Requiem

by Geir Tangen

  Sunday evening, October 19, 2014

  The flames were almost five meters in the air from the stake. Lotte could hear the deranged scream of pain all the way up at the command car where she was sitting. She turned away. There was nothing they could do to rescue him. The scream turned into a kind of bellowing howl before it was cut off. It was over in just a few seconds, but for Lotte it felt endlessly longer. Standing by the car and seeing the man be consumed by the flames was a definitive defeat.

  No matter how this ends, we’ve lost, she thought as she slowly sank into a crouch and hid her head in her hands. Despair and hopelessness washed over her while people shouted and screamed in all directions. When she raised her eyes later, she could see that someone had managed to overturn the stake where the body was tied and that they were vainly trying to pour seawater over it. She herself turned toward the car. Didn’t want to see any more. Didn’t want to hear. With trembling hands, she took out the microphone for police coordination and reported the incident. She asked them to send an ambulance, crime scene investigators, and firemen. It all happened mechanically. Action without thought.

  She stood there watching the three police officers who were still running around like confused lice down on the field. What is it they’re stressing about? It’s too late anyway.

  After a few moments, she understood that there was something going on down there. A guy who came running from the harbor was pointing and gesturing wildly to two of the constables. Lotte forced herself out of her apathy and slowly started moving toward them.

  “He was out by the point over there when it started to burn,” she heard the man say loudly as she approached. He showed them the place by pointing over toward the approach to the breakwater. She jogged the last stretch down to the three who were talking together.

  “Who is he? Did you see someone here?” Lotte’s piercing voice made the men flinch.

  The boat owner turned toward her and repeated what he had just said to the two constables. He had seen a man take off in a dinghy around the point more or less at the same time as it started burning.

  “He took the route through Røyksundet,” he specified.

  “And this happened five minutes ago, you say?” Lotte had subdued herself a little so as not to scare the pants off the poor guy.

  He nodded. “Less than that … Three, maybe. He must have come down from the shore, because otherwise I would have noticed him from my boat.”

  Lotte called the others to her. Here they had to pivot quickly. There was still hope they’d be able to stop that bastard. If he was on his way to town in the dinghy, at any rate.

  “Knut, you go with me in the car. The two of you stay here and watch the crime scene. Don’t let anyone else wander in before the CSIs are on-site. Okay? Not the ambulance personnel either if it’s possible to stop them. Viljar is dead, and right now we don’t need twelve men tramping down the field around him.”

  She jogged back up to the car. The energy came as soon as she glimpsed a hope of getting ahold of the killer. She threw herself into the driver’s seat and barely waited for Knut to get his long limbs in place before she screeched off on the narrow road while gravel sprayed around the car. The undercarriage scraped as she flew over the first bump. She had Knut call the response center and ask them to be on the lookout for a white dinghy, with one man on board, on its way north in Karmsundet.

  “Damn it that we don’t have a police boat here! Then we could have cut him off before he made it to land.”

  They had to hope and believe that he was following his own manuscript. In that case, he would have a bit of a welcoming committee. She called the police station and asked to be transferred to Harald Madsen, who had been allowed to use her office and quickly made himself comfortable in her chair.

  “Harald! Lotte here … Double-check the killer’s escape route from Lindøy. What does he do, and where does he come ashore? We know it said Haugesund, but look over the details.” Harald cleared his throat and she heard the sound of loose pages being turned right by the phone.

  It took a few endless seconds before Harald cleared his throat yet again. He’d found something.

  “In the book, he leaves the victim before it starts burning, and takes his boat back to the pier in Haugesund to a place he calls … Wait a moment … the Bakarøy breakwater.”

  Lotte knew it was risky business to bet everything on one card, but she had no other choice, the way things were now. An emergency response team could be ready to take him if he followed his own recipe. He would need over thirty minutes on the trip north in a little dinghy, she thought. If he deviated from his own writings, they would lose him. Again!

  Lotte drove even faster. She scraped bushes and the edge of ditches before she threw the car out on the main road by the entrance to the new subway connection. Knut Veldetun gave her a frightened look from where he was hanging on to the seat belt, trying to steady himself with one hand on the strap above the passenger door.

  Cars moved over to the side of the road in all directions, and new routes constantly opened up where before there was traffic. Only when the car just barely managed to stay on the road in the roundabout at Raglamyr did Lotte seem to realize that there were limits to speed even in a police response. BMW M3 was not the standard police vehicle, after all. Between the many roundabouts leading into the city center, she stepped on the gas anyway, far beyond what was reasonable driving. This time nothing would stop her. For the first time since the whole thing started, they were ahead of him. For the first time, she was the one who was the hunter and he was the prey.

  Over the police radio, she arranged full call-out to the Bakarøy breakwater, but discreetly so that lights and sirens could not be seen from the sea. The police should park nearby and keep out of sight. Everyone should be armed. The killer should be overpowered as he came on land. This was the only chance they had to stop him, the way Lotte saw it. If he discovered them, it was guaranteed that he would deviate from the original plan. The trump card they had by knowing about the unpublished manuscript would be lost if he discovered them before the arrest and had the opportunity to get away.

  At the roundabout at Flotmyr, she turned the car toward the city center, while she turned off the rotating blue lights. She hadn’t used the siren since she passed the city line. Two minutes later, she parked the police car by the Billed Gallery and unlocked the gun from the car. Put on bulletproof vest and helmet. She checked Knut’s equipment, and he checked hers, before they made their way down toward the bridge that led over to Hasseløy. They crouched down while they ran across the bridge so they wouldn’t be visible from the sound. For the time being, there was no boat to be seen on its way in toward the breakwater, and the two police officers were quickly waved over to the side of the response force. If the perpetrator came in here, he wouldn’t have a chance.

  Hasseløy, Haugesund

  Sunday evening, October 19, 2014

  The little dinghy was not moving very fast. For those who were waiting on land, it seemed like an eternity from when the first reports came in from the operations post until they could see the outlines of the boat that kept an even speed toward land. In an ideal world, there wouldn’t have been any other boats on the sea, but it just wasn’t like that. A warm autumn evening in Haugesund obviously enticed boat owners out, even if a good many had put their boats into winter hibernation. It was Sunday, and weekend sailors were gradually turning their noses homeward toward the pier.

  What Lotte in her confusion had thought would be a simple task turned out to be a rare test of patience. Time estimates showed that the dinghy ought to have been in the harbor at least ten minutes ago, but it wasn’t. Many boats had come and gone, but none that matched the description from the man on Lindøy. Not until now. She’d felt frustration seething again and again. She called the officers who were on Lindøy to get a more precise description of the boat they were hunting. The man maintained that it was white with a horizontal dark gray stripe. The boat had a small out
board motor, and there was certainly not room for more than three or four people on board. That was all. Strictly speaking, that description fit half a dozen boats that had been on Karmsundet the past half hour, but none of them had set a course toward the Bakarøy breakwater. This one, on the other hand, had.

  There was a crackle in the receiver she had in her ear. The observation post up by the bridge was calling her.

  “Sierra One, two persons have been observed on board. I repeat … Two persons on board the object.”

  Lotte was about to stand up from her hiding place, but she restrained herself. She wouldn’t be able to confirm the observation from here anyway. She asked the ops post to verify, and immediately got confirmation.

  “There is no doubt, Sierra One. There are two persons on board. One steering the boat, and a figure who is sitting in the bow.” Lotte cursed out loud and got a surprised look from Knut, who was lying beside her on the rock-covered slope. She didn’t understand a thing. Was it the wrong boat? Had they failed again, or did he have his next victim with him in the boat already? The questions were piling up, but there was little she could do about it. They just had to wait and see. The problem was that the arrest would be much more difficult now, as the man had a potential hostage. They couldn’t risk putting the other person in danger by moving in the way they’d planned.

  A new scenario struck her. What if it turns out to be two perpetrators who are working together? She dismissed that as quickly as she thought it. For one thing, it would be too improbable that there would be two such perpetrators in the same city and, as if that weren’t enough, who worked together besides. For another, there was nothing in the book that referred to more than one perpetrator. “Maestro” worked alone. There was no doubt whatsoever about that. Which might mean that the other person in the boat was either blissfully ignorant of what danger he or she was in, or else the person was a captive.

  Lotte turned to the side and called the police station. She hadn’t read the scene where the killer puts to shore by the breakwater. Only Harald Madsen had. The joker hadn’t forgotten to inform them that there were two in the boat, had he? She was transferred at once.

  “No, Lotte, there’s nothing about that here anyway. He’s alone when he comes to shore. But having said that, not everything matches a hundred percent here. He has deviated from the original plan a few times. He’s not psychic.”

  Lotte felt a headache coming on. She must have answers. The others waited for her commands now as the situation had suddenly changed.

  “Is Scheldrup Hansen there with you?”

  Harald Madsen answered affirmatively and handed the phone to the Kripos investigator.

  “Olav, I need answers quickly. Based on this guy’s psyche, how probable is it that he has picked up a hostage that he’s dragged with him on the boat?”

  There was silence a few seconds before he answered the question.

  “Based on his profile, I can’t get it to add up. In any event, if what Harald says is true, he hasn’t written anything about it in the manuscript. The guy seems almost manic about getting things to match the script. He evidently has a very clear intention of re-creating his own book, and the way I see it, he wants to exert himself very far to avoid major changes. Taking another person with him on the boat doesn’t seem very likely in that scenario. Having said that, he must have noticed us when we almost caught him at Lindøy, so he may well have put two and two together and realized that we know about the manuscript. In that case, it would be madness to stick to it.”

  “Madness, damn it? The guy is crazy!”

  “Yes, of course, but not in the sense that he doesn’t know what he’s up to. He’s not irrational and unbalanced. He apparently has full control, and seen that way, he would never think of ruining the rest of his plot by ending up in a hostage situation. Are you sure that it really is him on his way into the breakwater? That it’s not just someone who’s been out on a pleasure cruise in this nice weather?”

  Lotte hung up. She didn’t need Scheldrup Hansen’s overbearing truisms. In rapid succession, she called up the three groups of police. Asked them to hold off and not follow the original plan of arrest in case he came ashore. She asked them to wait until they had a closer observation of who was in the boat, any weapons, and if the other person was in any form of danger.

  Out on the sound, the dinghy approached the breakwater. Everything appeared normal. Nothing indicated that it was a man under pressure who was guiding the boat, or that the passenger felt threatened in any way.

  “Sierra One, there are two men in the boat. We have not observed any form of weapon. Neither of the two appears to be threatened by the other in any way.”

  Lotte now had a clear view to the boat as it slowly moved toward land. She put the binoculars to her eyes and focused. A brief cry came from her lips before she collected herself. The skipper had a bearskin cap pulled down over his head and was impossible to identify through the binoculars. An older man around sixty, she guessed. But it wasn’t the skipper who made her break her sound protocol. It was the sight of the slightly uncomfortable passenger. A worn, thin, and stoop-shouldered figure. Lotte held her breath. Looked again and again. There was no doubt. The passenger in the boat was Viljar Ravn Gudmundsson.

  Four years earlier …

  Stemmen, Haugesund

  Tuesday evening, August 31, 2010

  Fredric Karjoli turned away. Crawled on his knees farther in under the trees. What he had seen wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. The scream from the bridge still echoed in his ears. This isn’t true. This isn’t happening.

  The terrifying sight from the bridge whisked away the last little scrap of hope. There was no way back.

  Fredric tried to stand up. He had to get away. He had solemnly promised to stay away from Eivindsvatnet, but he hadn’t been able to. He wanted to be there. Make sure that nothing went wrong. Warn Jonas of the threat if the police were waiting for him up there. He realized suddenly how naïve he’d been. Jonas must have known what could happen. There was no other reasonable basis to refuse to let Fredric be present. All of Norway knew they were on the run together. He didn’t need to hide it. Not even from his family.

  “I can’t travel with you without apologizing to Mom,” Jonas had said.

  Travel … As if it were only a vacation trip. As if what had happened wouldn’t lead to a manhunt all over the world.

  “She’s not coming alone, Jonas. For God’s sake, we killed your sister. Do you think she’ll go there without taking the police with her?”

  “I don’t know, Fredric. That’s why you shouldn’t be there. If Mom reports me, that’s great. No matter what, I won’t be able to go on living without having talked with her.”

  Speak of the devil, thought Fredric.

  Jonas hadn’t said anything more to him before he left him in the grove of trees down by Haraldsvang and started walking up toward Stemmen, where he and his mother had agreed to meet. None of Fredric’s protests had helped. Instead it meant that he couldn’t keep his promise. As the rain picked up, he followed his friend at a safe distance to avoid being discovered. Once there, he had hidden by the boathouse. With a clear view to the bridge, he could see everything. Including the inconceivable, which was never meant for his eyes.

  The whole thing happened so fast that Fredric had no time to react. Mother and son in a tight embrace at one moment. The next moment, Jonas’s legs disappeared over the edge. A horrible scream as the woman who gave him life also took life from him.

  When five minutes later Fredric ventured out from his hiding place on wobbly legs, the bridge was abandoned. No one was in sight. He was shaking like an aspen leaf. His knees were about to buckle. Fredric held on hard to the railing while he looked down into the abyss. Spied for his lover. It was much too dark. After shouting himself hoarse, he sank down on his knees and cried. He vaguely glimpsed that there was a person standing over him.

  Fredric couldn’t bear to see whether it was her. It was all over rega
rdless. It was only when the person started talking to him that he realized that others had ventured out in the storm.

  “Do you need help?”

  Fredric nodded. Sobbed out some words that were so unclear, he had to say them again.

  “Call the police. I’m Fredric Karjoli. I think they’re searching for me.”

  The man stood up abruptly and walked away from him, but Fredric could hear him mumbling on the phone farther away. Minutes later, he sensed a blue shimmer from a police car in his peripheral vision. No sirens. Just blue lights. Through the small glimmers of cold blue light, he could see the bottom of the dam. Jonas’s red T-shirt showed where he had landed.

  Hasseløy, Haugesund

  Sunday evening, October 19, 2014

  On their way in toward the breakwater, Viljar had a strange sensation of being observed by a thousand eyes. He shook off the feeling and stared at André Ferkingstad, who was sitting in the stern, steering the dinghy. The old churchman had been seconds from breaking the fifth commandment. If everything had gone according to plan, Viljar would have been in the company of a cement block, down in the depths outside Røvær. Jonas’s bitter father had come to his senses, however. Listened to him. Heard his plea.

  The moment when he was standing there in the door to the boathouse, he had given no sign of a man who would relent. The tall, broad-shouldered man stood ramrod straight and observed Viljar. No Bible in the world could convert him. Nevertheless, it had happened. Viljar didn’t know what changed his mind, but he thought it was the sincerity. The honesty. The repentant sinner.

  Viljar had seen the hatred in the eyes of the aging man. The desperation. The sorrow. The despair … All the pain. This was the hour of reckoning, and even if Viljar was aware that it would probably end with his own death, it felt good anyway. He should have had this reckoning long ago. Then perhaps both of them could have moved forward with their grief.