Death By Water

by Damhaug, Torkil

  He reassured her that he had plenty of time.

  – After I went to Amsterdam, it went away. No one there knew me. But then it began happening again. Just before Mailin went missing.

  It was at the Café Alto, when Zako showed her the photograph. Tell him about it, Liss. Everything that happened. He can tell you what you should do.

  At the last moment she changed her mind.

  – Berger knew our father, she said quickly. – I think that’s why Mailin kept going to meet him.

  She told him what Berger had said about their father.

  – Mailin once mentioned to me that she hadn’t seen him for many years, Dahlstrøm observed. – Do you remember him?

  Liss took a deep breath. – I remember almost nothing from my childhood. Isn’t that abnormal?

  – There are great variations between how much we all remember.

  – But to me it’s as though it’s been deleted, edited out. And then without warning something pops up.

  Suddenly she began talking about the bedroom in Lørenskog. Mailin standing there in the dark, locking the door and creeping into bed beside her. The hammering on the door.

  – Did she mention any of this to you?

  – No, said Dahlstrøm. – We didn’t discuss our own possible traumas. I gathered that Mailin, like most of us, carried some kind of burden, and I did recommend that she go into therapy herself. She hadn’t got round to it, not yet.

  He paused a moment before he said: – Tell me this about the bedroom again, in as much detail as you can.

  Liss closed her eyes. Brought it back again. Mailin in the blue pyjamas, that could also be yellow, maybe several different episodes fused into one. Mailin with her arms around her. I’ll look after you, Liss. Nothing bad will ever, ever happen to you.

  – She said something else … Something about Mother.

  Liss switched off the light, listened into the darkness. Somewhere out there Mailin’s voice came back to her: Don’t tell anyone about this, Liss. Not even Mum. She won’t be able to take it if she finds out.

  31

  ODD LØKKEMO TURNED in to the petrol station at Kløfta. The gauge was only just down into the red, the reserve tank capacious, eight litres at least, and it was less than forty kilometres home. But the mere thought of running out along the E6 in the January dark was enough to make him shiver. Walking along an icy hard shoulder for several kilometres with an empty petrol can in his hand. The likelihood of it happening wasn’t great, he argued, but then the consequences of it doing so were all the greater. He’d been turning these thoughts over in his mind ever since Minnesund.

  He checked his mobile before getting out. No messages. He’d sent two to Elijah announcing that he was on his way. At the very least he deserved a reply. Though never explicitly stated, there was a tacit agreement that he keep out of the way until he received a message that it was okay to come home. It was always like that on days when Elijah was due at the studio in the evening. He had to have the whole house to himself. Couldn’t stand the sight of anyone, especially not Odd. After the broadcast, things changed completely. Then he was like a complaining child who could never get enough attention and Odd was the most important thing in the world to him.

  But it was probably not only on account of this evening’s Taboo that Elijah wanted him out of the house that afternoon. Odd was certain he was expecting a visitor. The same visitor who had been there so often over the past few weeks. Once they had shared secrets like this, but now Elijah had become more and more cranky about them and wanted to keep them all to himself.

  Odd pushed the button to pay at the counter. Didn’t like using the credit card pumps. Often the receipt was missing, and that left him standing there not knowing how much had been withdrawn from his account. At last a vibration in his pocket. He almost hung the diesel pistol back in its cradle at once but overcame the impulse and continued to follow the rolling display, how many litres, how many kroner, the figures creeping slowly up towards a full tank, sixty litres, so slowly that the pump was clearly faulty; all the same, he forced himself to wait for the click inside the pistol, and even then he first washed the diesel smell off his hands in the shabby toilet, which had no paper towels, and toilet roll strewn across the floor all the way over to the washbasin, and picked up copies of VG and Dagbladet and a packet of salt pastilles, and paid the teenage girl, who didn’t look at him once – overlooked, invisible; when did that happen, Odd, when did people stop even looking at you? Only then did he pull out the phone and read the message from Elijah. Sat there staring at it. Don’t come for another hour and a half. He fought against a desire to call him. Rage at him that he had no right to stop him coming home whenever he wanted. It was just as much his home. It was his apartment … No, he would never sink to the depths of reminding Elijah who it was who owned the apartment. Last time he tried it, a few years back, Elijah moved out, and he had to beg him to come back again.

  Odd switched on the coupé light, flipped through Dagbladet. He didn’t want to sit there with the engine idling and it soon grew cold inside the car. He strolled over to the café and took a seat at the window. Looked at VG, which he had already read. He’d been out and bought a copy that morning along with some croissants, and burst in on Elijah with it, sat on the edge of his bed and woken him up by shouting the headlines at him: Berger to reveal killer tonight on Taboo?

  Odd was used to the way Elijah attracted publicity. The Taboo series was the most successful thing he had ever done. Not artistically, of course, but in commercial terms. Elijah had always been prepared to do anything at all to create publicity around his name. But using Mailin Bjerke as bait for an audience hungry for sensation, surely that was going too far, even for him? Elijah wouldn’t hear a word of it. This is not bait. This is the real thing. Even you, Odd, who think you know everything that’s going on, even you’ll get a shock.

  He refused to say any more.

  The time was 7.20 when Odd turned down Løvenskiolds Street. Cruising round the block in search of a parking space, he passed Elijah’s car in Odins Street and noted that Elijah hadn’t used it this evening either. Must have been at least a week since he’d last driven it, a relief bearing in mind the state he was in these days. They’d discussed selling the BMW. Make do with Odd’s Peugeot. It means something when two people have one car, thought Odd. Especially at a time like this.

  He let himself in. Peered into the hallway. The smell of fresh bread made him feel happy. He’d prepared the dough this morning before going out, leaving Elijah to put it in the oven. The fact that he’d remembered to do it even on a day like this was heartening. In the bathroom, water was trickling from one of the bath taps. He went in and turned it, not that it made any difference. Stood there a moment, listening. It was not often this quiet in the apartment. In some ways it was good to come home to silence. It showed a kind of respect, like the way Elijah had warned him and asked him to stay out of the way. So he didn’t surprise him with one of his young lovers. A necessity of life was Elijah’s usual excuse. What about me? Odd had asked not long ago. Your job isn’t to keep me alive, Odd, but to make sure I die with at least a minimum of dignity. Then he’d laughed, the way he always did when things threatened to get serious.

  Odd opened the door into the living room. Elijah was sitting in his office chair in the flickering light of the screen saver from his computer, his head thrown backwards. The rest of the room was in darkness. The thin Japanese silk dressing gown had slid open, revealing his chest and his naked lower half. Odd sighed as he thought how he would have to call the studio and inform them that there wouldn’t be any show this evening after all. Felt relief at the realisation that this time Elijah had gone too far, raising expectations he couldn’t meet. It was going to be embarrassing and humiliating.

  He crossed the floor and bent to stroke Elijah on the cheek. Only then did he notice the wide-open eyes, the gaze fixed not on him but on infinite emptiness.

  32

  IT HAD STA
RTED to rain by the time Roar Horvath parked his car further up Odins Street, and when he turned the corner, it struck him like a whip. He turned up the fur collar of his leather jacket.

  The area in front of the entrance was cordoned off. A crowd of people thronged around the warning tape. A couple of TV cameras were present, journalists, but most of them were just curiosity-seekers who had heard the news of Berger’s death. It had been broadcast at 21.30, as his show was about to start. As Roar stepped over the tape, someone shouted: could he say anything about the cause of death? It wasn’t part of his job to talk to the press. and he carried on towards the door without turning round.

  Five or six forensic specialists were at work up in the apartment. He was handed a pair of plastic shoe covers and shown the narrow channel in the corridor he could use to walk along. There were people working in every room he passed.

  He looked into the living room. Berger was seated in the same office chair as he had been in when Roar had arrived to interview him nine days earlier. The chair had been pulled out into the room and turned round. On the desktop computer a screen saver displayed movement inside a stellar cluster that ended in an explosion before the whole thing started all over again. In front of the computer, just out of Berger’s reach, a tourniquet and a hypodermic syringe lay in a silver bowl. Inside the syringe was the residue of a milky white liquid and something that looked like blood. Berger was wearing a kimono. It was open – the belt lay next to the chair – and he was naked beneath it, his body collapsed like a sack containing some doughy substance, his organ hanging over the lip of the chair. It occurred to Roar that maybe it would be Jennifer who had to bend over this corpse and open it.

  In the kitchen, he found Viken talking to the man who had let Roar in when he was there before. His name was Odd Løkkemo, Berger’s live-in partner and the owner of the flat. Roar nodded, indicating that he remembered him, but Løkkemo didn’t notice him.

  – Let me just check I’ve got all this, said Viken. – You had been to Hamar to visit your sister and you got here a few minutes before seven thirty.

  He turned his head, interrupting himself: – Horvath, can you get someone from the patrol to go and locate Berger’s car. It’s a BMW X3. Metallic black. It’s parked somewhere around the block here. He handed Roar a piece of paper with the registration number on. – Tell them to cordon off the area round the car. Forensics will fetch it as soon as one of them is free.

  Roar went out into the corridor and left the apartment, following the channel shown to him. He hadn’t spoken to Viken since the encounter in the garage that morning. He’d had to think quickly to explain where he’d got his information from. Something in the detective chief inspector’s tone in the kitchen suggested to him that he had been exposed. – Alert, please, Roar, he muttered to himself. Level seven.

  He passed the message about the car on to a constable who was standing by the outside door. Just then Jennifer appeared, stepping over the tape. She was wearing white overalls that looked a couple of sizes too big. He held the door for her.

  – What have you got for me today? she said in a formal way and walked on by without waiting for an answer.

  Once the street door had closed behind them Roar replied: – TV celebrity dead in his own home.

  – Anyone watching TV tonight knows that.

  Roar added: – Found an hour and a half ago with a used syringe next to him. Looks like heroin.

  He followed her up the stairs. She was wearing the same perfume as usual, but had obviously given herself a double dose. He had never liked it, he realised.

  Up in the kitchen, Viken had finished with Løkkemo. Jennifer put her head in, briefly greeted the detective chief superintendent before turning to Roar. He was looking the other way.

  – I’ve checked with Hamar, said Viken, who seemed rather abrupt. – It looks as if it checks out, he did spend the day there. We’ll talk to him again tomorrow. I asked him to book in at a hotel for the night. He won’t get much peace here.

  – He won’t get much out there either, Roar observed with a nod in the direction of the outer door. – The crocodiles are waiting to be fed.

  Viken made a face. – Bon appétit.

  Løkkemo’s skinny, bent figure slipped by them out into the corridor; they heard the click of the front door.

  – Accident or suicide, Roar offered provisionally.

  – Or someone was here and lent him a helping hand, Viken interrupted. – According to Løkkemo, Berger had someone here all afternoon. He showed me a text that appears to confirm that. Received a couple of hours before he arrived back.

  In the car on the way over, Roar had managed to call Nydalen. – Berger sent his producer an email half an hour before he was found, he offered. – He asked to have a statement read out on TV.

  He fished out his notebook and read the quote: – I have left and do not expect to return. Regret is futile, forgiveness meaningless. The end is the end. Afterwards – nothing.

  – Is that all? Viken didn’t seem as interested as Roar had hoped.

  – The same message was mailed to Dagbladet, VG, Aftenposten and NRK. It might be read as a sort of confession. I mean, he was planning to make this revelation live on TV.

  – And you think this mail is what he was referring to? Viken growled. – The man lived and breathed publicity, and then he goes and kills himself and ends these Taboo shows with a tame fart of an email read out by someone else? He shook his head. – The people in charge of the programme tonight must have known what it was going to contain.

  – Not a lot of joy there, Roar answered. – A couple of guests had been invited, but Berger was going to be running the show. He liked to improvise, didn’t want others deciding too much in advance. But the producer maintains that the guy was going to talk about his own death.

  Viken stood up. – Anyone trying to persuade me that what we have here is the suicide of a repentant killer is going to have a pretty tough time of it, he said firmly. – You’d better go and talk to the neighbours, here and in the houses on either side. If Berger did have a visitor, one of them might have seen someone arriving or leaving.

  He was on his way out when he seemed to change his mind and pulled the door closed. – One other thing, he said, looking directly at Roar. – It’s none of my business what you get up to when you’re not at work.

  Roar glanced across at him, held his gaze.

  – Who you shag is your own private business. But as long as we’re working as a team, we need to be able to trust each other. I’m sure you understand.

  Roar could have pretended not to have any idea what Viken was talking about. But suddenly he felt an anger he hadn’t felt for a long time. And if he opened his mouth, there was a chance it would explode right in the detective chief inspector’s face. He decided to say nothing.

  – When you say something to me about who you’ve been talking to, where you got your information from and so on, it has to fit with the facts. If that isn’t something I can take for granted, then it’s no use.

  Viken left, closing the door behind him and leaving Roar to wonder just what it was that would be no use.

  The neighbours weren’t much help. The elderly woman on the floor above had let her cat out and thought she might have heard a door slam. That would have been about 7.30, which fitted with when Odd Løkkemo said he came back home. Not surprisingly, most of those living in the same house on Løvenskiolds Street had plenty to say on the subject of Berger. Enough opinions there to enthuse the editor of the letters column in Aftenposten, but nothing of any value to the investigation.

  By about 10.30, Roar was finished. He avoided going back to Berger’s apartment again, didn’t want to meet Jennifer, who would almost certainly still be working there. On his way to the car he came across a couple of forensic staff working on a black BMW that he knew had to be Berger’s.

  He crossed the road. – Started already?

  – A preliminary look. We’ll be taking it in for a thorough e
xamination.

  – Any titbits for a hungry investigator?

  A slight grin. – What do you expect? A loaded gun? A bloodstained knife?

  Roar grinned back, standing there in the rain, the memory of Viken’s outburst still fresh in his memory.

  The forensics guy opened the boot. – We did find something. Don’t know how interesting it is.

  He pulled away the felt mat covering the floor. There was a small object next to the seat back. Roar took out his torch and switched it on. Saw that it was a ring.

  The forensics guy offered him a pair of plastic gloves. Once he’d got them on, Roar bent inside and picked it up, holding it in the light. It was a gold wedding ring, with an inscription.

  – 30-5-51, he read. – Your Aage.

  33

  Friday 9 January

  JENNIFER PLÅTERUD HAD lost count of the number of autopsies she’d carried out over the years. For several reasons she was certain that the one she was on her way to now would be one she would remember. She had finished her external examination of the body the evening before and taken the necessary blood samples, collected hairs from the head and body, sperm residue, saliva, and matter beneath the fingernails. She had called Leif and agreed on where the opening incisions should be made. Her assistant was a trusty old workhorse who always did what was asked of him, and when Jennifer switched on the light in the autopsy room at 7.14, she noted that the body cavities had been opened. The precise cut of a bonesaw had removed the skull cap, leaving the brain exposed.

  She spent the first few minutes making a plan of work. Then she fetched pus bowls, test tubes and extra probes. The trainee arrived at 8.10. She was a single mother who needed a job with no exhausting night shifts, and her interest in forensic science was hardly passionate. Fortunately she was good with her hands and had a talent for finer surgery, which went some way towards making up for her lack of enthusiasm. But she also had a tendency to chatter, and with a poorly concealed pleasure at once remarked how dreadful it was that the enormous yellowing body that filled the steel table in front of them belonged to the man she had seen so many times on television that autumn.