by Gard Sveen
Bergmann couldn’t take any more. He closed his eyes, but all he saw was Hege. He inhaled deeply through his nose.
No, he thought, I won’t ask you why you stayed.
He was barely able to coax a cigarette out of his Prince pack. Then he rooted in the pockets of his workout jacket, tried to look as if he was searching for his phone, just to have something to do, to avoid answering her question. It wasn’t there; he must have left it in the car.
“Is there something wrong?” she said.
“No,” he said.
She smiled at him and looked as if she meant it.
“But the last year before Kristiane was killed, everything got better. It was like a miracle. He joined one of those men’s groups, you know, a kind of anger-management course, completely on his own initiative. I don’t know how he did it, but he suddenly seemed to get ahold of himself.”
Bergmann said nothing.
“Can you imagine what it’s like to lose your child just when everything seems to be resolving itself, after such a marriage?”
He nodded tentatively.
“Can you imagine that?” she repeated. “Right when you think your life has gotten as good as it can get. Then you lose your child.” Elisabeth pulled up the sleeve of her blouse and exposed her left forearm. The scars were still thicker and whiter than the thin skin around them.
“By the time I came home from the hospital—or the nuthouse, I knew perfectly well that’s what it was—Per-Erik had already moved out. It seems that Kristiane had to die for that to happen. I threw away everything of hers, absolutely everything. Then I got this picture from Alex last year.” Elisabeth held the little passport photo between her fingers, lightly stroked it with her index finger. She remained quiet, disappeared into herself again.
“Who ran that group?” he asked suddenly.
Elisabeth studied him a long time.
“What do you mean?”
“The men’s group Per-Erik joined. Anger management.”
She took one last puff of her cigarette. Bergmann looked at the city below them. The snowstorm had let up, and it was once again possible to see beyond the next house.
“I don’t know.”
“Try to think back.”
“Is it that important?”
“Did he have any friends in that group?”
What was it Farberg had said? That Rask had a friend? Someone who got so angry that he was afraid of what he might do.
“I don’t know. I really don’t.”
“Do you know where the course was held?”
“Can it be that important?”
“Try to remember.”
“I think it was on the west side somewhere.”
“The west side?”
“Yes. I think Per-Erik mentioned that, but I don’t remember exactly where.”
“The west side,” he wrote on his notepad and looked up. He was no longer able to concentrate. They studied each other. He should have averted his gaze, but didn’t want to. She smiled carefully, as if she were a girl Kristiane’s age and not a woman nearing sixty.
“And you still don’t know why you said, ‘It’s all my fault’?”
Elisabeth opened her mouth to speak, but stopped herself at the last moment.
“Why can’t you tell me where you were the evening she disappeared?”
It was the most obvious hole Bergmann had found in the previous investigation. Maybe it wasn’t all that strange that the question hadn’t come up again when she returned from the hospital in the winter of 1989. Maybe it was nothing, but he wanted to make sure that all was in order with regard to the case. He had to find something for Svein Finneland, almost regardless of how insignificant it might seem.
“Why is that so important?”
She was close to tears again.
Asgeir Nordli appeared in the doorway.
Elisabeth hid her face in her hands.
“I think you need to leave,” said Nordli.
“No,” she said, without taking her hands away. “Go, Asgeir. Please.”
She sat with her hands over her face until Nordli had closed the door behind him. He remained standing in the middle of the living room, as though deliberating over whether to leave. Finally he disappeared out of view.
Bergmann nodded at Elisabeth.
“I was with another man,” she said.
A sense of relief seemed to come over her face. She touched her hair, rearranging it a little. Bergmann cursed himself for enjoying the sight of her. The delicate hands, the dark features, the glistening eyes.
“The Saturday she disappeared?”
She nodded.
“We were at the Radisson hotel until Sunday morning. He was married then.”
Bergmann felt a faint stirring in his body. He tried to look as nonchalant as possible as he took notes.
“What was his name?”
She sucked in her cheeks, stared past him.
“Morten Høgda.”
His pen stopped on the paper.
“So you had a relationship Per-Erik didn’t know about?”
“Lord help us, yes. He had only himself to blame. He drove me into Morten’s arms. Literally beat me into his arms. If you’d been me, you would have done no differently.”
Their eyes met once again, but neither of them spoke.
Morten Høgda was a kind of investor, if Bergmann remembered right. One of those semifamous rich people who popped up in the newspaper from time to time.
But there was something else about that name, wasn’t there?
“Was that why you said that?”
“Said what?”
“‘It’s all my fault.’”
“I don’t understand . . .”
“You were with another man the evening she disappeared . . .”
Elisabeth clenched her teeth, then took a deep breath and held it for a while before releasing it.
“You know what,” she said calmly. “I think we’re done now.”
40
He couldn’t find a snow brush in the car, only an old ice scraper. It wasn’t ice that was the problem, but the crazy amount of snow. He sighed dejectedly as he dragged the thick layer of snow, too heavy for his near-failing wipers, off the windshield.
He could clearly see Elisabeth Thorstensen’s silhouette through the kitchen window. She hadn’t even come close to showing him out, had barely let a “good-bye” cross her lips.
What was the name of that interim pastor? He would have to call the Oppsal church first thing tomorrow.
Had she really said that? Screamed it.
“It’s all my fault.”
Oh well, he thought. He’d gone too far. But he only had five days left, and at least he had one new name on his pad. He was just relieved to get out of that house. For a moment, it had seemed as though Elisabeth saw right through him, he was sure of it. After having gotten out of her marriage to Per-Erik Thorstensen, she was certainly on her guard for any sign of men like him.
Morten Høgda.
Though he’d written it down, he made a point of committing the name to memory.
Before getting in the car, he brushed away the worst of the snow that always fell from the car roof onto the seat because he was either too lazy or too distracted to clear it before he opened the door.
His phone was on the passenger seat. He picked it up to call down to Dispatch. If they were having a quiet evening, they could do a search on Morten Høgda. The name “Høgda” rang a bell.
He cursed quietly. His phone was dead. It must have died right after Elisabeth called earlier that evening. How long ago was that? He checked the clock. Two hours? Three?
Though only a short drive, the trip home felt like a mountain expedition. He could barely get up the hill on Lambertseterveien because of all the snow. He may have to spend money on new snow tires. Then again, maybe not, he thought as he realized that he wasn’t going to slide down the hill. Just before the shopping center, he almost ran into a monster of a snowp
low, narrowly avoiding its enormous blade. The orange light was still burning in his eyes when he finally found a parking place.
As soon as he got home, he threw himself at the old landline in the hall. He dialed the number to Dispatch and asked them to do two searches. The one on Morten Høgda and the other on the interim pastor from the Oppsal church. Bergmann had remembered his name on his way from the car to the apartment. Hallvard Thorstad.
While he waited for them to call back, he sat down on the couch in the living room and lit a cigarette. As soon as he turned on the floor lamp in the corner, he sensed that something was wrong. Really wrong. He stood up and surveyed the room. Then he went into the bedroom, turned on the light, and studied the bed that he and Hege had once shared. He had a feeling that someone had just been lying in it, but quickly dismissed it. Craziness, he thought as he went over to the bed. He crouched down and held his hand that was holding the cigarette up above the bed, so that he wouldn’t set fire to the bed linens.
The phone rang out in the hall. He leaned down quickly and checked under the bed. Only dust bunnies. He cursed quietly.
“Morten Høgda,” said Johnsen down at Dispatch, “has been charged with rape three times. Each one of the three different women who called it in withdrew the charges. According to the pussy police he’s also a regular with the street prostitutes. Income last year: forty million, assets a hundred and ten. Nice guy. Just a bit of a violent sexual drive.”
He closed his eyes, and an image of Elisabeth Thorstensen flashed across his mind’s eye. Her dark eyes, the new husband. She’d finally found herself a good man, someone she could count on. Asgeir Nordli seemed like a decent guy. Maybe a little too nice, but how bad could that be for a woman who’d been through what she had?
“Okay, thanks,” he said as a question formed in his mind. Knowing what lengths women were willing to go to for men, what had Elisabeth been capable of doing for Morten Høgda once upon a time?
“And do you have the number for Hallvard Thorstad?”
“There’s only one Hallvard Thorstad, and he lives in a little settlement in Vestlandet.”
Bergmann jotted the number down on an old newspaper.
“Thanks a lot.”
“By the way, things are boiling over a bit over at Dispatch in Oppland right now.”
“Yeah?” said Bergmann absently.
“Haven’t you heard?”
“Heard what?”
Bergmann tried to open the top dresser drawer to pull out his cell-phone charger.
“Anders Rask has escaped.”
He had his hand halfway into the drawer.
“What did you say?”
“Anders Rask escaped from the hospital, along with another crazy. Two nurses were killed. There’s talk about deploying the SWAT team to find them. The helicopter’s in the air. They won’t get far, the camera will probably track them down soon.”
“Hell,” said Bergmann. He turned around in the hall. Scanned the living room. The couch, table, carpet, pictures, knickknacks, and bookcase all appeared to be okay. Nonetheless, he couldn’t shake the feeling that something inside the apartment was very wrong. The news that Rask had gotten out of Ringvoll didn’t help. The question was how he’d done it. And where he was now. Here in the city, thought Bergmann.
“How long ago?”
“A couple of hours.”
There was a short pause.
A couple of hours. It wouldn’t have taken them more than an hour and a half to get into Oslo. Change cars on the road, maybe, drive into some quiet residential area and find an old car they could hotwire. Two hours at most, he thought. They’re already here. The easiest place to hide in all of Norway.
“No, they won’t get far,” he said to Johnsen. “Thanks for the info.”
He set the phone carefully down in the cradle and plugged his phone into its charger.
Eight unanswered calls. All from Reuter.
“Where the hell have you been?” said Reuter when he answered. He was short of breath, and Bergmann figured he’d just gotten off his treadmill.
“Forgot to charge the phone.”
“Forgot?”
“I was at Elisabeth Thorstensen’s.”
That information seemed to soothe Reuter a bit. His voice calmed down.
“Did you find anything out?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll deal with that tomorrow. Finneland wants to have a meeting at his office at seven o’clock sharp, not a second later. I’m guessing that we’ll end up handling Rask’s escape. He wants to find him quickly, but I’m sure he also wants you to carry on with your investigation, though I’m guessing you have less time than you did earlier this evening. Do you think Rask is our man?”
“Didn’t he kill to get out?”
“I don’t know if he was the one who did it. Another psycho escaped along with him who’s capable of just about anything. One of them, if not both, probably had a relationship with a female nurse up at Ringvoll. She gave them her card and keys and God knows what else. That fucking cow is at Gjøvik now, it’s just a matter of finding the thumbscrews, milking her for all she’s worth, and then burying her. Can you beat that, Tommy? Two men dead up there tonight. My God.”
What could he say? He’d been in this game too long to be surprised by anything anymore. Almost.
He went straight to the shower after hanging up with Reuter and let the hot water scald his skin for several minutes. He wrote “Morten Høgda” in big letters in the condensation on the shower wall. Then he drew a line and wrote “Rask.”
He thought he heard the faint sound of his phone, but it could just as easily have been the doorbell or the landline. He turned off the shower and stood there, his body covered with soap, his hair full of shampoo. He had locked the door to the bathroom for the first time. He didn’t want to be surprised if Rask decided to pay him a visit.
No, he thought. Just my imagination.
No phones ringing, no sounds.
He turned the water back on. As he was rinsing the shampoo out of his hair, he realized what he had reacted to.
Even in the hot water he got goose bumps on his arms.
It was gone.
The photograph.
He stood in the shower, as a kind of stoic calm settled over him. Or paralysis. He was barely able to turn off the water.
He wrapped a towel around his waist and unlocked the bathroom door.
He went to stand, dripping wet, in the middle of the living room. A pool of water formed beneath him on the parquet.
He fixed his gaze on his IKEA bookcase. It was half-full of books, some magazines, two dried-up cactuses, some knickknacks Hege had left behind, and five or six framed photographs from old times. A ten-year-old picture of himself and Hege that he left there only to torment himself. An old class picture, a portrait of himself.
Half-hidden behind a framed postcard of Alice Springs, Australia, from an old classmate who was no longer alive, he’d placed a small photograph of his mother in a silver frame. It dated back to when she was in nursing school, at the Red Cross in Tromsø, sometime in the midsixties, right before he was born.
But now it was gone.
He walked slowly backward into the hall.
“He’s found me,” he whispered. “He’s been here and he’s taken the photograph of her.”
The phone was still on the dresser in the hall. Bent, his old colleague, answered almost at once.
“I thought you’d be sleeping at this hour,” he said.
“Gun,” Bergmann said. “I need a gun.”
PART THREE
DECEMBER 2004
41
The view was nothing like what it had been the day before. Though it was almost ten o’clock in the morning, there was barely any daylight and a dense snowfall largely concealed the main building at Ringvoll Psychiatric Hospital. The wind was so strong that the flag line whipping against the flagpole sounded like a snare drum. The flag was soaked through and hung at half-mast
, whipping around in the wind one moment, then collapsing again the next.
He assured himself that the small pistol Bent had brought him the night before—a Raven MP-25—was well concealed in the glove compartment. He hadn’t slept a wink. He’d spent half the night in the basement with the Saturday Night Special pistol stuck in his back pocket. He’d stored a few of his mother’s boxes down there after she died. The ruined padlock two days ago was clearly no coincidence. He didn’t know what was in the boxes, so he couldn’t tell if anything was gone, but he’d spent several hours searching through her papers to find traces of who she’d been, and who she’d known. Eventually, he’d had to give up. There was nothing of interest, mostly letters and postcards from girlfriends and what he assumed was an occasional fly-by-night boyfriend. Otherwise it was mostly old receipts, budget lists, and a jumble of notes that suggested they barely had enough food to survive at times.
What the burglar had been searching for in his basement compartment Bergmann didn’t know. But he was sure of one thing, and that was that the man who’d killed Kristiane Thorstensen and the other girls—if it was only one man—had been in his apartment. At least twice.
The car door blew shut. He pulled the hood of his bubble jacket over his head and jogged over to the steel gate. Damned Svein Finneland, he thought. It was his idea for Bergmann to go up to Ringvoll again, mainly to search through Anders Rask’s room and that of the other escapee, Øystein Jensrud, a psychotic thirty-five-year-old who had killed both his parents seven years ago. Bergmann thought it would have been more useful to have a talk with Elisabeth Thorstensen’s old lover, Morten Høgda, but he’d kept his mouth shut about that.
The brief morning meeting with Finneland—as well as Reuter and Kripo psychologist Rune Flatanger—had been stormy enough. Flatanger had spent the night before going through the material Bergmann had sent him, and rather quickly come to the conclusion that Rask had never killed anyone at all. According to him, Rask was in all likelihood just what Frank Krokhol maintained he was—a pedophile, but not a serial killer. Finneland, however, thought that the escape and the killings at Ringvoll indicated something quite different, and with that they were off. Bergmann mostly sat on the windowsill of Finneland’s office and stared at the morning traffic flowing through snow-covered Pilestredet. For a while he was convinced that it was his own father who was back. His mother had escaped from something awful, that he was sure of, and it couldn’t be anyone other than his own father. For where had his own craziness come from? Besides, who else would break into his apartment and take a photograph of his mother?
