Medusa

by Torkil Damhaug

  He looked around the table.

  – Two women killed in exactly the same way. Let us make this assertion: the perpetrator is the same. Or perpetrators.

  He gave them time to digest this. Then he asked:

  – What about time of death?

  – According to Plåterud, Davidsen had been dead for more than ten hours but less than twenty-four before she was found.

  – Less than twenty-four hours, Viken repeated thoughtfully. – I will presume the animal tracks by the water were left at the same time as the body.

  He swallowed the rest of his coffee.

  – Outside these walls we’re going to be as careful as fuck, pardon my French, Nina, you who are so young and unsullied.

  She responded with a weary little shake of the head.

  – But in here we can be as creative as we like. We damn well need to be. We know that Hilde Sofie Paulsen’s body had marks on it indicating an attack by a bear. If we leave out Spitsbergen, then it’s extremely rare for anyone to be threatened by a bear in Norway. But now we find a second victim, Cecilie Davidsen, with wounds remarkably similar to those we found on Paulsen, and animal tracks in Frogner Park that are practically identical to those we found up in the Nordmarka. Which of you supposes that a large brown bear is prowling the streets of central Oslo?

  He bared his teeth. To Nina it was unclear whether he was smiling or imitating the imagined animal.

  – We have to look at other possibilities here. Come on, Sigge, you grew up with polar bears as your next-door neighbours.

  The Icelander gave a little laugh, though he obviously didn’t think it was particularly funny.

  – It might have escaped from somewhere.

  – A bear sanctuary? The nearest one is in Hallingdal; that’s over a hundred miles away. Think it took the bus?

  Helgarsson rolled his eyes, but Nina saw that the corners of Agnes Finckenhagen’s mouth were twitching.

  – Some people keep animals illegally, she offered.

  Viken clicked his tongue a few times.

  – I’ve heard of boa constrictors in bedsits, even Amazonian lizards sticking their heads up out of the next-door neighbour’s toilet bowl, but a bear in a bedroom? Any other suggestions? Arve, you know more about wildlife than the rest of us – can we rule out the possibility that there was a bear in Frogner Park, or can we not?

  Arve Norbakk looked around, and to Nina it seemed his gaze rested on her a moment.

  – Bears avoid people, he told them. – It’s unthinkable it might make its way down into a town. Not on its own.

  – What do you mean? Could somebody have brought it here and turned it loose?

  Norbakk shrugged his shoulders.

  – Either that, or the victim has been moved after being ripped by bear claws.

  Viken nodded.

  – The plaster that was found under Hilde Paulsen’s nails might have come from a cellar. Maybe the body was taken out into the marka. But what about the tracks?

  Arve Norbakk dotted his pen against a sheet of paper as though sending a signal in Morse code.

  – I was wondering about that. The tracks have clearly been made by a bear’s paw, but all of them look like marks made by hind paws. So the bear must have been walking upright the entire time.

  – Like a circus act, Viken observed.

  Norbakk permitted himself a smile.

  – A bear will rise up on to its hind legs when faced with a potential danger, he said. – It does so to get a better overview and to pick up the scent of whatever’s approaching. It can look as if it’s dancing. But if it’s going to attack or flee, it quickly gets back down on all fours. Another thing is that the pattern of movement seems odd. There are about twenty metres of tracks before they disappear into the water. But the two paws are much too close together. On top of that, there isn’t a single track further down the bank, or on the other side. So where did the animal go?

  The question was still hanging in the air when the meeting broke up a couple of minutes later.

  Nina scrolled down through the list of witness statements on the subject of Paulsen’s disappearance. She carefully read the account given by the man who found the body. Or rather, the man who owned the dog that found the body. Fifteen people had come forward to confirm that they had seen Paulsen in the marka on the day she disappeared. She noted the names down in her notebook. The last confirmed sighting was that made by a doctor, Axel Glenne, who had called them a few days later. She leaned back in her chair, thinking. Something had struck her. She looked out of the window, over the row of hazels and the rooftops down in Grønland. Something she’d read. Her computer had already gone into hibernation and she woke it up and scrolled through the names once again. Found the interview with Cecilie Davidsen’s husband. He had attended at Majorstua police station to give his statement. He had raised the alarm after a couple of hours when his wife had failed to return from the hospital and didn’t answer her phone. She had just been told she had cancer and would be operated on in a few days’ time. The prospects weren’t good. He was afraid she might be in shock. At last Nina found what she was looking for: Cecilie Davidsen’s doctor. He had been a great help to her, according to the husband. His name was Axel Glenne.

  27

  Tuesday 16 October

  IT HAD BEEN snowing since early morning. A total surprise to everyone, even the meteorologists, who had forecast rain.

  Signy Bruseter stood on the steps in front of her house and looked out miserably across the fields sloping down towards the village. She didn’t like the winter, it was too long already, and now here it was snowing heavily and only the middle of October. Her house lay at the end of a farm track, almost two kilometres from the main road. The farmer who did the snow-clearing for her was reliable, but suppose he was ill? Or if he couldn’t get his tractor started and had to take it in for repairs? The thought of being snowed in here at the edge of the forest made her shiver, and she bitterly regretted ever having moved up here. She pulled the shawl tighter around herself, trotted across the yard and opened the garage door. She kept her winter tyres down at the petrol station in Åmoen; she knew the owner and he was always good to her and changed them at short notice. Now it was a question of how to get to the main road and then the seven kilometres to the Esso station.

  Luckily the snow was fairly light and hadn’t frozen hard yet. All the same, she drove in first gear all the way down. There was more on the news about the murders in Oslo. She couldn’t bear hearing about them but couldn’t stop herself either. No suspects as yet, they said, and interviewed a female officer. Fincken-something-or-other. We’re following up all the leads we’ve had so far, we’re encouraging anyone who thinks they might be able to help to come forward. Signy didn’t like her voice; it was brittle. Yes, we do believe it’s likely that the two cases are connected. But neither of the victims was killed by a bear. She sounded arrogant. No, absolutely not. It would be meaningless under the circumstances to demand that southern Norway be a bear-free area.

  The news continued with a story about a car bomb in Iraq. Signy switched off and stared out at the white flakes that came streaming towards the windscreen. They’re not in control, she complained to herself. They’ve no idea what to do. She’d been lying awake all night. She had hardly any coffee or bread left and hadn’t had time to shop. She’d said yes to the offer of an extra shift. Mette Martin was always nice and cheerful, but she evidently expected Signy to cover whenever anyone was sick. That was the way it was when you lived on your own and had no one else to look after. These afternoon shifts were stupid; it meant she didn’t get home until about eight, too late to bother making supper. She had a bowl of spinach soup she could heat up. She’d boil a couple of eggs to have with it.

  Roger Åheim, who owned the petrol station, was a man Signy wouldn’t hesitate to describe as ‘warm hearted’. It turned out he was cousin to Åse Berit Nytorpet, whom she worked with at Reinkollen. He always gave Signy a little wink. Though he wasn�
�t far off sixty, he was still a ladies’ man. In fact, if what she heard was true, he’d just become a father again. Now, seeing how desperate she was, he put everything else to one side to fix her wheels for her so she could get about.

  A young lad Signy knew from before she moved house took over from him behind the counter. Although he couldn’t be that young, she thought; it must have been all of twenty years ago when she was his teacher at the primary school in Kongsvinger. Not that that was any kind of happy memory; he’d been a right little mischief. Smart enough when it suited him, but that wasn’t very often. He was always playing truant, hanging out with boys five or six years older than him and drinking beer. When he went to secondary school, things turned really bad. He’d been in jail apparently, and now he’d ended up here. He was probably still struggling and didn’t exactly look a picture of health with his shaven head and tattooed skull. But Signy was the kind of person who cared about people. Every now and then she called in at the petrol station, bought a few small things and had a chat with the lad.

  But on this particular morning she sat on the battered sofa in the corner and nervously flipped through the newspaper as Roger Åheim jacked up the car and started work. The last murder victim had a daughter just eight years old. They’d found bear tracks everywhere, all around where she was lying.

  Up here we’ve always had bears, Åse Berit Nytorpet had said a few days earlier when Signy showed her a picture of the first woman to be killed. Maybe now they’ll understand what it’s like.

  But there was something else she’d said too, something Signy was still puzzling over.

  Some people I know would be prepared to go pretty far to make people down there see sense. Might even drug a bear and drive it down to Oslomarka and let it out there.

  – You’re surely not saying you know someone who might’ve done something like that, Signy had protested.

  I’m not saying anything. What I’m saying is, it’s not out of the question that I know someone with strong views on this business.

  That was what had kept Signy awake last night. On several occasions over the past week Åse Berit had hinted that she knew something about what was going on down there in Oslo. And then always that zip-fastener mime across the lips with the two fingers.

  By the time Roger Åheim had got the last of the winter tyres on, Signy had made up her mind. She couldn’t keep this to herself. She had to tell someone about it.

  28

  A POWERFULLY BUILT fair-haired man emerged from the lift on the ground floor at police headquarters and walked over to reception.

  – Detective Sergeant Norbakk, he said and held out his hand. The handshake wasn’t as firm as Axel Glenne had expected, judging by the upper-arm musculature. – Come with me, he added with a nod towards the lift door.

  On the way up, Axel looked him over. The sergeant was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and was probably about thirty years old, although that thick curl hanging down over his forehead perhaps made him look younger than he was.

  – Probably isn’t easy for a doctor to get away from his office in the middle of the afternoon, he observed, most likely as a way of neutralising the tension that arises in a lift when two strange men are standing face to face.

  – You’re right there, Axel agreed with a friendly smile, though in fact he was attending a three-day seminar on lung disease. He thought better of asking why they had requested that they meet up in person rather than deal with it over the telephone. Actually, he could understand why. The previous evening a female officer had called him and told him who the murdered woman in Frogner Park was. Afterwards he’d spent half the night lying awake, and found it hard to follow what was being said at the seminar in the morning.

  They came to a halt on the seventh floor.

  – We’re going over into the red zone, the sergeant told him.

  Axel was led down a corridor with red-painted doors and linoleum in the same colour, with no explanation being offered for the significance of the colour-coding. Presently they came to a door that was slightly ajar. There was a nameplate on it with the sergeant’s name. His first name was Arve, Axel registered. He was shown to a chair by the window in the cramped office. It looked out across Grønland and the Plaza Hotel, with Bjørvika and the opera house just visible on the left. The desk was tidy, a pile of documents next to a computer, a couple of copies of the legal code; the shelves were crammed with folders.

  – The chief inspector will be here in a moment. Coffee?

  Axel nodded and Norbakk disappeared, returning with a thermos and three cups.

  – Sugar? Milk?

  When Axel declined he said:

  – Me too, I don’t like junk in my coffee.

  Just then the door opened. Axel gave a start and turned round. The man standing there was a little under medium height, wearing suit trousers and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He was thinning on top, and thick grey eyebrows formed a bridge across the powerful crooked nose.

  – Viken, he said, sitting down on the chair nearest the door without offering to shake hands. – You’ve already met Norbakk.

  The conversation – Axel preferred to call it that, although interview sounded reasonable enough – went on for over an hour. An unnecessarily long time. He had planned to catch the 4.30 boat. It was his turn to make dinner. Marlen had her violin lesson. And he had planned to go over Tom’s weekly homework with him, something he overlooked too often and that gave him a guilty conscience. But he was careful to give no indication of his impatience. Said what he was able to say about Cecilie Davidsen. He had never before been in the situation of being interviewed about a dead patient, and he decided to be open about her sickness. Yes, of course the diagnosis had come as a terrible shock to her. No, the prognosis had not been good. Possibly three years to live. It was the young sergeant, Norbakk, who asked about this. He looked up from the computer he was working at and observed Axel with calm, direct eyes. On those occasions when he did speak, he kept it short and his voice was relaxed, unlike the chief inspector, who sounded pressured and a little hoarse. If he had to choose which one of the two to drink a beer with, thought Axel, it would be Norbakk, no question about it. As for the other one, Viken, there was an impenetrable sullenness about him, and he seemed to exude something that filled Axel with unease. When was the last time Axel had seen Davidsen? he wanted to know. Axel gave him the date of the visit to her house. Was it usual to go to patients’ houses out of office hours? The chief inspector’s delivery was patronising and insistent, but it was the penetrating stare that irritated Axel most and brought on a sort of reluctance. He spun it out a bit, didn’t tell Viken how he’d stood outside Davidsen’s front door, how the daughter had opened up, the scared way she’d looked at him. The messenger of death, was what he had thought. Though not this death, the death he was being questioned about now.

  But most of the conversation was about Hilde Paulsen rather than Cecilie Davidsen. How well had he known her? Did they work closely together? Had he had any contact with her outside work? Exactly where was it he had met her that afternoon? Had he met anyone else? Axel forced his lips into a smile. He was a good observer. He noticed things, big things, little things. But to remember every detail of a bike ride nearly three weeks ago was asking a bit much. He remembered a woman carrying a child in a back frame, three or four people out jogging. Naturally the elderly couple out at the Nordmarka chapel; he could give them a detailed description of the woman’s face if they wanted. A cyclist had raced past him, that was near the chapel too. And after meeting Hilde Paulsen, a steady stream of keep-fitters and walkers, with and without dogs, on their way to and from Ullevålseter. Approaching Sognsvann, he’d met three women in headscarves and long coats, probably Turks or Kurds. One of them limped and looked as though she had problems with her hip. Directly behind them a person he recognised from television. A former newsreader for NRK who now had his own talk show on another channel and was what you might call a celebrity. And in the car park by th
e lake, a cyclist with a child-trailer. It was dark by then, and he remembered thinking it was too late to be taking a child out into the forest. Why was he walking when he had the bicycle with him? He told them about the puncture in his rear tyre, then the run and the swim in the tarn. But nothing about the spruce shelter. He didn’t know why. Only that the shelter made him think of Brede. Brede had no place in this conversation.

  Where were you last Thursday afternoon? the chief inspector wanted to know. When he heard the answer, he observed drily:

  – Well, well, the day of your weekly bike ride. And here was me thinking you doctors worked round the clock. Were you with anyone?

  Axel had come to tell them what he knew about two women who had been murdered, not to defend anything he himself might have been up to in his private life. He thought it through quickly and came to the conclusion that Miriam had no place in this conversation either.

  – No, he replied, and felt himself crossing a threshold as he lied to the chief inspector. – I was alone.

  29

  DETECTIVE CHIEF INSPECTOR Hans Magnus Viken piled the takeaway cartons from China Dragon on to the plate and pushed it to one side as he clicked the remote control. There was a debate programme on TV2: Should dangerous animals be allowed close to people’s homes? What are the limits? The murder cases weren’t mentioned, but the programme was fuelled by the general uncertainty in the air. Viken switched to a travel channel. Pictures of a desert sunset. Looked like Morocco. He watched for a while before getting out the DVD he’d brought home from work with him. Only now did he have time to watch the whole of the Monday press conference, not just the few extracts he’d seen on NRK that same evening. It was useful to watch all TV appearances, which was why they were recorded and handed out to everyone taking part. Learning media skills was as important a part of the job as actual policing skills, they were constantly being told.