by Geir Tangen
In front of the Austmanna high-rises, they attracted curious looks. It was Sunday, and the high-rise residents were for the most part outside in the pleasant fall weather. Children were playing in the grassy areas to the left of the B Building, and parents sat patiently watching their offspring. The two policemen struggled out of the car and pretended not to notice they were being observed. All movements the police were making now during the day were put in direct connection with the “Executioner Case.” The whole city was swarming with reporters and TV cameras.
Knut Veldetun and Olav went up to the entry where Viljar Ravn Gudmundsson lived and rang the bell. After having tried this a couple of times without success, Olav did the old “getting into the building without keys trick.” He rang all the doorbells in the entry. Very soon the door buzzed once and even twice, and they had free passage in. Viljar lived on the second floor. Olav breathed out in relief. Knut would not likely take the elevator, and there are twenty-five floors, he thought dryly.
They could hear the doorbell buzzing inside the apartment, but no one answered. Knut pounded on the door so that it echoed in the stairwell. Still no response. They were about to leave with unfinished business when a woman stuck her head out the door right across the hall from Viljar’s.
“He’s not home.”
She didn’t say anything else. Just looked at the two policemen. When she very clearly had no intention of saying anything more on her own initiative, the Kripos investigator took command.
“I see … How do you know that? Have you seen him go out today?”
She cocked her head. Her eyes were fixed on Knut and not on Olav. There was something hungry in her eyes that she was unable to conceal. She hesitated.…
“No … I don’t know if he’s been here today, that is. Haven’t seen or heard anything from there anyway. But he was home yesterday. There was a terrible racket in the hall. It woke me up, and when I’d put on some clothes and went to the door to see whether everything was okay, I just got a glimpse of his back as he went out the door downstairs.”
“Great. You’re sure it was him? I mean, since you only saw his back?”
“Well, who else would it be? I heard the row from his apartment, and after he left, it was completely quiet in there.”
“What kind of clothes did he have on, can you say anything about that? Or whether he was drunk or anything?”
The lady in the doorway tossed her head and grinned. “Whether he was drunk? It would surprise me if he was sober, put it that way. It’s probably not that often that sober folks knock over the coat stand on their way out the door and don’t set it back up again.”
“Did you say he knocked over the coat stand? I thought you said you only saw his back on the way out the door below?”
She sighed dejectedly and now came all the way out on the stairwell. At the same time, a pair of slender, bare thighs appeared under a silk top. Knut rolled his eyes and looked shyly anyplace other than at her.
“See here,” she said, looking demonstratively through the little peephole in the door. “Here you see the coat stand at an angle over by the wall.” She waved them over and took the opportunity to have plenty of body contact as Knut leaned over to look through the hole.
“Did you go over here after he’d left?”
The lady in the silk top observed the investigator as if he were an idiot. “Of course I did. I had to see that everything was all right. There was a lot of commotion in there, you see.”
Olav Scheldrup Hansen suspected the helpful neighbor of being a touch more curious than she tried to appear. “You go over and look in the peephole to see whether everything is okay with Viljar after you’ve seen him go out the door below?”
She got a sullen look on her face, sighed, and started speaking with clearer diction, as if she were talking to a deaf person. “I don’t know whether it was Viljar who went out the door. I just assume it was him. I saw a man in a black jacket and hood. He walked as if he was carrying a sack in his arms. There’s garbage pickup tomorrow, so I assume he had a garbage bag with him.”
Scheldrup Hansen tugged on his colleague’s shirtsleeve and gave him a signal that they had to leave.
Knut looked at the Kripos investigator with surprise and followed him down the stairs. He blushed a little when the lady sent him a look of clear invitation.
Out in the sun, Olav took Knut aside and gave him instructions to get ahold of the janitor or building manager. “I don’t like this. Gudmundsson has been securely lashed to this case like the string around a Sunday pot roast since day one.
“We’ll need a search of the apartment. Should go fine, considering the neighbor’s observations in addition to the overturned coat stand and the fact that we haven’t had any response from him. If you can try to find someone who has keys, I’ll arrange the formalities.”
Knut jogged over to the group of dads and moms who were sitting on the bench. One of them ought to know who had master keys.
When half an hour later they stood in front of the door to Viljar’s apartment for the second time, they had company from the police department technicians. A clearly nervous janitor opened the door for them. It slid open a few centimeters, and then stopped. Something heavy was blocking the way. Olav did not have the patience to wait and pressed on. At last, he managed to make his way through the opening. Three seconds after he went in, he stuck his head out again. A brief order was enough for everyone to understand the seriousness.
“Sound a full alarm, Knut! Full alarm…”
Haugesund
Late Sunday morning, October 19, 2014
The room still had a hint of tar-stained ship’s floor, salt sea, kelp, and freshly cleaned fish. Memories from the sun-filled, peaceful existence of childhood.
There was the creaking of old woodwork. From outside, the gentle lapping of waves was heard. Quiet creaking from rope struggling against the tide. A two-cycle engine chugged past at a leisurely tempo. Loud screeches from gulls cut through from time to time. A moored boat?
He was lying completely still. The floor did not rock. In this room, you could both smell and hear the sea, but not feel it. Solid ground, in other words.
His subconscious picked up something that his brain registered without having it reach the processing center. A hint of sweat. A sound. Heat radiation, as if someone was right next to him. There’s someone here! The smell of desire … or fear?
A modern human is basically robbed of these instincts. They show up only in a few situations in life when you are deprived of one of your senses. Sight, for example. Or … Perhaps mainly then. Sight is our strongest sense, and we are so dependent on it that a person has to reinforce what’s already there in order to survive. Read with your fingers. Interpret body language with hearing. Calculate distances by resonance and echo. Recognize people by the sense of smell. Become aware of danger through feeling.
An animal will always camouflage its handicap if that is possible. Conceal how vulnerable it is. With a blindfold over your eyes, it is difficult for a person to camouflage that he cannot see. The waiting predator is completely aware of the prey’s handicap and is convinced of its own invincibility.
In many ways, this certainty was harder for Viljar Ravn Gudmundsson to handle than the fact that he couldn’t see. The certainty that there was someone in the room observing him. A silent stranger, but he was there.… Someplace between the creaking woodwork and the smell of tar, he was there.
He also suspected who it was. It was his turn now. Fate had finally picked him up and made him ready for the ultimate journey. Deep down, he’d seen it coming. The past had caught up with him.
The pain in his head was unbearable, and did not get any better from the aftereffects of yesterday’s whole bottle of whiskey. As if that weren’t enough, he was lying on his stomach on a hard wooden floor with his arms and legs tied behind his back. He had almost as much pain in his ribs after hours on his stomach as he had in his head. But just almost.
Viljar had
thought that the anxiety would grab him, overpower and paralyze him, but not this time. The reality was much worse than all the fears he could imagine. The physical pain was so intense that it forced away all thoughts about what might be coming. Right now a shot in the forehead would be true liberation, and then he would no longer have anything to fear. For the first time, he had encountered something that overcame the anxiety.
Viljar was silent. Lay quietly. Breathed softly. Did not want the person in the room to realize that he was awake. Had to buy himself time. Time for what? Someplace or other in all this pain and in the total darkness around him, there was a solution. There had to be. If he just lay there a little longer, it would come to him.
It always had. Through his entire life, the solution was always served up nonchalantly on a platter, and he got out of the problem. Or … That is … Almost always. Not with Jonas. Not when he needed it the most.
With the blindfold over his eyes, it was impossible to know whether it was night or day or how long he’d been in the room. No voices could be heard outside. No cars. No sounds from a pulsating small town. He was probably in a boathouse. But it couldn’t be one along the Inner Pier in Haugesund. Then he would have heard sounds from people. Even at night, he would have heard both people and cars. In other words, this boathouse was in an isolated location. For that matter, it could be anywhere at all. He had been transported here, but he’d been unconscious during the trip.
He tried to remember something from the seconds before everything turned black in the hall in the apartment, but it was foggy and unclear. He produced the face, but realized that it might be a face he had conjured forth from his memory simply because it was the most probable attacker.
Viljar could remember hearing the doorbell. He also recalled that he went to answer the door. Then it turned black. There was actually no face. He could see it now. The face was wrapped in a black bandanna or scarf. A black hood over his head concealed the rest. The next memory was lapping waves, the smell of tar, and intense pain.
While his thoughts wandered around in circles, he became aware of a new sound in the room. Steps. Someone was walking across the floor. He had to struggle against the compulsion to scream. The steps were almost soundless, but they were there. He had been right. There was another person in the room. Now the steps were moving away from where Viljar lay. There was creaking from rusty door hinges.
Viljar waited a couple of minutes. Then he took the chance to move as best he could. He felt a sharp stab in his foot when he tried to move his legs. He ran his foot over the same place again. Could feel the outline of what might be a nail sticking out from the wall behind him.
Centimeter by centimeter, he crawled backwards and finally managed to twist his back next to the place where he’d felt the nail against the ball of his foot. Felt the sharp metal against his fingers. He breathed out in relief. Hoped intensely that what bound his hands and feet together was made of a material that would give way with a combination of precision and friction. For a brief moment, he lay still and listened. This was going to take time.
Finally he managed to get one end of the rope between his index finger and thumb. The rope was probably the kind you tie a turkey up with before roasting. He penetrated the skin just as often as he got hold of a thread. Several times he was about to give up. The sweat poured down his back. Long strands of hair were plastered to his face. He forced himself to maintain focus. Whittled, sweated, and cursed. As he felt that the rope was giving a little in the bindings, he heard the creak from the door hinges again. Like a spider, he froze his position, even as he pushed the back of his hands apart. The sound of steps that hurried toward him made him pull all he could with his hands. The twine did not give way.
Viljar screamed as the man lifted him up in a sitting position, as if he weighed five kilos and not seventy-five. The familiar sound of a zip tie that was tightened behind his back killed all hope. Next it was his legs’ turn. The man in the dark breathed out. Viljar felt the heat from his body as he sat down close beside him.
“I’ve been waiting a long time to get you alone, Viljar. It’s time to settle up for old sins, don’t you think?”
Four years earlier …
Viljar’s apartment, Haugesund
Tuesday evening, August 31, 2010
Viljar Ravn Gudmundsson could not let go of the thought that it was the newspaper interview on Saturday that made Jonas flee head over heels on Sunday along with his friend. He could not understand what had come over the boys.
First came the shock over what had happened at Torvastad, then a new shock when he realized that prior to what happened, Jonas had decided to go out in the media with his full name. What was the point of making him anonymous in Saturday’s paper if he intended to be interviewed by TV 2 the next day? And why run away from his family if he’d planned to come forward anyway?
Two full days had passed, and no one had yet been able to track down the two boys. The car had been found in the parking lot at Amanda Shopping Center a few hours after the accident, but after that, it was as if Jonas and Fredric had been lifted to heaven by angels. Not a single trace. No witness reports. Fruitless searches on cell phone tracking. They had evaporated.
For Viljar, it had been a double-edged sword, sitting in London and following Norwegian news broadcasts on the internet. The long weekend with Alexander had not turned out the way he’d pictured it. A furious Johan Øveraas wanted him home to cover what had happened, but he could live with that. It was worse to think about the young boy who in a way had placed his life in his hands and who was in flight from everything and everyone. Viljar understood that it wasn’t his fault, it just couldn’t be, but nonetheless, it felt like it was his responsibility. From London, he couldn’t do anything. He had to focus on making the holiday into the dream weekend his son had awaited for so long.
He had done his best, but even in the roar of exultation at Stamford Bridge, when Alexander threw himself around his neck, Viljar’s thoughts had been in Norway. With a completely different boy, who didn’t care in the least that Chelsea had just beaten Stoke 2–0. And with a little nine-year-old girl who was no more. Whose last thought in life, according to her parents, had been to try to stop her brother from running away from home.
When Viljar’s flight landed at Haugesund Airport in the afternoon that Tuesday, he knew what he would encounter at work the next day. The entire Norwegian press corps and an impressively large police force were on an English foxhunt, and Viljar was sought after wildly in the news broadcasts. He was the expert who could tell about which boys they were dealing with. After all, he had met them. Talked confidentially with them. Heard their story.
Viljar was deep into the thought process about what he should tell the media the next day, and almost didn’t hear that his doorbell was ringing. It took a few seconds before he collected himself and stumbled out in the hall in his slippers to answer. He was completely unprepared for what met him when the door was opened. A skinny, ungainly figure, with hair wet from rain in strips down his face, stood in the hall and handed him a letter. Once again, Viljar was slow to make the connection. He stood there with the letter in his hands for some time before it occurred to him what had happened.
“Jonas!”
Viljar called after the spindly back that was already far down the stairs. He was about to run after the boy, but happened to think that if he let go of the door, it would close behind him, and he would be locked out. Quickly he ran in, put on shoes, grabbed his keys, and took the stairs three at a time. When he burst out the front door on the first floor, it was like running right into a brook. The rain was pouring down, and he got soaked to the skin. He looked around in all directions, but Jonas was nowhere to be seen. Where did he go? Viljar hadn’t taken more than half a minute to find shoes and keys. He can’t be far away, can he?
He called to Jonas a few times, but the boy was gone. For that matter, it was no challenge to hide in the confusion of high-rises, cars, cellar stairs, and path
s in this area. And right behind the high-rises, there was a forested recreational area. Viljar realized that it was useless. He trudged back to the apartment and slammed the door behind him as he went into the hall. The letter he had gotten from Jonas was on the floor. It was in a simple, unsealed envelope, and Viljar could see that the letter was handwritten. He plopped down on the black armchair in the living room and unfolded the letter. His head was empty, and he fished out a cigarette and fired it up with the ember from the one he’d been smoking when the doorbell rang two minutes earlier.
Viljar felt a little prick of guilty conscience because he didn’t call the police first of all. Nonetheless … There was something in Jonas’s eyes that stopped him. It was a wounded animal in flight who’d been standing outside.
Viljar read slowly. Stopped several times to see that what was there was really true. That he wasn’t misinterpreting the bad handwriting. He wasn’t. At the back of the letter there was a newspaper clipping of the picture he had taken at the outdoor restaurant at Samson, and which he had approved in passing before he left to make the Ryanair flight to London. Can this be true? He looked again and again at the picture, but was unable to see what Jonas alleged was there. At last he took out his reading glasses, which an overeager optician’s employee had palmed off on him after a free vision test. Used them as a magnifying glass and with his own eyes could see himself sliding down into an inferno that could only be the outer court of hell.
The evidence, along with the final words in the letter, made Viljar clutch his chest. He could feel the pain radiate out to his arms. The blood disappeared from his head, and his throat constricted. He couldn’t breathe, while the chest pains only increased in intensity. In a final spasm, he grabbed the phone and called 911.
While Viljar lay on the floor waiting for the ambulance, the final words from Jonas buzzed around in his head again and again. There was nothing more to say. He truly deserved to die from this heart attack. He almost hoped that the men in yellow would come too late.
