Death By Water

by Damhaug, Torkil

  – The bloke being a lawyer didn’t make matters any better. I had to take him down three or four pegs. He came bursting in on us demanding to know if it was Jo who had killed that cat and hung it on their door. I kicked him out. The next day I asked Jo about it, and he said he thought it was that idiot’s daughter who had done it and was trying to pin the blame on him.

  Again he made a sound with his lips as though he were sucking on a boiled sweet.

  – But now tell me what it is you’re really after. Because obviously you’re not ringing about a cat that got killed in Crete. You’re with the Oslo police, isn’t that what you said? Or did I get that wrong? Did you say you were with the RSPCA?

  Suddenly Roar wondered whether he had misunderstood. – You said Jo? We are talking about your son Viljam, aren’t we?

  – That’s right. We’ve always called him Jo. He’s named Johannes Viljam after me. My name’s Arne Johannes.

  – But now he calls himself Viljam.

  A few strangled cries came from the other end, which Roar did not immediately identify as the sound of Vogt-Nielsen laughing.

  – That lad’s always been a one-off. When he became a teenager he decided he was going to call me Arne. He got this idea that I wasn’t his real father. Some kids play the most fantastic games. Of course, he didn’t really mean it. But when he left home after finishing secondary school, he insisted on being addressed as Viljam. Claimed he wouldn’t even answer people who still called him Jo.

  – So he left home early?

  – That’s right. Autumn 2003. After he left school, he messed about round here for quite a while before he settled down. I mean, he couldn’t spend the rest of his life lying in bed, so I took him in hand, got him moving, made sure he got his driving licence and helped him get himself a car. Then I sent him off to look for places to study. He’s always been a bright lad, and his school-leaving certificate was bloody brilliant, give him his due.

  – He travelled about, you say … Was he in Bergen?

  – He might have been. He wanted to study somewhere far away from home. It was best for everybody, it seemed to us. Finally he ended up in Oslo studying law. But now you tell me what this is all about, otherwise this conversation is over.

  Viken got into the passenger seat. – The emergency response unit will be ready in five minutes. We’ll follow them.

  – Armed? Roar asked.

  – We’re talking about someone who’s killed three or possibly four times.

  Roar drove out through the gates of Oslo police station and drew up alongside the pavement.

  – You doubted the partner’s explanation from the very start, he said, not averse to confirming that Viken had got it right all along.

  The detective chief inspector accepted the veiled praise without visible response. – Can we be sure the father won’t call him? he wanted to know.

  – I repeated it to him three times, Roar replied as he turned off the engine. – I’m certain he understood. What’s more, he hasn’t had any contact with Viljam for a long time.

  – In other words, not exactly the best of father–son relationships.

  – Probably not. It seems that for a number of years before leaving home, Viljam denied that Vogt-Nielsen was his real father.

  Viken glanced across at Roar. – When did he move out?

  – Just before Christmas 2003. The family lives in Tønsberg. Viljam was going to study in Oslo.

  – Ergo he left directly after Ylva Richter was murdered.

  Sleet began falling again. The wind wafted the wet flakes against the windscreen and Roar turned on the wipers. Viken repeated what the psychological profiling had said about Ylva Richter’s killer: someone her own age from a similar sort of background, a person who made changes in his life after committing the act.

  – I questioned the father closely about the time when Ylva was murdered, said Roar. – He remembered that Viljam got his driving licence that autumn. He was given money towards a car and spent a lot of time driving round in it.

  – To among other places Bergen, Viken observed with a glance at his watch. – We’ve got five men with us. This is not some holed-up shooter we’re going to arrest. But if the man gets cornered, then anything might happen.

  – He might have a weapon.

  – I’m guessing he doesn’t. But that’s enough guessing.

  As two cars came flying through the gates, Roar started his engine. Passing through Grønland he said: – You’re right about making changes. Not only did he leave home and want nothing more to do with his family, he changed his name too.

  Viken turned towards him. – But it is still Vogt-Nielsen?

  Roar explained how Viljam had refused to answer to the name of Jo after he moved away.

  – Exactly, Viken exclaimed, as if this was what he had been expecting to hear. – He changes his name too immediately after killing Ylva. Anything else on the family?

  Roar repeated what Anne Sofie Richter had told him about them.

  – The father seemed very keen to let me know that Viljam has two younger siblings who still live at home and who are doing very well indeed. It sounds as though the mother is in a nursing home.

  – Really? She can’t be all that old.

  – I didn’t have time to get any more detail.

  – Of course not. You’ve used the time well, Roar. A solid day’s work. Top marks.

  He grinned at his own irony, but Roar noticed how pleased he was. He wrenched the wheel down hard as a cyclist came skidding down off the slippery pavement.

  – Bloody hell, he shouted. – If people really want to kill themselves, then leave me out of it.

  – Berger’s part in all this is very unclear, said Viken, sounding as though he hadn’t even noticed the near-accident.

  Roar accelerated and went through a red light to keep pace with the two squad cars.

  – Maybe his own version is the correct one, he suggested. – Could be Mailin wanted to talk to him about some of the practical details of the programme.

  – And the connection between Berger and Viljam Vogt-Nielsen?

  – Viljam wanted it to look as though Berger was the killer. He goes to see him, takes away a few strands of hair and plants the wedding ring in his car.

  – To do all that, he must have known him pretty well.

  – Either that or he began the relationship with Berger after he’d killed Mailin.

  Roar thought his own arguments were convincing. – Once Berger realised what was going on, he didn’t have enough to go to the police with, so he decided to reveal the killer’s name live on air.

  Viken looked to be weighing this up. – If there’s anything else there, we’re going to need Viljam Vogt-Nielsen’s help in digging it up.

  The two squad cars parked one on each side of the house. Roar pulled up on to the kerb a little further up the narrow road. They could just make out the shapes of officers splitting up as they surrounded the building. The clock on the dashboard said 11.16. A minute later, Roar heard Viken receive a message on his headset.

  – They’re going in, he said in a low voice.

  Two of the uniformed figures were on their way up the steps. They disappeared into the house.

  – The door was unlocked, Viken observed.

  That means arrest, thought Roar. It wasn’t too unlikely that the inspector would want him present at the interrogation. Viken was known to be particularly good at getting confessions.

  At 11.32, the door was thrown open wide.

  – We’re on, said Viken as he stepped out into the driving snow.

  – Have they got him? Roar asked when he caught up with him.

  Viken put a hand over his headset, listened. – No one home. Call the father again. Get him to tell you whether he warned his son after all.

  As Roar entered the hallway, Viken was coming down the stairs. – The lights are on all over the house. The computer, and the coffee machine. And as you heard, the door was unlocked. What did the fat
her say?

  – He swore he hasn’t been in touch with Viljam.

  Viken carried on down into the living room, checked the French windows. – Locked from the inside. If we can believe the father, it looks as though Vogt-Nielsen has just popped out on an errand. There’s not much chance anyone else could have warned him.

  He stood there looking out at the patch of garden.

  – We’ll check that tool shed straight away.

  – He’s hardly likely to have hidden anything in there, Roar objected. – The guy’s not stupid.

  Viken dropped his head very slightly. – I want to see what tools we don’t find in the shed. If there’s anything the owner of the house can tell us is missing. A sledgehammer, for example.

  7

  THE LAST OF the embers in the fireplace had gone out. The little gnome is gone forever, thought Liss. Maybe she said it as well, quietly, to herself. She checked the empty jug she had filtered the red wine into. The vodka too was gone. Even the half-bottle of egg liqueur. She needed more to drink. Needed to disappear into something, because she was still not tired … Could see nothing through the window of the room, but the wind had gained in strength – she could hear it in the chimney, it had started howling down to her – and she could feel that it was still snowing. Again the thought that it wouldn’t stop snowing, that the whole cabin would get snowed up. That she wouldn’t be found until they dug a way in. Or come spring, when it all melted. She would still be sitting in this same chair in front of the fire, in the same position. Her heart frozen, all the currents flowing through her body stilled, her thoughts stopped in mid-motion.

  She picked up the notebook again. Viljam needed you, Mailin. You wanted to make everything right again. That’s why you were with him. You crossed a boundary. You shouldn’t have done that. But you did it to help him.

  Viljam had seemed relieved when she rang.

  He’s glad that I know what happened with Jacket. Viljam had you, Mailin. Johannes Viljam. Now he has no one. But how can I ever help anyone? I’ve killed a person. That’s who I am.

  Suddenly she got up, took down the album of old photographs, turned to the portrait of her grandmother. Elisabeth, that was her name. The eyes in the black-and-white picture were more intense than her own. She might have been anything between forty and fifty when it was taken. Had travelled twice as far as Liss into this impossible life.

  Elisabeth got stuck. Tried to pull herself free. Never managed it. Elisabeth became Liss. Someone has to carry the darkness on, Mailin. You’ve always shed light all around you. I spread darkness. Everything I touch freezes.

  She had to pee, tottered out unsteadily in her boots, pulled a jacket over her shoulders. Didn’t bother taking the torch. Could find her way around here blindfolded. The wind buffeted her as she rounded the corner. Tiny grains of ice that jabbed at her eyes and forced her to keep them closed. They melted against her skin and ran down her cheeks. She heard something, listened out. As though the wind had gone off with her steps and now threw the sounds of them back at her. She carried on, high-stepping through the deep snow, unhooked the latch on the outside toilet, fumbled her way to the closet, lifted the lid and sat down on the cold surface. The wet blast raced through the toilet, penetrating deep inside her.

  Afterwards she stood still again for a long time, listening. The wind and that sound that wasn’t wind, approaching from somewhere close by. Not my footsteps in the snow, she thought. These footsteps are coming from behind. Two arms locked around her. It was as though she had been expecting it. She jerked in an attempt to free herself. One of the arms let go. At that instant, pain flaring down her throat. Like being bitten by a snake. It burnt, and the warmth spread out into her shoulder and chest.

  – Stand still, he whispered in her ear. – Stand still and it’ll be all right.

  She lay slumped on her back on the sofa. Imagined how the snow had forced its way into the room. She wasn’t cold. The blanket of snow wrapped around her was warm.

  He was standing in the centre of the room, his back turned; must have put more wood on the fire because it was burning again. Without moving her leaden head, she followed his outline with her eyes. From the waist and up to the hair that hung dark and wet on the shoulders.

  She managed to open her mouth, tried to find out what she had to do for her lips to shape sounds, things that could turn into words.

  – What … have you done to me.

  The echo of her words came rolling back at her. He didn’t turn round.

  – A shot. It’ll do you good. You’ll feel good.

  Viljam, she tried to say, Johannes Viljam, Jo. We’ll have a good time. Together.

  She opened her eyes as far as she was able. Cold now. Dark in the room. Just a few glowing embers left in the fireplace. Couldn’t see him but knew he was there. Heard the sound of his breathing.

  Her hands held fast in some way. Fastened together. She was lying in a corner of the sofa, naked. Her mouth felt swollen.

  – Viljam.

  She heard a noise from over by the table. That was where he was sitting. Still wearing his outdoor jacket, she could make out, the hood pulled down over the head now.

  – I’m cold, she managed to say.

  – It’s better to be cold. Things don’t hurt as much then. The cold is an anaesthetic.

  The tone of his voice was different. Not different, but something that had been faintly present in it before was stronger now.

  – Why did you give me that shot?

  He turned towards her. – I like being together best this way. Calm and easy.

  He tossed something on to the mantelpiece.

  – I see from your call list that you haven’t rung anybody but me this evening. We’ve got plenty of time.

  – Can you take off these handcuffs?

  He made a clucking sound with his tongue. – This is the way it is now, he said, and sounded saddened. – You’d best get used to it. The way Mailin had to.

  She closed her eyes. Still she managed to keep the thought at bay. The thought that it wasn’t Berger who had killed Mailin.

  – You called me that morning. After she went missing. I could hear how upset you were.

  He stood up, crossed the floor and stopped in front of her. She could just make out the lines of his jaw, the shadowed eye sockets.

  – She shouldn’t have gone prying into that business with Ylva.

  Liss twisted round. – Ylva? Is that someone you’re having a relationship with?

  He shrugged his shoulders. – Used to have.

  – Did Mailin find out?

  – Yes, she did.

  He stepped towards the fireplace, turned an almost unburnt log over and made it flare up again.

  – There was an article about an unsolved murder in one of the magazines she subscribed to. It was only when she read about it that she began to see the connection. Before she was due to come out here that day, she sat searching on the net. Logged off when she heard me come home. Deleted the history. But I was able to restore it while she was in the bathroom. A load of old stuff about Ylva. She was reading it behind my back.

  Liss struggled to compose her slowly drifting thoughts, couldn’t relate them to what Viljam was standing there and saying.

  – It had been more than two years since I’d said anything about Ylva. That was during the first sessions in the office in Welhavens Street. And she still had her notes from those days on the CD, even though she’d promised to delete them. Delete everything that was said about Jacket.

  Finally Liss got it: the printout she had found inside the sofa cover. The girl in Bergen was Ylva. There was something about her in the newspapers years ago. She’d been murdered.

  – You were at work the day Mailin went missing, she whispered, because it still seemed possible that these thoughts did not belong together. – And then at home with my mother and Tage.

  He came closer again.

  – That’s what you think. What everyone thinks. But when she
was supposed to be coming out here, the day before, she went to the post office to deposit some money. I followed. Waited for her in the car. She could have run off when she saw me there, but she got in. She had a whole pile of printouts about Ylva and what happened that time in Bergen in her bag. I’d interrupted her when I came home, and now she’d been to the post office and continued searching on the net. That’s why I came out here with her. I was with her when she was in pain.

  – Was it here? Liss managed to say.

  – Was what here?

  – That you stabbed her in the eyes with a syringe.

  – Not a syringe. The corkscrew. I had to screw it in.

  He bent over her, his eyes just about visible. Liss’s body felt too heavy for her to move.

  – Is that what you’re going to do to me?

  He didn’t answer.

  – Don’t you want me to see you?

  – Shut up, he said, startling her. That new tone in his voice was darker now, pushing the familiar one away. She tried to put together something to say. Something that could stop what was about to happen, make it change direction.

  – But Mailin left here again. She didn’t go missing until the next evening.

  He laughed briefly. She didn’t see it, but she could hear the muted clucking sounds.

  – Think it over while I make a quick trip to the shed. It wouldn’t surprise me if you worked it out. You know, you’re not all that slow. Just a shame you never learned how to use it.

  She heard him open the outside door.

  Is that when you wrote it in the book, Mailin, while he was out in the shed? You managed to get over to the fireplace and pick up a piece of charcoal. Maybe you couldn’t even see.

  The stuff he’d injected her with came surging back, retreated, surged inwards again. Each time she became more and more sleepy. Let yourself flow on these waves, don’t want anything any more. I’ll look after you. An image appears in the darkness, Mailin naked and bound. She’s bleeding from the eyes. It mustn’t happen to you, Liss.