Death By Water

by Damhaug, Torkil

  – Gotta go, the young man mumbled.

  Liss slumped down into the office chair again. Noticed in the same instant that the appointment book, which she had left lying on the desk, was now back in the drawer. She picked it up, flipped back through. The page for Thursday 11 December had been torn out. She jumped up and ran out into the corridor. Heard the street door closing down below.

  6

  LARGE FLAKES OF wet snow were falling in her hair. She was already drenched and on the point of giving up when Viljam opened the door. The heavy eyes and the creases on the pale cheeks showed what he had been doing since she left some hours earlier.

  – You’re home, she said as she held up the office keys. – Sorry if I woke you. Just wanted to hand these back.

  He blinked in the afternoon light. – Doesn’t matter. Come in. More coffee?

  She pulled off the soaking wet boots.

  – Don’t you have lectures or something to go to?

  He shrugged. In the kitchen he added: – Can’t take anything in anyway. Not getting much sleep these nights.

  Liss put the keys on the table. Decided to tell him about the patient who had appeared and then disappeared again.

  – He tore a page out of the diary? Viljam exclaimed.

  – The one with the appointments for the day Mailin went missing.

  – Have you told the police?

  She had called them. Still no one there who had anything to do with the case. She had left another message.

  – They’re doing nothing, she groaned. – Absolutely fuck all.

  He didn’t respond, but once he had produced the rolls from earlier on he asked: – What did this guy look like?

  She described him. Black curly hair, unkempt. Acne scars on his cheeks, shifty eyes. – I had the feeling he was on something or other.

  Viljam poured coffee from a little grey bag into the cafetière. – Quite a lot of Mailin’s patients are. I’ve asked her if it’s safe to have an office without any kind of alarm system. She just shrugs it off.

  As he chewed at half a roll with nothing on it, Liss unobtrusively watched his dark blue eyes. He had a heavy growth of beard and still hadn’t shaved. On the other hand, the narrow nose and full lips accentuated the feminine prettiness of the face. Not hard to see why Mailin was attracted to him. Although her sister was more concerned about what lay behind an appearance; she dived down to investigate what was not immediately apparent to the naked eye. Liss, by way of contrast, had always been fascinated by the surface of things, what the masks looked like, not what was hidden behind them. Even so, she too tried to follow her intuition in deciding whether to trust someone or not. As regards Viljam, she still hadn’t made up her mind.

  – Did you find what you were looking for in her office?

  She didn’t know what she had been looking for. If she told him she’d been looking for Mailin, he might stop asking.

  – I spent an evening with my mother, she said instead. – She sits there completely paralysed, can hardly get a word out. She’s wilting in front of our very eyes.

  She dragged her fingers through her hair; they stopped at a knot, which she began to twist at.

  – I must do something. Anything at all. Go over every single thing Mailin did recently. Go where she went. Just not carry on sitting here waiting.

  He didn’t answer, sat there staring at the table.

  – What about the thesis she was working on? she asked. – Is it lying around here somewhere?

  He drank from his coffee cup. – Her computer is missing. It wasn’t in the car. Not at her office either, nor at the cabin. Doesn’t make sense.

  Liss mulled this over.

  – What else does she use it for?

  – Journals. Everyone who came to her for treatment.

  – Presumably she backs it all up?

  – Think so. We can see up in her study.

  He went ahead of her up the stairs and into the little room with the desk and the couch. A model of a seagull hung from the ceiling, and the draught from the opening door was enough to set the wings in motion.

  – She’s very good at organising her work systematically, Viljam remarked. – So the journals aren’t just lying around all over the place. I helped her buy a fireproof safe for her office. She shares it with the other people who work there.

  They looked through the drawers without finding anything of interest.

  – What are you looking for? Viljam wanted to know.

  – Don’t know. I need to see what kind of things she was doing.

  As they were about to head back downstairs again, she said: – I just leapt on the plane last Sunday, didn’t have time to pack anything. Can I take a look and see if Mailin has any clothes I could borrow?

  Viljam glanced at her. Clearly he now saw for the first time the wet hair and the jacket with its large dark patchy stains from the shoulders and down over the chest. He opened the bedroom door. – The furthest cupboard is hers.

  He popped into the bathroom, came back with a towel.

  – Sorry for not thinking of it before, he said, and disappeared out.

  In the cupboard, Liss found what she was looking for. Put on a clean pair of tights, but the bras were two sizes too large and she gave up on them. Borrowed a couple of pullovers, underwear and a bottle-green cashmere cardigan. Mailin’s trousers were too short in the leg for her, so she pulled her own on again.

  – I’ve heard a lot about you, Viljam said when she came down again. – Mailin liked to talk about you.

  – Really. So you know the worst?

  – Quite the contrary. But the fact that you arrive in Norway without a change of clothes and use her wardrobe as though it was your own fits the picture.

  Briefly his face lightened. She was relieved that he took it like that.

  – Does she still have the same supervisor? she asked as she forced her feet down into the wet boots. – Is it still Dahlstrøm?

  – Dahlstrøm? Do you know him? Viljam asked, and looked surprised.

  – I met him when he was at that conference in Amsterdam this summer, with Mailin. I’d like to talk to him. She glanced at her watch. – Actually, I met one of Mailin’s colleague’s at the office. It was her who let me in. Torunn Gabrielsen, do you know her?

  – Slightly.

  Really it was her other colleague she wanted to ask about. How could Mailin bring herself to share an office with him? She wondered whether Viljam knew that Pål Øvreby and Mailin had once been a couple. The thought filled her with unease, and she couldn’t face asking any more questions.

  The sleet had stopped. The streets looked as though they were soaked in oil. She walked aimlessly. Crossed a park. Down a narrow street. There was a café at the end of it. She looked in. Only two customers there, sitting at the back in the half-dark, an elderly couple each with a glass of beer. She picked a table by the window. The view out was on to a factory gate and a roundabout. On the pavement outside, a bush decked with garish Christmas lights. Her phone rang. She jumped. Wouters; the name pounded in her head. They’ve found out. Soon they’d be there to fetch her.

  – Liss Bjerke? This is Judith van Ravens.

  – How did you get my number?

  – My call list. You called me several times before you got here.

  Everything connected with Zako had been shoved behind a door. Liss had worked to keep it there. Now that door swung open again and it all came tumbling out. Suddenly she was angry. Why didn’t you delete me from the list? she nearly shouted.

  – I’ve been thinking so much, said the voice at the other end.

  – And now you’ve got something to tell me?

  Judith van Ravens sighed. – I had to find out about it.

  – About what?

  – This business with the photo of your sister, what Zako was going to do with it … I haven’t been able to sleep since you were here. I called some friends in Amsterdam. The police think Zako’s death was accidental.

  – I t
old you that.

  – All the same, perhaps I should tell them about these photos. Don’t you think?

  Liss said nothing for a moment. Inside her head, everything was still spinning. The image of Zako on the sofa. Hands washing bottles beneath a tap. Her own hands.

  – I don’t think so.

  – Why not?

  Judith van Ravens’ voice was sharper, as though at any moment the doubt could turn into suspicion.

  – I want the police to find my sister. That’s all that matters. If they start getting a lot of confusing information, it’ll take them longer, and by then it might be too late. Surely you can understand that.

  She drank the rest of the coffee that had been brought to her table. Had no reason to be sitting there. Had nowhere else to go. Put her hand down into her bag for her cigarettes and touched something else. She lifted out the notebook she’d taken from Mailin’s office. Sat there studying how her sister had written her name inside the cover. Then she wrote her own name, imitating the calligraphy. Mailin had always been able to use her head better than her. Mailin was stronger, had more endurance, but somehow her hands seemed to live in a different world.

  Liss.

  She sat for a long time and looked at the four letters.

  Liss is Mailin’s sister, she wrote. Liss Bjerke.

  Liss Bjerke contacts the police. She hasn’t heard from them. Does she know something that might help them find Mailin?

  The appointment on 11 December, the afternoon she went missing: JH.

  The image of Zako lying on the sofa paled as she sat there writing. Didn’t disappear, but detached itself from her other thoughts.

  Thinking about you helps, Mailin.

  What was it you were going to tell Berger before the TV broadcast?

  Viljam knows. Get him to tell you.

  Had no idea where she got that from. She ordered another espresso. The waiter was from the Middle East, probably, or maybe Pakistan. The way he was looking at her was easy to interpret. He wanted her body without knowing anything else about who she was. It was uncomplicated. Awakened something in her, something she had control over. She held his gaze so long that in the end he was the one who had to look away. He returned, put her coffee on the table, remained standing there as though waiting for something.

  – Do you want me to pay now?

  – Pay when you leave.

  He leaned slightly towards her. He had a dense growth of hair and thick eyebrows. He smelt strongly of something fatty and salty, disgusting in a way that for a few seconds allowed her to stop thinking.

  As he walked back to the counter, she followed him with her eyes. So intensely did she scrutinise the broad back and the narrow hips that he must have noticed it.

  She took the notebook out again.

  Tell Mailin everything. About what happened in Bloemstraat.

  Zako was choked. Someone put sleeping tablets in his beer.

  What would you have said, Mailin?

  You would have told me to talk to someone or other about it.

  Ring Dahlstrøm.

  She sat for a few moments, pressing the pen against a point on her forehead.

  You mustn’t go away, Mailin. I need you.

  7

  Wednesday 17 December

  TORMOD DAHLSTRØM TOOK her hand and held it tightly, obviously to express his sympathy. She knew he was somewhere in his mid-fifties, but there was something about him that made him seem younger. It wasn’t the jutting chin or the outline of the almost bald head beneath the thin crest of fair hair. Maybe the deep-set pale blue eyes. She had met him for the first time four years previously. The second time was six months ago, when he attended the conference in Amsterdam with Mailin. He was one of the keynote speakers, said Mailin proudly, and insisted that Liss take them to a really good restaurant. Liss had her suspicions about why her sister was so keen, but went along with it anyway. For some years Dahlstrøm had had a regular column in Dagbladet where people could write in about their problems. He advised them on their marital difficulties, gambling and drug addictions, infidelities, lack of libido, and eating disorders. On this latter topic he had written several books, Mailin pointed out to her.

  His office was in a daylight basement room in his villa, with a view of the garden and some spruce trees in a copse along Frognerseter Way.

  – Does she still come to you for mentoring? Liss asked after sitting down in the soft leather chair.

  – Did you know that? He seemed surprised. – Mailin doesn’t usually reveal whom she’s going to for mentoring, does she?

  – She tells me lots of things. She trusts me.

  – I didn’t mean it like that, Dahlstrøm reassured her.

  She hadn’t taken it that way either, but she had an idea that Mailin had talked to him about her, and now she sat there with an uncomfortable feeling that he knew what was going on in her head.

  He poured coffee from a thermos, tasted it, made a face, offered to brew a fresh pot. She said no. There was a girl of about her own age sitting in the waiting room. – I won’t take up much of your time, I know you’re busy.

  – I’m glad you want to talk to me, he said.

  Liss had always felt a need to be on the alert when she was with her sister’s colleagues. When she was younger and Mailin introduced her to her fellow students, she had had the idea that psychologists could see through people, and that the slightest thing she said or did, or even thought, might give her away. In time her belief in such magical powers faded, and instead she had to guard against her own irritation, control that urge to provoke that all therapists aroused in her. Twice she had started in treatment and both times terminated after a few sessions. She had sworn never again to see a psychologist, and definitely not a psychiatrist.

  Dahlstrøm was a psychiatrist.

  – I’m having trouble functioning normally, he added. – At the moment it’s hard to think of anything apart from Mailin.

  It sounded as though he meant it. He began by asking how things were at home in Lørenskog, and she had no problem talking about her mother’s reaction, or about Tage’s well-meaning but hopeless attempts to comfort her. But Dahlstrøm also wanted to know how she was coping.

  – What’s your opinion on that TV show Mailin was supposed to be on? she interrupted.

  He ran a finger over the depression in the bridge of his nose; it was crooked and looked to have been broken. Sitting in the Vermeer restaurant in Amsterdam, he had joked about how he used to box when he was younger.

  – I mentor Mailin on the treatment of patients, he answered. – Anything else she does is none of my business. But if she had asked, I would have advised against having anything to do with Berger and what he’s up to.

  – So you don’t like him either, Liss pressed.

  Dahlstrøm appeared to be thinking this over.

  – Any bully with a minimum of talent who is sufficiently ruthless is doomed to succeed, he said.

  – There’s no harm in laughing at ourselves, is there?

  – On the contrary, Liss, it’s good for us. But for those of us who work with the victims of cynicism, the world looks a little different.

  He put one leg over the other and leaned back. – There is nothing we aren’t prepared to joke about. No matter what you say about sex or death or God, you won’t be breaking any taboos. Not as long as you do it ironically. Seriousness is the only taboo of our age. Taboo has migrated from content to form.

  Liss said suddenly: – Mailin found out something about him. Something Berger’s supposed to have done. She was going to expose it on TV that evening. She was due to meet him directly before the show to give him a chance to cancel the broadcast.

  – How do you know this?

  – Viljam, her partner.

  But I don’t know if I can trust him, she was on the point of adding.

  Dahlstrøm sat up straight. – Have the police been informed of this?

  – Viljam has tried to tell them. But they don’t seem inter
ested. At least according to him.

  – They have to work through a great many possibilities.

  – I don’t think they’re doing anything at all.

  – That isn’t correct, Dahlstrøm said firmly. – But I’ll make a call. I know someone at police headquarters you can talk to.

  Liss prepared to bring the conversation to a close. She noticed how good it felt to sit with this man whom Mailin admired and trusted. If she went on sitting there much longer, she might end up telling him things she didn’t want him to know.

  – It’s impossible to imagine someone hurting Mailin.

  Dahlstrøm nodded. – Mailin is what I would call a fundamentally decent human being. But she’s also courageous, which means she makes enemies. On top of that, she’s spent a long time working in a landscape that is basically a minefield.

  He sat there, brow wrinkled, looking out of the window.

  – I know you can’t tell me anything about Mailin’s patients, said Liss. – But I know she’s working on a doctoral thesis about incest and that kind of thing. That’s no secret?

  – Of course not. It’s going to be published … She’s studying a group of young men who have been the subject of serious abuse.

  – Is it possible one of them might have harmed her?

  Dahlstrøm hesitated before answering: – When Mailin started this study a couple of years ago, she chose seven men who she was going to follow over a period of time. She was very careful to find victims who had not themselves become perpetrators.

  He raised his coffee cup, changed his mind, put it down again. – What is it that enables a vicious circle of sexual violence and abuse to be broken? What makes some people choose to endure the pain inflicted on them without taking it out on other innocents? That is what she wants to study.

  Liss thought this through.

  – You can’t know for certain whether one of the seven she ended up with hasn’t abused someone else, she objected. – Even though they might deny it when asked.

  – That is correct. Mailin can only relate to what they tell her about themselves, and to the fact that they have no criminal record. But we’ve reached the limit of what I can discuss with you, Liss. I hope you understand that.