by Gard Sveen
She spent the rest of the afternoon copying and organizing.
When she was halfway through, she almost gave up and started reading Kripo’s summary report as she stood in the copy room. After reading a couple of pages, she was struck by a memory, like one of the lightning flashes from her childhood summers at Hvaler.
Two witnesses, she thought.
She had just started on patrol, and all anyone was talking about was the trial.
The two witnesses hadn’t testified in court; it wasn’t necessary since Rask had already confessed. But they’d seen Kristiane that Saturday. Yes, she thought. One of them had been mentioned in a newspaper, either VG or Dagbladet, she was sure of it. The headline was “I Saw Kristiane at Skøyen.”
Two men had seen Kristiane that Saturday evening. One at Oslo Central Station. The other in the Skøyen neighborhood. Under the railroad bridge, wasn’t it?
Anders Rask had said that he had arranged to meet Kristiane in the city, but she had instead come to his place in the Oslo district of Haugerud, where he rented a townhouse. He had never said anything whatsoever about Skøyen. When he confessed, it was suddenly assumed that everything he said was true. No one had been able to catch him make any errors or inconsistencies, so the witness testimony became no longer significant.
She browsed back through the summary report.
“Kristiane observed at Oslo Central Station at 18:30 hours by the witness G. Gundersen,” it said on page 12. Nothing else. Could she remember so wrong?
She walked as fast as she could without running to her own office, and bumped into a guy in the corridor without even seeing who it was.
“How about an excuse me?” she heard behind her.
“The binders!” she cried, tossing documents to the floor. If she got a head start on Bergmann, he couldn’t help but put in a good word for her. She would lay everything out on the table before him and solve this case for him. Find something Kripo overlooked, damn straight. I’ll do just that.
She paged back through the second of the five binders containing the witness hearings in the Kristiane case. She still hadn’t opened the boxes with all the tips they’d received in November and December 1988 and, judging by the quantity, well into 1989. It was no doubt page after page of tips from either disturbed or self-centered persons across the country. She herself had been on the tip line a few times, and there was no limit to what people claimed to have seen. Kristiane had surely been glimpsed everywhere in the greater Oslo area that Saturday. The most publicized cases overflowed with leads from self-appointed mediums and faith healers.
After several minutes she found the interviews with G. Gundersen, who turned out to be Georg Gundersen, an eighty-year-old accountant from Moss. There were two interviews with him: one that took place at the Moss police station on November 30, where Gundersen was “almost certain” that it was Kristiane he had seen; and one dated two days later, December 2, conducted at the Grønland police station by Kripo detective Holte and a man whose name she didn’t recognize.
In the second interview the transcript did not say “almost certain.” Now Gundersen was “absolutely certain.” Gundersen had signed with the same steady handwriting as he had at the prior interview in Moss. Attached to the interview was a brief note from Holte, who concluded that Gundersen was a reliable witness.
A search in the census registry revealed a setback she hadn’t foreseen.
Gundersen died in 1998.
It would have been too good to be true if he was still alive.
What about the other witness? The junkie from the newspaper back then.
Near the back of the binder she found the document she was searching for.
According to a detective at the Oslo police station involved in a drug-dealing arrest on Saturday, November 19, Bjørn-Åge Flaten, born March 4, 1964, said that he had seen Kristiane Thorstensen at Skøyen exactly one week earlier. The document was not a separate witness interview in the Kristiane case, but a copy of the initial interview conducted after his arrest for the sale of fifty grams of hash and ten grams of amphetamine in an apartment in Tøyen.
Bjørn-Åge Flaten had been registered in late 1988 at an address in Rykkinn, but was also listed as a tenant in the old workers’ quarters of Amalienborg in Skøyen. He said in the interview that he wanted his sentence reduced in exchange for supplying the police with information on Kristiane. Alternatively, as he expressed it, he wanted money, as he expected that Kristiane’s family would soon promise a reward.
The only thing he appeared to have to offer was that he had seen Kristiane under the railroad bridge in Skøyen the Saturday she disappeared. When questioned about why he hadn’t said anything about this before, Flaten replied that he wasn’t in the habit of reading newspapers that often, and it was mostly crap on TV, as he put it.
Susanne Bech chewed on the end of her glasses for a moment. This may be a simple error, she thought. So simple and arrogant. And yet so difficult. The investigators had been sure that Kristiane had taken the train to Oslo Central Station, after which she probably took the subway to Haugerud, where Rask waited, according to the plan he had reportedly made with her. It just didn’t add up that no one had seen her take the Furuset line out to Haugerud on Saturday evening, especially since it was one of the most heavily used stretches of public transit in Oslo.
She stared out the window at the snowstorm outside. She pictured Mathea at preschool, trudging through the deep snow in the pink snowsuit her mother had forced on her, even though Susanne had bought an almost identical one for Mathea earlier in the fall.
“Mathea?” her mother had said when she visited her at the hospital when her daughter was born. “Mathea? No, you don’t mean that, my dear. That’s not a name for our family, is it?”
“Mathea,” Susanne whispered. Tears welled up in her eyes, which happened occasionally when she thought about her too much.
In her mind’s eye, she saw herself open the gate, the last one to arrive at pickup—she was almost always the last. The snowsuit was gone. The door to the drying cabinet was open, but there was no snowsuit there either. The box with a change of clothes was empty. The daycare was empty. She pushed the thought away. That would never happen.
“Bjørn-Åge Flaten,” she said out loud, tearing herself away from her own sick thoughts. She held the page out far in front of her, as though to convince herself that she wasn’t farsighted and read just fine without glasses.
She put on her glasses again and read the whole document one more time.
There wasn’t much substance in it. Bjørn-Åge, who went by Bønna, was a young boy from Bærum who’d started messing around with drugs. Not exactly a breakthrough. Or was it? Did we just never take you seriously?
There was no assessment of the credibility of the interview. Perhaps that was unnecessary. Like every other criminal, Flaten had tried to take advantage of someone else’s misfortune. Regardless of whether or not that was the case, he was only looking out for himself.
“Bjørn-Åge Flaten,” she wrote on a Post-it note.
She left her office before she could reconsider, and walked quickly to Bergmann’s office. The door was half-open. She was on her way in when she heard him talking on the phone. The smell of smoke wafted toward her. Someone had to put a stop to that. She would have to bring it up with Reuter, who was the lead representative on all matters related to health and safety. But not until she got a permanent position.
“These are my principles, and if you don’t like them, I have others.”
Mother, she thought, my cursed mother.
It looked like he could be on the phone forever, and she had no intention of interrupting him. As always when men spoke on the phone, it sounded as if it were the most important call ever made.
Back in her office she looked up Bjørn-Åge Flaten in the trial registry, investigation registry, and informant registry. The man had done little other than spend time in and out of prison in the nineties for theft, robbery, and minor narco
tics convictions. It appeared that he was no longer active as an informant. Susanne had a suspicion about why. His last known address—the terraced apartments in Sogneprest Munthe-Kaas Vei in Gjettum—was registered to Bjørg Flaten. His mother.
She called Bjørg Flaten in Bærum, but no one answered until the second attempt.
“I have no idea where he is,” she said indifferently, as if her son were merely a transient tenant she’d taken in many years ago. “He’s not here anyway.”
“Do you know where he’s living?”
Bjørg sighed heavily. When there was no reply, Susanne guessed that she was crying.
“It’s that awful heroin. As long as he . . . we’re respectable people. Even sold the house at Rykinn to save him.” She had no more to say.
“I understand that it’s difficult,” said Susanne.
“You? You don’t understand a thing.”
Susanne remained silent.
“What did I do wrong? I’ve tried everything. His father, I don’t know.” She started crying again, then blew her nose loudly, twice.
Susanne closed her eyes.
I understand everything, she thought. Absolutely everything. But she didn’t say so.
“If he contacts you, I need you to call me right away.”
“So what has he done now?”
“Nothing. You must tell him that he’s not suspected of anything at all.”
“That place at Brobekk,” said Bjørg. “They’ve called me from there a couple of times.”
“Brobekkveien? The shelter?”
“They let him in, even if he’s high.”
After confirming that Bjørg Flaten had her name, along with all the phone numbers, to the switchboard, the office, and cell phone, Susanne pulled up a list of numbers for the shelters.
A tired voice answered at the Brobekkveien shelter.
“No,” he said. “He’s not here.”
She looked at the clock, pulled out the pocket mirror from the new bag she’d bought but strictly speaking couldn’t afford, freshened up her eyelashes, and took her Canada Goose jacket from the coat stand.
Someone must know if he’s up there. She didn’t even bother to ask Bergmann what he thought.
24
When a nurse opened the door to the therapy room, Arne Furuberget was reminded of the words he’d read that morning. He’d stayed up late reading the patient record chronologically. Though his body hadn’t wanted to get up when the alarm clock rang at six o’clock this morning, he’d nonetheless gone straight to the office and continued reading.
What was it about this room that made him remember? The room itself? Or perhaps the few rays of sunshine that filtered through the almost impenetrable layer of clouds. Or perhaps the sight of Anders Rask standing with his back to him taking in the view of Mjøsa. His small fine hands that looked like they belonged to a child, like those of the girls he’d killed.
The girls he was convicted of having killed, Furuberget corrected himself.
“Leave us alone,” Furuberget said. One of the nurses, a burly fellow from Raufoss, looked at him skeptically. The instructions were clear: none of the employees in the security ward were allowed to be alone with the patients, unless the medical director granted explicit permission.
Since Furuberget was the medical director, it was therefore up to him to decide if he wanted to be alone with the patients. When the door closed, however, he wasn’t quite so sure of his decision on this particular day. Rask had never harmed a fly since he’d been confined in these sixteen thousand square feet of Ringvoll Psychiatric Hospital. Nonetheless Furuberget had recently developed a nagging worry where Rask was concerned. He imagined that a dark fury was building up behind his seemingly unflappable facade. The sort of fury that he’d once taken out on young girls.
But then who had killed the prostitute on Frognerveien?
The words from the patient record fluttered across his mind.
Edle Maria is alive.
He imagined how the conversation might go.
Edle Maria?
Yes, Edle Maria.
She’s alive.
Rask stood motionless by the window, as if he were autistic and could not move until he’d registered every single movement outside the windows—the black birds rising from the snow-covered fields, a deer on the ice, the passage of every single cloud across the sky.
Furuberget sat down carefully in the chair he usually sat in. He glanced over at the couch where Rask usually sat. If he wanted to. Furuberget assured himself that he had the alarm on his belt. He brought his index finger over the button he would press if Rask attempted to act upon the threat he’d made last time.
Five minutes later, Rask still had not moved.
“What was it that made you threaten me last time?” Furuberget drew a face on his notepad, then crossed it out.
“I have never threatened you.”
“You don’t remember?”
Rask shook his head and turned slowly. Furuberget suddenly thought he looked more grotesque than he could recall ever having seen him. The medications had once made him overweight, but now he was thin again, with a child’s face on a middle-aged man’s body.
“Last time you said that I would die if I didn’t get you moved to an open ward.”
Rask’s gaze remained distant.
“We’re all going to die.”
“But we won’t all be killed, Anders. This is serious. I think you understand that.”
Rask did not reply.
“You’re ruining it for yourself.”
Still no answer.
“Do you think a lot about death, Anders?”
Rask sat down on the couch across from Furuberget and scanned the room. Judging by his expression, it seemed he found the room as repellent as Furuberget himself did.
Without warning Rask stood up and took a step toward Furuberget. He chose to remain seated, but instinctively leaned back in the chair, so that he felt the wooden frame sharply beneath the upholstery. He caught himself breathing out in relief as Rask turned and went back to the window. He brought his hand up to the alarm on his belt and considered pressing the red button.
“Maria,” said Rask from over by the window.
Furuberget noticed a faint trembling in his body. Goose bumps started to form on his scalp and around his temples. His mouth felt parched, and his lips parted slightly as he reached for the paper cup of water.
“Maria?”
“Why did you ask me about that name? Maria? And Edle Maria?” Rask had turned around. His gaze was serious, but his mouth held a hint of a sneer, as if he thought he’d caught Furuberget in some kind of lie. Furuberget was unable to conceal that he’d been taken by surprise and knew it all too well.
“Is Edle Maria alive, Anders?”
Furuberget’s body shuddered, like the start of a fever. He might as well take the chance.
“Edle Maria . . .” Rask said to himself, dreamily, quietly, as if the memory was about to disappear. He turned back toward the window.
“Maybe we can come to an agreement,” Furuberget said.
“Agreement? What kind of agreement?”
“You got a letter. Do you remember that letter?”
Rask laughed, a boyish laugh, as if he were innocence itself.
“I get a lot of letters, a lot more than you.”
“Of course, Anders. Of course. If you give me that letter, I’ll do what I can to get you transferred. But you can’t keep on threatening me. If you do that again, it will be a long time before I can assess transferring you.”
“Which letter?” said Rask in a low voice.
“You know which letter I mean.”
Rask appeared in front of Furuberget before he even had time to think. Rask’s plastic sandals were soundless on the tile floor. He was holding one hand behind his back. Furuberget knew that two wooden ladles had disappeared from the kitchen and a carpet knife from the workshop three weeks ago. The whole place had been turned upside down, but
the items were never found. All the patients in the security ward had been stripped down naked to no avail.
Rask leaned over him, his mouth once again distorted into that unfathomable sneer. “You’re going to die, you know that?”
He raised his arm slowly toward Furuberget’s throat.
No knife.
“Because you intend to let me rot in here. You’ve probably thought about keeping me locked up here even if I’m acquitted.”
Furuberget held his right hand on the alarm.
“Put down your arm. Show me what you have in the other hand.”
“What are you afraid of, Furuberget? Dying?”
Rask smelled of cheap soap, and it nauseated him. Rask was holding his wrist, hard, as if he didn’t want to let go before it cracked.
He pressed the button.
Rask took a step back.
“Your problem is that you’re so pathetic.”
By the time the nurses burst through the door, Rask was seated on the couch. Furuberget stared out into the room.
“I just brushed against the button by accident.” He could not avoid inhaling sharply. “We’re through. Take him to his room.”
Down in the office he took off his suit coat and unbuttoned the cuffs on his left shirt sleeve. He tried to massage the circulation back into his wrist where Rask had gripped it. He felt feverish.
The file drawer opened with a sharp crack, and he tossed the old folder containing the patient record on his desk. The sound made him jump. Everything scared him now—the paintings on the wall, the thought that it would never be light again in this country, that Rask would find a way to take his life. And make it back out into the world to meet up with whoever it was he was corresponding with out there.
