Requiem

by Geir Tangen

  The delightful feeling is a tender memory as I’m standing here watching the police run around like confused little mice. They don’t see the cat, but perhaps sense that he’s in the vicinity? I see that Lotte Skeisvoll is studying us.

  Does she know something? Does she understand what is in the process of happening around her?

  I don’t know. Can’t know with certainty. Nonetheless, I’m quite sure of what she’s thinking about right now. Probably reproaching herself because she hasn’t taken me seriously earlier. She is angry at herself. Angry because she hasn’t understood that it all goes much deeper than the emails have expressed. In despair because she wasn’t able to protect Ranveig. Didn’t discover in time what was going on.

  She is going to wonder how I could know whom the newspaper would send out last night. The funny thing is that I couldn’t know that. Only hope, and otherwise arrange everything so that other journalists were burningly occupied with other things.

  I had the key to Ranveig’s apartment in reserve in case the original plan didn’t work.

  The only thing I don’t understand is why the police didn’t put measures in place to protect Ranveig. It seems as if they work slower than I’ve foreseen. No problem, it does make my job easier, but it’s an offbeat that doesn’t belong. It’s important that the instruments play together. Most of all, I want them to follow the recipe to the letter, but I can’t do anything about what’s happened so far. There isn’t much that has to be changed, just some small adjustments to the score. Nothing that will create consequential errors toward the transition to my Domine Jesu.

  I see Viljar Ravn Gudmundsson get up. It’s about time. I have to watch myself a little so he doesn’t collapse completely. We’re not there in the score yet. In due time, he will get to meet himself and his actions at the door. But for now, I need him as first violinist. Seen that way, it’s too bad that he was the one who found her, but good grief … That does increase the drama.

  I slip away so he doesn’t see me. If he had, he would have become suspicious. I am balancing on a knife edge now. I know that, but I’ve known all along that when the turning point comes, the border between success and fiasco will be just as thin and delicate as a bridal veil.

  Viljar is a wounded animal. Dangerous, but not really capable of protecting himself. It was this state I had in mind when I was composing, and now it’s only a matter of moving the baton properly, the rest will arrange itself.

  The pain pounds in the back of my head while I babble with one of the neighbors as I walk away from the area. I use the real pain to show my sincere anguish. I know that it will be interpreted as sympathy and empathy, and that amuses me.

  I turn around when I hear the murmur that goes through the crowd. I raise my eyes to find out what is causing their reaction. Out the door comes the stretcher with Ranveig. Naturally, she is covered by a white cloth. More white … Only white, actually. Just as white as Ranveig herself was. Innocent white. Guilty or not … It’s utterly unimportant to me.

  If I could do anything over, it would be the next email that will be sent. Pathetic when both sender and recipient know that it’s bullshit, but so it must be. Every piece has its necessary place in the artwork, even if after the fact I see that perhaps it’s slightly misplaced.

  I think about what my old art teacher taught me in middle school. That Edvard Munch painted many versions of his pictures. Every time he was finished with a picture, he found something he was dissatisfied with, and so he made a new version. There are many different examples of Madonna and The Girls on the Bridge. Edvard Munch was privileged. I have just this one chance to make this complete. I can’t do it over. There is only one Scream in me.…

  Tømmerdalen, Haugesund

  Late Friday morning, October 17, 2014

  Lotte Skeisvoll turned in place, taking mental pictures. Tried to fix her gaze on small details. Things that in some way or other could tell a story about what had happened in here, and preferably also why. What was left behind in this room after Ranveig was carried out was here because she was supposed to find it.

  At the previous crime scenes, the technicians had spent an enormous amount of time and resources securing physical and biological traces that could nail the perpetrator to the scene. Obviously that had to be done here too, but Lotte asked them to expend less energy on that and instead concentrate on finding other things in the room that could lead them further. This order sounded extremely unusual to Åse Fruholm, and she asked Lotte why she wanted to prioritize that way. Lotte looked at her a long time before she decided to be honest.

  “If this person is ever in a courtroom, he’s going to tell the whole story from start to finish. Then it will be enough to place him at the scene purely technically. We don’t need to make a latticework of biological traces for every little move he’s made.”

  Åse Fruholm looked grim and offended as she threw up her hands, but she capitulated. “By all means. You’re saving me a lot of time-consuming work. But this is your responsibility. The hell if I’m going to be caught with my ass offside if it turns out you’re wrong. Then you’ll have to take the heat.”

  Lotte nodded, and twenty minutes later, she had the room to herself. She was just about to start fine-combing it when her cell phone rang. It was an agitated Knut Veldetun on the other end. She had to calm the rookie policeman down and ask him to start over. It helped a little.

  “I’ve checked up the backstory to Ranveig Børve the way you said I should early this morning.…” He stopped.

  “Tell me!”

  “Well, I’ve found the connection, but I don’t understand what you were thinking.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Lotte noticed that her voice was a little harsher than she wanted it to be. Knut was young and didn’t need to be put in his place for asking questions, but it was easy to get defensive. Did I forget something?

  “I see from the registers that Ranveig Børve was charged with driving under the influence in a fatal accident back in 2004, but was acquitted when it couldn’t be proved that she was the one who’d been driving. She herself maintained the whole time that a friend of hers was at the wheel, while she was asleep in the front seat after a party where the alcohol flowed a bit too freely.” Knut made a brief dramatic pause before he continued.

  “I mean, shouldn’t we have checked?”

  “We damn well have checked! Every single damned judgment and acquittal all the way back to 1995!”

  She heard Knut clear his throat repeatedly. A sign that his nervousness hadn’t subsided.

  “Oh well. But what happened then? Why didn’t anyone … I would have thought at least, but … Who was it who checked the lists?”

  The last sentence struck down like a lightning bolt on a power substation. Scheldrup Hansen! That damned dinosaur!

  “Damn it, Knut! It was Scheldrup Hansen who checked the lists. He must have been sloppy, because he emailed me the list of acquittals last evening, and Ranveig wasn’t on it. That’s quite certain, in any event.”

  Lotte stood there looking suspiciously down at her own phone. The thought of what could have been done for Ranveig if she’d gotten the complete list raced through her, and she felt a despair she hadn’t felt since that time she found her sister lifeless on the street and thought she was dead. She pushed away the awful memory. There was no place for anger, despair, or guilty conscience in this room now. She would surely seal Olav Scheldrup Hansen’s fate at the next crossroads.

  Lotte breathed in and out calmly a few times with her eyes closed. Emptied her head completely of thoughts. Let a few seconds pass in a dark and solitary stillness before she slowly opened her eyes and focused. Let her gaze meet object after object. Associated and analyzed. Most of it was here already and was untouched. That had a thin veil of dust on it. Other things had either been used or brought into the room.

  The box of zip ties on the coffee table was one of these things. This tallied well with the injuries Ranveig had on her wrists
and ankles. Trying to pull or tear yourself loose from tight plastic strips makes them cut into the skin. She could see that the technicians had found fingerprints on the shiny plastic box.

  Alongside it was a half-eaten apple. Oxidation showed that it had been a few hours since it was bitten into. It was gnawed off midway with an exact precision that could indicate compulsive behavior in the person who had done it. She could remember having done similar things herself.

  On the floor below where Ranveig had been hanging, there was a vertical stripe of urine, which indicated that she had probably swayed back and forth like a pendulum at the moment of death. It also indicated that she had not broken her neck in a vertical fall, but was suffocated by the noose while she swayed. This was odd. Normally someone would squirm so that the urine that came out would splatter in a big circle, but here the puddle was vertical and even. Thus the body had been at rest, even though she was dying?

  Lotte let her gaze sweep farther around the room. An apparent chaos that told her everything and nothing. An overturned chair. Ironing board and iron in the kitchen. Obviously used to smooth the white nightgown Ranveig was wearing. Newspapers, magazines, and books. What about the bloodstains on the floor? Was it important that they were right there? Was it important whether it was her blood or his? Was it actually important how Ranveig had dangled when she died? Was it of any importance whatsoever to note all the data from this crime scene and the other two? Would they find anything at all that the murderer didn’t want them to find?

  No, it struck her that she would have to search for what the killer hadn’t planted. Everything else would only lead them a step closer to where he wanted them. It was time to break the pattern. Do the unexpected. She let the rest of the crime scene go and left the room. On her way out of the cordoned-off area, the flashbulbs hailed at her. She stopped and answered questions.

  Then everyone is in place, she thought. You’ve got what you wanted.

  Haugesund Police Station

  Friday afternoon, October 17, 2014

  Five minutes after Lotte got a phone call from Lars Stople, she was on her way to his office in the police building. Everything else would have to wait. She swept in and plopped down on the visitor’s chair.

  “Tell me!”

  Lars Stople looked up over his square eyeglass frames. Cleared his throat briefly before he threw out his arms.

  “What should I say? I told you most of it on the phone. Stein Åmli decided to change email provider yesterday. This created some problems for us, since we’d developed a good cooperation with the Google team, and we could get a localization from them in less than an hour. Now Åmli jumped over to Hotmail instead. That meant we couldn’t get the sender localization tracked until this morning. Hotmail wasn’t so eager to cooperate as Google was, as long as Interpol wasn’t brought in. Fortunately at last we got them started anyway.”

  “And you got a location, but what does that actually mean? He’s evidently wandering around on open networks.”

  Lotte looked at Stople. Could see that he too was starting to get bloodshot eyes and that his hands were trembling slightly. Signs of stress and lack of sleep. Lars Stople hemmed and hawed.…

  “Well … What does it mean? The message was sent from the Haugesund News server located in the newspaper building. They don’t have an open network, which means that the email was sent from one of the desktop computers connected to the office network in the editorial offices, marketing department, or at Radio 102, but which computer was used is hard to figure out, according to the experts. The only thing we can say with certainty is that the perpetrator was in the media building at 12:30 A.M. and that he was logged onto an office computer.”

  Lars Stople sighed. Leaned back in the office chair, took off his glasses, and rubbed his eyes.

  “It won’t stop here, will it?…”

  “No, Lars, it won’t stop here. I’m really afraid that it won’t stop until we find him.” She gave him a slightly dejected look.

  The killer was too quick. They weren’t able to move on from crime scene investigations and preliminary investigation before new emails and new murders dropped down into their laps. She looked over at Lars, who was staring vacantly into space.

  “What are you thinking about, Lars?”

  He turned, about to say something, but finally just shook his head.

  “Come on, Lars. What are you brooding about?”

  “It’s not my job. Then it’s just as well to keep your mouth shut, isn’t it?”

  “Stop fooling around. I’ve known you since my first day here in the building. No matter what you’re thinking, you can come to me with it.”

  “Oh, well. That’s fine, but you aren’t exactly a world champion in not taking things personally, and I’ll ask you not to take this wrong.”

  Lotte was about to respond to what he’d said, but he interrupted her by raising his palm.

  “Listen here. I know you’re not particularly fond of Olav Scheldrup Hansen, and God only knows he’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer despite his position, but now I actually think you ought to let bygones be bygones for a moment and meet with him. We need him and his expertise.”

  Lars Stople could hardly have found a worse time to make his move. He was blissfully ignorant of what had happened concerning Scheldrup Hansen in the past few hours.

  Lotte boiled over and stood up so quickly, the visitor’s chair toppled to the floor. “You know what? You can damn well forget about sticking your nose into how I lead my investigation! Hansen is possibly the most incompetent person I’ve ever met. The fact that you and other old hermits think his methods are best is only because you’re a bunch of flipping fossils with your asses buried in 1973. Earth to Lars! Have you ever taken off your glasses and seen that investigation methods have long passed by you and Hansen and all the other old farts?”

  She went out the door at warp speed and slammed it behind her so that the knickknacks in Stolpe’s office rattled. Several faces came into view along the row of offices in the corridor.

  “Go to hell!” She howled so that it reverberated in the halls in the whole building.

  Two minutes later, a red-faced Lotte Skeisvoll stormed right into the office of Police Chief Arnstein Guldbrandsen without knocking. He looked up in surprise. It was not daily fare that someone came into his office like that.

  “What in the—?”

  “I want to submit an official complaint against Olav Scheldrup Hansen for negligence in duty!” Lotte was clear and definite. The decision had been made hours ago, but she hadn’t really intended to present it this way.

  Guldbrandsen did not seem particularly surprised by this demand. He remained calm. “I see.… And on what grounds, if I dare ask?”

  “He is hindering the investigation, playing the group against me to undermine my authority, and he’s not doing the tasks he’s assigned. Most recently yesterday, negligence that cost Ranveig Børve her life last night.”

  Guldbrandsen raised his eyebrows and asked her to sit down. After a few ifs and buts he was served her version of the story. He sat quietly and thought awhile before he answered her in a calm voice.

  “I assume that you haven’t talked with Olav about this and gotten his explanation of the matter?”

  “No, I can’t take any more of that guy. He’s got to go!”

  “That, Skeisvoll, is actually not for you to decide. In contrast to you, I have talked with Olav today. He’s been in my office along with Kripos director Ove Fiskaa for several hours.”

  Lotte’s face lost its color.

  “Let it be said right off, Lotte. Olav Scheldrup Hansen is an arrogant sack of shit with an overly high opinion of himself and his own excellence. You and I are in agreement on that. He came here along with Fiskaa because the Kripos director had heard that the cooperation between you and Hansen wasn’t working.”

  “That should damned well be certain—”

  “Stop!” Guldbrandsen banged his palm on the desk and dr
illed his eyes into Lotte Skeisvoll. “Now, that’s enough! Do you understand that? We have three homicides in a row, but you and Scheldrup Hansen are evidently far more occupied by showing who has the biggest balls than in solving the case. That is goddamned disrespectful to the victims and their families. We’re a police agency, damn it! The point is that we should work together.”

  Lotte held her breath while she counted to ten.

  “God knows I’ve tried to get some cooperation, Guldbrandsen.”

  “No, you damn well haven’t. I’ve been at the meetings you’ve led. What I’ve seen there is pathetic. You’ve been using despicable domination techniques from the first moment. Don’t you think those of us who’ve been in the room have seen the condescending looks you give him? That you never let him have the floor when he asks for it. That you never engage with the suggestions he makes. Irony and sarcasm at his expense. And now, yesterday … Then you went way over the line in your ridicule. You gave him a task that the office assistant could just as well have done, while the rest of the group was given police assignments! Are you aware of how embarrassing that was to witness?”

  Lotte had listened throughout the monologue, but was not yet ready to call a truce.

  “Office assistant, yes. I wish I’d given her that task, then perhaps Ranveig Børve would be alive now, but he couldn’t even manage such a simple task.”

  “Quite correct, Lotte. If you’d given the task of checking the lists to the office assistant, Ranveig would be alive. But you chose not to do that. You chose to give it to someone else. You chose to give the task to someone who felt it was beneath his dignity to do such things. That’s your responsibility! Think a little about the following scenario, Lotte.… If I had given you the task of going through all passports issued the past year to find out which of them had a slight error in a bar code. How precisely would you have done that job?” Lotte had no answer. She suddenly realized how furious she would have been at Guldbrandsen if he’d done something like that. If she had even completed the task, the work would have been done superficially. Her cheeks were redder than ever, but now mostly because she was blushing.