by Gard Sveen
She pulled the duvet around her, even though she’d gone to bed fully clothed, and headed into the kitchen, where the phone was glowing green on the counter. She prayed that it wasn’t Farberg. What signals had she given him? Men like him never gave up, she knew that all too well.
She picked up the phone and studied the number. An unknown Oslo number. Keeping her gaze fixed on the Christmas star Torvald had hung in the window earlier that evening, she brought the phone slowly to her ear.
“Susanne Bech?” said a female voice.
“Who is this?”
“I’m very sorry that I woke you up.”
The woman paused. Susanne felt herself frowning. A strange feeling came over her—that someone was in Mathea’s room. Had Torvald closed the door properly? The deadbolt wasn’t locked.
“Who is this?” she said sternly. She let the duvet drop to the floor and turned on the Poul Henningsen lamp over the kitchen table.
“I’m calling from Lovisenberg Hospital.”
Mother, thought Susanne. But no. They would have called from Bærum. Besides, she certainly wouldn’t have been told if her mother had died.
She went to the front door and checked it. Thank God, she thought. It was locked. She turned the deadbolt and walked down the hall to Mathea’s room.
“We have a patient here who insists on speaking with you.”
Susanne stopped outside the door to Mathea’s room. She put her hand on the colorful princess drawing that was taped to the door.
“Can’t it wait until morning?”
“I’m not sure he’ll be alive in the morning.”
Susanne felt goose bumps form on her arm.
“Is it Flaten? Bjørn-Åge Flaten?”
“Yes. He refuses to talk with anyone but you. He has some information, he says. The doctor has agreed to let you come.”
There was a pause. Finally Susanne heard herself saying, “Don’t let him die. I’ll be right there.”
She had no choice but to take Mathea with her. Torvald had already done more than enough this evening.
She opened the door to Mathea’s room. Mathea was talking in her sleep.
“Ma . . . ,” she said. “Ma . . .”
“Mommy is here,” said Susanne.
Mathea turned toward the wall without waking up. Her breathing was heavy, so heavy that Susanne hesitated for a moment. She looked at the watch, thought of Nico, and promised herself that she would sell it before Christmas.
Ten minutes later Mathea was standing fully dressed by the door waiting for Susanne. She’d been allowed to put on exactly what she wanted, so long as it was winter clothing. It was almost three o’clock in the morning, and the girl looked like she was going to the Theater Café in a green velvet dress from Fru Lyng with a white bow that was much too small, white wool tights, and a blue duffel coat. On her head she wore a hat that would have been better suited for Pippi Longstocking.
Good Lord, what a pair we are, thought Susanne as she was struck by a cold wind out on the street.
“This is fun,” said Mathea.
“Do you think so?”
Fortunately there were two taxis outside the bus terminal.
“Don’t ask,” said Susanne to the taxi driver, pushing the swanky Mathea onto the passenger seat.
“What are we going to do?” Mathea asked.
The taxi picked up speed as it headed down into the tunnel.
“I’m just going to talk with a man.” Susanne took her little hand and squeezed it. A man who’s going to die, she thought, clearly hearing the voice of Flaten’s mother. But first I’m going to hear his confession.
When they emerged from the tunnel, she was almost overwhelmed by the sight of the Trinity Church. A homeless man had settled down for the night next to the church wall, a bundle of blankets and cartons. The taxi shifted gears and swerved on the slippery surface up Ullevålsveien. Susanne stroked Mathea’s hand. Æreslunden at Our Savior’s cemetery disappeared in the darkness. It’s not likely Flaten will be put to rest there, she thought.
“I’m here to speak with Bjørn-Åge Flaten,” Susanne said to the nurse in the emergency psychiatric ward. The nurse entered some commands on the keyboard and glanced at Mathea.
“Hi,” said Mathea.
“Can you keep an eye on her for a while? Just give her something to draw on.”
“Do you like cocoa?” the nurse asked Mathea. Her name tag said Jorunn, and her relaxed Vestland dialect gave Susanne a sense of security that made her feel calmer than she could remember feeling in a long time.
“He shouldn’t have come here,” said Jorunn to Susanne. “You know how it is—he has a transitory psychosis, and a patrol car dumps him on our door.”
“Where should he have gone?”
“To hospice. We’ll get him transferred tomorrow. If we have him that long.”
“If he’s psychotic, then—”
“He’s taken his medications. See it as his last wish.”
Mathea remained with Jorunn in the nurses’ office, so trusting that Susanne was almost afraid for her. One day her trust in other adults might be her undoing.
Susanne opened the door to Flaten’s room slowly. A scream from the adjacent room startled her, and she looked over toward the nurses’ office. Strangely enough Mathea didn’t appear to be scared.
What kind of mother am I, waking her up in the middle of the night and dragging her to an emergency psychiatric ward?
She entered the room.
The light coming from a mounted wall lamp gave Bjørn-Åge Flaten’s face a mild sheen. He must have been sleeping lightly, because he woke up when she’d taken two steps into the room.
“I just fake my way in here,” he said in a quiet, hoarse voice. “If I need a decent place to sleep.”
Susanne took off her jacket and set it on the floor. She sat down in the chair near his bed.
“You’re sick,” she said.
Flaten closed his eyes, and she saw how old he looked.
“You’re the only one who knows I’m here. Not even my mother knows. She’s given up on me. You know that.”
“I haven’t given up on you,” said Susanne. She took his hand and squeezed it as if she were his girlfriend.
“I’ve let everyone down. Everyone who wished me well. I didn’t want to let you down too.”
“What do you mean?”
“You never would have believed me. No one believed me.”
“So tell me the truth.”
“I just want you to find who killed Kristiane. Who killed all those girls.”
Susanne released his hand, and he reached for it with all the strength he had.
“I saw her under the railroad bridge at Skøyen.”
“The Saturday she disappeared?”
“Yes.”
“She was just standing there?”
“I’d come in on the train from the city center. I was the last one off the platform. Stepped down on the sidewalk and was going to light up a smoke.”
“And then?”
“There was a girl standing a few steps away from me, under the bridge. Her Nordstrand bag was on the sidewalk. She didn’t quite seem to know what she was doing there. ‘Do you have a smoke?’ she said.”
“Yes?”
“So I gave her a smoke. I said I was going up to Amalienborg, told her she could come along if she wanted. That I wasn’t dangerous.”
“Did she say her name?”
“No. But I saw the picture of her the week after. In the paper, when she was reported missing.”
“So did she go with you?”
“You don’t believe me.”
She stroked his hand.
“Yes, I do.”
“It turned out that she was going the same way as me. I asked her if she was going to a party.”
“What did she say?”
“That she was going to visit someone.”
“She didn’t say who?”
He slowly shook his head.
“We went our
separate ways at Amalienborg.”
“Did you pass anyone on the way?”
“An old lady with a dog. She just looked down at the ground, probably hated people like me—a junkie in Skøyen, you know. Amalienborg was full of riffraff like me.”
“And then?”
“‘Don’t get into trouble now’ was the last thing she said. It looked like something was bothering her, but I didn’t want to ask. A boyfriend, I guessed, but how could I know?”
“And then?”
There was a knock at the door. Flaten’s gaze barely moved toward the door. She was still holding his hand, stroking it with the other.
The nurse, Jorunn, stood there with Mathea.
“Is that your kid?” he whispered.
She nodded.
“I didn’t know you were single. You don’t look like you would be.”
“No one probably looks like that.”
She thought that Mathea might be afraid of Flaten, the way he looked closer to death than life.
He had closed his eyes. A tear trickled down from each eye.
“What’s her name?”
“Mathea,” whispered Susanne.
“Never say this to yourself . . .”
“What’s that?”
“If I only had one more chance.”
She took his hand again. It seemed as if life really was ebbing out of him.
“What did you do when you parted ways?”
“What?”
“What—”
“I pretended like I was going in a door . . . then I waited ten or fifteen seconds. And I stood and watched her.”
Susanne tightened her grip on his hand.
“Where did she go?”
“You won’t believe me.”
“I will.”
“She turned left, toward the terraced apartment buildings.”
“The terraced apartments?”
“There’s a courtyard there with terraced apartments, the kind that Selvaag built back then.”
“You think she was going there?”
“Yes. If she was going someplace else, she would have continued straight ahead up Nedre Skøyen Vei. The street where she turned dead-ends at those apartment buildings.”
“Mommy,” said Mathea from over by the window, “I want to go home.”
Bjørn-Åge Flaten smiled slowly.
“Take her home. Just promise me one thing.”
“I promise.”
“Believe me.”
48
Nothing in the apartment had been touched. He opened the refrigerator, cleared away the worst of the old vegetables and cheese and some other shit he couldn’t identify. He found two bottles of beer he’d forgotten about at the back of the middle shelf. He pried open one of them and took a couple of swigs before mounting the door chain he’d bought on the way home. Solid stuff, according to the seller.
A little too solid for this door frame, thought Bergmann as he tightened the screws with the screwdriver. The old frame creaked, and he noticed a substantial crack up the middle of it. It had been so long since he’d done anything practical that he forgot to use an awl first. The whole thing will probably just fall out, he thought. He finished the beer and figured it would have to do. Just let him come. Or let them come. If it was Rask, he would probably have his friend Jensrud with him. Tomorrow he would call the locksmith.
He stood in the middle of the living room and studied the bookcase. He should have reported this missing photograph, but what was the point? A break-in without a trace. Whoever had entered must have had a key.
He took an old photograph of himself from the shelf. It was a portrait from seventh grade. It had been raining that day. Rain and autumn, that was his clearest memory from his school days. Wasn’t it always rain and autumn? If I haven’t repressed the rest, he thought. What more did he recall? Dry leaves blowing along the apartment buildings, a dusty spring day, the aimless emptiness of suburban life in springtime, his longing for summer to be over, the sun baking the little apartment, broken windows at the subway station, the sound of glass on the ground, sneakers running along the platform, over the electrified rails, a junkie on his knees, some glue-sniffers lying on the steps, a warm summer night, a couple having sex in the underpass below Tvetenveien, carrying on like dogs.
He shook his head, and put the 1970s version of Tommy Bergmann back on the dusty shelf.
He lay down on the couch, pulled a wool blanket over himself, and read that satanic letter over again.
He should have called Reuter, but he was too tired.
Hell open.
If you come here, I’ll kill you.
I’m ready was his last thought before he fell asleep. The sight of the Raven pistol on the coffee table became part of his dream. After that his army boots got wet, a flashlight swept over black spruce trunks somewhere in front of him, and the image of a figure working with a shiny tool flickered somewhere up ahead in the forest. He tried to pick up the pace, but couldn’t, was unable to move his legs fast enough—the moss, mud, and water underfoot made it impossible. He fumbled for the pistol in his pocket, but it fell out and disappeared into the earth. When he got there, the figure with the shiny tool was gone, and a bundle of a girl lay on the ground. It was too dark for him to see her face clearly. She was holding her stomach, slashed from the neck on down, crying quietly, her face white like a doll’s. He leaned over, and she turned toward him and screamed, spasmodically, a howl so loud that he fell back, landing in the wet marsh.
He sat up on the couch. He had goose bumps on his sweaty skin.
That sound, he thought.
Her screams.
The entry phone was buzzing.
The sharp sound of it penetrated the entire apartment. The room was ice cold, as if someone had turned off the heat.
It buzzed again.
Bergmann took the pistol off the coffee table. The display on the DVD player showed 03:40.
He threw off the blanket and put his feet on the floor. For a moment he was afraid that the ground would be wet moss and marsh, that this was a mixture of dream and reality, a labyrinth he wasn’t going to get out of.
The entry phone buzzed again.
It couldn’t be him. Not like this.
He nonetheless crouched down as he passed through the living room into the hall. He noted that he’d had the foresight to pull the curtains in the guest room, whose window was right by the entryway to the building.
He paused by the entry phone, looked at the safety chain, and placed his index finger on the cold curved steel of the trigger.
When it buzzed again, he picked up the receiver.
First just a sigh.
“Tommy?”
A few seconds passed before he recognized the voice.
A woman’s.
It was different than he remembered, slurred, dulled by alcohol or drugs.
He pressed the door button to let her in, but kept an eye on the stairwell through the peephole in the door.
Elisabeth Thorstensen let the entry door glide closed behind her. She looked lost in her big fur coat, as if she were from another era and didn’t understand anything she saw around her. Bergmann saw that she stopped by the mailboxes for a moment. Then she started the few steps up to the apartment.
Property Services, he thought. Did she have her own set of keys to the building? Or did her husband? Could she have given keys to someone else?
He opened the door to the closet beside him and dropped the loaded pistol on the floor in there. Then he observed her for a few seconds through the peephole. He was unsure how to interpret her expression—unsure whether it was sorrow or madness, or perhaps both. He unlocked the door and removed the safety chain.
“I’ve taken some pills,” she said quietly. She was standing in the middle of the entry, looking like a baby bird in that massive fur coat. Her dark hair was wet with snow, and her mascara had run down her cheeks. “Something I got from a doctor one time. He was in love with me.” Though she
laughed quietly, her eyes remained sorrowful. “After Asgeir went to bed . . . and then I started drinking.”
“Please come in,” he said.
Elisabeth tried to get out of her coat, and he gave her a hand with it.
“I can’t bear to go on living anymore. I don’t know . . . I thought of you.”
She brought her hands up to his face. Her head fell against his open shirt front.
“You saved me once before.”
He put his arms around her.
“I’m just so tired.”
He tried to push her gently away from him, but she didn’t let go.
“Don’t leave me,” she said.
She started to cry. But a minute later, her tears turned to laughter.
“I don’t know why I came here,” she whispered.
I think I know, thought Bergmann, but he didn’t say anything.
“You must always be kind to me, Tommy,” she said into his ear. “Promise me that.”
He had a forbidden thought—that he’d desired her that first time in Skøyenbrynet, when she sat on the kitchen floor with the knife in her hand—but he pushed it away. Thoughts like that weren’t allowed.
“How late is it?” she said.
“Almost four.”
“Can I sleep here?”
Bergmann shook his head. Her expression suggested that she shouldn’t be left alone. She blinked, and the tears trickled down her cheeks.
“I miss her. I can’t live without her, Tommy.”
He took a deep breath and knew that he was doing something stupid.
“You can sleep on the couch.”
“Then you have to sleep beside me.”
“I—”
She put her hand over his mouth.
“I don’t want to die,” she said.
He put his arms around her.
“You won’t die.”
He woke up to the sound of the building’s entryway door slamming shut.
Elisabeth Thorstensen lay partially on top of him on the couch, sleeping heavily. He thanked the Creator that they still had their clothes on.
Nothing happened, he thought, feeling the onset of a pounding headache. He slid off the couch without waking her up, checked the closet to make sure the pistol was still there—it was—and then headed into the bathroom.
When he came back into the living room, she was awake. Had she only been pretending to be asleep?
