by Geir Tangen
He looked at the phone. He was by no means the only one who had tried to get ahold of her in the course of the morning. Johan Øveraas, Rolf, a blocked number, and a call from Øystein Vindheim ten minutes ago. Viljar set the phone on silent and put it in his pocket.
He started moving along the wall of the house on the back side. Stopped and listened several times. Felt the whole time that he heard sounds from inside the house. A branch of a bare birch tree scratched on an old windowpane, making a whining sound. A cow mooed from a barn a little farther up. Viljar had not gone far before he caught sight of a broken cellar window. The opening was too small, however, for a person to get through. He continued on until he came to the deck that turned diagonally toward the back side. He had to either go back, or make his way up on the deck itself and move ahead from there. He chose the latter alternative.
With much effort, Viljar managed to hoist himself up over the railing and down on the other side. Tried to land softly on his feet so as not to make more sound than necessary. For all he knew, there might be someone inside who wasn’t expecting him to come storming in.
Viljar raised his eyes and looked through the double picture window. His brain was unable to interpret the visual impression properly. There was a connection error somewhere along the way. Inside the window, he glimpsed a beautiful white angel who was looking at him. Viljar shook his head. Understood that he must have seen wrong and looked again. The recognition struck like a sledgehammer against his forehead. In the middle of the living room, only three meters from him, Ranveig was swaying, clad only in a white nightgown. The only thing that separated this angelic sight from the shepherds on the fields of Bethlehem two thousand years ago was that this angel was not hovering in the open air. She was hanging from the roof beam with a rope around her neck.
Four years earlier …
Samson Bar, Inner Pier, Haugesund
Tuesday afternoon, August 24, 2010
Besides a tall waiter who darted around wiping off tables, only a middle-aged married couple was sitting in the farthest corner of the outdoor restaurant Samson. Deeply engaged in conversation with clouds of cigarette smoke and half-empty beer glasses. Outside the fence, the Flaggruten express boat was docking, and a new load of people stepped out onto the cobblestone pier.
Jonas pushed a sun-bleached lock of hair from his face and looked at the people hurrying past. He felt naked and unprotected sitting there.
Ten minutes past the agreed time, Viljar Ravn Gudmundsson came strolling in and sat down beside him. With his emaciated body and long, stringy hair, he could easily have been mistaken for one of the city’s many street people.
“I’d like to record the conversation if that’s all right.”
Jonas didn’t like it, but nodded anyway. It was bad enough that he had to ask Viljar to take the illustration pictures himself. He didn’t want a photographer to be in possession of the secret of who was behind it. Viljar had accepted this, if somewhat hesitantly.
“Are you alone? I thought there were two of you.”
Jonas was stressed. On the phone, Gudmundsson had seemed so eager, but now Jonas felt like he was on trial.
“Fredric is coming in half an hour.”
Viljar rolled a cigarette, fired up, and stuffed the tobacco pouch back in the front pocket of the denim jacket he had on. Loose tobacco? Good Lord, is the man a holdover from the seventies, or what? Gudmundsson blew smoke out his nose while the butt dangled from the corner of his mouth. Now and then he tilted it up, and the ember got new life. He smiled. Brushed off any lingering skepticism and let Jonas talk.
“If I understand you right, you maintain the Minister of Transport and Communications pays for sexual services from younger party members?”
“No, it’s not payment for sex that this is about. He ingratiates himself with young boys and promises them a career in the party if they stay on good terms with him. At the same time, there’s a hidden threat in what he says. If you refuse to be a ‘friend,’ then you’re out in the cold.”
“How young are the boys we’re talking about here?”
“The majority are of legal age, to put it that way.”
Viljar Ravn Gudmundsson opened his eyes wide and looked like a fish that was breaking the surface for the first time. The cigarette was dangerously close to falling out of the corner of his mouth.
“The majority are legal, you say. Does that mean not all of them are? Does Hermann Eliassen have sex with underage boys?”
“Yes, he has many times.”
“These meetings between Eliassen and the young boys have gone on at various gatherings of New Voices in the Center Party, am I understanding correctly?”
Jonas took a breath. It was right before he dropped the bomb and admitted that it was in that context Eliassen had used him.
“Yes, unfortunately. One of the stories that has come to my attention is from a member of this group. What he has to tell is a lot like how I’ve experienced the minister privately, to put it that way, so the story is true.”
“And you’re one of those he has exploited?”
“Yes, systematically over a whole year. Until this summer, I thought I was in some kind of special position. That there were feelings involved in the game.”
“Do you understand that this can be perceived as revenge from your side? That you want to get back at him for dumping you?”
With clenched teeth, Jonas answered Gudmundsson’s frank question. “Would it make any difference in that case? He’s used me and other teenagers quite deliberately to get access to sexual services. It’s unheard of for a public official to act that way.”
Jonas drew his index finger over his throat. Viljar picked up the recorder and turned it off.
“What the hell are you up to? I’m letting myself be interviewed, I’m not sitting in a courtroom.”
Viljar Ravn Gudmundsson fired up another hand-rolled cigarette with the ember from the first one and looked at Jonas with a sly smile. “What I’m doing now, Jonas, is saving your ass. By my asking critical questions, the whole flock of Norwegian media people don’t need to search you out to get answers. These are the kind of questions that must be both asked and answered before you can pounce on one of the country’s foremost politicians.” Viljar took a deep puff on the cigarette, and Jonas noted in amazement several seconds later that not so much as a wisp of smoke came out again between his lips.
“We want other journalists, and Eliassen’s lackeys, to be looking for you somewhere other than in New Voices. We’re doing this to protect the source, and even if it’s on the borderline of what’s ethically correct, it’s something I choose to do to protect you. Do you understand that?”
Jonas nodded dejectedly. He completed the rest of the interview as best he could and agreed to the classic backlit pictures photographers prefer to use to conceal the identity of the interview subject. All that could be seen in the picture was the black shadow of a young man with sloping shoulders looking out over the sound.
Tømmerdalen, Haugesund
Late Friday morning, October 17, 2014
Alfred Isvik was the closest neighbor to Stein Vikshåland’s house in Tømmerdalen. He was a part-time farmer, and had just sat down on the tractor when the first cries resounded through the air. He jumped off the tractor at once. The screams from the author’s house persisted. People came running from the other neighboring houses too. The bellowing man standing on Stein Vikshåland’s deck pounded and kicked at the living room window so it was heard in the whole valley. The heartrending cries and panicked bellowing bore witness to someone who had lost control.
When Alfred and another man from the neighboring farm climbed over the fence to help, they were met by a fury from another world. They had to use every ounce of force and muscle to tear the man away from the window, which had started to crack. He screamed, bit, and clawed in turn. The man was spindly and ungainly, but the terror and blackness in his eyes gave him a strength that could have overturned a trailer load. A
fter a while, Alfred got the man’s hands firmly tethered to keep him from doing more damage. The neighbor still had to work to get his legs quiet under him. Gradually they managed to subdue him. Hysterical weeping turned into whimpering sobs. Alfred let go; another neighbor took over.
Never before had he been witness to such boundless despair.
He scratched his head and looked down at the man on the floor of the deck. The man was sobbing and staring stiffly ahead while he repeated the same thing over and over again. Ranveig …
Alfred followed the man’s gaze. Then he saw her.
“Oh my God!”
Alfred’s outburst made the other neighbors raise their eyes. The farmer’s stomach contents came up without warning and struck the deck with a splash. The sight of the angelic woman dangling from a rope inside the living room was grotesque. The bloodshot eyes saw right through the window and cut into your soul like a projectile. The eyes were evidence of a death full of boundless anguish. The blue color of the face. The swollen tongue. Each detail evidence of a horrible death. Even so, the white was worst. White nightgown, white shoes, white belt, white hairband, white nail polish.
When the first ambulance came rolling onto Stein Vikshåland’s yard, Alfred was still sitting beside Viljar. The neighbors had helped him get the desperate journalist to lie down on the lawn in front of the house. Viljar took frequent puffs on a cigarette while his hands trembled.
Tømmerdalen, Haugesund
Late Friday morning, October 17, 2014
The sight of Ranveig made Viljar black out completely. He couldn’t remember what happened before he came to with a whole pile of people struggling on top of him. He could still see Ranveig from where he was lying, and he realized there was nothing he could do. This was not a bad dream he would wake up from. This was reality. So naked, so honest, so all-consumingly irrevocable. There were no pills for something like this. Nothing could reverse what had happened. Nothing could remove this awfulness. The darkness crept slowly into every nerve in his body. Settled like a veil over every single cell. Despondency and aversion hand in hand.
Does it have to hurt so much? The feeling lay there like a plague in his stomach. Seethed, ached, burned …
He lit another cigarette. Registered dimly that the ambulance personnel and others had come over to tend to him, were talking with him, shaking him. He answered them with apathy. Nothing was important any longer. Because of him, yet another innocent person had been deprived of life. He understood it now. He was an angel of death. It was best to keep your distance. Protect others.
It was only when a familiar face was standing in front of him shaking both his shoulders that he managed to move his gaze and attention out of the inner fog he found himself in.
“Damn it, Viljar! You have to wake up!”
He blinked … Looked inquisitively at Lotte Skeisvoll, who was standing over him. In the background, he could see that the ambulance personnel were getting a stretcher ready.
“Come on, Viljar! I don’t have time for you to go cuckoo now. They’re ready to roll you straight down to intensive care if you don’t snap out of it. What happened here?”
Viljar took Lotte by the arm. Held on to her tightly before he nodded. He stared into Lotte Skeisvoll’s determined dark brown eyes that were asking him to wake up.
Tømmerdalen, Haugesund
Late Friday morning, October 17, 2014
The headache threatened to burst through her skull. Lotte felt worn-out. Exhausted, tired, angry, afraid, and frustrated. All adjectives were suitable, and part of making Friday a true hell for the police detective. The dead seriousness was a lead blanket over everyone at the scene in Tømmerdalen. Nonetheless, she collected herself. Scraped up the last remnant of surplus energy to be able to look the rest of the team in the eyes and give them the necessary tasks. Learn from the rain, Ole Paus said in one of his songs. There’s always a drop left.… She had to find that drop in each and every one of them.
It was as if only now did it occur to the folks around her that this was serious. Maybe because only now was it obvious that the perpetrator did not have the slightest sense of justice, even if that was what he cited in his emails. Maybe it was because everyone who worked with the investigation could see with their own eyes how unpredictable the killer was in the choice of his victims. But probably it was simply because the killer wanted it that way. He had staged the whole thing and left behind a trail of gloom and fear. This was a turning point. The gauntlet was thrown.
When Lotte Skeisvoll saw Ranveig hanging like a macabre decorative mannequin, a new reckoning of time started. She knew that the image would be there the rest of her life. She was hanging completely still, with her head bowed forward as if in reverence. All the white made her pure. The killer underscored that nothing was spared. The white reinforced the dramaturgy. A conscious choice from someone who knew exactly what he was doing. A provocation. A demonstration of strength: If you haven’t woken up before, you will now.… Lotte barked out orders at the scene. Everything should be done by the book.
Not the slightest little detail should be overlooked. All traces the perpetrator left behind him had a purpose. It was not carelessness and nonchalance that meant that each crime scene had loads of traces of the perpetrator. These were guides. He doesn’t do anything that isn’t calculated, Lotte thought. What seemed banal and amateurish was a brilliant camouflage that gave him more latitude than he otherwise would have. Despite two murders, they really hadn’t taken him completely seriously. There was an end to just that.
In front of her sat Viljar Ravn Gudmundsson, who had also shown signs of seeing the whole thing as an exciting game. If one were to believe a small fraction of the regurgitation he had written in today’s Haugesund News, that is. The Norwegian crime press came completely unhinged after he had written about his mysterious letters from the murderer. From now on, the killer was referred to as “the Executioner” by the tabloid press. Crime journalists from far and near abandoned stolid courthouses and futile follow-up cases and instead took the shortest route to Haugesund. In the course of the afternoon, the number of media people in the City of Herring would increase by a factor of five. And every one of them would be calling her.…
After shaking Viljar awhile, it seemed like he was gradually starting to focus. She could sense a kind of decisiveness in his eyes.
Good, Viljar, I need you to roll up your sleeves now, she thought.
After a few minutes, she let him go and got him to talk. He told what had happened. She understood that Ranveig had been lured to Tømmerdalen through a news tipster sometime in the course of the night.
How could the tipster know that they would send her? She got up on stiff legs. Decided that the headache had if possible gotten even worse and rubbed her forehead with the back of her hand. Behind her and the police barricades, quite a few curiosity-seekers had started to gather. The homeowner, however, was conspicuous in his absence. They finally got hold of him through his agent. On a noisy phone line from Riga, the author could report that he hadn’t been at home in Haugesund for over a week, which was also confirmed by the publisher. “The key is under the doormat,” he said to the question of whether anyone had access to the house.
Lotte smoothed out the corner of her shirt collar and turned her gaze back to the mass of people below. Yet again, a sense of unreality came creeping in under her skin.
If this were a boring American detective series, the murderer would be in this crowd of people, she thought. He always returned to the scene of the crime. Unfortunately, real life was not so simple.
Requiem: Offertorium, Domine Jesu
I know I ought to take the pain medication the doctor prescribed for me before the weekend, but I don’t want to. It will remove the pain, but it will also make me apathetic. Make me unable to act. Unable to observe. Unable to feel the music …
I feel the very life streaming through me like a kind of tingling lust. It pricks my fingers and toes. The major muscle groups flex
. My blood pounds. The hair on my body stands up. Erection.
The police tape that runs along my stomach is a tingling caress. A feather-light touch from soft female fingers along my navel. Ranveig’s fingers were soft. Even as they scratched me, they were soft. I have to hide the deep and bloody tears on my arms, but I feel them there. I get a surge in my belly every time I stroke my hand over the fresh scars. The same surge that I feel when the g-forces kick in on a roller coaster. Enjoyable, tingling, exciting.
The scratch marks are Ranveig’s last remnant of living energy transferred from her fingers to my arms as I hung tightly entwined around the lower part of her body. Locked her arms and legs firmly with the weight of my own body dangling from hers. The double weight of two people made the rope around her neck tighten even more. Not so hard that the neck gave way, but hard enough that her life ended faster than it would have from her own weight alone.
I came while she was dying. Uncontrolled and sudden. That surprised me. I have never had any form of morbid sexual fantasies. Never associated death with anything sexual. My sexual advances have always been extremely ordinary. Not so much as one little forbidden fantasy has been allowed to climb to the surface. For that reason this came, literally speaking, suddenly to me. The feeling of power over life and death. The excitement of doing something forbidden, combined with having a trembling body in my arms … The sudden orgasm can be explained that way. Though it can’t really be called an orgasm.… Not the kind that washes over you as a climax to a burning desire. This was more like a sudden trickling emptying. The kind you often wake up from at night as a teenager.
