The Fifth Element

by Jorgen Brekke

  Now he was in Hitra alone, setting up things as quickly as he could. In either end of the living room he placed the laser sensors and the remote detonator for the bomb, so they would suffer the least amount of damage during the explosion. That would make it easier to remove them afterward. There wouldn’t be much left of the blasting cap and timer. He hoped the police wouldn’t find any leftover fragments. The success of the whole operation depended on the police quickly deciding that the old dynamite, which had been recently reported, had exploded accidentally.

  After completing the work, he gathered up all the extra wires, packaging, and trash. The last time they were out here, Ane had shown him where her sister used to throw junk down a dried-out old well some distance from the house. And on that occasion they had helped her get rid of a moldy old mattress from upstairs. But Sving thought it would be too risky to leave any evidence so close to the explosion, so he put all the remaining items in a black garbage bag that he would take back with him. Then he paused to look out at the sea.

  They hadn’t yet seen any of the stormy weather that had been forecast for the south. But apparently it was headed north.

  He took out his cell and called Ane.

  Tina was crying in the background when she answered. Sving couldn’t tell if it was defiance or desperation he heard in her voice.

  “Okay, you can start the process now,” he said.

  “I laid the trail today. I met with a mutual friend of ours and mentioned exactly what he needed to know. So now I’ll go out and send the letter.”

  “Remember to call the sheriff.”

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

  “Trust me. He’s a real slowpoke. And it’s important.”

  22

  The day before it happened …

  “Do you think he’ll come in the night or in the daytime?”

  “It seems more likely he’d arrive at night so he could surprise me when I’m asleep. But we can’t think like that when it comes to Rolf. You can’t assume anything when it comes to him. He’s always calculating. Probably he’ll decide that I’d be less on my guard during the day, so that’s when he’ll get here.”

  “It’s starting to get dark,” said Sving.

  They had backed the car in among the boulders and spruce trees, just as Ane had suggested. It was a good hiding place. Sving had suggested that they sit and wait in the boat that belonged to Ane’s sister. They had borrowed the boat after taking Tina out to stay with her. It was an “archipelago jeep,” a speedboat intended mostly for transport, though it did have a tarp that could be pulled up like a roof over the stern, if needed. But they had quickly dismissed the boat idea. The storm had now reached them, even though it wasn’t as fierce as when it had raged over the southern and southwestern regions of the country. The boats were all safely moored inside the breakwater, but the water was anything but calm. In among the rocks, where the car was parked, they were protected from the squalls. It was cold outside, and every once in a while they had to turn on the car to stay warm. But it was the safest place to wait, and they also had a good view. They could see the road as it curved around the boulders on the other side of the property. And they had an adequate view of both sides of the house.

  As soon as the dynamite exploded and they made sure that everything had gone as planned, Ane was going to get in the boat and head straight across the water to where her sister lived. The key was already waiting in the ignition. Sving would stay behind and clean up as fast as possible before any neighbors showed up after hearing the explosion. Then he would get in the car and drive to Trondheim. They had agreed not to meet again for several weeks. Not until everything had settled down and all suspicion had faded from the case.

  “It’s impossible to know when he might arrive,” she said now.

  “He’ll probably get here sometime tomorrow,” said Sving. “The only question is how long it’ll take him to track you out here.”

  “He’s efficient. That’s all I can say.”

  She put her hand on Sving’s thigh. He responded. They tore off their clothes and made love in the ice-cold car while steam poured off their bodies like dread.

  Afterward they put their clothes back on, zipped their sleeping bags together, and snuggled next to each other. That was how they kept warm through the night, occasionally dozing off, with dreams that lasted only seconds, flaring up and then vanishing. In his dream, Sving caught a glimpse of his son, sleeping with his eyes open. He saw the young student they’d killed a few nights before, gasping and slobbering in the throes of death. He saw himself as a tattoo on Ane’s skin. He saw a lot of other images in the tension between fear and hope, budding dreams that died with each restless movement next to him.

  23

  The day before it happened …

  In the early morning hours, they drove off to get coffee. It felt good to keep the heater on inside the car. Then they went back to resume their watch. Later in the day an old Mercedes appeared and parked down by the marina. An overweight young guy and a very old man transferred a lot of gear into one of the boats and then headed out to sea. Not long after that, Fagerhus finally showed up. Ane had fallen asleep and was snoring with her head resting on Sving’s shoulder.

  “Wake up,” he said, giving her a cautious poke in the arm.

  “What’s happening?”

  He pointed at the car as it pulled in behind the house and then reappeared in the driveway leading to the porch.

  “We’ve got a nibble,” she said, her voice so tense it sounded electrified.

  They sat and watched without speaking.

  Fagerhus got out of the car and immediately headed for the front door. Then they couldn’t see him anymore. They didn’t know whether he was waiting outside or had gone right in. All they could do was breathe heavily and wait.

  “That’s not his car,” Ane said suddenly.

  Sving didn’t reply.

  Inside him the clock was ticking. He pictured Rolf Fagerhus moving about inside the house. Where would he go first? How fast would he get to the dining table in the main room?

  “He’s been inside there forever,” she said.

  “No, it just feels like that,” he told her.

  Then came the explosion. The boom was more violent than even he could have imagined. The whole house seemed to expand. Boards were ripped off the walls and went flying in every direction. The windowpanes were pulverized by the shock wave and shot through the air like glitter.

  Sving fixed his gaze on what was happening at the front of the house. The top of the table, under which he’d set the dynamite, now came flying through the big picture window. In front of the tabletop dove a dark-clad figure. Rolf Fagerhus. He had launched himself on top of the table just before the explosion, and now he’d been hurled through the window, with the table serving as a shield. He turned a somersault in the air and landed on the ground where it sloped down to the sea. There he rolled over several times before coming to a halt.

  “Is he alive?”

  Ane was whispering, as if there was a risk he might hear her from where he lay, stretched out in the snow, his body motionless and smoking. The tabletop lay below him, like a big ashtray from which he’d tumbled.

  Then he moved. He put the palm of his hand on the ground and pushed himself up. Then he was on his knees, and finally standing upright, swaying.

  “Shit! He’s alive!” said Ane.

  “I told you we shouldn’t give him any time,” said Sving. “That fucking countdown of yours. Give me the binoculars!”

  Ane Fagerhus didn’t move. Sving had to reach over her to get the binoculars out of the glove compartment. When he raised them to his eyes, he got a better look.

  Rolf Fagerhus was standing there picking pieces of glass out of his face. A big shard had pierced his cheek, leaving an ugly gash. A big splinter was sticking out of one eye. Displaying a strange calm, he slowly pulled it out. Blood gushed out over his whole face. That eye had clearly been destroyed. Almost as
if he were sleepy, Fagerhus rubbed his good eye. Then he looked down at himself. His pants hung in tatters around his legs, and a flesh wound marred one thigh. But his jacket seemed to be intact. He took a few tentative steps as he flexed his wrists. They had probably been badly sprained as he tried to break his fall after being hurled through the air. Sving couldn’t even imagine the pain he must be feeling. He was amazed the man could stay on his feet at all.

  “What do we do now?” Sving was thinking aloud.

  “The baseball bat. You have to go after him with the bat.”

  “No. Then it’s guaranteed to be a homicide case.”

  “I don’t give a fuck!”

  “Who else but you has a motive for wanting him dead? Do you know how fast they’d come after us if we kill him here in the yard?”

  They sat there staring at Fagerhus. He had started walking around the house to the car he’d parked in the driveway. They saw him open the door and take out a bag from the passenger seat. Then he closed the door and sank down onto the ground. He sat there, leaning against the front tire as he took out something that looked like a toiletry kit.

  “A syringe, rubber tubing, a spoon, a little cylinder. He’s pouring something out of it into the spoon.” Sving was still looking through the binoculars as he recounted what he saw.

  “Christ, I think he’s going to shoot up.”

  “Rolf? Not on your life. He’d never do anything that might impede his thinking.”

  “It’s for the pain,” said Sving. “He can’t keep going unless he does something about the pain.”

  “What do you think it is?”

  “Heroin.”

  “Will that help with the pain?”

  “Heroin helps with just about anything.”

  Sving moved the binoculars over the scene as Rolf Fagerhus got ready to shoot up.

  “Wait a minute,” he said suddenly. “I can see a face in the back window. There’s somebody else in the car.”

  “Are you kidding? Give me those!” Ane grabbed the binoculars from Sving. “You’re right. There’s a woman in there.”

  Now Fagerhus stood up and tossed away the syringe. He was moving in slow motion. Like a sleepwalker, he opened the back door and hauled out the woman. She fell to the ground because her wrists and feet were bound. Then he took out a knife.

  “Shit, that’s the knife he bought on Crete last summer. Do you know how much it cost? What a fucking idiot!”

  Sving looked at Ane Fagerhus. How could she be thinking about the cost of the knife right now? Again he sensed something that had been nagging him for a while. A thought that he didn’t want to consider popped into his mind. Did she have other reasons for wanting her husband dead?

  Even without the binoculars he could see what was happening. Slowly Fagerhus leaned down and cut the plastic ties around the woman’s wrists and ankles. He was setting her free. Quickly she got to her feet and took three steps away from him. Sving was all too familiar with her body language. She was afraid.

  But it turned out she had nothing to fear from Fagerhus. As soon as she was free, he turned on his heel and set off running. He dashed around the house to where they couldn’t see him and then reappeared on the path leading to the dock.

  “Shit, Sving! You have to stop him!” cried Ane.

  But Sving didn’t move.

  They watched as Fagerhus jumped into the speedboat. The key was in the ignition, so he turned on the engine and then untied the mooring lines. The next second he was heading out to sea.

  Sving took back the binoculars and watched him go.

  Ane kept on howling.

  “Tina! He knows that she’s out there with my sister! That’s where he’s going! He’s going to get her!”

  Sving didn’t move as he studied the motorboat. Fagerhus was steering in a drug-induced haze. He was going much too fast for the huge waves left by the storm that had raged during the night. His reflexes were dulled by the heroin. He was having a hard time setting a straight course.

  All of a sudden it happened. The boat slammed right into a high wave and was thrown violently into the air so it almost tipped over and capsized. It miraculously came back down with the rudder in the water, but Fagerhus was thrown overboard. Since he was so out of it when he commandeered the boat, he hadn’t fastened the wire to the dead-man’s switch, so the boat continued on without him. But it didn’t get far. Only now did Sving notice the smaller boat, which was directly in the speedboat’s path. Moving at an insane speed, it headed for the small vessel. Just before the collision, he saw somebody jump into the sea.

  “That’s got to be the end of him,” said Sving.

  “Did he fall in?” asked Ane as if she couldn’t quite believe it. She grabbed the binoculars from him. “He won’t live long in such cold water. Looks like we’ve had better luck than we expected. Maybe we’ll get out of this after all.”

  “Except that we’re forgetting one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We have a witness.”

  Sving pointed to the yard where the woman from the car—a brunette around thirty or forty—was now sitting on the backseat with her legs sticking out as she bent forward with her head resting on her knees.

  “How are we going to clean up after ourselves now?”

  “You need to take care of her.”

  “She’s an innocent bystander. Plus, we don’t know anything about her. She could be anyone. If we kill her, we don’t know whether that might lead the police to us.”

  “Fuck, Sving! This doesn’t fit with what I’ve heard about you. Innocent bystander? Don’t you get that she’s a fucking whore?”

  “Ane, what are you talking about? He had her tied up. There’s something strange about all this. Something very strange, if you ask me.”

  “A fucking whore!”

  Now Ane got out of the car and slammed the door behind her. She opened the back door and took out the baseball bat, which was lying on the backseat.

  Sving saw her fury erupt like a trembling frenzy in every move she made. Where did that kind of anger come from? It’s not fear, he thought. It’s not the terrified thought of getting caught for doing something bad out of necessity. This was something altogether different.

  Silently he watched as Ane began hammering the woman with the bat. She hit her again and again, until there was no sign of resistance left in her, until she could no longer protect her bloodied face with her hands. Even then Ane didn’t stop. Finally, she tossed aside the bat and sank down on the slushy driveway.

  She stayed there for a moment, huddled up and looking almost like she was praying. Then she stood up and grabbed the arm of the woman she had practically beaten to death. She dragged her over to the well at the edge of the property, toward the boulders.

  Sving still didn’t move. He merely raised the binoculars to his eyes, as if they might protect him from what he was seeing, a way of filtering out the madness.

  Ane dragged the thin, lifeless body to the well and pushed it over the side. But her hand must have got caught on something, maybe a cord from the woman’s jacket, because she ended up being pulled partway in before she managed to get loose and straighten up.

  On her way back, Ane stopped at the car and rummaged around inside. She took out a bag before retrieving the baseball bat from the driveway.

  Then she came back and got in beside Sving. She tossed the bat and the bag in the backseat.

  “Shit! I dropped my cell phone in the well!”

  “Christ!” said Sving. That’s all he managed to say.

  “I took his bag. Maybe there’s something inside we can use. I think there’s more heroin inside.”

  “Do you realize what you’ve done?” Sving glared at her, furious and in despair.

  “That’s what I hired you for, you shithead!” she said.

  She seemed exhilarated and confused. Her eyes flitted around, unable to settled on any fixed point. Ane Fagerhus was shivering like a freezing dog.

  “Y
ou didn’t hire me,” said Sving. “I went along with this to protect you.”

  “Some protection! What fucking bullshit! You’re nothing but a fuckup. Shit! I don’t know what to say. Protection? You? You utter fuck!”

  She wasn’t making any sense. She turned to face Sving and began hitting him. First the same kind of slaps that she’d given him that time in bed back at his place in Strindheim. And he instantly felt the same sort of shame that had come over him afterward as he sat on the toilet for over an hour. But once again he didn’t have it in him to strike a woman.

  She kept on hitting, now using her fists. Finally, he grabbed her wrists and managed to push her, flailing and cursing, back in the passenger seat. He put both arms around her and held on tight. He felt the rage in her body ebbing and flowing spasmodically. At last she calmed down, breathing hard.

  “It was you who hit him,” said Sving as he sank back in the driver’s seat.

  Then he turned pensive. “In ten percent of domestic violence cases, it’s the woman who’s the abuser, but people don’t want to believe it. You said there was physical abuse involved, but you never said he was the one doing the beating.”

  “He’s a shithead!”

  “It was you who hit him.”

  “He used psychological terror. He kept on talking about his fucking father the whole time. His father, who disappeared into the woods and had words of wisdom for everything. You have no idea how horrible it is to feel like you’re never right about anything, like you’re worthless. That man didn’t have a single feeling in his whole body. I hit him to make him react. And one thing I told you was true.”

  “What’s that?”

  “He was capable of murder. There’s no doubt about it.”

  “You loved him,” said Sving. “This rage of yours? It’s jealousy. The way you attacked that woman. It can only be jealousy. You loved him. Why did you want me to kill him?”

  “I told you. He was impossible to live with.”

  “But you loved him.”

  “Love dies.”

  “But why murder? You could have left him.”