The Fifth Element

by Jorgen Brekke

  “I didn’t want him to destroy Tina. That’s what he does. He destroys everyone around him. Just look what he did to me.”

  “There’s some other motive here.”

  All sorts of things were whirling through Sving’s mind. He thought back to the planning they’d done.

  “I asked your sister to cancel the insurance on the house,” he said. “But I forgot to ask about any other kind of insurance.”

  “Do you really think it’s that simple, you idiot?”

  “No, but that’s part of the picture. How much was he worth?”

  “More than you’ll ever be,” said Ane Fagerhus.

  Then she opened the door on her side and got out, heading back to the other car. Sving watched as she reached in through the door, which was still open. Had she seen something else when she went over there? A moment later she stood up. And in her hands was a sawed-off shotgun.

  Sving instantly started up the car. He got it moving, following the same tracks in the thin layer of snow that they’d made when they’d backed the car into position.

  Up ahead he could see that she was now standing between the house and the parked car. She was aiming at him.

  He stomped on the gas and drove straight for her. The shotgun went off when he was no more than ten yards away. Instinctively he ducked below the dashboard. The buckshot struck the windshield, which exploded over him. He couldn’t see where he was going, but he felt the car veer and start to skid. It came to an abrupt halt with the driver’s side pressed against the wall of the house. When he sat up, he saw that she was right in front of the car. She’d thrown herself to the side to avoid the swerving vehicle, and now she lay on her stomach on the ground. In a flash Sving put the car in reverse and backed in an arc away from the house. He gave the other car a slight nudge with his bumper before he shifted into first and raced down the driveway toward the road. Behind him, Ane Fagerhus, his lover, was now back on her feet. In the rearview mirror he saw her take aim and fire again, but this time she missed completely. Sving eventually came out onto the highway. Driving without a windshield, he headed for Trondheim. He was hoping to leave this whole episode behind him for good.

  24

  Three days after it happened …

  Look at the boy. Look at the way his mother is looking at him now. He’s sitting on the floor in the living room, on the rug that came from his grandfather’s house in the south. On the TV a news clip is showing a house on Hitra with all the windows blown out. Shards of glass and pieces of the building are scattered over the dried, brown tufts of grass and traces of snow. A reporter with wind ruffling his hair stares somberly at the boy, almost as if they’re together in the same scene, on either side of the TV screen.

  Then the picture cuts to a photo of a woman in her thirties, with dark, shoulder-length hair. In the photo she is wearing a police uniform from the state of Virginia in the United States.

  The mother, who is standing in the doorway behind the TV, sees something in the boy that she has never seen before. Something that has to do with the woods.

  Frost has settled inside of him, she thinks. And it may never let go of him again. This is a dangerous country. Not everyone can stand as much silence as they have here.

  She wants to move back south, taking along only the boy and his siblings and move away from this land that killed their father. As she stands there, she is holding a book in her hand. It was his. A souvenir of the man she loved. She doesn’t read. But now that he’s gone, she takes comfort in holding his books, rubbing her fingertips over the leather, lovingly, as if he now lived inside these books.

  25

  When it happened …

  Jensen had been talking on his cell almost the whole drive. After he reported to Trondheim about the man who’d run away from the doctor’s clinic, his phone hadn’t stopped ringing. The police were at a loss about what to do. It wasn’t clear who exactly they were dealing with. When the man was brought into the clinic, he’d had no ID on him, and the name he gave had quickly turned out to be phony. Jensen and the sheriff’s deputy had agreed to meet at the sheriff’s office on Hitra to discuss the matter further.

  It was on their way out to the cars that Singsaker’s cell had rung. It took a moment for him to realize it was his phone. After he went on sick leave and Felicia disappeared, he could go an entire day without getting a call. But he managed to pick up before it stopped ringing.

  “Odd Singsaker.”

  At first no one spoke on the other end. All he could hear was someone breathing heavily.

  “Who is this?”

  A voice said something. It was garbled, incoherent, sounding like the person was ill and barely able to speak.

  “Who?”

  “It’s me.”

  Now he managed to hear the words over all the traffic noise, the wheezing and gurgling.

  He recognized something in the voice that had initially sounded so foreign.

  “It’s me, sweetheart.”

  Even though every word was so contorted as to be nearly incomprehensible, the accent was still audible.

  “Felicia? Is that you?”

  He had stopped halfway between the clinic and the cars. Up ahead he saw Jensen and the sheriff’s deputy. They were discussing something. But Odd felt as if he was in some other reality.

  “It’s me.”

  “Good Lord, what’s wrong with you? What’s happened to your voice?”

  “You have to find me, Odd. You have to come and find me now. Please.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Her voice was getting weaker, as if it had taken all her strength to speak. Now she was barely whispering.

  “You need to tell me where you are. Are you locked in somewhere?”

  “I heard an explosion. That was a long time ago.” That’s what he thought she said, but he could hardly hear her anymore.

  He heard some clattering sounds on the line.

  “Are you still there? Where you heard the explosion?”

  “Not far away.”

  She was clearly straining to make an effort.

  “Please come, Odd! Just come. You have to get me out of here. We…”

  She was breathing hard. Then he heard another clattering sound, as if she’d dropped the phone, as if it fell to the ground and she was trying to pick it up.

  He stood there, shouting to her on his cell. But either she was gone, or she couldn’t say anything more. Soon the line went dead.

  He rushed over to Jensen.

  “I need to take your car,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Felicia. She just called me. I think she’s near the site of the explosion. I know that you have to go to the sheriff’s office and try to track down the man who fled. That’s your job. But I need to go and find her.”

  Jensen gave Singsaker a long look. Then he nodded.

  “I’ll catch a ride with him,” he said, nodding toward the sheriff’s deputy. Then he handed his car keys to Singsaker.

  Singsaker jumped into the driver’s seat. As he backed out of the parking lot and raced toward the highway, Jensen and the deputy were still standing next to their vehicle. Jensen looked worried. By that point he’d probably realized that he’d just done something he was going to regret.

  The site of the explosion had already been logged into the GPS in Jensen’s car, so it didn’t take Singsaker long to find it. The last part of the way he drove on a narrow country road that hadn’t been properly plowed, but a number of other cars had already made a track in the snow. He came around two boulders, and there it was. Dusk was starting to settle in, but even from a distance the damage to the house was still visible. All the windows on the ground floor had been blown out, and some of the panes upstairs had also shattered. A lot of the siding had fallen off the walls, and in some places there were holes all the way through. It must have been a big explosion. In the driveway Singsaker saw a rental car parked behind the local doctor’s vehicle.
The rental was the car that had been traced to Felicia.

  She was at Gardermoen Airport, he thought. She was on her way home, for the second time, and she ended up here. Why? And why hadn’t she come back the first time she was booked on a flight? Then none of this would have happened. Then both of them would be sitting at home, and she wouldn’t be lying injured somewhere, waiting for him to find her.

  He approached the driveway in front of the house.

  Then he stomped on the brakes. A figure came running toward his car from some trees that stood between the road and what looked like a well over by the rocks nearby. He heard a shot and noticed that one of his tires exploded. Another shot struck the window behind him on the driver’s side, shattering the glass. Bits of glass rained down on him. Then the door was yanked open. He saw only half a figure—an arm, one side of the face, short dark hair. The rest was behind the door. The man was dressed in white. On his chest it said in blue letters: Health Services.

  The man who escaped from the clinic, thought Singsaker. What’s he doing here? Now he caught a glimpse of his whole face, a bandage covering one eye. Then a gun struck him in the face and night fell instantly.

  * * *

  When Singsaker came to, he was lying on a dock. His face was pressed down into the snow, but he was able to breathe through a crack between the planks. He heard the sea underneath him. The waves were still high, and a strong wind was blowing through his gray hair. He turned his head to one side and caught sight of feet. Wearing slippers. Bare calves covered in cuts and gashes. A white gown, like the ones given to hospital patients, reached past the man’s knees.

  Then Singsaker realized that his wrists and ankles were bound. The man who had attacked him in the car now grabbed the plastic ties around his wrists and began tugging at him.

  Then Singsaker’s phone rang. He felt fingers rummaging in his right-hand pocket to get out his cell, which was then held out so he could see the display. The hands holding the phone had the same injuries as the man’s legs. Some of the cuts looked deep, and one of them had been bandaged, most likely at the clinic.

  Singsaker could no longer trust his memory, yet he was positive the number he saw was the same one that Felicia had called from less than half an hour ago. It wasn’t Felicia’s number. He had that one stored on his contact list, and her name would have shown up if she was using it to call him. He wondered how she’d gotten access to this number. Was somebody helping her to call? That didn’t seem likely. She had sounded so alone.

  “Anybody you know?” asked the voice above him, sounding eerily calm.

  He didn’t reply.

  “Well, I’m afraid you’re not going to take the call.”

  The display went dark. The ringtone died away. Then the cell disappeared from view. Singsaker saw the slippers move across the dock. Desperately he tried to raise his head to see what was going on, but he couldn’t lift his gaze higher than the man’s waist. The man stopped at the end of the dock. Singsaker could hear what happened next. A loud splash as the phone hit the water.

  Then the man came back and grabbed him again. This time he didn’t hesitate. He dragged Singsaker over to the very edge of the dock and pushed him far enough that his own weight pulled him down into the water.

  * * *

  Was Singsaker scared? Was he consumed by an intense and paralyzing fear of death? He’d always been the type of person who could never imagine his own death. The thought seemed somehow irrelevant. Maybe that was why he’d never fully considered any other consequences of his illness other than that it made him forgetful and put him behind at work.

  But right now it was difficult to imagine any outcome other than death. He drifted down in the water. It was only a few degrees above freezing, but as an enthusiastic ice bather, he was used to this kind of temperature. He could stand it for a while, but not forever. And it wasn’t very deep at this spot. Maybe six or seven feet. Enough that his head was underwater when he stood on the bottom. He kicked with all his might and managed to get his face above the waves for a short time before sinking down again.

  The first time he came to the surface, he saw the man standing on the dock. And for the first time he saw all of him, not just arms and feet. A tall figure wearing hospital garb. He’d turned around and was on his way back toward shore, moving calmly, as if he had no worries, was in no hurry, indifferent to what had just happened behind him, as if Singsaker no longer existed.

  Then he was gone. Singsaker sank down again, touched bottom, and kicked his way back up to the surface.

  By then the perpetrator had reached shore. His white clothing made him nearly invisible against the snow on the slope leading up to the house. It almost looked as if his dark head were hovering all by itself in the dim light.

  Singsaker repeated his kicking maneuver on the bottom several more times. But each time he sank down, the current pulled him a little farther out, and the sea got deeper. On his sixth and seventh attempts, he didn’t make it to the surface before going down again. This time he thought:

  Now she’s going to die.

  That much he understood. If he didn’t manage to get to Felicia, it would be over. She was badly injured and had lost all strength. He’d heard that in her voice. If there were other people near her, they weren’t there to help. And now both of them were going to die.

  What were you doing out here, Felicia? he thought. How did you end up here of all places?

  When he touched bottom again, he lay down.

  Normally he was good at holding his breath. He also knew that the low temperature of the water had set off a diving reflex that is common to all mammals when they land in cold water. This reflex moves the blood from the extremities to the body’s most important organs, the brain and the area behind the rib cage, which supports the lungs. So it’s possible to survive longer without oxygen than under normal circumstances. Singsaker estimated that he had about a minute left before panic would take over. Then he’d start straining his arms and legs, which would quickly increase his need for oxygen. Sooner or later he’d open his mouth and water would enter his respiratory passages. That in turn would cause a so-called larynx spasm, an automatic constriction of the vocal cords to prevent water from seeping all the way down into his lungs. But it wouldn’t give him more oxygen. Soon afterward he would lose consciousness, the spasm in his throat would cease, and luckily he’d be blacked out and unable to notice his blood vessels bursting before his heart stopped beating and his brain slowly died. Without oxygen it might take six or seven minutes at this temperature before he was totally brain dead. Drowning was a slow and brutal way to die. If some miracle didn’t occur, drowning was all he had left in this life.

  Even so, he lay on the sea bottom, thinking.

  Then something occurred to him that almost gave him hope. He started tugging at his coat with his fingers, bound behind his back. He pulled and scratched until he managed to get hold of his left pocket. After more fumbling, he reached one hand inside. Then he pulled out the plastic bag that he’d put there in the clinic. From the bag he fished out the item he’d seized as evidence. It was the scalpel that Knut Andersen Stang had used to kill himself. Singsaker held it firmly with his fingers and directed it toward the plastic ties binding him.

  * * *

  After cutting his wrists and ankles free, Singsaker rose to the surface and gulped in air that tasted both sour and sweet. He didn’t just inhale, he swallowed the air, drinking it in. It felt like something brightened inside of him, and he could have laughed. If he hadn’t been about to be carried beyond the breakwater, wearing heavy clothes and boots, and if he hadn’t known that he’d lost way too much valuable time, he might have howled and bellowed with glee. But as things stood, this moment of joy and relief could only be short-lived.

  Quickly he shed his coat and boots and began swimming toward shore. In the harbor, within the breakwater, the water was thankfully calm and made for easy swimming.

  * * *

  When Singsaker final
ly clambered up onto the dock, he couldn’t see his attacker, but he realized he knew far too little about the man. What was he doing out here? Had he come here with Felicia? Could he possibly be the man the Oslo police were looking for? Had he caused the explosion? Or was the tentative official theory correct, that old dynamite had exploded accidentally? And why had the man crashed his boat out there at sea? There were too many loose ends. Nothing made sense. And what Singsaker most wanted to know about this man was: Did he know where Felicia was? Was he the person holding her captive?

  Singsaker took off all his clothes and wrung out as much water as he could before he put them back on. The temperature in the air was well above freezing now that the storm had passed. His clothes weren’t going to freeze on his body, but they also weren’t going to dry anytime soon. It was important for him to keep moving.

  There were too many footprints leading up the slope from the dock for him to know which way the man had gone, but he followed the tracks toward the house. Halfway there, he stopped abruptly. A sharp bang came from the open windows of the house. A shot fired from a medium-sized weapon, he determined. And with that he started running toward the front entrance.

  The moment he reached it, he saw that the police tape the fire department had put up to cordon off the front door had been broken. The ends of the tape fluttered in the drifts still surrounding the house. The front door had been blown off its hinges and stood leaning against the wall next to the opening.

  Singsaker ran up the stairs to the porch and went inside. The main room had been totally wrecked by the explosion. The wind blowing in from the sea was sharp with damp and salt. The whole place smelled scorched. The walls were black with soot. Several gaps in the ceiling revealed the upstairs, and a big hole in the floor opened into the basement.

  Singsaker moved cautiously around the hole on the rickety floorboards. In the middle of the room a person lay on the floor. The white hospital garb told Singsaker that the man who had attacked him was dead. A big red patch was spreading over the white back. He’d probably been shot in the chest. That meant the blood on his shirt was pouring out of an exit hole in his back. A shotgun lay next to him.