by Gard Sveen
Bergmann bit his lip.
Who did he think he was? Her father?
On the other hand, this would give him a good reason to call Hadja.
He turned away and walked toward his car.
The boy had lit a fire in her. She would soon be fifteen. He supposed she knew what she wanted.
A fire, he thought. Someone had lit a fire in Kristiane.
His phone rang, and he recognized the number at once. He’d saved it earlier in the day.
He remained standing outside the car, as the snow fell harder and harder, but he could not take the chance of missing this call.
“Tommy Bergmann,” he said in what he hoped was a tone of both authority and courtesy.
Silence.
A bus passed the parking lot, and he put his hand over his free ear.
“Elisabeth Thorstensen?”
39
Bergmann didn’t have time to go home to shower. All he had time for on the short drive over to Elisabeth Thorstensen’s old patrician villa was two cigarettes. Her words—“I go to bed early”—made him realize it was now or never.
As he stood on the steps, he hoped he didn’t smell like a gym. Even though it was a different house, with a different view, he had the feeling of having traveled sixteen years back in time.
He raised his arm and knocked with the knocker, noticing as he did so that there was no nameplate on the door. He still remembered the childish ceramic sign that had hung beside the door of the red house in Skøyenbrynet: “Here live Alexander and Kristiane, Per-Erik and Elisabeth Thorstensen.”
The person who appeared in the doorway must be her new husband, Asgeir Nordli. The slightly long, combed-back gray hair gave him a bohemian look, which surprised Bergmann. The tall body was a bit ungainly, but he was tanned and dressed in an expensive dark-blue cardigan. He had a full-sized foreign newspaper in his hands. The furrow between his eyes seemed to deepen as he studied the big wet man on his steps. Bergmann remembered that he was in workout clothes, emblazoned with “Klemetsrud Handball” and various sponsor logos.
He introduced himself.
The gray-haired man inhaled deeply through his nose before he took Bergmann’s hand. Then he turned and closed the outside door.
“I don’t like this,” he said quietly.
“She called me herself,” said Bergmann.
“After you’d been calling her all day.”
“I don’t think I got your name.”
“I didn’t say it.”
But I know it, Bergmann thought as the man introduced himself.
“Follow me,” said Nordli quietly, leading him across the hall. Bergmann glanced around at the abstract art on white walls and the antique furnishings, all vastly more expensive than he could imagine.
Nordli opened a door into what looked like an office or a library. He closed the door quietly behind Bergmann. Outside the window he could see the lights of Ulvøya, but Malmøya appeared to have disappeared in the blizzard. Nordli turned on the ceiling light, illuminating the overfilled bookcases, a desk, and a guest bed. The room was as big as Bergmann’s own living room. He fixed his gaze on one of the pictures on the walls. A disturbing picture of a man who appeared to be emerging from a black-and-white vagina.
Nordli could not help but notice Bergmann staring at the picture.
“Ghosts,” he said. “Not for delicate souls.”
“Your books?” Bergmann said to Nordli, nodding toward the bookcases.
Nordli sighed dejectedly, evidently irritated by the seemingly irrelevant question.
“She’s done nothing but cry since you called the first time, Bergmann.”
“I’m sorry, but—”
The door behind them flew open, and a twelve-year-old boy appeared, looking at Bergmann as if he were dangerous.
“Peter, go back up to your room,” said Nordli.
“Peter,” called a female voice somewhere behind him.
Bergmann heard steps approaching across the hall. As his legs buckled a little and his heart raced, he realized that he was insufficiently prepared to meet Elisabeth Thorstensen again.
“I guess we’ll have to go meet her,” said Nordli. He went almost reluctantly into the hall again and put his arms around the woman who stood there. Bergmann recognized her at once.
Her son stood beside her, looking as though he might burst into tears at any moment. His mother put her hand on his shoulder; her nails were painted red, and she wore a thin wedding band.
Bergmann met her gaze. Her eyes were just as dark as they had been sixteen years ago, but they were vacant and her face had no life in it at all. Not even his odd attire, or the fact that he was soaked through from all the snow, seemed to make any impression on her.
“I’ll be right there, just go on in for now. Give him something to drink. Asgeir, will you put on some coffee?”
Bergmann didn’t know if he should feel relieved or disappointed that she hadn’t recognized him. But how could she have?
As Nordli led him through the house to the living room, Bergmann thought, This is a good house, the kind he could imagine living in himself if he just had the money. A house that perhaps had given Elisabeth Thorstensen the peace she needed to go on in life. White walls and broad pine flooring, abstract and colorful art, enough books to last a lifetime, and much more besides. The aroma of spices, likely lingering from dinner, hung in the air, reminding him of Hadja. He nodded to a Filipina woman who stuck her head out the kitchen doorway. He followed the ungainly Asgeir Nordli all the way to the glassed-in porch that was connected to the living room.
“She likes to sit here,” said Nordli. “We’ve put in insulated glass, and, well . . .” He stood by the window. The snow was falling even more heavily than before; it seemed as if it might soon cover the entire city.
Bergmann sank down into one of the wicker chairs. On a low table in front of him were four or five tealights, a half-full glass of red wine, a couple of books, and an old black-and-white passport photo. The ashtray was full of butts, and an empty pack of More was on the table. He studied Kristiane Thorstensen’s face, upside down, in the little photo booth picture from the eighties. She was smiling at the camera in a way that suggested she meant to give the picture to someone special, perhaps someone waiting outside the photo booth.
Nordli had disappeared from the glassed-in porch without his even noticing. He carefully picked up the photograph, holding it by the top left corner, as if it were evidence and he did not want to leave any fingerprints. Though she was smiling, her gaze was deeply serious.
Someone lit a fire in her, he thought, and heard Anders Rask’s voice in his head. Should he believe such a man, a man he was not at all certain was innocent?
He set the photograph down again, the way it had been. In the nick of time. He heard Elisabeth and Nordli talking together somewhere in the living room. Nordli was clearly trying to keep her from talking to Bergmann, but to no avail.
He stood up quickly when she came out onto the glassed-in porch. He had taken off his workout jacket and hung it over one of the wicker chairs. So he stood there feeling foolish in an old moss-colored Army field sweater, a sweaty microfiber undershirt, and wet workout pants.
“Tommy Bergmann. I’m glad you wanted to see me.”
Her delicate fingers disappeared into his big right hand. She raised her other hand up to his cheek. He wanted to avert his gaze, but was unable to.
“To think that it’s you.”
She stroked his cheek lightly, just as she had sixteen years ago. He could almost feel her blood running down over his skin again.
“I didn’t think you would recognize me,” he said.
She withdrew her hand, pulled the sleeve of her blouse down. He barely had time to see the outlines of the old scars.
“I would have recognized you in a hundred years.”
He studied her as she sank down in the chair behind her and dried her cheeks with the back of her hand. Her brown hair was almost as he reme
mbered it, her face still marked by delicate, symmetrical lines, but she now had wrinkles that radiated out from her eyes and around her mouth. Nonetheless, if he’d seen her on the street, he would have thought she was in her late forties, not fifties. It was strange how well she had held up. Based on what he’d read in the investigation materials, Bergmann had thought that Kristiane’s death had taken a hard toll on Elisabeth. He thought that she’d been hospitalized for a long time, though he didn’t remember exactly where.
“She resembled him so much.” Elisabeth picked up the passport photo.
“Your ex-husband?”
“Per-Erik,” she said, staring at the little picture. “I haven’t spoken to him in fifteen years. Not once.”
“H—” was all he managed to say.
“I’ve hardly looked at a single picture of her either. I hadn’t seen her face since 1988, until Dagbladet ran that photograph on the front page recently. I had to lie down in the store when I saw it on the newsstand. For many years I got Asgeir to read through the papers for me. I never watch the evening news. Don’t you think they should have called me first?”
She raised her head, her expression leaving no doubt that this was a sorrow she would take with her to the grave.
“I’m sorry” was all he could manage to say.
Elisabeth hid her face in her hands, her tears almost soundless. He didn’t know what he should do. Just as he was about to stand up to comfort her, she mumbled something.
“I wish it was him.”
“Rask?”
“It gave me peace,” she said from between her hands.
There were few reasonable responses to this. Didn’t they all wish Rask was responsible for killing Kristiane and the other girls?
He waited until she had calmed down. She lit a cigarette, absently.
“There is one thing I must ask you about. Which I’ve been thinking about recently.”
“Yes?”
“You said something back then, the night we came to talk to you, after we’d found Kristiane. Do you remember?”
She shook her head.
“‘It’s all my fault,’” he said.
A long pause followed.
“Why did you say that?”
“I don’t remember saying that. Why would I say that?” Something in her face closed up. “You were the first one who saw her?” she said instead.
He nodded, even though that wasn’t quite true.
“Tell me that she was all right. Please be kind.”
“She was in a good place,” he said.
Elisabeth put out the half-smoked cigarette.
“You’re a handball coach?” She smiled weakly and nodded at the workout jacket hanging over the chair.
He nodded.
Her gaze turned inward again. As if she was thinking the same thing he was. Kristiane had left the Nordstrand sports facility and headed down one of the nearby residential streets, her bag over her shoulder, perhaps strolling, perhaps running to make the train. But why the train? Why not the trolley? It would have been shorter for her. He still didn’t understand that, but it was a waste of time to figure it out, despite Susanne’s insistence that it mattered.
“We have to decide whether to reopen the case,” he said. “But if we do, then we have to have something more to go on, if such a thing is possible now. You know that the evidence against Rask is weak. If there is anything you’ve thought about over the years, anything you think doesn’t add up—”
“I said all I had to say back then.”
Which wasn’t much, thought Bergmann. She had been in no condition for questioning for several months after they found Kristiane. When a similar murder of a prostitute was committed in February 1989, all resources were transferred to that case. Everyone was convinced that it was the same man, and the newest murder always got highest priority. Cold trails were cold trails. Of the almost seven thousand pages of investigation material against Anders Rask, the interviews with Elisabeth Thorstensen constituted a very negligible portion.
“I must ask you about a name,” said Bergmann.
“Name?”
“Maria,” he said quickly.
“Maria?” Elisabeth shook her head.
“Or Edle Maria. Does that sound familiar?” It was Sørvaag’s track, but there might be something to it.
“No,” she said. “That doesn’t ring any bells.”
Bergmann waited, but she gave no sign of wanting to say more.
“Next I must ask you why you were at the funeral for the Lithuanian girl, Daina. Because that was you, wasn’t it?”
Elisabeth grimaced, as if she had to concentrate in order not to start crying.
“Yes,” she said quietly. “I decided to go. I even called to be sure about the time. Maybe it was to reconcile myself with my own fate. I wasn’t at my own daughter’s funeral, perhaps you know that. What mother does such a thing? Not saying good-bye to her own child.”
Bergmann didn’t know what to say. He could have asked her who she thought had killed Daina, but that was pointless. Besides, he couldn’t give her any details about the killing.
“Boyfriend,” said Bergmann. “Did Kristiane have a boyfriend when she disappeared?”
Elisabeth shook her head.
“Not that I knew about. She lived her own life. I think she’d broken up with her boyfriend—what was his name? Ståle?—sometime during the summer. I didn’t keep very close track, to be quite honest.”
“Did you notice any changes in her that fall?”
“No.”
“And she hadn’t said anything about where she was going that Saturday night?”
Elisabeth shook her head.
“Did she usually take the trolley from Sæter, or the train from the station?”
She closed her eyes.
“Kristiane,” she began, then stopped herself. “Usually . . .” She was unable to continue.
“Took the subway from Munkelia,” he said to her. That meant that Kristiane normally left the Nordstrand sports facility in the opposite direction.
Bergmann grew annoyed with himself. Obvious things, he thought. We’re stuck in obvious things.
“You weren’t home that Saturday? And you didn’t see the match?”
“No.”
“Neither you nor Per-Erik?”
“He was on a business trip in Sweden.”
Bergmann knew that Per-Erik Thorstensen had been no farther away than Gothenburg. Instinctively he thought that Per-Erik was no more than three and a half hours outside Oslo when Kristiane disappeared. He could have made it there and back that night.
“So only Alexander was home?”
Elisabeth nodded, but avoided looking him in the eye.
“We always gave our kids great freedom; I often didn’t know where they were, or where they’d been, before they came home in the evening. Freedom with responsibility, it always worked fine.”
Bergmann knew that solid police work had been done in the case. Everyone’s alibis and movements were charted, apart from Elisabeth Thorstensen’s. The two circles around the victim—first the immediate family, then friends, acquaintances, and the expanded social circle—had all been accounted for. Her ex-boyfriend, Ståle, had an alibi and was questioned and checked out. None of those questioned had given any sign that would suggest they were a likely candidate. And five other girls. All the usual lunatics—semipsychotic rapists, of which two were convicted of murder from before—had alibis in place. On the other hand, the killer could be a person who was able to conceal his madness. Wasn’t that what Dr. Furuberget had said? That Rask could appear healthy for long periods of time. That probably was true of any number of people in this world.
Like me, thought Bergmann.
“My life was as good as it could be,” said Elisabeth.
He acted as if he hadn’t heard what she said, and asked instead, “Where were you that evening?” That was her weak point, which no one had ever bothered to dig into after Rask was arrested. M
aybe it was nothing, but he had to try.
“I was in town. You don’t need to know more than that, Tommy.”
Her voice was firm, but not unfriendly. She met his gaze. There was nothing more to say. Not for the time being anyway. They stared at each other for a few seconds. He couldn’t help but think that she was attractive. More than attractive. She could have wrapped him around her little finger if she wanted.
“Oh well.”
“But one thing you must know, Tommy. My life had been a living hell up until 1987. Then suddenly my life became better than it had ever been. And a year later Kristiane disappeared.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Sometimes he hit me with oranges wrapped in a wet towel.”
He didn’t understand the meaning behind what she had said right away. Then her words slowly sank in. Bergmann felt the glassed-in porch begin to spin; it felt as if the wickerwork in the chair beneath him was unraveling.
“Per-Erik,” he said quietly.
They stared at each other. She seemed to see right through him—it was clear she knew men like him. Then they regained a kind of equilibrium. Elisabeth fumbled with the cigarette pack on the table. Faint jazz music was heard from the living room. Bergmann closed his eyes, thought that he hadn’t been as bad as Per-Erik Thorstensen. Lies, he thought a second later.
“There’s nothing about that in the old investigation.”
She blew the smoke right toward him.
“That was always our little secret. Ever since the year after I met him. The bit with the oranges was his little specialty. You don’t get any bruises from that, but minor internal bleeding. It was so dreadfully painful, you wouldn’t believe it.”
He said nothing. He felt an urgent desire to get out of there, but he had no choice but to finish.
“For almost all those years, Tommy. Even when I was pregnant with Kristiane, he thought I flirted with other men. I was pregnant, pregnant, Tommy. I could have lost her.”
He felt a strong wave of nausea rising up from his stomach.
“Aren’t you going to ask me why I didn’t leave him?”
