Requiem

by Geir Tangen

  Viljar felt the surge of nausea again and again. At last it was impossible to stop. The taste of bile that seeped up through his esophagus and settled like moldy water in his mouth was too much. It felt as if the entire contents of his stomach came out at one time. He didn’t have a chance to turn his head to the side, reach a sink or a toilet. He was tied up to one of the structural beams in the room where he was imprisoned. His arms around the beam. His head was held up by another strap, which was attached under his chin, just tight enough that it didn’t slide down around his throat.… His legs were taped together at the ankles. The only route the vomit could take was over his chest and lap.

  The acrid smell that struck him seconds after the first wave came immediately started another, more powerful wave of vomiting. The strap under his chin moved backwards a little, toward his Adam’s apple. The stomach cramps did not let up until the last remnant of bile and acid was out in the open air. Viljar felt helpless sitting there in his own vomit, waiting for the final judgment. He tried to hang on to a final scrap of dignity by refusing to think about how he looked, and about the yellow pools that he could feel were bathing his lap. That it should all end like this came as a surprise. Despite his anxiety problems, he had pictured a dignified finish for himself.

  The pieces of the puzzle had fallen into place when he confirmed who was in the room with him. At least three, and probably four, people had to pay with their lives simply so that the perpetrator could have his great, grandiose finish with Viljar. The killer could have made it much simpler, sparing innocent lives along the way, but he didn’t want that. Evidently he wanted Viljar to have more blood on his hands than he already did. Simply so that Viljar would feel regret. Feel what he had really done that time he betrayed Jonas.

  Why couldn’t he have stepped forward and taken the hit back then? Why couldn’t he have admitted all the guilt and let the damned newspaper job go? Then this wouldn’t have happened. Then Ranveig would still be alive.

  Viljar tried to shove all the negative thoughts out of his head. Regardless of how hopeless that was, he had to keep his courage up. He knew he couldn’t get himself loose, but he was alone. The kidnapper had gone out. It was quiet. Several times Viljar tried to shout. Only three times had he heard signs of what might be human activity outside. He’d shouted himself hoarse, but to no avail.

  If Viljar were to get help, it had to happen now. He needed the last remnant of his voice in case he heard someone outside. He had to make a sound another way. A way that didn’t wear him out. The way he was sitting now, the solution presented itself. He had to call with his legs. Three short thumps. Three long ones. Three new short ones. Pause … Repeat … Pause …

  Viljar focused a hundred percent on the Morse code signal. It seemed completely idiotic, but in a way, it gave him new hope and new courage. If someone walked past, they would hear it. The SOS signal was known by everyone, even children.… He encouraged himself to continue even if his legs got tired. The small thumps were his last wisp of hope, and it gave him something to think about other than what was waiting. Maybe it would be over in a few minutes or a few hours. Maybe this evening. He didn’t know, and in a sense he was happy about that. Knowing would be worse. Now he had at least a straw of time, and a regular, thumping communication out toward the world.

  Viljar went into a kind of self-hypnosis. The thumps became more and more distant from him, like echoes from a parallel world that didn’t concern him. For that reason, he didn’t notice the first sounds outside. Strolling steps in the gravel that stopped and listened.

  It was only when the steps in the gravel were heard again that Viljar was torn out of his trance. All the nerve endings in his body reacted at the same time. His body tensed and he roared as loud as he was able. The steps in the gravel continued. The person out there could not help hearing him now, yet the steps became more distant. He screamed again and again. When he had no breath left, he listened. Outside, it was completely quiet.

  He was unable to stop the sobbing that welled up through his sore throat. Not until a few minutes later did he hear a click in what must be a lock from the floor below. His heart was racing. Viljar roared. Steps were heard on the stairs. There was creaking in every single step. The straps around his chin prevented him from turning his head toward the stairs.

  The steps stopped at the doorway. Viljar was sobbing more than shouting now. Why didn’t the person standing there come over to him? He got the answer three seconds later. The person who stood in the doorway started laughing out loud.

  Viljar collapsed, and in a way that was fine. Now it was finally over. It was the beginning of the end, and it was what he deserved. Only the judgment awaited; then his soul would be free. That freedom no one could take from him.…

  Media House Haugesund News

  Sunday afternoon, October 19, 2014

  Olav Scheldrup Hansen wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. Even if the new Haugesund News building had a well-functioning air-conditioning system, the sun sneaked through the window where he was sitting. The investigator was taking saliva samples from the employees. After yesterday’s fiasco, the prosecutor’s office had also gotten stressed and impatient. The press was screaming at them from magazines and websites. Getting permission to obtain DNA samples from those who’d been in the newspaper building on Thursday was suddenly unproblematic. The cotton swabs were lined up like soldiers before him. One holder with marked swabs, and one for unused ones. Scheldrup Hansen focused on the task. Registered employees one by one as they came in, and had their mouths scraped with the cotton swab. Exchanged a few words with each of them to write down where they were at the relevant time, and if they had heard or seen anything. There was nothing new that could illuminate the dark tunnel they found themselves in.

  Right before the two final samples were to be taken, editor Johan Øveraas came into view in the doorway. He showed signs that he wanted to have a word with the investigator. The man looked nervous and uncomfortable. Scheldrup Hansen decided to finish the last two samples first, so he signaled to the editor to wait outside. The man sat down on a chair and started tapping on his phone.

  When he was finished ten minutes later, he followed Øveraas into his office. He was placed in the editor’s chair with Johan standing behind him. In front of him was a sizable computer screen. The screen saver sent figures back and forth. A psychedelic pattern of shapes. Øveraas touched the mouse slightly and then clicked on the mail icon for Outlook.

  With practiced fingers, he went to an email with a familiar heading. It was him. A new judgment was pronounced in front of the eyes of Olav Scheldrup Hansen and Johan Øveraas.

  He had read it so many times now that the only thing that was of interest was which “sin” was to be punished, and the letter and number code at the bottom that could tell how the whole thing would happen. Scheldrup Hansen scrolled down until he found what he needed.

  The code was HM-5-1. He wrote it down on a note on his cell phone. The mortal sin was laughable.

  The investigator shook his head before he looked up at Johan Øveraas. “You’re kidding me now.… Lies!… Lies! He can’t very well send folks to the boatman because they’ve lied on some occasion or other? This is completely over the top!” Olav cleared his throat. Thought about it.

  “I don’t know if you’ve thought about this before, but this doesn’t look genuine at all. It doesn’t seem as if he bothers to ever put any weight behind his arguments. It looks as if the guy is bored while he writes.”

  “What you’re saying there is a bull’s-eye,” said Scheldrup Hansen. “We have no faith at all that this is a man with the slightest trace of morals. The fictional judgments are a pretext … I—”

  Olav Scheldrup Hansen bit off his own sentence when he noticed the oily grin of the editor.

  “Damn it, you can’t use what I said in your newspaper! You don’t dare!”

  Scheldrup Hansen overturned the office chair as he left Øveraas in fury. He call
ed Lotte as soon as he came out in the hall.

  “Olav here. Has the patrol gotten hold of Ferkingstad yet? In that case, they should check whether he has cell phone or Wi-Fi in the vicinity. You see, we just got a new email. Øveraas is the recipient this time.”

  “And?… You can forget Ferkingstad. I have something much better. I have a name.”

  “A name?”

  “Yes, I know who we’re searching for. I have his name right in front of me.”

  Haugesund Police Station

  Sunday afternoon, October 19, 2014

  The phone call from the publisher Harald Madsen had cut the Gordian knot. It was the kind of call every investigator dreams of, but unfortunately happens only once in a blue moon. An outsider who has the answer and the solution. A little, random detail that makes everything fall into place. She had always had faith that they would find the killer, but not this way. Not because a person from somewhere else suddenly called and gave them the name. It was unbelievable, and pleasant. She breathed out slowly. There had been enough fiascos. They had underestimated him at every turn, but now they knew who was sitting on the other side of the table.

  Her phone rang. It was Madsen again. This time from a taxi en route from Helganes to Haugesund. She’d asked him to jump on the first flight from Gardermoen as soon as he’d said what he had on his mind. In his baggage, he had with him what would hopefully give them all the answers they were waiting for. The manuscript. Obviously it would have been simplest to email the manuscript, but it had been submitted in paper form. The company computer register showed only the filing number, title, and author.

  What they struggled to understand had been written down three years ago. Harald Madsen had recognized the sequence of events once he’d read through the newspaper articles. It all added up. The killings were performed in the same way and in the same sequence as in a manuscript his publishing house had received. A very poor manuscript, to be sure. Harald Madsen had not hesitated to refuse the “mess,” as he put it. It was a barely believable story, written with a weak pen. The clichés were like snails in a rain-filled pasture, Madsen said.

  Lotte was not entirely able to see what was banal about what had gone on in the city the past week. It was bloody, ghastly, and genuine. As far as she could see from searches on the internet, the book and the author were not anywhere to be found. The book must not have been published. Madsen, in other words, was not the only one who had rejected the manuscript. The killer had evidently decided to show the world that his crime story measured up. He was his own copycat, with an unknown recipe in his hands. But … thanks to Alfa Madsen Publishers’ filing procedures, the manuscript would soon be in her hands too. This was something the killer had not expected. That will give us an advantage, thought Lotte.

  As far as Madsen could recall, the manuscript and the events were very coincidental, both in dramaturgy and time interval. In practice, almost a carbon copy.

  When half an hour later Harald Madsen was in Lotte’s office at the police building and rattling off how he had just barely managed to both book a seat on Norwegian Air’s afternoon departure and get to Gardermoen in time, Lotte Skeisvoll listened with half an ear. The only thing that meant anything was in the bag he had over his shoulder. She’d gotten the name on the phone, but it was the details in the manuscript she needed now.

  Besides herself and the editor from Gjøvik, she had managed to get hold of Olav, Knut, Lars, and the police chief. That would have to do for now. Besides the fact that it would have required some logistics to call in the whole team, which now was made up of seventeen men, there was a rationale for keeping this information internal. The press must not get hold of what Madsen had. The killer must not for anything in the world know that they knew who he was.

  Besides, he probably had Viljar at an unknown place, and for that reason, he hadn’t been arrested yet, but was under constant and precise monitoring.

  Plainclothes policemen were placed no more than fifty meters from him at any time. In his house, which had been searched in total secrecy, Lotte hoped they would find Viljar, but the house was empty of anything that could expose him. He must have access to another place from which he could operate.

  Madsen was duly placed on a stick-back chair with a cup of coffee in his hand, and he was just about to take the manuscript out of his bag when a constable from the team stuck his head in the door. The same stripling who had been with her up to Fjellvegen less than a week ago, she noted.

  “Listen, Lotte, can I have two words with you?”

  She sighed, but managed to paste on a fake smile before she answered. “As perhaps you see, we’re a little busy here. Can it wait, do you think?” Lotte was unable to conceal the sarcasm.

  The constable looked around a little in confusion at the people who were sitting like herring in a can inside the little office, nodded in recognition to Lars and Knut, before he replied. “I think the meeting room down the hall is free if you need it.…” The constable got no further. He quickly noticed that the gaze of both Lotte and the police chief had blackened. “Whatever … It probably can’t wait. I think we’ve solved the code in the email we got from Øveraas, and then we know how…”

  Lotte softened up a little. This was good news. She nodded curtly at him to continue. He cleared his throat a few times.

  Clearly nervous.

  “Uh … It took a little time, because we didn’t find any Norwegian crime author with the initials HM. It may be that he doesn’t just use Norwegian ones, and in that case, we think that HM stands for Henning Mankell.”

  Once again, he looked around at the gathering in order to get confirmation that he was on the right track. Everyone except for the worn-out guy with the bag in the middle nodded.

  “The code refers in that case to Henning Mankell’s fifth book. The first murder. We have proceeded based on his crime novel bibliography, because that’s what’s used in the others. The fifth book is titled Sidetracked, and the scene being referred to is—”

  “The fire in the rape field.” The man with the bag had interrupted the constable before he got to the point.

  “That’s right. A girl burns herself to death in the middle of a rape field.”

  Lotte felt her heart sink like a stone in her chest. Of all the ghastly ways to die, this was one of the worst.

  “He can’t mean that seriously, can he? Does he intend to set fire to someone?” Knut Veldetun’s outburst was an echo of the others’ thoughts.

  The only one who wasn’t shocked was Harald Madsen. “I’m afraid that’s exactly what he intends to do. He wrote this,” said Madsen, lifting a bundle of paper tied together with string out of his backpack. He set it on the table. Everyone’s eyes were fixed like flies to flypaper on the first page of the manuscript, where the title and author were written in capital letters:

  MAESTRO by GEIR TANGEN

  Haugesund Police Station

  Sunday evening, October 19, 2014

  Everything suddenly seemed so common now that they had a name to relate to. An ordinary name. An ordinary man with a completely ordinary job. An elementary-school teacher. Nowhere near the profile Olav Scheldrup Hansen had drawn up for him. A family man with a wife and kids. A known, humor-filled face in the local community. Recognized soccer supporter, former politician, and someone constantly seen on local TV.

  “He must have lost his mind.”

  It was Lars Stople who broke the silence in the room after Harald Madsen placed the printout of the manuscript on the table. Only two of those in the room looked inquisitively at Lars. Olav Scheldrup Hansen and Harald Madsen obviously didn’t know who this guy was. For them, it was just a name on a piece of paper.

  “Does that mean you already know who he is?”

  Harald Madsen gave Lotte a look of surprise. He obviously could not know that this was a name many people in the city recognized.

  “Yes, Tangen is a familiar name here in Haugesund,” Lotte replied.

  “We’ve followed Geir
Tangen closely all afternoon since we got the name from you. We hope that he’ll lead us to where he’s keeping the journalist hidden,” Knut Veldetun added.

  Harald Madsen suddenly looked embarrassed, and he cleared his throat several times before he said anything.

  “I think you can release him.… Didn’t you hear what I said when I spoke with you on the phone, Skeisvoll?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I said that your killer had submitted a manuscript to us under the pseudonym Geir Tangen.”

  “And that means…?”

  “A pseudonym is a false name that some authors use when they publish books in order to conceal their real identity. Maria Amelie was in the air a few years ago, but that’s not her real name. In the classic literature, we find pseudonyms like George Orwell, for example. His real name was Eric Arthur Blair.”

  Lotte felt her cheeks turning red. This was not just embarrassing. This was downright catastrophic.

  “Are you telling me that we really don’t know the name of the killer anyway? Are we shadowing an innocent guy out there, while the one we want to get ahold of is probably about to set fire to someone in some field or other?”

  Harald Madsen held her gaze a long time, but lowered it at last, even if he wasn’t the one who had lost the battle. It was decidedly she.

  “Uh … Yes.”

  “Damn it all to hell! Are you an idiot? You must have realized that it was the real name of the killer I wanted, not a fucking pen name!”

  Lotte was yelling. Everyone in the room hunched up. The seconds dragged by in silence. She looked at the tabletop for a while, straightened out a corner of the tablecloth before she took a breath and decided. A few minutes later, the room was almost empty. The police chief left the office after having assured himself that Lotte had control. Left behind was a bewildered Harald Madsen and a worn-out edition of Detective Inspector Lotte Skeisvoll.