Death By Water

by Damhaug, Torkil

  – Clown’s mask, was that the phrase she used?

  – That absurd clown’s mask. She’d already met Berger a couple of times, before the information about his past emerged. She said she was going to get in touch with him before the broadcast and give him a chance to cancel it.

  Roar Horvath wasn’t taking any notes. He trusted his memory, which he thought was very precise.

  – And that was the last thing you talked about?

  Viljam rubbed a finger back and forth over his forehead, as though struggling to remember something.

  – She said she had to call in at the post office. Put some cash into her account.

  – Cash?

  – Some of her patients paid her by the hour. She put it aside and deposited it once a week.

  The nearest post office was the one up by Carl Berners Place. Roar glanced at his watch. They should make it before closing time.

  – What did you do after she left on that Wednesday?

  – Sat here and read for a lot of the afternoon. Went down to the gym just before eight thirty. I play indoor bandy with a few mates. I was back home by about eleven. Just caught the evening news broadcast.

  – And the next day?

  – Lecture in the morning. Sat in the library afterwards. I called in here at about three, before I left for work.

  – Work?

  – Justice Bus, he explained. – I try to help out there as much as I can.

  Roar made a mental note. Well-spoken young man with a social conscience.

  – Had Mailin been here when you called in on Thursday?

  – Don’t think so. She would have left her rucksack, or her computer. But I got a couple of text messages from her.

  He showed him his mobile. Only now did Roar take out his notebook and write down the exact times.

  – We’d arranged to meet at her parents’. I was going to watch Taboo there, and Mailin was going to come back there later.

  – In other words, you were at work the whole evening on Thursday the eleventh?

  – From three thirty to eight thirty. Then Tage picked me up, her stepfather. He works at the university.

  – And you were on the Justice Bus with other students the whole time?

  – Popped out to Deli de Luca on Karl Johan to get something to eat. Ten minutes, maybe quarter of an hour, ask the others. Aside from that, I was there until Tage arrived. We drove out to Lørenskog, called in at Menu on the way and did some shopping. He slumped a little in his chair. – I called at once, as soon as she didn’t show up on the programme. Her phone was switched off. It looked as if he was reluctant to say any more.

  – And then what happened?

  Viljam Vogt-Nielsen pushed his hair back with both hands. – We drove into town, Tage and I. Checked to see if she’d gone home. We went up to the TV studio. Tried to get a word with that Berger guy, but he’d apparently already left. I called round, everyone I could think of. No one knew anything. I even tried to get in touch with Mailin’s sister, in Amsterdam … Tage persuaded me to go back home with him. Ragnhild went into a panic, and he had to look after her while I carried on ringing round. Early next morning Tage and I went out to the cabin by Morr Water. Searched all around there. Of course, we knew that she’d left there, but we had to do something. At about twelve, we reported it to the police, and then drove back out to Lørenskog again. Only then did it begin to really dawn on me …

  Roar Horvath didn’t offer any expressions of comfort; sat observing him, waiting. For the first time, Viken spoke: – How did you know that she had left the cabin?

  Viljam turned to him, momentarily surprised; perhaps he’d forgotten that the chief inspector was there too.

  – You said you knew she wasn’t there any more, Viken repeated. – How could you know that?

  Viljam blinked several times. – Her car … it wasn’t in the parking space. Tage found it in town later, a block down from where she rents the office.

  Roar Horvath started the engine as Viken got in.

  – Nothing particularly striking at first glance, he remarked.

  Viken said nothing.

  – At least it should be easy to check if what he says is true, Roar claimed. – We’d best have a word with the other people on the Justice Bus. And the staff at Deli de Luca.

  – When did she disappear? Viken suddenly asked.

  Roar inched the car out of its narrow parking space. – The parking ticket shows that the car was parked in Welhavens Street at four minutes past five on that Thursday.

  – That’s the car, but when did the woman who owns it disappear?

  It didn’t look as if the snowploughs had been down the narrow street for the past week. – It’s not improbable that she went to her office after she left the cabin, Roar insisted as he manoeuvred past the rear of a badly parked taxi. – We’ll have to see what the people she shares the office with say.

  As he swung down into the much broader Gøteborg Street he added: – At least it looks as if the partner can account for all his movements.

  Viken said: – In principle there isn’t an alibi in the world that can’t be torn apart. Not a single one. Even if someone can prove they were at an audience with the king at the time in question, that doesn’t necessarily let them off the hook in a case like this.

  5

  Sunday 28 December

  JUST AS THE elk stew appeared on the table, the three-note alert sounded on Jennifer’s phone announcing an incoming message. Twice more the cheery notes sang out from her handbag, which she had hung over the arm of her chair.

  Ivar nudged her. – And you’re the one who isn’t on duty this evening, he growled, but after living together for twenty years, he was used to the fact that she was more or less never completely free.

  Jennifer excused herself to her hostess, her sister-in-law, and went out into the next room. The fire was on in there; the Christmas tree had been pulled out into the middle of the floor. Outside, the snow had hung on despite the mild weather and lay across the garden and the field beyond in a soggy carpet. It smelled good in Ivar’s sister’s house. Always freshly washed, always tidy. Just so, as she used to say herself. Important to have everything just so.

  Jennifer had been hoping that Roar Horvath wouldn’t send any more messages, but when she saw it was from him, she had to admit that she’d also hoped the opposite. She listened to the talk in the dining room, how she always had to be ready at a moment’s notice, how vital her work was. Soon they would get on to the case they knew she was working on, the woman found dead in a disused factory in Hurum. Fancy a cup of coffee? she read on the display.

  A roll after the office Christmas party was one thing. The statistics were on her side there. Most people could manage that. Bump up against each other by the buffet, like the random collision of two billiards balls, then a dance, then a quick kiss good night in the car, and the kiss so to speak trips and loses its footing, and ends up in a bed that was fortunately very solidly constructed. After something like that, it was still possible to be around each other almost as though nothing had happened. But to meet again, outside the office, that was taking it too far. Another meeting wouldn’t just happen, it would have to be arranged, and with that a completely new set of rules would come into play. Accommodations and transgressions would follow. Judgements concerning the right degree of involvement, plausible excuses for being away from home, dealing with guilt, and all the rest of it. Above all the pattern of everyday life would be disturbed, the ground beneath her feet less secure. It had taken her six months to regain her self-composure after Sean left. Roar Horvath was hardly the type she could fall in love with, and from that perspective he made a better choice as a lover. Moreover, he was ten years her junior, divorced less than a year previously, and had a daughter to look after every other weekend.

  She felt like a coffee. She felt like meeting him. The night she drove him home after the Christmas party he had lifted her up almost before she was through the front door and carri
ed her into the bedroom while continuing their conversation, and that spontaneous lifting seemed like the most natural thing in the world. He went on making her laugh as he removed her clothing piece by piece before undressing himself in two quick movements that left him standing naked and proud in front of her, enjoying the way she looked at him … and this time too, he kissed her in the hall, even before she had taken off her coat, and she was just as unprepared for it, noticing that he had already drunk the coffee he had invited her to join him in, and eaten something salty, possibly smoked, drunk beer too, but his kiss was so passionate that the thought of smoked salmon, the most curious of all Norwegian dishes, disappeared as quickly as it had appeared; he put his hand up her skirt, pulled down her panties, lifted her up, opened his flies and removed his trousers smoothly, entered her with a jolt, she tried to suppress the scream but screamed anyway, not that she noticed it, and when she came and was hanging from his neck like a dishcloth, he didn’t let her go, but turned one of her legs around and carried her into the bedroom as he had done before. She had already got used to it.

  By the time the promised cup of coffee finally appeared on the table, over an hour had passed since her arrival. With her legs still trembling, and a throbbing tenderness between them, she sank on to one of the chairs by the kitchen table. It obviously hadn’t occurred to him to sit in the living room, from which there was a view of the block next door, and that was fine by her; she’d had a quick look and established that the furnishing had been done by a recently divorced man in his thirties. She preferred the kitchen.

  – And there I was thinking that coffee was just an excuse to have sex, she sighed as she inhaled from the steaming cup.

  – Other way round, he said with that teasing smile she had to admit she liked a lot. – I knew you would never come here and drink coffee with me unless there was a chance of sex.

  She tasted it, controlled the urge to turn up her nose.

  – You surely didn’t get a woman to leave a family gathering at Christmas and drive over twenty miles for coffee like this.

  – I wanted to talk to you too, he said and put his hand over hers, and for a moment it seemed to her that he really meant it. It made her happy as much as it bothered her. She didn’t want to have to spoil the good atmosphere between them with a lot of rules and regulations. But he was thirty-four and old enough to take it on the chin, despite that air of boyishness.

  Fortunately he went on: – A chat over a cup of coffee is fine, but when I saw you standing there in the hall, I just got carried away.

  – Do you often get whims like that? she asked, and tried to put on a concerned face.

  – It’s been a while since last time.

  – Yes, I noticed.

  – Ditto.

  He opened a bottle of beer. – I wondered what it would be like to talk to you without having a dead body next to us.

  She took a few swigs and handed the bottle back. – Are you talking about Viken? she wondered, not wanting to get into any joking about the young woman they’d had lying between them on the autopsy table two days previously.

  He laughed, but left it at that.

  – Lot of action up at your place right now, she said after a while.

  Roar glanced out of the window. – Never known anything like it since the Orderud murders.

  Then you should have been there last autumn, said Jennifer, – when all that business with the bear murders was going on. Funny that Viken didn’t go in the general clear-out after that.

  Abruptly Roar looked uncomfortable.

  – There’s a shortage of people with his experience, he objected. – He’s probably the best investigator I’ve worked with.

  Jennifer had heard this from others too, despite what had happened the year before.

  – Some people thought they might go for him as the new section head, Roar said.

  – That would have been impossible, she asserted.

  – Maybe so. But the appointment they did make … Roar blew air between his compressed lips. – I’ve got nothing against Sigge Helgarsson. I know him from before, we worked together in Romerike. He got a boss’s job there too and it went okay. But head of Violent Crimes in Oslo is something different. The guy’s not much older than me. He isn’t Norwegian. And he and Viken aren’t exactly the best of friends, and that’s putting it mildly.

  – Well they can hardly confer with Viken every time they make an appointment, said Jennifer. When Roar didn’t respond, she realised he didn’t want to talk about the detective chief inspector any more. – How far have you got with this latest case? she asked, moving the conversation on to another track.

  – We’re fumbling away out there in the mist, Roar yawned. – Gradually the visibility will improve, I expect. We need another tactician or two. At the moment there’s still only the four of us. And you can imagine the amount of material there is to go through.

  – Then it’s about priorities, she said, thinking about something quite specific.

  Roar emptied the bottle of beer and fetched another from the fridge. – Of course we have to start with the ones who are closest. The man she lived with has been interviewed three times.

  – Have you got anything on him?

  – He seems to have a fairly good alibi.

  – No better than fairly good?

  – In cases of murder there is not a single alibi that cannot be torn to shreds, declared Roar. – That’s the rule we have to go by. Even if someone can prove they were at an audience with the king at the time, that doesn’t necessarily let them off the hook in a case like this.

  – And definitely not if it’s the king who’s been murdered, Jennifer observed.

  Roar gave a quick smile. – In the great majority of cases of this kind, what lies behind is usually something involving lovers, people who live together or are married, close family.

  – Statistics aren’t much help in individual cases, Jennifer objected.

  – Of course not. But topping the list of suspects is always going to be the husband or partner. The way the investigation proceeds determines whether or not they drop down the list, or even out of it entirely.

  – Can’t say I’m surprised to hear that Viken thinks that way, she said acidly.

  – It doesn’t mean we’re fixated, Roar assured her. – Everyone close to her is being interviewed as a potential perpetrator, that goes without saying. The stepfather, her mother, and the father, who apparently lives in Canada. Then after that we look at her colleagues at work and her patients …

  Suddenly he fell silent.

  – You’re not sure how much you can tell me, Jennifer volunteered.

  He thought about it. – Well, you are part of the investigation, in a way.

  – In a way? How far do you think you’ll get if we don’t do our job down at the path lab?

  He conceded that she had a point.

  – It appears that Mailin Bjerke had a meeting arranged at her office with Berger a few hours before they were due in the Taboo studio that Thursday, he told her. – Apparently he turned up, but she wasn’t there. We know from her phone that she sent him a text at about five thirty. She called him but got no answer just after seven, and then sent him another message.

  – Wasn’t that around the time when she went missing?

  Roar went over it in his mind. – Actually the last sighting of her was the day before, after she left home. She called in at the post office on Carl Berners Place.

  – And you are sure about that?

  – The man who was working there was quite certain about it. He remembered in detail what she did when she was there. She used a computer, printed out a few things from the internet, put a small deposit in her account and left. Directly afterwards she came back in again, bought a padded envelope and sent a package. According to the person serving, she suddenly seemed frightened. He’s absolutely certain of all this, but where the package was addressed to he has no idea.

  – She was afraid because of t
his package?

  – We don’t know anything about that. It’s quite common for witnesses to dramatise things, especially once they know a murder is involved.

  Jennifer said, out of the blue: – I mentioned a case to you. The girl who was killed five years ago in Bergen.

  – We talked about it at our morning briefing yesterday, Roar said with a nod.

  – And?

  – And what?

  Jennifer furrowed her brows. – What are you going to do about it?

  Roar seemed surprised by her harsh tone of voice. Maybe it dawned on him that this was what she had been heading the conversation towards.

  – Obviously we’ll take a look at that case. But we can’t do everything at once.

  Jennifer became agitated. – The girl in Bergen was found naked in a remote part of the woods. She had been tied up, but there were no signs of sexual assault. It was in November, and she froze to death. She had been repeatedly stabbed through the eyes with a pointed object. Think about the circumstances in our case and tell me why our top priority isn’t to look for a connection here.

  Roar raised both hands. – Don’t hit me, he said in a weedy voice.

  Jennifer felt her irritation drain away. – That’s exactly what you need, she said severely. – A right good spanking. On your barest arse.

  – Okay, said Roar as he got to his feet, – but it will have to be in the bedroom. I don’t want the neighbours involved in this.

  6

  Monday 29 December

  EMPTY STREETS. IT’S night. He hasn’t eaten. Not since early this morning. It’s getting colder. He should’ve put a jacket on. Didn’t find it in the rush. He sprints down Wergelandsveien. Runs himself warm. A clock strikes down in the city. He counts three strokes. Empty streets. He’s started running again. Every night for the last couple of weeks. He heads round the corner, down Pilestredet, towards the mouth of the Ibsen Tunnel. Tunnels set their own deadlines; he has to get out of them again before a car passes him from behind. Try Festning Tunnel too, that’s longer. And Ekeberg Tunnel. Formerly he ran on fast tracks. Lots of people watching. He had an acceleration down the final straight no one else could match. Could stay well at the back and wait. Coming out of the final bend, he changed gear and left them standing. They didn’t know where he’d come from. Another planet, he called out to them. Not Mars or Venus, but a planet in another galaxy.