Death By Water

by Damhaug, Torkil

  – So that’s why you presume that something with a handle was used. Viken lowered his head slightly, a habit when drawing a conclusion that Jennifer had previously noticed. – And the third possible cause of death?

  She took two steps to the side. – Numerous punctiform haemorrhages in the bowel mucosa, she said, pointing with her scalpel into the open belly. – Something similar here. She moved her scalpel to the thoracic cavity and scraped at a membrane surrounding the lung. – The blood is also unusually pale red, which we often find in cases of death from hypothermia. The question is whether the other wounds killed her, or whether she managed to freeze to death. The temperature in that factory was obviously well below freezing.

  She straightened up and fastened her gaze on Viken.

  – Additionally you can see these two marks in the neck, which must be from a hypodermic. She had heroin in her blood, but it was not given intravenously, and there are no other needle marks on her body.

  – Ergo the heroin was used to sedate her or keep her passive, said Viken.

  Jennifer raised one of the body’s hands. – There is superficial scratching here, which might indicate that she was handcuffed before she was found. She described a circle round each wrist. – Note also the tips of the right thumb and forefinger.

  – Oil? Horvath asked.

  – It turns out to be soot. But nothing was found in the vicinity that was either burnt or sooted. She laid the dead arm back on the table. – And then of course there are the eyes, as you can see from the report.

  She raised both eyelids. The exposed eyeballs were almost black from the coagulated blood that had gathered there. Viken bent forward, and she handed him a magnifying glass and a torch. While he was standing there examining the punctured eyes, she glanced over at Roar Horvath. He was wearing a suitably serious expression for the occasion, and she was glad to see this sign that he was adult enough not to start flirting there and then. He didn’t look particularly stylish, in his green lab coat and with the paper hat pulled down over his ears. It made his face seem rounder, the nose stick out more. But he had that dimple in his chin – it was, as she had noticed before he put on the face mask, even more prominent in the light from the ceiling – and he was so entertaining, had made her laugh out loud more than once at the Christmas party, and even more afterwards. And he was by no means the worst lover she had ever gone to bed with; far from it. She hadn’t taken him for an Adonis that evening either, since she had been stone-cold sober from the moment she arrived to the moment she left, as she had to confess to herself with both pride and shame. That was why she had offered to drive him home, since he lived on the same side of town. Or at least, not in the completely opposite direction, as it turned out. Concentration, Jennifer, she warned herself again. You’re at work now.

  – To sum up, I conclude that Mailin Bjerke died from such extensive trauma to the brain that the medulla oblongata was severed, which led to the cessation of the respiratory and circulatory functions. Prior to this she had been repeatedly choked, but the evidence indicates that she did not die of this. As you know, in cases involving this kind of asphyxiation, it can take up to five minutes for death to occur. At the time of her death she was almost certainly severely hypothermic, but this in itself is not the likely cause of death. As for the presence of heroin in the blood, the concentration was so low that the effect of it must have worn off several hours before she died.

  Viken handed the torch and the magnifying glass to Roar Horvath. – Stabbed with a pointed object, he observed as his younger colleague leaned over to examine the damage to the eyes. – Repeatedly. But with something rather less sharp than the needle of a hypodermic. To what purpose?

  – Prevent the victim from seeing, Horvath offered.

  – Much easier, surely, simply to blindfold her.

  Jennifer said: – I have some information that might be worth taking a closer look at.

  As ever, Viken had that openly scrutinising look in his eyes, which he made no attempt to disguise. Probably something that’s bound to happen when you’ve worked as a detective for decades, she thought. Roar Horvath straightened up and looked at her as well. It didn’t bother her. She had long since accepted that she didn’t have the figure of a twenty year old. She consoled herself with the thought that there were a surprising number of advantages to having passed forty, and felt the heat begin to prickle in her cheeks. Which was not one of them. Not even when she was a little girl had she blushed as much as she had started doing recently.

  – Five years ago, a nineteen-year-old girl was killed in Bergen, she began. – She was found in the woods about twenty kilometres south of the town. The case was never solved.

  – Everybody remembers that, Viken said, immediately impatient. – We live, thank God, in a country in which murders aren’t forgotten in three days.

  She wasn’t sure what he was referring to, but chose to ignore the interruption.

  – The girl was found tied to a tree. She was handcuffed, and had frozen to death.

  – That much we gathered, grunted Viken. – Even if they gave an exemplary demonstration on that occasion of how not to share the details of the case with others.

  – What struck me as I examined Mailin Bjerke, Jennifer went on, – was the damage inflicted on the eyes. The girl in Bergen had something similar.

  – And how on earth did you find that out?

  She explained. The seminar she had attended at Gades Pathological Institute in Bergen a few months after the girl was found. A colleague whom she knew well had spoken about the case over a drink in the hotel bar one evening. Confidentially, naturally.

  – I took the liberty of calling my colleague earlier today.

  She paused. Could feel Viken’s irritation rising.

  – He was struck by the similarities with what I described, she continued. – The eyelids in both cases were not damaged. The person who did this must have forced them open and stabbed the eyeballs directly with a nail or some other sharp object. But one of the wounds is bigger. I examined it, and it appears to have been done by something like a screw with a fairly large distance between the threads. It was screwed directly through the cornea. She let that sink in. – In addition, both victims were found in remote places.

  Initially Viken said nothing. Then he said, rather irritably: – You’re divulging important information to someone who is not directly involved in our case.

  Jennifer’s anger flared up. – I can assure you that it will go no further, she said as calmly as she could. She realised she had been expecting some recognition of the value of what she had done. – Well, I’ve spent enough time on this, she concluded. – If you think it is interesting enough, you can get in touch.

  – Of course, said Viken tartly. – Everything is of interest.

  – It looks as if Mailin Bjerke was drugged, Roar Horvath interposed in a conciliatory tone. – What about the girl in Bergen?

  Jennifer permitted herself a small smile as she met his gaze. – There I am afraid I must disappoint you. She was totally clean.

  He nodded thoughtfully, as though to demonstrate that at least he thought her information was interesting.

  3

  Friday 26 December

  THEY SAT IN the vestibule. The middle-aged man was the first to catch sight of Jennifer and get to his feet. He wore a cord jacket under his overcoat, had round glasses and a grey beard. The other visitor, a woman with reddish hair, sat with her back turned.

  The grey-bearded man held out his hand and introduced himself. – Tage Turén Bjerke.

  She heard at once that he was Swedish. His palm was moist and his lips trembled.

  – Are you the deceased’s father?

  He shook his head. – I’m married to her mother. She was in no condition to come here today.

  Jennifer turned to the other visitor, who had now also got to her feet. The young woman was tall and unusually slim, but her eyes were what attracted the attention. They were large and green, or pe
rhaps hazel, and there was something about the gaze that made it hard to look away. Beautiful women had always fascinated Jennifer. She subscribed to three or four fashion magazines, partly to keep herself up to date on matters of clothing and make-up, mostly to browse through the pictures of stylised feminine beauty. She had been prepared for something else that morning. She’d worked out what she was going to say, how she would accompany the bereaved to the chapel, even how she would draw aside the sheet covering the dead woman’s body, and how much of it she should expose. But the sight of the young woman’s face momentarily disorientated her. Not only the eyes, but the bow of the mouth and the curve of the forehead under the auburn hair.

  – Liss Bjerke. I’m Mailin Bjerke’s sister.

  The hand the woman held out was cold and dry, the skin like marble. Jennifer explained who she was and recovered the thread of the ritual she had prepared. She walked ahead of them, stopping when she reached the door to the chapel.

  – I know what a strain it must be to come here.

  The young woman nodded almost imperceptibly. The grey-bearded man was shaking even more.

  Jennifer opened the door. The bier with the dead body on it stood in the middle of the room, beneath the light from the ceiling lamp. She stood beside it, waved them over. The grey-bearded man remained in the doorway as though frozen, apparently unable to move. But the young woman crossed the floor. When she stopped by the bier, Jennifer waited a few seconds before lifting the sheet and drawing it slowly down to the chest. At that moment she felt relieved that it had been possible to hide the worst injuries to the body lying there. The mortuary assistant had wrapped a towel around the head, hiding all the crushed areas, and washed the hair; it had been matted with dried blood and matter that had oozed out from inside the skull. Jennifer was able to show the sister a face that the brutal death had not rendered physically repulsive; nothing crushed, no skin cut into pieces or melted. Scant comfort, she thought, but a comfort to me at least.

  Suddenly the young woman bent down, took hold of her dead sister’s hands, pressed her cheek against her own. A tremor passed through her back, two or three times, as she murmured her sister’s name. She said something else, something whispered that Jennifer didn’t catch as she had withdrawn a few paces and half turned away. For a long time the young woman stood there with her cheek pressed to the dead woman’s. So long that Jennifer began to think she might have to give some kind of sign. Before that happened, however, the visitor straightened up. Still looking at the body, she asked:

  – What’s the matter with her eyes?

  The voice was unexpectedly firm and clear. Jennifer looked down at the dead woman’s face. It had not been possible to close the eyelids completely; beneath them, the rim of the destroyed membranes was still visible.

  She said: – There are signs of damage to both the deceased’s eyes.

  The woman turned towards her. The gaze was veiled, the effect now even stronger.

  – What kind of damage?

  – From a pointed object.

  – Was she blind when she died?

  – It’s hard to tell. It’s possible she could still see, at least light.

  Suddenly the young woman lifted the hand she was holding.

  – Where is her ring? Did you take it off?

  Jennifer had noticed the marks of a ring on the fourth finger of the left hand.

  – She wasn’t wearing one when we found her. What did it look like?

  – A wedding ring, the dead woman’s sister answered. – From our grandmother. She bit her lower lip. – What did she die of?

  – We still can’t say with absolute certainty, replied Jennifer. – Probably head wounds. But it looks as if she was already in a hypothermic state when death occurred. It may have made the pain less.

  The grounds for making the claim were not convincing, but it felt good to say it.

  – Could still see light, Liss Bjerke repeated to herself. She had not let go of her dead sister’s hand. – You were freezing, Mailin.

  4

  Saturday 27 December

  ROAR HORVATH CLIMBED the three icy steps gingerly and rang on the doorbell. They hadn’t arranged anything in advance. There was a chance the trip would be wasted, but Detective Chief Inspector Viken insisted that it was worth a try. In cases that were particularly special, he made a point of popping up unexpectedly and surprising the person they wanted to interview. Sometimes they learnt something that would not otherwise have emerged in the interview.

  There was the sound of footsteps from within and the door glided open, not suddenly, not slowly. The man standing there was above average height, dark, with longish hair and carefully trimmed sideburns. The face had a wintry pallor; the features were regular. The good-looking young-guy type, thought Roar Horvath. He introduced himself and showed his ID. The young man glanced at it and his immediate response appeared to be one of relief rather than suspicion.

  – I’m Viljam Vogt-Nielsen. I’m sure you already know that.

  – We made a presumption, said Roar Horvath, and introduced Viken.

  The two investigators followed him along a hallway and down a flight of stairs into a room with large windows facing out on to a patch of garden in which an Argentinian barbecue and a tool shed could be seen. A few bushes were partially covered in snow. The room wasn’t large, but the ceiling was unusually high. There was an open fireplace in one corner. On the wall behind the sofa hung an enormous painting that looked very dull to Roar Horvath, though he had never thought of himself as a connoisseur of modern art.

  – Nice place, he observed.

  – The people who own it are architects, Viljam Vogt-Nielsen informed him. – We’re renting it for a year.

  Roar Horvath sat down in the sofa. – You’ve already made a statement to the crime response unit, he said. – But then it was about a missing person. We’re investigating a murder now.

  Viljam Vogt-Nielsen did not respond. He slipped into the chair nearest the stairs and gazed out of the window. It gave Roar Horvath a chance to get a closer look at him. He had interrogated a number of people who had later been found guilty of murder. He’d seen bad liars and good actors. Many people were capable of manufacturing a carefully crafted first impression, but if they were playing a part, then sooner or later something would always emerge that didn’t quite fit. He glanced over at Viken, who was sitting in the easy chair at the end of the table. They had arranged beforehand that Roar Horvath would lead the interview and Viken would observe. From the start, Viken had made it clear that he was perfectly happy to be working with Roar. It seemed as though, for some reason or other, he had decided he wanted to guide this newcomer to the department through his first period with them. And over the last year, Roar had learnt things about investigating cases of serious violence that he would never have learnt had he stayed in his old job at Romerike police station.

  – As you will appreciate, we have to go through the sequence of events all over again, he said. – Not just with you, but with everyone involved.

  He added this in the hope of getting Viljam Vogt-Nielsen to relax: someone who felt he was the object of suspicion would be careful about what he said, whereas someone who felt he was being looked after was more liable to slip up.

  – Of course, Viljam Vogt-Nielsen answered. – We can go over it as many times as you feel is necessary.

  There was no sign of tension in his voice, no discontinuity between what he said and the way he said it. Despair? Grief? Any trace of shock? Again Roar Horvath let his gaze wander over the pale face. If this young man was acting, he certainly wasn’t overdoing it.

  – Let’s take it from the point at which you saw Mailin Bjerke for the last time.

  An idea seemed to strike Viljam Vogt-Nielsen. – Coffee? he asked.

  Roar Horvath said no thanks, Viken remained silent, and the young man sank back into his chair. – I saw her on the day before she disappeared, that’s to say, Wednesday the tenth. It was nearly five o’clock
… quarter to five, he corrected himself. – She was standing outside on the steps, rucksack on her back. We hugged each other. Then I closed the door. That was the last … A tiny break in the voice, a few seconds’ silence and then he carried on. – She was going to the cabin. Often used to go out there to work. It’s such a lovely place. Quiet and peaceful. No stress, can’t even get a signal on your mobile.

  – What were you talking about just before she left? Roar Horvath wanted to know.

  Viljam Vogt-Nielsen thought about it; it was evident the crime response unit hadn’t asked him this.

  – What was going to happen the next day. The programme she was due to appear on, Taboo. I’m sure you’ve heard of it.

  The detective sergeant nodded briefly, not wishing to interrupt.

  – We’d talked about it a lot over the preceding few days. Mailin is not exactly a fan of Berger’s. I asked whether she was worried that her appearing on it might give him some kind of academic respectability, but she had a very particular reason for wanting to go on the show.

  Roar had noticed a similar assertion in the statement made to the crime response unit.

  – Can you be any more precise about what that reason might have been?

  – She had been told something about Berger. I think it was a former patient who approached her. Mailin was quite excited about it. It sounded as if Berger had once at some point sexually assaulted a child.

  – Can you give us a name?

  Viljam Vogt-Nielsen shook his head. – She is very strict about observing confidentiality, and that even applied to me, obviously.

  – But you think she intended to reveal this on his live TV show?

  – Mailin wasn’t specific about exactly what she intended to do. But she was determined to strip away that absurd clown’s mask of his. Berger was in for a shock.