Hell Is Open (Tommy Bergmann Series Book 2)

by Gard Sveen

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2015 Gard Sveen

  Translation copyright © 2017 Paul Norlen

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Previously published as Helvete åpent by Vigmostad & Bjørke in Norway in 2015. Translated from Norwegian by Paul Norlen. First published in English by AmazonCrossing in 2017.

  Published by AmazonCrossing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and AmazonCrossing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503943919

  ISBN-10: 1503943917

  Cover design by Faceout Studio

  But fear not for me, my friend, for I have already seen

  Hell open

  standing.

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  For unto us . . .

  PART ONE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  PART TWO

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  PART THREE

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  PART FOUR

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  64

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

  PROLOGUE

  NOVEMBER 1988

  For unto us a Savior is born, thought Tommy Bergmann.

  He glanced through the windows of a house that stood close by the road. There was light in the middle window, a solitary golden Christmas star beaming out into the winter darkness.

  Just in front of the house a dark-clothed figure was leaning over; he didn’t appear to have noticed the car. Bergmann’s partner, old Kåre Gjervan from Trondheim, stopped the car and put it in neutral. The man turned his head slowly in their direction. They looked furtively at each other, the men in the patrol car and the dark-clothed man. The windshield was covered with sleet. Gjervan turned on the windshield wipers. The figure by the roadside stood motionless, looking straight ahead into the sleet; even his dog stood as if frozen, staring at the two beams from the headlights, the sleet falling to the ground, as if the world was nothing but a snow globe and there was no evil in it. Even many years later Bergmann fantasized that right then, in that little pocket of time, he’d opened the car door and run the other way, back to the city, run until he was completely out of breath.

  Kåre Gjervan swore quietly to himself, just as he’d done at the gas station at Mortensrud as Bergmann grabbed the portable radio when the call came through from Dispatch. There was less than an hour left on their shift, but Bergmann was bored and didn’t want to wait for another car to report in. Unlike old Gjervan, Bergmann was only twenty-three, and he was eager to experience something on duty, not just count down the hours like Gjervan, who couldn’t wait to get home to his wife and kids.

  Gjervan pounded his hand a couple of times on the gear shift. The sound of his wedding ring made a metallic sound.

  “Get the old man and the dog into the car,” he said.

  Just as Bergmann opened the car door, the man on the roadside started moving toward them and slid into the backseat.

  They drove for several minutes through the darkness until they’d left all the houses behind and only dense black forest lay ahead. At last the forest road ended, dissolving into nothingness. It was as if they’d arrived at the ends of the earth. Only the headlights that lit up the spruce trunks showed that the world existed beyond the car. The wet dog, an innocent Labrador, cocked its head when Bergmann turned around and looked at them. Black blood was still caked on its nose. The man in the backseat sat quietly and stared out the windshield.

  “What were you doing in the forest?” said Bergmann quietly.

  The man did not answer.

  Kåre Gjervan adjusted the rearview mirror and studied the man who had called the emergency number from one of the houses down by the main road.

  “I’m telling you,” said the man in the backseat. He paused, then closed his eyes. “This is the Devil’s work.”

  Although the beam from the MagLite was powerful, darkness enveloped them. The spruce trees were so dense that Bergmann thought the sun wouldn’t penetrate their depths on even a bright summer day. Gjervan carefully put one foot in front of the other, but kept an even pace as he ventured deeper into the forest. The caller was already well ahead, the dog pulling him along as if he were a dogsled. Bergmann fell behind a few steps and tightened his grip on his MagLite until the fine waffle pattern was embossed in his hand. There was a squishing sound under his feet. Ice-cold water had seeped through his military boots, and a faint odor of rotten earth rose up around him. He sped up to catch up with Gjervan. When he reached him, he heard a voice call out from farther in the forest.

  “Here!” called the man with the dog. It looked like he was having a hard time holding it back. Bergmann tried not to imagine the worst.

  “Oh, help me,” he whispered to himself a minute later. “Dear God, you must help me.”

  The two men in front of him had stopped up ahead by a dense cluster of spruce trees. Gjervan slowly angled the MagLite away and waited a few seconds, as if he wanted to collect himself. Bergmann stopped on the narrow path a few steps behind him. The caller worked to restrain the dog as Gjervan bent over and removed what looked like branches and spruce twigs. He stood up quickly and took a couple of fumbling steps backward. His flashlight fell to the ground. Bergmann gripped his more tightly and took the last few steps up to the two other men.

  Even in the white light from the flashlight, and even though she’d been lying there for days, she was easy to recognize from the police bulletin. Kristiane Thorstensen lay in two taped-up garbage bags that someone had tried to cover with branches and moss. The dog had torn open the top part, and her head was visible. The bags had torn in a few places, and it appeared that the birds had been after her too. But her face seemed untouched. She was bruised, but looked better than Bergmann had feared. Gjervan leaned down and carefully touched the baptismal necklace she wore around her neck. Bergmann closed his eyes and tried to tell himself that she had surely died quickly.

  When the crime scene investigators arrived and pulled the garbage bags aside, all hope of a quick death disappeared.<
br />
  She was so mutilated that he could no longer believe that there was anything but evil on earth.

  He was unable to take his eyes off the left part of her chest.

  He heard one of the CSIs mumble, “Trophy hunter,” and quietly swore a death sentence over the man who had done this, after which he was in no shape to understand anything other than Gjervan’s arm over his shoulders before everything turned black.

  They drove back to the city in silence. Gjervan stopped at the Shell station again and parked the car in the same place as before, in the dark on the side of the building. He picked up the portable radio and called Dispatch. In a quiet voice he said simply, “Address,” and waited until the man at Dispatch understood what he meant. As always, there were plenty of journalists listening to the police radio, but Gjervan evidently didn’t want to give away this particular bit of information. Then he asked for the name of the minister in Oppsal parish, and asked Dispatch to call the person in question. Why did he do that? thought Bergmann. What was done was done, though. He knew that the first pack of hyena-like journalists was already on their way.

  He studied Gjervan’s hands as he took notes. They were just as steady as if he were sitting at home on a Sunday evening writing Christmas cards. A claw seized Bergmann’s chest. He was twenty-three years old and had never seen a dead person—much less one that had been murdered—before tonight. And now, he thought. Now he was going to meet the parents who had lost their child.

  “Do you want anything to eat?” said Gjervan, opening the car door.

  Bergmann shook his head.

  “You have to eat.”

  He shook his head again. He stayed in the car with his eyes closed and tried to control his breathing.

  It turned out that they would have to be content with the interim pastor in Oppsal parish this first Sunday of Advent. He had no car, so they picked him up at Abildsø, where he lived in a basement apartment rental. He wasn’t much older than Bergmann, and on the way up to Skøyenbrynet, the street in Godlia where the dead girl’s family lived, he tried to talk about Kristiane, asking in a quiet voice if she didn’t go to Vetlandsåsen Middle School and play handball, as if she were still alive.

  “It’s not easy to believe in God,” the pastor said barely audibly. “When something like this . . .” It seemed as if he had run out of words.

  As the car turned toward Skøyenbrynet, Bergmann caught himself wishing they would never get there. When Gjervan stopped the car in front of the Thorstensen family’s red house, it occurred to him—and the thought frightened him—that they had nothing more to offer the family than this, three guys in a Volvo patrol car: himself, just out of the Police Academy; a deathly pale interim pastor who looked as if he regretted his faith in God; and old Kåre Gjervan. If it hadn’t been for him, they would have nothing to lean on.

  Bergmann thought he glimpsed a face in the kitchen window as he walked along the leafless hedge toward the front door. If it hadn’t been for the fact that the outside light was on, the house would have looked abandoned. His mind flitted to the fact that he was less than a mile from where he himself had grown up. But this was another world, a realm of prosperity he would probably never experience. A world that in a few seconds would never be the same again, that would be in ruins with a single press of the doorbell.

  As they stood on the doorstep, he stared at the sign on the door. It was a ceramic plaque that one of the kids—perhaps Kristiane herself—had made in grade school. Big blue glazed letters read, “Here live Alexander and Kristiane, Per-Erik and Elisabeth Thorstensen.” Now they would have to take it down. Kristiane would never come home again. She would never stand on this doorstep and think that the sign was childish.

  He spotted an Advent candleholder on the kitchen table through the kitchen window. One candle was lit. Bergmann thought it seemed absurd to light an Advent candle when their daughter was missing. But what did he know? Maybe it was a way to cling to normalcy, the hope that she was still alive. He heard the dull sound of the door to the entry porch being opened. Bergmann swallowed heavily, and his pulse raced. He caught the gaze of the interim pastor, who looked even paler than before—if that was possible—in the light from the outdoor lamp over the front door.

  All three took a step back as the door opened. A man came into view in the doorway. Gjervan cleared his throat as the man in the door scrutinized the three men on the doorstep.

  “Per-Erik Thorstensen?” said Gjervan in a quiet voice.

  The man barely nodded.

  Gjervan cleared his throat again.

  “Yes?” said Per-Erik Thorstensen in a cracked voice. His eyes were already filled with tears, as if the sight of the uniforms and the pastor’s green parka told him all he needed to know. Nevertheless there was a hint of hope in his voice—that the three men on the doorstep came bearing good news, that a miracle had taken place on this first Sunday of Advent.

  Cautious steps could be heard behind Thorstensen as a woman came down the stairs from the second floor. She stopped in the passageway inside the entry porch with her hands to her face.

  “I’m sorry,” said Gjervan.

  A shiver passed through Bergmann as the woman began to scream.

  It seemed as if she was never going to stop.

  He was only able to make out four words from the hysterical sounds.

  “It’s all my fault.”

  She said it over and over again: “It’s all my fault.”

  Her husband took a few fumbling steps backward.

  Without turning around he said, “Elisabeth, Elisabeth.”

  She just screamed louder behind him, until it seemed physically impossible that she could keep it up. Thorstensen leaned back against the wall in the passageway, knocking over several framed photos on a chest of drawers as he did so. The sound of splintering glass mixed with Elisabeth Thorstensen’s screams. Gjervan went over to Per-Erik and took him by the shoulders.

  Bergmann exchanged a quick glance with the pastor. They studied each other for a moment before Bergmann noticed that it had suddenly become quiet in the house. Apart from a weak, desperate sob from Per-Erik Thorstensen, who was now leaning against Gjervan’s uniform jacket, silence had fallen. Bergmann walked inside, and Gjervan nodded toward the kitchen, which was to the left of the hall.

  Bergmann walked across the large Persian rug in the hall toward the kitchen, where the sound of utensils clattering to the floor could be heard. He stopped in the doorway. The Advent candle flickered on the kitchen table. A Christmas star was on one of the kitchen chairs, ready to be hung up.

  Elisabeth Thorstensen was kneeling on the ground. She raised her head and stared apathetically at Bergmann. For a moment he was unable to move. He studied her facial features and was almost certain he’d seen her before, long ago. An image popped up in his mind. For a second or two he saw it clearly. She was young, standing in a long corridor, reaching her hand out to him.

  He tore himself away from the train of thought.

  “Don’t do it,” he said, nodding toward her right hand.

  She pressed the big kitchen knife harder against her wrist. He saw that blood had already started to trickle, but that she still hadn’t cut completely across the artery.

  He took a cautious step into the room. The pine floorboard creaked under his military boot.

  “Don’t touch me,” she said quietly. “Don’t touch me, you pig.”

  Without a sound she pulled the kitchen knife forcefully across her wrist. Bergmann had time to think that it was good she didn’t cut along the tendons, down into the flesh. The tendons were severed, but the blood wasn’t pouring out. He crouched down in front of her, but not before she managed to cut herself again. He took a firm hold of her right wrist, which hung limply. She seemed suddenly drained of energy, and her fingers let go of the knife immediately. Bergmann tossed it across the floor.

  He pressed his big hand hard against her thin wrist, a chaos of white cuts and black warm blood oozing out between his
fingers. Her head sank toward his leather uniform jacket. She pressed against his neck; he put his free left arm over her back and tried to call to Gjervan, but not too loud. Kåre must have understood the situation, as somewhere behind him Bergmann heard Gjervan’s voice barking out short commands. He picked out the words ambulance, Skøyenbrynet.

  He tightened his grip on her wrist and swept his gaze across the kitchen counter. A dish towel was only an arm’s length from him. He tried to get up, but Elisabeth Thorstensen held him back. He let go of her wrist; he had to put the towel in place as a compress. She raised her right hand to his face, so pale that she looked as if she would soon faint.

  “My child,” she said. “I will never see my child again.”

  PART ONE

  NOVEMBER 2004

  1

  He knocked the alarm clock to the floor as he reached for his phone. It was Leif Monsen, the duty officer at Kripo—the Criminal Police. Tommy Bergmann had no great confidence in Monsen. He was infantile, an obvious racist and politically well to the right of Genghis Khan. But when it came to crime scene descriptions, Monsen was worth listening to. No one in active service had seen more than he had. And when he said a crime scene was ghastly, there was no reason to doubt it.

  Though Bergmann heard the words duct tape and knife, hammer and blood, they barely registered, as if they weren’t real. It was the words that followed that made him wake up properly.

  “I don’t see how it could be possible, but it must be the same man,” said Monsen. His voice sounded desperate for a moment. “I’ve sent a car up for you.”

  As Bergmann hung up, he heard the sound of a diesel engine and a car braking quickly. The bedroom lit up with a blue flashing light.

  The light on the roof of the car painted the walls in Oslo’s Svartdal tunnel. The driver pressed the siren button on the midconsole, as a car at the end of the tunnel was straddling two lanes.

  “So you’re Bergmann,” said the young uniformed officer in the passenger seat. Bergmann grunted in response. This was not the time to start a conversation. Besides, for the first time in his life, he was unsure what the kid was referring to, how far down in the system the rumors had trickled.