Death By Water

by Damhaug, Torkil

  He stood leaning against the banisters, maybe expecting her to say something more.

  – Viljam, I’ve been sleeping here almost every night since Christmas. It wasn’t the plan.

  He straightened up, looked at her. – It helps having you here. Would have been even more awful without you.

  She almost gave in to an urge to get up and hug him. Get as close to Mailin as she could.

  He popped back in again half an hour later and handed her an A4-size package. She left it lying on the kitchen worktop, drifted out on to the steps and lit a cigarette. Consumed it slowly as she watched the darkness settle over the rooftops. Wondered whether to throw the package away unopened. I’ll never go back there again, she thought. Must send Rikke a message, tell her to stop forwarding mail. Ask her to give my clothes away to the Salvation Army. The DVDs and the armchair she can keep.

  The package contained two letters from the school, a late payment reminder and a couple of other bills. And a reply from a modelling agency. Wim had promised to try to get something organised with them. For once he might not have been bluffing. She tore the letter to pieces without reading it and dug down to a package at the bottom of the pile. On the outside of it her name had been written with a blue magic marker. She recognised Mailin’s small, sloping handwriting. The padded envelope was postmarked 10 December, the day before she went missing. Liss struggled to open it, her hand was shaking and she couldn’t get her fingers under the flap, had to fetch a knife from the drawer.

  There was a CD case inside. A small note was attached to it: I said on the phone that everything was all right, but it isn’t. Look after this CD carefully for me. Will explain later. Trust you, Liss. Big hug. Mailin.

  By the time she got up from the kitchen table, it was dark. She hurried up the stairs and into Viljam and Mailin’s room. She switched on the computer on the table by the window, stood there pinching her lower lip hard as she waited for it to boot up.

  There were two documents on the CD: Liss opened the first, entitled Patient Example 8: Jo and Jacket. It ran to several pages and was in the form of an interview.

  Therapist: Last time you were talking about a holiday trip to Crete. You were twelve years old. Something happened there, something that made an impression on you.

  Patient: It was that girl. Her and her family were in the apartment next door. She liked me. Wanted us to get together. She wanted me to do all sorts of things.

  T: What things?

  (Long pause)

  P: For example that about the cat. Wanted me to torture a cat. It only had one eye, and I felt sorry for it, but Ylva wanted us to catch it and torture it.

  T: She made you do things you didn’t really want to do?

  P: (nods) And when I said stop, we mustn’t do this, she got the others to gang up on me.

  T: What about the grown-ups, didn’t they notice what was going on?

  P: They were only interested in themselves. Apart from one.

  T: The one you mentioned last time, the one you called Jacket?

  P: He was the one who wanted me to call him Jacket. That’s what they called him when he was my age. His father ran a clothes shop. Gents’ outfitters was what he called it. He didn’t want me to call him anything else. Later on, of course, I found out what his real name was. Maybe I already knew it that first time. I mean, I’d seen his picture in the papers.

  T: He was well known?

  (Pause)

  P: Jacket read something to me. A poem in English. Which he translated. About a Phoenician lying drowned at the bottom of the sea. Handsome young man, strong and muscular. Now all that was left was a few bones. ‘Death by Water’ it was called. Later on we read it together.

  T: You had many conversations with him?

  P: He kept showing up. Seemed to be there when I needed him. Don’t you believe me? Think I’m making this up?

  T: I believe you.

  P: I was very low. Had made up my mind to disappear. Walked out on to the beach in the dark. Took off my clothes and was on my way out to the water. Was going to swim far out until I couldn’t swim any more … Then he appeared out of the shadows. Been sitting in a chair, looking out. It was as if he’d been waiting for me. ‘Hey, Joe,’ he said, like in that Jimi Hendrix record, that was what he used to say when he saw me. Without me having told anyone, he knew what I was going to do. He made me think about other things. Took me up to his room. We sat there talking most of the night.

  (Pause)

  T: Did anything else happen?

  P: Such as?

  T: Last time you hinted that something had happened between you and this man, something …

  P (angry): It’s not like you think. Jacket saved me. I wouldn’t be sitting in this chair now if it hadn’t been for him. You’re trying to get me to say that he abused me.

  T: I want you to say what happened in your own words, not mine.

  (Pause)

  P: It was cold. He let me shower in his room. Afterwards he towelled me dry. Put me in the bed … Lay beside me. Kept me warm.

  T: You felt that he was looking after you.

  P: More than that. When I got back to Norway …

  (Pause)

  T: You met him again in Norway.

  P: He showed up one day, that same autumn. Outside school. We went for a long drive. Stopped and walked along the beach. He liked me. Everything I said and did was okay.

  T: And after that?

  P: I met him again. Went to his house, spent a whole weekend there. Several times, as it happens.

  T: And your parents, did they know about this?

  P: This was between Jacket and me. We made a pact. It was holy. What we did together was nobody’s business but ours. He helped me in all sorts of ways.

  T: What did he help you with?

  (Pause)

  P: For example he showed me what to do with Ylva next time I met her.

  T: Ylva? The girl you met in Crete?

  P: I don’t want to talk about that any more.

  Liss read the rest of what was presumably the transcript from a therapy session. It was so detailed it might have been recorded on tape and then transcribed. She opened the second document. It was called En route and consisted of commentaries on a whole series of conversations. She scrolled down through it. Beneath a heading Patient Example 8 Mailin had added:

  Therapy concluded after fourth session. Obviously cannot be used in the study. Delete interview or keep it anyway?

  Her phone rang. Liss saw that it was Jomar. She’d promised to get in touch before six, she recalled, and now it was half past.

  – I’ve booked a table, he said secretively, – and I’m not telling you where.

  She was still deep in Mailin’s world of thought. Reading through the document, she had heard her sister’s voice asking the patient questions. Mailin cared about him and wanted to help, but she hadn’t pressured him.

  – We have to be there by eight.

  – Okay, Liss answered, pulling herself together. – Do I have to wear an evening gown?

  She heard him laugh at the other end. – Well they do have one star in the Michelin catalogue, but they’re not that fussy about attire. He added: – As you know, I have a jacket you can borrow. It’s so big you don’t need to have anything on underneath it.

  Liss ejected the CD from the computer, put it back in its case, and opened her notebook.

  The name of the eighth patient is Jo.

  She thought for a few moments before continuing:

  Dahlstrøm said you ended up with seven patients in your study, but in the draft outline I found in the office you wrote that there were eight young men. Didn’t Dahlstrøm say something about patients who had themselves become abusers were not to be part of it?

  Mailin could have kept the CD in a safe place if she was afraid the information might end up in the wrong hands.

  Why did you send it to me? What do you want me to do, Mailin?

  Again she read the note taped to the CD c
ase: Trust you, Liss.

  You were due to meet Berger before Taboo was broadcast. You heard that he had committed offences. Does that have anything to do with the CD? Is Berger the person known as Jacket?

  Did you talk to him about Father?

  She had to show the CD to someone. Did Jennifer have a duty of confidentiality, or did she have to tell the police everything she found out? Liss visualised her handing the CD over to the detective chief inspector she had met that day at the police station … Trust you, Liss. Mailin trusted her. And why should the police be told about her patients now the investigation was over?

  She put the CD back inside the envelope, took it up into the room she was borrowing, wedged it under the mattress. Made up her mind to talk to Dahlstrøm about it all. Visit him at his home again, maybe even do it tomorrow. He would know what she ought to do with this CD, if it was the right thing to hand it over to the police. And she had another reason for wanting to see him. Was already walking around discussing it with him in her thoughts.

  She wandered back into Mailin’s room, opened the wardrobe in search of something to wear. Found a lacy blouse she would never have chosen herself in a shop. Lace suited Mailin, but not her. But tonight this was exactly the blouse she wanted to wear. And underwear Mailin had maybe been saving for a special occasion, because the price tag hadn’t even been removed. It was black and smooth and transparent. She put it on and looked at herself in the mirror beside the bed. The fasteners for the bra were at the front for easy opening, but of course it was too large, and she unfastened it and let it slip to the floor.

  It was a long time since she had felt the thrill of seeing herself in a mirror wearing nothing but a string. Knowing that someone else would be seeing her standing like that in a few hours’ time … Berger’s voice: I know what happened, Liss. The words came tumbling through her and she had to sit down. The day after the funeral, Jennifer had rung. Liss asked her if it was true what the papers were saying, that Berger had killed Mailin. And not only her, but Jim Harris, who had seen something that day. Jennifer couldn’t tell her what they had found, but Liss gathered that the police now had evidence.

  She couldn’t rid herself of the thought of that last visit to Berger, the smell of him as he squeezed himself against her. In the notebook she wrote: I will find your grave. Every night I will go there and push the stone over and trample down everything that grows there.

  2

  LISS WAS DRESSED, had put on her makeup and was on her way out when she received a text message. She froze halfway down the steps. The name of the sender was like an ill omen, and she didn’t breathe normally again until she had read it through.

  Judith van Ravens sent her condolences. She had been reading the papers and thinking a lot about Liss and how she must be feeling, she wrote, though Liss didn’t find that particularly credible. A relief that the crime had now been solved, she went on. She was about to travel back to the Netherlands and wanted to get rid of the pictures she had kept. She was sending them now to Liss, so that she could decide whether to delete them or use them in some way. If necessary, Judith van Ravens was still prepared to make a statement to the police, she claimed, even though what she had to say had no bearing on the case.

  Liss had her finger on the delete button, but changed her mind. Maybe these were the last pictures to be taken of Mailin. And even though they would perhaps remind her of the person who had asked to have them taken, she felt she had to keep them.

  She opened the file, stood in front of the mirror in the hallway as the pictures were downloaded, slowly combing out her still-wet hair. It was the first time for several days, and each time the brush stuck, she had to tug so hard it sent shock waves across her scalp.

  The figure of Mailin appeared on the screen as she exited the main entrance on Welhavens Street. Liss scrolled down to one of the close-ups, taken at a tram stop. Her sister was standing gazing upwards somewhere over the rooftops, as if she was looking for the source of the light. Liss had seen these pictures once before, on Zako’s mobile. She had a thought. Not so much a thought, more like a rush through the head. She scrolled back to the picture of Mailin in the gateway. On the next picture a figure appeared behind her; on the one after, he was standing beside her on the pavement. Liss’s arm sank down. In the mirror she saw her own eyes, the pupils so huge she could have disappeared into them.

  Sometime later, he rang again. She was still sitting on the floor of the hallway. The ringing sound woke her from her trance.

  – Has something happened?

  – Yes, she said.

  – When are you coming? I’ve been waiting three quarters of an hour.

  – I’m not coming.

  She didn’t feel the slightest trace of disappointment. He had said he had met Mailin only briefly. He had lied to her. People told lies almost all the time. Herself too, when necessary. Jomar Vindheim was no worse and no better than anyone else.

  – You were at Mailin’s office. Two weeks or so before she went missing.

  He didn’t answer.

  – You’ve been there several times. You knew her.

  If he’d spoken now, she could have ended the call and switched off her phone. But his silence provoked her. She could feel how the anger took possession of her, alarming because she didn’t know where it came from. She started calling him things she had no reason to. Accused him of being wicked, calculating, and stupid enough to think he could fool her. The whole thing took off and she lost control completely. Everything that had been bottled up, that she hadn’t realised she had suppressed. Somewhere deep in her thoughts, remote from the rage that swept over her in ever larger waves, was a hope that he would hang up so that he wouldn’t have to stand there and have all this shit pouring over him. But he didn’t hang up.

  It petered out, like cramp after a physical effort. Presently she was able to compartmentalise her anger, divide it up into portions small enough to be choked back. Finally she sat there, trembling on some kind of brink, the first feeling to come to her would overwhelm her totally, whether it was the anger flaring up again, or the grief that would take hold of her. Only this time it would never let go again.

  – I’m sorry, said Jomar.

  The first thing that came to her was laughter. Started in her stomach and throat, then took possession of her whole body. There was no mirth in it. Just another expression of what raged inside her. She saw herself lying there in the hallway, skirt in a twist around her waist, her crotch showing behind some flimsy material, the make-up that must be running across the vacant gaze.

  – It was stupid of me, he said, trying again, having heard the result of his previous effort. – I can explain.

  And that was a quote too. Maybe it wasn’t possible to say anything that wasn’t a quote, she thought as she lay there.

  – You don’t need to explain.

  He ignored her. – I didn’t mean to lie to you, but you never asked, and I couldn’t bring myself to talk about it. Maybe it was embarrassing. And once I hadn’t said anything the first time, it became impossible to talk about it later.

  He sounded genuinely sorry. Enough for her to let him finish what he was saying.

  – I had a few appointments with her a couple of years ago, when she gave those lectures at the sports academy. Things weren’t too good for me. Some family stuff. I saw her about four or five times. She helped me, I …

  – Get to the point, if there is one.

  – When we finished that time, we agreed that I could get in touch later if I needed to. And a couple of months ago I found I needed someone to talk to. I went there twice. Was due to go a third time but then all this happened.

  – I’ve got to hang up, she said.

  – Are you coming here?

  – No.

  – Then we can go to my place instead, I’ll fix us something to eat.

  The suggestion prodded at her smouldering anger. – It won’t work, she said as calmly as she could.

  – What won’t w
ork?

  – You and me.

  He was silent. Then he said:

  – I want you to know what happened to me after I met you. Can we meet to talk about that?

  She got up from the floor. – I have to go away for a few days. Get out of town.

  – Tonight? The cabin you mentioned?

  She didn’t answer.

  – Can we meet when you get back?

  She hung up.

  3

  HEAVY, WET SNOW had been falling all day. The motorway was slippery and Liss had to force herself to keep her speed down even though there was very little traffic. Driving slowly made her restless, and she clipped a headset on, connected her iPod and clicked forward to some electronica she used to like. After a couple of minutes the music got on her nerves and she tossed the player on to the passenger seat.

  She had created an image of Jomar Vindheim. Fooled herself into thinking he was someone who spoke his mind and kept his word. Someone who was always straight with her. Who didn’t lie. Who wasn’t like her.

  She turned off the E6. The road up into the forest was even more treacherous; she had to choose second gear on the hills, but she didn’t mind driving slowly now. The calm of the cabin at Morr Water was already reaching out to her. Fields and copses slid by in the dark, snow-clad, still … The fact that Jomar had known Mailin and been her patient changed how she thought of him. She could have found out more about what he was hiding, got things under control. Or she could have said even worse things to him on the phone, made sure that he couldn’t stand the thought of ever seeing her again. She could have told him she had killed someone.

  The snowploughs had cleared the forest track from the parking place at Bysetermosan up to Vangen. But when she came to the turn-off for the summer path, she had to get out her snowshoes. The snow that had fallen during the day was drier and lighter than down in town, and beneath it was a layer of crusty snow. She began making her way into the forest. Stopped and listened. Mailin would have a grave where Liss could light candles and leave roses in a jar. But here was where she would come to feel close to her sister.