Death By Water

by Damhaug, Torkil

  Dahlstrøm stood up, crossed to the coffee percolator, lifted the jug and sniffed at it.

  – Torunn Gabrielsen’s working method involves the patients meticulously describing the assaults they have been subjected to. She wants them to relive them, so to speak. The idea is that they will remember and in that way neutralise the damage inflicted on their psyche. Mailin has become increasingly sceptical about this way of doing things. She believes that it often makes things worse if the traumatic event is relived in detail. It can easily seem like another assault. Torunn is interested in Ferenczi too, but Mailin’s interpretation is different. She wrote an article about his theories in which she maintained that it can be just as important to learn to forget as to remember. This is among the things she’s looking at in the treatment of the seven young men as part of her PhD.

  – Seven? Liss exclaimed. – Eight, isn’t it? I had a peek at one of the folders in Mailin’s office. I’m certain it said there that there were eight men in the study.

  Dahlstrøm looked surprised.

  – I must say, you’re going about this very thoroughly, Liss. Yes, originally there were eight subjects. One was dropped, or withdrew. That was in the early stages, over two years ago.

  He poured out two cups of coffee, handed one to Liss. – I think we’ll take a chance that this is okay today as well.

  – Has it been there since last time?

  – Can’t remember, he winked. – I’m really quite an absent-minded person.

  He didn’t seem the least bit absent-minded; on the contrary, Liss felt sure he was taking in every last thing about her.

  – What’s it like, living in Amsterdam? It’s a wonderful city.

  Liss didn’t answer.

  – Mailin said you had a boyfriend down there.

  Had Mailin spoken to Dahlstrøm about her? And about Zako?

  – Then she’s misunderstood, or you have. I don’t have a boyfriend.

  Zako was never your boyfriend. He used you. You let him use you. Zako is dead. You killed him, Liss Bjerke.

  – There’s something wrong with me, she said.

  Through the window the sky had turned dark grey. Suddenly she felt like a sack that was about to split open. I shouldn’t have come here, she heard herself think.

  – Sorry. I come here and start to talk about myself. You aren’t my shrink.

  – That’s not something that should worry you, Liss.

  – I’ve never been like other people, she muttered.

  – A lot of people feel that way. Most of us perhaps.

  – I’m from another place, far away. No idea how I ended up here. Just know the whole thing is a misunderstanding. I don’t know anyone who …

  There was a knock on the door. Dahlstrøm stood up and opened it slightly.

  – Two minutes, he said, and turned towards her again. – Liss, I’m glad we can talk together. I hope you’ll come back and see me again.

  He added: – And I don’t mean as your therapist.

  18

  IT WAS STILL snowing as she walked down Slemdals Way. It was colder now, and the wind came in sharp gusts that blew the snow into tiny drifts on the pavement in front of her. She pulled the heavy-weather jacket tightly around her. It was extra large and could have fitted two of her. The question of how she was going to return it struck her. Avoid meeting the owner. Images from the night before appeared again, but they were less distinct and no longer gave rise to so many emotions. Maybe this was the effect of the conversation with Dahlstrøm. The mere thought that there was somebody she could talk to made her feel calmer.

  Approaching Ris Church, a man in a Father Christmas suit and thin shoes crossed the road. He had trouble keeping his feet on the slippery surface. He had a burlap Christmas sack over one shoulder. He padded along the pavement, picking his way tentatively between the frozen patches, slipped, fell and swore. The episode reminded her that it was Christmas Eve. She dreaded going out to Lørenskog, but she had hardly slept at all, and she needed a shower, even something to eat … Sit there and watch as Ragnhild slowly went to pieces. Tage’s futile attempts to keep her from falling apart.

  A quick throb from her mobile. She took it out. Bitch! it said on the display; that was all. She didn’t know Therese’s number but realised who the message was from. It was a pretty accurate description of how she felt about herself as she headed on through the snow.

  Viljam looked as though he’d just come out of the shower. The longish dark hair was wet and combed straight back. There had been no need for her to call in to wish him a merry Christmas. A text message would have done just as well.

  – I’ll pay you ten kroner for a shower, clean clothes and a cup of coffee, she offered.

  For the first time she saw a flash of something like humour in the dark blue eyes.

  – Salvation Army closed already? he asked.

  – I’ll go there if I need a roll and some soup as well.

  He took her at her word. When she came down, freshly showered with sweet-smelling hair and clean underwear from Mailin’s wardrobe, he was standing there stirring something in a saucepan. She sniffed.

  – Mexican tomato soup, he informed her. – Pretty good considering it comes from a packet.

  He heated rolls, put some cheese and a bowl of apples on the table.

  – Good of you to help out an old wretch like me, she said in the quavering voice of an old beggar woman.

  He smiled dutifully. – And someone’s given you a new jacket, I see, he remarked. – Obviously you bring out the best in people.

  She slurped at the soup, had no wish to tell him anything about yesterday’s events.

  – What are you doing this evening? she asked, changing the subject.

  He hesitated a moment. – Mailin and I had planned to have Christmas dinner with Ragnhild and Tage. Now I don’t know.

  – Can’t you come along anyway, she asked, – so I don’t have to sit there with them on my own.

  – Maybe … Actually, what is this with you and your mother?

  – Is there something between me and her? she said guardedly.

  He put his head very slightly on one side. – Nothing, apart from the fact that it seems as though you can’t stand her.

  – That isn’t right. I don’t have a relationship with her, either a good one or a bad one.

  – With your own mother? Sounds strange. But Mailin and Ragnhild are very close.

  She couldn’t ignore this. – So now you suppose I’m the jealous little sister?

  – I don’t suppose anything specific at all. Far as I’m concerned, the subject is closed.

  – There is no subject, she insisted. – Ragnhild is the way she is. Impossible to live with, unless you’re made of rubber, like Tage. She has her idea of the world, and if yours is any different then you must be pretty stupid. She made it impossible for our father to live there. She froze him out.

  Viljam looked at her for a few moments.

  – Mailin’s idea of what happened is slightly different.

  Liss pushed her soup bowl away. – Mailin is a compromiser. I’m not.

  She looked out into the street. The snow was coming down heavily. A man hurried by with two children wearing their Sunday best in tow. A post office van stopped outside.

  – Need a smoke, she said and got up.

  She stood outside on the steps. The cigarette tasted like sheep’s wool, but she needed it. She needed something else too, something to keep her going, help her make it through the day … A week and a half since she’d returned to Oslo. She had no plans to stay. No plans to go back. Limbo. Something must happen. She flicked the half-smoked cigarette between two parked cars, opened the letter box and pulled out the letters and brochures, Aftenposten, and a package in a thick brown envelope.

  She laid the mail on the kitchen table. – Your Christmas post has arrived, she called to Viljam, who had disappeared down into the living room.

  – Great, he called back without notable enthusiasm.


  She sat down and carried on eating her soup. It was lukewarm by this time but still tasted incredibly good. She looked at the pile of mail. Suddenly she had a thought. The brown package was addressed to Mailin, the name written with a black felt-tip pen. No sender’s address.

  – Viljam?

  He came up from the living room.

  – We should open that, she said and pointed at the package.

  – Perhaps.

  It didn’t look as if he wanted to. She carefully felt the padded envelope. Inside was something hard. At once she thought she knew what it was.

  – It’s not possible … She prised open the flap, put a hand inside and pulled out a mobile phone.

  Viljam stared at it.

  – Hers? she asked.

  – Put it back. Don’t fiddle with it. The police need to see it without us messing with it …

  – It’s already got my fingerprints all over it. She turned it on – Do you know the PIN code?

  – Liss, this isn’t very smart …

  – I want to see, she interrupted.

  He sat at the table. – She often used her birthday as a code.

  Liss tried; it didn’t work. – What about yours?

  He gave her the four digits. No luck there either.

  – I give up, we better go down to the police station.

  She gave it one last try, using her own birthday. The display flickered into life.

  – Shit, she called out, and held it up to show him. The phone was looking for a signal. The battery icon showed it was almost discharged. She opened the menu.

  – Liss, let the police do this.

  She ignored him, navigated to the call list. Last call was outgoing: 11 December, at 19.03. She grabbed the pen that was hanging on the noticeboard and a piece of paper.

  – What are you doing? He sounded as nervous as she was.

  – I need this call list.

  She opened the messages. Kept on taking notes. Found the one Mailin had sent to her: Keep Midsummer’s Day free next year. Call you tomorrow. By the time she was finished, she had covered two whole pages.

  – Don’t you trust the police?

  – Are you impressed by what they’ve done so far? she said as she navigated to the images file.

  – She didn’t use the phone much for pictures, Viljam volunteered. – She bought herself a good-quality digital camera in the summer. Carried it with her almost everywhere.

  It looked as though he was right. The last photo had been taken fourteen days earlier, obviously at a restaurant. Viljam’s face in golden-brown light.

  He gave a quick smile. – Annen Etage. The evening we got engaged. I surprised her.

  Liss opened the folder with video clips, sat there with her mouth open.

  – What is it? Viljam stood up and walked round the table.

  She pointed to the display. The last recording had been made on 12 December at 05.35.

  – The day after she disappeared …

  – Listen, Liss, I said we should let them have this straight away.

  She didn’t answer. Pressed play.

  Indoors, in darkness, difficult to make out detail. A torch is switched on, must be the person doing the filming who is holding it. A floor is illuminated. A few newspapers strewn about, some bottles. A figure lying there, tied to something.

  – Mailin, Liss screamed, bit her lip without even noticing it.

  The camera zoomed in, the torch was shone into the face. Suddenly Mailin’s voice: Are you there, is that light there?

  – What’s the matter with her eyes? Liss whispered.

  There was blood around her sister’s eyes, and they stared blindly into the light without blinking. What are you doing? Are you filming me?

  Panning round the room, some crates stacked against a wall, a wheel next to two barrels. The camera turned back to Mailin’s face.

  Sand …

  She said something else, indistinctly. Then she shouted: Liss!

  There was a cut. Then a glimpse of a building.

  THAT EVENING AS I sat in darkness down by the beach listening to the sound of the breakers, I had almost made up my mind. Go down there and disappear into the darkness, let myself be swallowed up and consumed by the water, along with the Phoenician and all the other drowned bodies.

  Then a figure appeared over by the stone steps. I had a feeling it was Jo. He passed by in the darkness without spotting me, wandered on through the sand. I could see he was taking his clothes off. That scrawny white boy’s body in the cold moonlight. I waited until he was undressed before getting up and sort of casually strolling up behind him. He was standing staring out to sea, still hadn’t noticed me. I saw there was a note in one of his shoes. There was something written on it, like Forget me, in big, scrawled handwriting. He was going to drown himself. I saved him, Liss. He saved me. On the beach that night, with the breakers washing in over our feet, we made a promise to each other, without a word being said.

  PART III

  1

  Wednesday 24 December

  JENNIFER PLÅTERUD STRUGGLED across the grass. The hill was coated with a layer of fresh snow some fifteen or twenty centimetres thick. It was Christmas Eve, approaching two o’clock, and still it hadn’t been cleared away. Trym, the elder of the boys, was on shovelling duty that day. The last thing she did before going out to shop was call up to his room and remind him of the fact. Now she was furious as she went over in her mind how she would confront him, firmly, but short and effective, so as not to ruin the Christmas mood. Trym was the phlegmatic type. It wasn’t something he got from her; on the contrary, he was exactly like his father. Only a touch worse. A characteristic like that was probably more strongly reinforced through the succeeding generations, she shuddered. The phlegm had accumulated in her husband’s family over the centuries, she had long ago realised. Now and then with an undercurrent of melancholy. As a pathologist Jennifer demanded the highest standards of scientific accuracy, and she was always dismissive of facile conclusions in the field of genetics, neurobiology and anything else that had to do with it. But when it came to psychology, to which she had a contemptuous attitude, she was oddly enough a sworn upholder of the ancient teaching about the four bodily fluids: depending which of these we have in the greatest abundance, one of four characteristics will be predominant. She herself was decidedly sanguine, but with a touch of the choleric, she had to admit. The fact that she had fallen for a man with quite the opposite characteristics – a brooding and silent bear from the other side of the world – and allowed herself to be transported to his much too cold and much too dark homeland only showed that opposites attract, another idea she sometimes advanced, with as little scientific basis as when applying it to the psychology of human beings.

  In the hallway she put down her bags of shopping and pulled off her boots, which were made of antelope hide and had stiletto heels, and then called out to her oldest boy. She got no answer, not surprisingly, since the bass notes from his amplifier were making the ceiling above her shake. She was about to run upstairs to deliver the necessary rebuke when her mobile rang. She pulled it out of her jacket pocket.

  – Flatland here.

  The moment she heard that grey voice, she knew she had to be off. At the institute they had discussed who should be on duty over the Christmas weekend, and she had volunteered. As a rule, things were quiet on days like this; the odd call maybe, questions that could be dealt with over the phone. But Flatland was an experienced technician who never called about trivial matters.

  Passing the crossing at Skedsmo on the slushy motorway, she took a quick look at her watch and assessed her chances of getting back in time for Christmas dinner at six o’clock. Missing the tidying up and the decorating was nothing to get upset about. And Ivar was cooking the rib of pork, the sausages and the sauerkraut. He was a keen and competent cook, and she would never get the hang of that Norwegian Christmas food anyway. She had introduced a few Australian traditions to the family. Stockings
filled with small presents hung on the boys’ beds on Christmas morning. And in the afternoon, they would eat turkey and Yorkshire pudding, followed by mince pies with brandy butter.

  She would even miss the traditional lighting of candles on her father-in-law’s grave, and the rice pudding at her mother-in-law’s that the boys, a few hours before their own Christmas meal, had to gorge themselves on in order to find the hidden almond. And then there was all the mulled wine, and as many ginger biscuits as they could get down while subjected to Grandma’s alternating cries of encouragement and admonishment. Ivar’s brothers and sisters and their children would also be there, and sitting there in the car Jennifer felt a relief that she would be getting out of it all.

  Karihaugen appeared through the haze. She turned on the radio. Located a station she didn’t have to listen to. Eight days earlier, she had been unfaithful. It had happened so unexpectedly that she had to shut her eyes tightly every time she thought of it. Not from shame, but surprise. A man whom she had not remotely suspected she was attracted to. And maybe she wasn’t either, neither before nor after it happened. But he had turned her on in a way no one else had in years. Not since Sean. But that was different. She had been in love with Sean. More than that: unhappily and incurably obsessed from the moment he placed a hand on her shoulder in the lab. When he went back to Dublin, she would have gone with him unhesitatingly if he had suggested it. Of course she would have hesitated. But it might have ended with her leaving the boys and the farm and this wintry land … Sean was a scar that evoked a delicious pain when touched, and what had happened eight days earlier was fortunately nothing like that. Just frantically and crudely exciting. It began and ended there. Possible it might happen again, though not necessarily with him, but it might well force itself to the surface once again. That reminder of the part of herself that kept everything else going.