by Gard Sveen
“Edle Maria is alive,” he said aloud to himself. “You must understand that she is alive.”
The patient checked for somatic disorders with EEG. Paranoid schizophrenia cannot be ruled out, but transitory nonschizophrenic paranoid psychosis is more probable.
Furuberget read his own notes from the printout. She had improved, and he thought sending her home would help her get better. He thought that the major trauma she had been subjected to had triggered a latent personality disturbance in her, the same one she had shown signs of previously, but that she could be attended to locally at the district psychiatric unit.
He browsed through the copies of her earliest patient records, dating back to her time at the Frensby and Sandberg hospitals back in the seventies. Furuberget himself had worked at Sandberg, but never treated her there.
He studied the pages closely.
June 1975. Patient keeps referring to a female person, Edle Maria, who seems traumatic to patient. Possible persecution paranoia. Schizophrenia less probable. Patient unwilling to talk about symptoms or own illness, reason for hospitalization, attempts at suicide, self-injury, lack of capacity to care for children, panic anxiety, increasing depression.
September 1975. Patient still has had no contact with family. Have not followed up on the person Edle Maria in the treatment. Patient has stopped referring to her. Over the summer patient has developed an apparently strong trust in one of the temporary nurses and seems far more functional than upon admission. Patient has resumed her interest in literature and film and has been accompanied to the cinema on several occasions.
Furuberget vaguely remembered reading the old patient records back then, fourteen or fifteen years ago. He himself had assessed schizophrenia, and more specifically what was previously called multiple personality disorder, but then rejected it. Perhaps because the whole matter had gotten so complicated, and the most important thing at the time was to treat her for the violent trauma she had been subjected to. But she had shown symptoms of dissociative identity disorder, he had to admit that. Her memory lapses were striking, and the way she distanced herself from the trauma, as if she was in a kind of hypnosis, was barely functional.
But that she could have several identities that fought over her personality? Could he really have overlooked something so basic? Maybe, he thought. Perhaps he had never really been open to that extreme possibility. He was aware that recent research showed that the dominant personality could actually move aside, even consciously, and that both personalities were aware of the other’s existence.
Schizophrenia was a mirrored hall, for patient and caregiver alike.
Furuberget found himself in just such a mirrored room right now—wherever he turned, everything looked the same.
He held the old patient record from Sandberg Psychiatric Hospital between his fingers, carefully, as if it were a newborn baby.
The patient keeps referring to a person, Edle Maria.
But what could that mean fourteen years later?
Edle Maria is alive.
How?
And why did the poor Lithuanian girl say that name?
He had to find her. If it was the last thing he did on earth.
25
Bergmann already felt that things were slipping out of his grasp. Who did they think he was? Jesus? Miracles in a week, forget that. Susanne was still not done with the copies he was supposed to have. Kristiane’s mother, Elisabeth Thorstensen, wouldn’t talk to him; the father, Per-Erik, couldn’t be reached.
All he could do was wait. He should have used Susanne for something else, but that had actually been the best he could think of just then. He needed order.
He opened the window and lit a cigarette. It was early afternoon, but already seemed like it was starting to get dark. He hadn’t even noticed that it had started snowing. Again. The snow came blowing in through the open window. A copy of Dagbladet by the windowsill grew damp. Kristiane’s face, which filled the right column on the front page, looked like it was covered with tears. He picked up the paper and turned to the two-page story. He read it slowly, as if that might give him the answer to whether Rask was guilty or not.
In the bottom right corner of the two-page spread was a facsimile of Dagbladet from Monday, November 28, 1988. It showed a black-and-white picture of a short, stocky man with his arms around two girls Kristiane’s age. Bergmann remembered the picture now. It was the first time he had ever seen young people gather at the school of a friend who had been killed. Vetlandsåsen Middle School had been open on the evening of the Sunday they found Kristiane. He remembered it all now. Even remembered the man in the picture. He was the handball coach, wasn’t he? Yes. What was his name again?
Bergmann tried to read the caption in the facsimile, but the print was so small that it was hopeless. He hurried down the corridor to Halgeir Sørvaag’s office, holding the damp newspaper carefully, so that the wet pages wouldn’t tear. Sørvaag was on the phone and did not look happy that Bergmann just burst in after a brief knock on the door.
“Your magnifying glass.”
Both handheld magnifying glasses and magnifying lamps were part of Sørvaag’s standard setup, which had earned him the unavoidable nickname Sherlock back in the day. Hardly any of the new graduates from the Police Academy knew who Sherlock was anymore, though.
Bergmann hurried to one end of the desk, where a large magnifying lamp was stationed. Sørvaag had paid for it himself. The whole thing bordered on autism—it was as if he hadn’t registered that the police district had its own forensics unit—but Bergmann needed just such a device right now.
“Careful,” said Sørvaag, putting the receiver to his ear again. “What about Frontrunner in the third?” he said to the person on the other end.
Damned gamblers, thought Bergmann. Spending all their free time at the track. Strictly speaking, police employees were no longer permitted to gamble away their salary, but Sørvaag and his buddies didn’t give a damn. On the other hand gambling may not have been the worst thing to occupy their time. Occasionally, they even won.
He set the newspaper on the tabletop and lowered the spring-loaded arm that held the magnifying glass. The circular lamp below the glass blinked a couple of times. The faces in the facsimile from the 1988 edition of Dagbladet appeared in the diopter at twice their previous size.
“Damn,” said Bergmann. The print was still too small for him to be able to read the names of the man and the two crying girls in the picture.
“Try this,” he heard behind him. Sørvaag exhaled like a walrus, set the receiver down on the desk, and pushed off with the office chair. He held a smaller magnifying glass with mounted tweezers and a little lamp.
“Five times,” Sørvaag said, and rolled back to the phone. “Frontrunner,” he said into the receiver again. “Pure gold. The name says it all.”
Finally, thought Bergmann. He let the powerful lens glide over the three faces, which were now dissolved into pixels of black, gray, and white. Then he brought the glass down to the caption: “Jon-Olav Farberg, a teacher at Vetlandsåsen Middle School, opened the school on Sunday. Here he is consoling Kristiane’s friends, Marianne and Eva.”
“Jon-Olav Farberg,” he said quietly. He’d turned his face and appeared in profile, so it was hard to see what he looked like. But Bergmann remembered him now from handball. He’d never coached Bergmann’s team, but he might have coached Kristiane’s. And he was a teacher. He must have known Anders Rask, who taught there around the same time. That was as good a place to start as any.
Jon-Olav Farberg was easy to find on the Internet. He’d evidently given up teaching and was now part-owner of a consulting firm that specialized in recruiting, management, and human resources. The photograph on the company’s website showed a man who looked younger than his almost sixty years.
Farberg answered his phone almost immediately. Bergmann studied his features on the computer screen. The voice on the other end was light, almost boyish.
“Many of u
s are hurting now,” said Farberg, “from all these stories about Kristiane. It’s like reliving it all over again.”
“I understand that.”
“I don’t know what you stand to gain by talking with me, but by all means. Anything at all to help.”
There was a pause. Bergmann thought that perhaps it had been hasty to call Farberg. Nevertheless, it might be worth driving over to his office.
“You knew Anders Rask, right?” he asked.
Farberg did not answer right away.
“Is that what this is about?”
“I can explain when I come out to see you. But yes, Rask has gotten the case reopened, and—”
Farberg sighed heavily.
“Sorry, I don’t want to be negative. But being associated with Anders again—the way I, the way all of us were back then—it’s, well, extremely unpleasant.”
26
He was nearly incapable of leaving the office. Had the threat from Anders Rask rattled him that much? Arne Furuberget closed his eyes and rested his head against the back of his chair. Had he simply been doing this job too long? Committed the classic mistake of not realizing he was too old to handle its challenges anymore? Tomorrow a policeman from Oslo would come to talk to Rask. He barely remembered the name of the fellow who would be showing up here; all he could recall was the look on Rask’s face when he took hold of his wrist. For the first time he saw how dangerous Rask really was. He had been at Ringvoll for almost eleven years, and never, not once, had he seen him like today. He was only a patient in the security ward because of the crimes he was convicted of. Nothing in his behavior pattern had ever suggested that he had any reason to be there. Until today. First the death threat yesterday. Today physical contact.
Furuberget chose not to think about it anymore. He’d had far worse patients than Rask, after all. You can live a whole life in a state of repression, he thought. Deep down, he knew that no, he had never had a worse patient. He was unable to read Rask, had never been able to.
Quickly, as if it was dangerous to remain in the office for even one more second, Furuberget sprang up from his chair. He rushed past the guard on the first floor without so much as a good-bye. Gusts of whirling snow blew toward him when he opened the heavy steel door. He walked slowly and reluctantly toward the gate and thought for the first time that the fences here in the open ward were too low. The fences at the back of the building—where the security ward was located—were fine, but here? It didn’t look like much of a fence at all.
When he held his card up to the reader, his fingers grew instantly numb with cold. Once inside his car, he set the old patient record on the passenger seat. He started the engine, then studied the illuminated windowpanes of the security ward as he brushed the snow off the windshield. The light was on in Rask’s window. Just as Furuberget was done brushing off the snow, a silhouette appeared in Rask’s window.
This was what was almost supernatural about Rask—that he’d been lying in bed waiting for just this moment when the two dark figures could observe one another from a distance. Who are you communicating with? Furuberget wondered. He’d been through Rask’s entire mail list, but hadn’t found anything of interest.
But how could I have been so dumb that I tried to make a deal with him? Now Rask is going to destroy the letter. Furuberget would have to start all over. He knew that he had to continue to be alone with Rask in the therapy sessions. Rask would never say a word with others present. He could only thank his Creator that he would never be set free. Even if he were acquitted of Kristiane’s murder, the five other murders would take time. If only the fools down at the police station had frozen the bastard’s sperm.
“Damned fools,” he said to himself.
He remained standing and listened to the even humming of the diesel engine while he held his gaze fixed on Rask’s silhouette in the window. Rask raised his arm and waved slowly.
Furuberget was starting to feel cold and got into the car with barely controlled movements.
When he parked outside his garage ten minutes later, he realized he could hardly recall anything about the short drive home. He didn’t remember having passed a single car as he drove through downtown Skreia, and he hadn’t seen a soul out and about. Now everything was dark. Though there had been a last remnant of daylight when he left Ringvoll, it was now completely dark.
He turned off the ignition, and the engine died away. He looked toward the neighbors’ house and saw that their outdoor light was on. They’d left on vacation today and wouldn’t return until after Christmas. Thank the Lord, he thought. It would be like having the entire world to himself here at the end of the street. Only the peace and quiet of the nearby forest and fields. He had no desire to travel to Malaysia for Christmas, but what could he do?
He opened the car door and put his foot in the snow. Then he glanced at the house. It was completely dark. Not even the outdoor light by the steps was on. There was no light in any of the windows. After his wife retired, she always turned on the outdoor light at three o’clock. She wouldn’t hear of having an automatic light.
He looked at his watch. It was already four.
She could be out for a walk. But no, she was always there when he came home. Dinner was at four thirty. It had been like that ever since the kids moved away from home.
He left the car door open and pressed the old patient record to his body. He briefly considered walking around the house, but changed his mind. Instead he walked as quietly as he could up the slippery iron steps.
He fumbled for a long time with the keys in his pocket. Then he turned around and looked at the tire tracks from his car. In half an hour they would be gone. Though he had shoveled early this morning, there was no evidence of his work left.
He went back down the steps and past the car. He got on his knees and tried to look for tire tracks from another car into and out of the garage.
It was useless, everything was snowed over again.
It had only begun to snow heavily after noon.
He went back to the house.
Carefully he turned the key in the cylinder lock.
It did not smell like dinner.
A foreign smell?
Maybe.
Someone was here, he thought. He clutched the patient record more tightly, as if he planned to defend himself with it. He remained standing on the entry porch and raised his hand to the light switch, but changed his mind.
“Gunn,” he said quietly. An intruder would have heard him anyway. “Gunn!”
Without turning on the light he walked down the hallway. He went past the kitchen, not even hearing his own steps on the runner that covered the length of the floor.
He found her in the living room.
He dropped the patient record at the sight of her. For a couple of seconds his life flashed before his eyes—he was twenty-three again, it was summer, she was three months along and had never smiled so beautifully as that day on the church steps.
She lay on her back on the new couch, facing the ceiling.
He was unable to move his legs.
Suddenly, she sat up.
Furuberget staggered back. Struck his head on the wall.
“Are you home already?” she said dryly. She sighed and lay down again. “I think I’m starting to get sick. How long have I been asleep?”
He shook his head, unable to answer.
Tomorrow he had to tell the policeman everything.
He got two Paracetamol for her in the bathroom and hoped he could hide his frayed nerves. The face in the mirror was not his own.
“I’ll fix some food for myself,” he said. “Would you like anything?”
She shook her head and fell back asleep almost at once.
He sat there awhile holding her hand, then gathered the documents that had fallen on the floor when he walked in.
As he went into his office, he felt dizzy and there was ringing in his ears, as if he had a brain tumor he’d ignored for much too long. He guided his index fing
er over the few lines that appeared in the patient record from Sandberg, but did not understand a thing. Nothing other than that Edle Maria had something to do with the Lithuanian girl’s murder. And that the news had not come as a surprise to Anders Rask.
He turned on the computer and double-checked the number. He pointed at the four words in the file: “Edle Maria is alive.”
He considered calling Rune Flatanger at Kripo, since this was strictly speaking a police matter. But no, she had been his patient during that difficult period, so it would inevitably come out that he himself had done a poor job with her. Though his professional career was coming to an end, he nonetheless did not care to bring such disrepute on himself.
Besides, if he got the cops involved, that would set her back completely. As for Rask . . . He could almost swear that Rask knew something about this. He must be lured out of his hole, not hunted.
He picked up his phone and entered the number.
27
Some afternoons the stairs up to the top floor felt impossibly far. Mathea lay down twice, the first time right inside the entryway. Then on the landing on the third floor. Susanne Bech thought there was little other than uphill climbs in her life right now. The bus down from Vålerenga had been packed, and she couldn’t count the number of times she’d cursed herself for not having applied to get Mathea into staff daycare. But it was out of the question to move Mathea now, when she was doing so well.
When she’d made it to the top floor and was waiting for the small feet in their lilac boots to take the last two steps, she couldn’t help but realize there were some upsides to her life: she no longer had to clean up after Nico or endure his silence, his distant gaze, the accusations that it was her fault, that he no longer had the energy to have sex that often, that she made too many demands, and his never coming home before 9:00 a.m. after a night out. She had successfully avoided ending up like her mother—a prisoner serving a life sentence in a marriage that had gone stale twenty years ago, that was reminiscent of a carton of sour milk you couldn’t bear to pour out in the sink because you were afraid of what was inside.
