Requiem

by Geir Tangen

  Central Haugesund

  Saturday evening, October 18, 2014

  Lotte Skeisvoll felt uncomfortable. Squeezed into the backseat of a police car, she sat looking out a steamed-up window that had to be constantly wiped off. The climate control system had evidently called it a day, and was barely able to keep the windshield clear. She poked Scheldrup Hansen, who was sitting in the front seat.

  “Can you quickly go through the operation one more time? There were a couple of details I didn’t understand.”

  He showed no sign of turning around, but cleared his throat a little before he repeated himself from the briefing a few minutes earlier. Slower this time, as if Lotte were less intelligent and needed time to take in the points.

  “We’ve limited the surveillance to four possible sites. The surveillance is not concealed, but made visible by using rotating lights. This is done to frustrate his plans so that he might start improvising. Do you follow so far?”

  Olav barely looked over his shoulder. Lotte nodded in confirmation.

  “The four addresses we’re monitoring are two addresses here in the center of town, one on Salhusveien out by the cemetery, and one in Skudeneshavn. In addition, we’ve sent two men out to Røvær to babysit a lady who may also be in the killer’s crosshairs.

  “In the city center, we’re talking about the old building we see on the other side of the street, right by the entry to the Palestine Restaurant. Jomar Palsgård lives there. “Jompa” to his friends. Age fifty-five. Alcoholic. Multiple convictions, but also acquitted on a few occasions. Has a fondness for Polish liquor and cigarettes. There’s one more car in the city center. It’s up by Haugesund Stadium. An immigrant lives there. His name is … Wait a moment.…”

  Olav Scheldrup Hansen fished a phone out of his jacket pocket and browsed in his notes. He found the name.

  “That’s it! Heilu Manstrawi. Age forty. Was indicted for unlawful import and sale of cigarettes from Nigeria … Who the hell wants to smoke Nigerian cigarettes? Whatever … He was acquitted of illegal selling because he managed to convince the court in some strange way that it was only for his own use. Forty-two cartons, actually … He was fined for unlawful import, but thus acquitted of selling, so he avoided prison.”

  Lotte felt a little surprised by the tactic, but didn’t quite know how far she could stretch the cord without Scheldrup Hansen getting obstinate.

  “Out of pure curiosity, why have you chosen the strategy of monitoring? I mean … wouldn’t the first instinct be to protect the possible victims inside the buildings, or evacuate them to a safe place?”

  Scheldrup Hansen straightened up in the seat. She knew from experience that he disliked such questions, but in any event, she got a complete answer without his getting angry.

  “He has to be stressed. By being visible at the scene, we force him to act irrationally. Then he’ll be out of his comfort zone and have to play on our territory. We simply turn the tables on him.”

  Lotte saw the logic in Olav’s line of argument, but didn’t like it. This was a game of chance where they couldn’t afford to make a mistake. She was about to ask more questions, but decided against it. She was simply too tired.

  She looked down at her hands. They were shaking a little. The worry. The anxiety. The shame. Only hours after they had revived Anne at the hospital, Lotte did what she had promised herself she would stop doing. She had prioritized her job ahead of her family. Why is it that way? she thought. It doesn’t make any difference whether I’m here or not this evening.

  The tears came without warning, and she had to turn away so that neither the constable nor Scheldrup Hansen would see it in the rearview mirror. There and then, she felt that her sister was much closer to the pearly gates than she herself would ever get. On a day like this, Lotte chose the adrenaline kick over concern. She had little faith that He up there had much use for that line of thought.

  She dried the tears with the back of her hand. Promised herself to stop by the hospital as soon as the action was over. She had to. She couldn’t desert Anne completely. Right now it was important for her to show Anne that she could be trusted. The question was whether that was really true.

  The constable and Olav were talking so quietly together that Lotte couldn’t make out what they were saying. It almost seemed like they were doing it deliberately. She felt ignored in the backseat. Involved, but it doesn’t count … The fragile child’s voice from her innermost childhood memories echoed in her ears. She said it every time they were out on the street and played hide-and-seek or war. She didn’t want to really be involved. Then she might lose, and she didn’t like that. Was it that way now too? Had she taken herself out of the investigation as soon as she met a little resistance? Was it safest to let the big, tough boys take the lead, so she could just be there without having it count? Lotte shook off that thought. Of course it wasn’t that way. She still had control. She was the leader. It was just that she was sitting in the backseat.…

  Her line of thought was broken when the police radio started to crackle. One of the other patrols was calling them.

  “We hear shots! I repeat. We can hear shots. Not here by the stadium, but up toward Fjellvegen, I think. We heard the shots down here. Two shots. I repeat … Two shots. Should we leave our position, or send other patrols up there?”

  “Are you sure those were shots?” the Kripos investigator asked. “You say Fjellvegen.… Isn’t that where those confounded high-rises are?”

  “That’s confirmed. We don’t know yet if the shots came from there, but it tallies with both direction and distance.”

  “All patrols … I repeat … All patrols! Drive to the high-rises on Fjellvegen. Shots have been fired. We have a potential victim living in apartment 8H.”

  Lotte stared openmouthed from the backseat. A probable victim in the high-rises?

  Unprotected?

  “What the hell are you doing, Olav?”

  “We removed that victim from our list. He lives on one of the top floors in the high-rise, and it was quite improbable that the killer would venture back to the same crime scene he’s used before, while he is sure to be observed both on the way in and coming out of the high-rise. After shots were fired, that is.”

  “You are, God help me, the biggest idiot I have ever met!” Lotte screamed out the words, and then gave him a smack on the back of the head that he definitely felt. The sirens could be heard from all directions shortly after they took off toward Fjellvegen.

  Two police cars screeched into the parking lot in front of the high-rises simultaneously. Right behind, they could see the blue lights from the other cars that had been sent out. A handful of residents had huddled together outside the entryway to one of the high-rises. Lotte, Scheldrup Hansen, and the constable were quickly out of the car and barricaded themselves behind it. The Kripos investigator shouted to people that they should get away from the building, but they stood as if paralyzed.

  One minute later, all three police cars were at the scene, and they could hear that several sirens were on their way farther down Fjellvegen. Knut Veldetun had been in car number two, and he now called on the megaphone that everyone should remove themselves from the high-rise. Slowly the mass of people broke up, but there was no hint of either panic or fear. One of the spectators came sauntering toward the police cars without showing any sign of haste. Lotte was about to get up, but was brusquely pulled down again by Scheldrup Hansen.

  She felt it in her body. There was something that didn’t add up. Ordinarily, people would have run to safety if there was danger afoot, but here there was nothing to see but curiosity. The way in which the man came toward them signaled the same. He stopped right before them and looked down at the police officers behind the car.

  “He took off,” he said dryly, pointing toward the student housing alongside the high-rise.

  Lotte made a fresh attempt to stand up, and this time no one tried to prevent her.

  “What happened, and who is it who took off?” s
he asked while she made signs to the others that they should follow her. The man looked back toward the entry to the high-rise.

  “There was a guy in here who fired two shots, and then disappeared on a bicycle that way,” he said, pointing once again toward the spot where Fjellvegen turns past the student housing and farther down toward Geitafjellet. Lotte took him by the arm and led him a bit to the side.

  “Did you see him?”

  “Well…” He hesitated a little. “I got a slight glimpse of his back as he left on the bike, but he was already a good ways down the street when I came out on the pavement here. Black clothes, in any event, and a jacket with a hood.”

  “So how do you know it was a man?”

  “No, did I say…? That I don’t really know. I just thought it was.”

  “Do you know if anyone in there is injured?”

  The man’s pupils widened when it occurred to him that of course that was a possibility. “Oh dear … Good Lord, that may be, but…”

  “But?”

  “No, I don’t know. People streamed out of the apartments, so I don’t think that happened. Then someone would have called for help, or we would have seen if someone had been hit.”

  “You stay here. I need to talk more with you as soon as we’ve checked out the apartments. Could you hear from which floor the shots came?”

  The man was apparently confused. He shook his head and looked at Lotte questioningly. “Floor? No, I don’t think it came from any floor. More from the exit here. I live on the first floor, and I ran out at once. Then he was already on his bicycle, so he can’t have been farther inside than the entry.”

  Lotte didn’t understand a thing. If the man who fired the shot had only been in the entry, it couldn’t have been the goal to hit anyone. She jogged across the parking lot toward the entry, where several constables were already busy checking whether anyone had been wounded. Scheldrup Hansen stood by the entry and called to them.

  “Go to apartment 8H first. Check if anyone’s there.”

  “Who lives there?” Lotte asked.

  “Johan Gundersen. Loner, age forty-three. Acquitted of smuggling four years ago. He was on our list.”

  “And despite that, he was unprotected here this evening?”

  The Kripos investigator looked uncomfortable. His facial expression alternated between fury and uncertainty. Lotte could not understand that he’d made such a mistake. She thought he had learned from the episode with Ranveig.

  “It’s stupidity to try to shoot someone on the eighth floor. You would definitely be observed on the way down again.”

  “No, Olav! Stupidity is assuming that our man thinks rationally and reasonably, and basing our actions and people’s safety on what we might think. We’re police officers, Olav. We are here to protect people, not put them in danger. Damn it all!”

  She pushed past Scheldrup Hansen and took the stairs up to the eighth floor. Bitterly regretted it when she was halfway. There was an elevator in this building after all. She sighed and continued up the last flights of stairs. Passed police officers who were on their way to other residents in the apartments above. Outside 8H stood Knut Veldetun. He was talking with a man who could be none other than Johan Gundersen.

  The stench of alcohol from Gundersen reached her already on the landing below, and the man’s face showed that it was not the first drink of the evening. Or the first in his life either. A tattered knit jacket hung loosely around a bare torso and a potbelly that bulged in all its glory and suggested that it had been a while since Johan last saw his penis. Whatever … The man was alive, and that was the most important thing. Lotte shook her head. Gave a sign to Knut that she was going down again.

  The projectiles from the shots were evident on the white brick wall between the first and second stories. The whole thing seemed completely unmotivated. Lotte tried to think through what made the guy act this way. Did he want to scare them? Show that he still had power and the possibility to take out his victims?

  She walked back toward the police cars. Felt that she was inexpressibly tired. Maybe it wasn’t their man who had shot in the entry? Maybe the whole thing was a weird coincidence? The answer came two minutes later when she had settled into the front seat of the police car. I’ll be damned if Scheldrup Hansen is going to sit there one more second, she thought as the police radio crackled.

  “Emergency response center here. Can anyone answer me?”

  Lotte sighed and picked up the intercom microphone from the holder on the dashboard. “This is car 554 here. Skeisvoll. What’s this about?”

  “We’ve just gotten a message about a shooting on Djupaskarsveien right by the stadium. Are you in the vicinity?”

  The blood left her head, and she turned cold. The police patrol had been there all evening, but not now. With all police resources up here, the killer obviously had free rein wherever he wanted in the city. It would surprise her if the immigrant at Djupaskarsveien 21B was still alive. She got on the horn to summon the others, even though she already knew it was too late.

  As the sirens finally reached the address three minutes later, the scene outside Manstrawi’s house was quite different from the one they had seen at the high-rises. Here too people had gathered, but these people were afraid. Someone screamed. Another was crying, while the others stood apathetically and stared into space. The door into the single-family house was wide open, and in the hallway lay a dead Nigerian cigarette smuggler.

  Lotte gave up. She gave word to Lars Stople that she was not reachable by phone, and left the scene without any further explanation. Right then and there, she couldn’t care less about the whole job. Anyone who wanted it could have it. Dereliction of duty is not great, but regardless, the police chief will have someone and something to blame when he is covering his ass in front of an assembled national press corps tomorrow, Lotte thought, going toward the footbridge. The hospital was only a two-minute walk away, and someone was waiting for her there. Someone who was still alive, if only just barely …

  Viljar’s apartment on Austmannavegen, Haugesund

  Saturday evening, October 18, 2014

  Holed up inside the apartment, Viljar had the company of Johnnie Walker this evening. Boring guy: doesn’t say much and smells a little like an old man. After Lotte left the apartment in a hurry a few hours before, Viljar had done what he’d decided to do earlier in the day. He called his psychologist at the district psychiatric center. He needed to know what she had told the police, but she flatly denied having said anything at all. They hadn’t even called her. The psychologist understood in the course of the call that something was terribly wrong, and a quick explanation resulted in a four-week medical leave due to long-term mental stress.

  The all-encompassing darkness had been a torment in Viljar’s life in recent years, but he had always dragged himself out of it by pure mental force. Besides, he had to. Viljar had Alexander to think about too. Even if the boy lived with his mother, he couldn’t just go to seed. He longed for an inner voice that could tell him that everything was going to be fine. That it would soon be over.

  The moment with Ranveig’s white figure dangled before his eyes over and over again, and it didn’t seem as if all the whiskey in the world could conjure that image away. A tableau in his mind stamped ETERNITY.

  Viljar emptied another brimful of whiskey in the glass. A water glass.

  Like a damned alkie, he was sitting here downing whiskey from a water glass while feeling sorry for himself. He decided to take care of what he had to do. The email to the editor with the password to the mailbox was at the top of the list. After that, pack up …

  When Viljar sat back on the couch twenty minutes later, everything was done. Two suitcases of capriciously chosen clothes were on the living room floor. Passport and wallet with bank card and credit cards were packed. The email was sent. The only thing that remained was figuring out where he should go.

  He searched for various travel destinations with seats available the next day. He
had not really traveled to speak of, and actually it was utterly immaterial where he ended up. He just wanted to get away from everything. A place where it fazed no one that he had stiff drinks in the morning and a tendency to be antisocial. Alicante? Why not?

  Viljar paid, printed out the ticket, and put it along with the passport and wallet in the one bag. Then he leaned back on the couch. Found the alarm clock on the cell phone and set it for ten o’clock the next day. Then he would have plenty of time to get a few more drops of liquid in him before he had to take the Coast Bus to Stavanger. Before he fell asleep, he made a silent prayer that there wouldn’t be anyone he knew on the flight. He just wanted to get away. Forget. Get some distance from all the problems here at home.

  Jonas sought him out in the state between dream and reality. That young, innocent, and beautiful face. The blond, shoulder-length hair. The cautious smile that Viljar had misunderstood when he received the letter. He had seen him on only two occasions, but Jonas had followed him like an incubus every single night in his dreams. He would never let go, and this time he was closer than ever. He was standing outside Viljar’s front door with a new letter in his hands. Not the same one as last time. This letter had a pink envelope. Viljar gradually became aware that Jonas was not alone. By his side, Ranveig was standing, holding him by the hand. She was beautiful, but the sight of the white gown made his heart hammer wildly in Viljar’s throat.

  He woke up with a start when the doorbell buzzed. He was in a cold sweat. Viljar felt more than heard that he had screamed loudly when he saw Ranveig and Jonas by the door in his dream.

  Half unconscious, he staggered to the front door. Still caught between dream and reality. In a daze, he almost expected to see Jonas and Ranveig standing outside. They weren’t.…