by Geir Tangen
“Does this mean you don’t have an alibi, Gudmundsson?” Olav Scheldrup Hansen sneered openly as he said it.
Viljar shook his head. He understood less and less of this. He had twisted himself into a fishing net. “You can believe what you want, but it wasn’t me. Would I have sent idiotic emails to myself, in order to carry out killings that I’ve alerted myself to? Do you understand how sick that sounds?”
“Do you understand how sick the man who is doing this is?” Scheldrup Hansen was still sneering.
“Fine. You can take all the tests you want on me.” Viljar pulled out a strand of hair and held it in front of the detective.
Scheldrup Hansen took the strand of hair. Curled it between his fingers and started up again. “Be quite certain that we will check you out in every conceivable way. With as many biological traces as this murderer leaves behind him, there is actually a slight possibility that they are placed there to mislead us. If you were to go free on fingerprints and DNA, that doesn’t mean that you’re beyond suspicion.
“So, how long have you known Rita Lothe?” The Kripos investigator was evidently not done.
Viljar sighed heavily. “How many times do I have to tell you? I have nothing to do with this, and I’ve never met Rita Lothe.”
“There you’re mistaken, Gudmundsson.” Olav fished out a printout of a photograph.
When Viljar saw the picture, he instinctively recoiled so quickly that the chair scraped along the floor, and he let out a whining sound.
“What the hell!”
It felt as if his heart had stopped, as if it had suddenly come loose from its moorings and fallen down on the floor in front of him. In panic he glanced at Lotte. She met his gaze. Resolute. Hard. Her eyes had a decisiveness that frightened him. Viljar turned slowly around back to the picture.
He could not believe what he was seeing. Now he was truly scared. He felt the nausea spurting up his throat. Did not want to look, but the photograph was like flypaper. Viljar could not get out a sound. He put his hand in front of his mouth, so the contents of his stomach wouldn’t come up.
“I found this picture on Rita Lothe’s Facebook page.”
The picture showed Viljar and Rita sitting close to each other while they smiled into the camera. Both clearly very drunk.
“This was uploaded a week before the murder. Do you want to change your explanation?”
This was evidently news to Lotte Skeisvoll too. She looked at the interview leader with raised eyebrows. Viljar could not for the life of him remember either when or how that picture was taken. Festive mood evidently, but they looked like a couple. He didn’t answer Scheldrup Hansen’s question, simply shook his head.
“The woman has written your name several times in her calendar. You maintain you don’t know her, but then you are entwined with the murder victim on a picture taken quite recently. You lack an alibi for both murders, you try to avoid the police, and you find yourself in the vicinity of a possible victim number two the night before the second murder. To me that’s enough circumstantial evidence that I no longer believe you.”
The investigator droned on in the same monotonous voice, not taking his eyes off Viljar for a moment.
It was boiling inside Viljar’s head now. He needed air. Air and a smoke. Lotte did not come to his defense. She sat looking down at her notes. Almost seemed as if she had given up completely.
“We’re going to hold you overnight, Gudmundsson.” Scheldrup Hansen looked at him and got back the fawning smile he’d had at the start of the interview. “Until we’ve checked out your movements the past few days, and gone through your computer, we are keeping you in custody.”
He stood up and left Viljar and Lotte.
Lotte looked amazed, to put it mildly, but after a few seconds it was as if she had collected herself. She stood up suddenly. Turned toward Viljar and raised her index finger at him. It was shaking.
“You stay here, Viljar. You damned well better not move!”
Lotte slammed the door to the little office, while the darkness took full control over his fragile mind. He collapsed on the chair, and for the first time in four years, the tears came.
Haugesund Police Station
Wednesday afternoon, October 15, 2014
The cell walls were creeping in. Viljar could see that, centimeter by centimeter, they were moving closer to him. He sat on the lowered bunk with his legs curled up under him in a kind of seated fetal position. He knew purely logically that concrete walls don’t move, but they were doing it anyway.…
The first ten minutes of confinement, the panic attack had torn him to shreds. Made him hammer on the cell door and shout all the oaths and bile in the world against the society outside. Pathetic. Gradually he calmed down enough to sit on the bunk, but the anxiety still pursued him in waves. Viljar’s nerves were frayed and he jumped every time there was the slightest sound from outside.
There were no windows. Only bare walls painted in a shade of blue that most resembled the shirt color of a police constable. It was a myth that blue instills peace and harmony in people.
“Myth busted!” he said out loud in English, imitating the voice of Jamie Hyneman in the series MythBusters.
The gallows humor helped a little. The blue walls were still creeping. Viljar was in a cold sweat. His brain was uninhabited. Every time he tried to capture bits of what had happened the last few days, anxiety came washing over him again, and it took several minutes to collect himself. Concentrate on breathing normally. Convince his own brain that the pain in his chest wasn’t dangerous. Vigdis had taught him these techniques to better handle the hyperventilation and anxiety, and he’d gotten more skilled at pushing away the heavy thoughts that produced the attacks. Now it was in vain.
“Can you stand still, damn it!” he shouted at the walls. They could crawl, but evidently they had no ears. Viljar threw his arms around himself as he sat on the bunk. Understood his own madness, but was unable to do anything about it. All reason was blocked. In his delusion, he even thought he could hear a grand piano from the police building on the floor above. He was a powerless witness to the fact that his own mind was crumbling.
In a final attempt to understand the insanity, Viljar started talking out loud to his own anxiety. Vigdis had said he could try this trick. It seemed a bit far-fetched, but right now it was sink or swim.…
“Come on then,” he said to the anxiety. “I’m not afraid of you. You’re not dangerous.” He fixed his gaze on a spot on the wall in front of him.
“You are just feelings. This is a farce. Come on then,” he said again.
Little by little, Viljar noticed that the paralyzing panic was starting to leave him. Ecstatic that the method seemed to work, he used stronger words and more energy every time he talked to that point on the wall.
“Go to hell! I don’t want you here, you miserable parasite. Go away!”
He noticed with astonishment that the anxiety was receding. He ordered the walls back in place. Focused intensely on rational and reasonable thoughts. It was frightfully delicate, but Viljar somehow or other managed to collect himself. The piano music stopped.
Why do I find myself in this situation? He asked himself that question, revealing a completely new perspective. It’s not a coincidence, he decided.
I’m here because that’s what the killer wants.
Someone was trying to pin the guilt on him by placing him in the middle of the beehive with both hands full of honey. He had to get out, and made a silent prayer to higher powers.
Ten seconds later, the cell door opened.…
Requiem: Sequentia
I am satisfied. Every slightest sequence is going as expected. The piece has started to take shape. Not a single false phrasing. Small changes in the composition here and there. A kettledrum instead of a cymbal. I enjoy the feeling. Not killing, that’s just a necessity, but creating …
It’s lovely to see the various instruments come in at the right time. How they overlap one another.
That people act predictably. Every single little movement, every choice they make, is part of the creation, and it works. I smile at the evening sun. I’ve found myself a cozy little nook on the terrace. For the moment, the pain is only a dull grumbling in the background. I relax with a beer and a good book. I’ve mowed the lawn. Suddenly it strikes me that I’ve done it for the last time. New delight. It’s important to be happy about the things at hand. This day has been liberating.
Right from when the day started with a dull crack at Stord and until I sat down out here in the autumn sun.
The third row of information and preparatory material is packed in the bag beside me. The next step is unpleasant. The first two have gone playfully easily, and I’ve had reason to keep myself at a proper distance from it all. Observing but not participating. Seeing the investigators inspect the corpse of Rita Lothe was a rush. I was walking on pillows of air in all the excitement. I was seen but ignored, exactly as I’d foreseen.
The same thing today. Only small changes. All the uproar around my journalist is a challenge, but it amuses me. They’ve found the link much faster than I thought. But now it remains to be seen whether they find the actual context in time.
Tomorrow and the next day will be a test of whether I have the spine for this. I think about Jonas. Steel myself. If the work is to be completed, I must go through this part of the process too. At the same time, the risk of making a mistake undoubtedly increases now as I take a step out of my comfort zone. So far, it has all been a game. An exercise to see whether I am capable of going further. Challenging my own limits. Enter into the artwork and become a part of it.
Now days are coming when the whole orchestra will go into action. With each instrument that steps out of the silence, the pressure on me increases. They have to see me. Feel me. Be me.
It will be spectacular. I revel in the thought of what the newspapers are going to write after the third one is found. They will see it then. Someone will understand. They must actually understand it. That’s the point. It can’t be helped that I myself will become visible in the approaching process. My worry is not essential in this connection. This is much bigger than I, and so much greater than the pain I cause myself by executing what the script says.…
It’s time to go into the hall. It’s time to make myself visible and vulnerable. It’s time to swing the hammer.
Maestro …
Haugesund Police Station
Wednesday afternoon, October 15, 2014
Olav Scheldrup Hansen closed the door to his temporary office and plopped down in the creaking chair. The adjustment mechanism was stuck, and it was set too high, so he sat there dangling his legs.
“What is it with women and their need for control?” he asked himself. He could not understand why Lotte got so angry about the picture he set out during the interview. It was circumstantial evidence that Viljar Ravn Gudmundsson and Rita Lothe were acquainted, but she evidently thought that such confrontations should be approved by her first. That he had ordered the arrest of Viljar was clearly not okay either, which proved what he had thought all along: Lotte Skeisvoll was a long-winded stickler, and if he let her get her hands on the rudder, the ship would founder.
Lotte would have to accept that she couldn’t steer this boat alone. The team she had selected actually spoke for itself. Most of them were as sluggish as the last kilometer of an Ironman course up a mountainside.
When the laptop was finally finished with all the start-up functions, Olav started work by checking up on Viljar Ravn Gudmundsson a little more thoroughly than the Haugesund folks had managed so far. He was a hundred percent certain that the man was hiding something. He’d seen it on several occasions during the interview. The question was what, and why he was wrapping the net around himself. Apart from the shot itself that killed Johannes Fredriksen at Stord, it was all amateurishly performed. The killer did nothing to hide his actions.
Rita Lothe’s Facebook profile opened quickly because he had searched for it less than an hour ago. The profile contained only five photos, all of recent vintage, and only one where Viljar Ravn Gudmundsson figured. Olav called up Lars Stople and ordered him to check the profile for Rita Lothe’s family. The account had only been set up in August, and included only seven status reports and a friend list of fourteen persons, none of them family. What was even more remarkable was that she had ignored a series of friend requests, far more than she had accepted. If the profile was genuine, this indicated that this was a lady who wanted to be private on Facebook, but still had a public profile where anyone had access.
Olav then turned to Johannes Fredriksen, but he evidently had no profile at all on social media. The investigator sighed and scratched his thinning head of hair. He took out the papers the team had collected about Viljar Ravn Gudmundsson in the course of the day. He would just have to read his way to the answers the old-fashioned way.
The papers told little or nothing that led the investigator toward what Gudmundsson was trying to hide. His history as a journalist was interesting enough. Impressive work in uncovering scandals and skulduggery that the police wouldn’t have managed to figure out without his help. But somewhere along the way, he had evidently gotten tired. After the revelations that made him a national celebrity in 2010, there was little to find other than boring articles. It seemed like Gudmundsson was on autopilot. Can there be something in that case with the Minister of Transport and Communications? He called his department in Oslo and asked to have all the papers concerning the Hermann Eliassen case sent over. At the same time, he confirmed that Eliassen was still in prison. Maybe there’s another connection to the same case?
Further along in the documents about Gudmundsson, he became aware of a detail that caught his attention. Earlier in the day, one of the constables had conducted a routine interview with the editor of Haugesund News. In the interview it came out that Gudmundsson had been ordered by newspaper management to seek psychiatric help in the winter of 2010. The journalist had been irascible and unstable for some time and was starting to be a strain on the work environment. A few minutes later, he had the editor on the line. The conversation that ensued gave Olav everything he needed. Editor Øveraas was a plainspoken monkey who clearly did not have much use for his journalist. At the media house, Viljar was a dead man careerwise.
Olav packed up his things on the desktop. Took the notepad and a pen with him. He was happy to confront Gudmundsson. He rounded the corner and passed Lotte Skeisvoll’s office. It was empty. Just as well, because he had no intention of dragging her with him anyway.
After asking for directions in the corridors, he made his way to the holding cell and got a constable passing by to unlock it. When the door opened, Olav stood there like one big question mark. It was empty. He turned to the constable and asked if they had other cells for suspects. The constable shook his head.
“Only the drunk tank, but we don’t put folks in there who are suspects in other cases.”
The Kripos investigator stomped back to his office, but was stopped on the way by the city attorney, Synne Lie.
“Is there something wrong?” she asked with a fake smile.
It didn’t suit her. He looked at the pencil-thin figure in front of him and let all his frustration out on her. “Hell yes, there’s something wrong. Someone or other has let Viljar Ravn Gudmundsson out of the cell!”
Synne Lie cocked her head and looked at him like a little sparrow waiting for bread crumbs. “I was the one who signed the release papers. At the request of investigation leader Lotte Skeisvoll. She expected that you would come to me, and asked me to tell you that the reason for the release was that all physical traces point toward a different perpetrator. She also asked me to remind you that making arrests is not one of your duties. You’re here to assist the investigation, not lead it.”
Viljar’s apartment on Austmannavegen, Haugesund
Wednesday evening, October 15, 2014
There are days with bad karma. When every choice you make leads
to a downward spiral. Breaking out of that spiral seems impossible. Everything you say, everything you do, sends you further down toward the abyss. It was not until Lotte Skeisvoll unexpectedly showed up at the door of his cell and let him out that he was able to make the turn. He looked at her inquisitively.
“Wasn’t I put under arrest?”
“No, it must be a misunderstanding.” Lotte did not let her facial expression reveal the reason for the sudden reversal.
“All suspicions removed?” Viljar knew the answer, but asked mostly to complain.
“I can promise you that we are going to be a pimple on your ass in the days to come. If you think about changing the channel on your TV at home, I want a written application in triplicate. You’re not out of the picture, but next time you’re sitting in a cell, it’s because I say you should be.”
Viljar had spent the hours in freedom the way he had thought in the cell. Searched out places he knew had video surveillance, kept track of receipts from stores, talked with the neighbor in the stairwell on his way into the apartment. For the first time in a week, he also called his father. Counted on the phone being traceable. No one would get him without an alibi more than once. He still felt the feeling of terror from seeing the cell walls approaching, and his hands were still shaking as he sat peacefully on the couch. Viljar put a sachet of snus under his lip and fired up a fresh cigarette.
An hour after he came home, a police constable brought back his computer. Viljar started on the excavation work that lay ahead of him.
He quickly searched Rita Lothe’s public Facebook profile. The picture of him and her was actually the last one that had been posted. He stored the pictures from the profile in a folder. Copied the status updates, and noted the names of the Facebook friends.
Viljar began by studying the surroundings in the picture. Behind him and Rita, he could see black leather barstools around a mahogany-colored hexagonal bar. Round globe lights in the ceiling, dark wallpaper or paint on the walls. Farther back, he could barely make out a Winchester-style sofa set. Viljar smiled and nodded in recognition.
