by Thomas Enger
I heard Mork call for an ambulance, giving them Imo’s and Tobias’s location. Then he gave the operator Imo’s phone number. The last thing Mork said before hanging up, was ‘hurry’.
Then he looked at me.
‘Is he … is he going to be alright?’ I stammered.
‘I…’ Mork paused, then continued: ‘I don’t know.’
It was all too unreal. My throat was tight, but I didn’t cry. Perhaps it was too early for tears. I had to find out what had happened first, and why.
‘Did he do it while … Imo was talking to you?’ I asked.
‘Seems like it,’ Mork said.
‘But … how? How did he try to do it?’
The inspector put a hand on my shoulder. ‘Imo said that he’d swallowed something, a pill or … maybe lots of them – he wasn’t sure. He just fell forward in his seat.’ Mork took a deep breath. ‘Imo put down his phone when it happened. From what I could hear, it sounded like he slammed on the brakes, ran over to the other side of the car and pulled your brother out onto the road. Then he stuck his fingers down his throat and got him to vomit. But…’ Mork looked around ‘…Imo doesn’t know if he’d got it all up.’
I tried to picture it. Imo must have reacted fast. We could only hope that he’d been fast enough.
‘An ambulance will be there very soon,’ Mork said. ‘And then your brother will be in the best possible hands.’
It was cold comfort, though. I couldn’t help feeling that this was partly my fault. I had half accused Tobias of being a murderer the night before. Maybe I’d pushed him over the edge.
‘Would you like to go to the hospital yourself?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, please.’
Mork took me to his police car and let me in.
‘And what about your mother?’ he asked.
‘She’s at Knut’s. Should we go and collect her?’
He nodded and got in beside me.
I sat and stared at the road in silence as we drove to Knut’s. Mork didn’t say anything either; so I was left to my own thoughts: Was Tobias really in such a bad way? How much had he really suffered?
When Mum came out of the flat, her eyes were flooded with tears. She ran over and threw her arms around me, then sobbed against my neck. I let her do it; this was not the time to be angry because she’d slapped me.
It took us about thirty minutes to get to the hospital. We found Imo in a waiting room on the first floor. He got up as soon as he saw us.
Mum ran over and grabbed him, wanting to know how Tobias was.
‘They’re trying to … to pump his stomach,’ Imo said, holding her arm. ‘He’s got a tube down here…’ He pointed at his throat. ‘And they’re … flushing him out.’
‘What does that mean?’ Mum shouted.
‘They’re trying to get him to vomit as much as possible.’
I pulled a face.
‘And then they’ll give him activated charcoal. It binds itself to any poison that’s left, so it doesn’t enter his system. And then it will be discharged normally.’
Mum cried uncontrollably for a few more minutes. We all stood around, not knowing what to do.
Finally she pulled herself together enough to ask Imo to tell her exactly what had happened from the time he found Tobias to the moment he collapsed in the car. Even though Imo said everything slowly and clearly, I wasn’t sure Mum was able to take much in. She just stood there, her face blank, shaking her head.
‘Can I see him?’ she asked, when Imo was finished.
‘His body’s had a bit of bashing, so I’m not sure that now’s the right time to—’
‘I just want to see him,’ she begged.
‘I spoke to the nurse just before you came. It’s not possible. At least not yet. We have to give his body time to deal with this and then we might be able to talk to him later.’
Later, I thought. What would happen later?
Would my brother be sectioned? And how should we care for him if he wasn’t? How could we make sure that he stayed away from drugs? Would we manage?
There was nothing we could do at the moment, other than wait.
The only thing I knew with one hundred percent certainty was that nothing would ever be the same again.
62
Yngve summoned everyone in the task force to a quick meeting in the town’s arts centre. It took some time for everyone to get there, as they’d been scattered around Fredheim and local areas, looking for Tobias.
Yngve quickly brought them up to speed on the latest developments in the case.
‘Wow,’ Therese Kyrkjebø said.
‘Wow?’ Yngve raised his eyebrows. She looked pale, as if she was about to vomit.
‘It’s just that it’s a huge surprise. If Tobias was already suicidal, why wait until Imo found him before trying anything? Why wait until they were headed back to Fredheim?’
‘Two theories,’ said Davidsen. He’d placed himself at the other end of the conference table from where Yngve was standing. ‘One: Tobias had gone to Solstad to escape his dull Fredheim life. He despised the thought of going back so intensely that he decided he couldn’t take it anymore. The means to do so were in his hands or his pocket or whatever.’
‘Tobias did spend a lot of time by himself,’ Yngve said. ‘And a few people are saying that he’s a bit socially inept, but that’s not unusual in a teenager. Doesn’t necessarily mean they hate their lives to the extent that they want to end it.’
‘I agree with you on that,’ Davidsen said. ‘That was only my first theory. My second theory…’ He waited a moment, to make sure he had everybody’s attention. ‘My second theory is that he knew he had questions to answer when he got back here. Why he was at the school play that night? What kind of relationship did he have with Mari? If it was Tobias who killed her and the other kids, a suicide could easily solve that problem. He wouldn’t have to answer to anyone. He wouldn’t have to go to prison. Wouldn’t have to bear being labelled a killer for the rest of his life.’
Davidsen’s second theory seemed to resonate better with the task force. The thought had occurred Yngve too.
‘But it doesn’t quite add up,’ he said. ‘In his chats with Mari, Tobias’s tone was normal. Friendly. Nothing there to indicate he felt any anger towards her.’
‘So what was he doing with her keys?’ asked Vibeke Hanstveit.
‘I don’t know,’ Yngve said.
None of them spoke for a few moments.
‘How is he?’ Therese asked.
‘I don’t know yet,’ Yngve said.
Weedon, the tech analyst, entered the room. ‘Sorry I’m late,’ he said. ‘I was in the middle of something.’
He found a seat, and from the expression on his face Yngve could tell that Weedon had something he wanted to share. Yngve nodded to him.
‘I was just going through Tobias’s computer,’ Weedon said. ‘I checked his chat log with this Ruben guy from Solstad. They did agree that Ruben was going to come and pick Tobias up last night, and yes, it appears that Tobias had managed to get hold of some drugs. Then I checked their messages going a bit further back. And I cross-referenced those messages with the time of Børre Halvorsen’s murder.’
The room was dead quiet, hanging on Weedon’s words.
‘Tobias and Ruben were chatting non-stop between midnight and two a.m. that night,’ Weedon continued. ‘Børre Halvorsen’s body was found under Fredheim Bridge at half past midnight.’
No one said anything for a long time.
‘So Tobias didn’t kill Børre,’ Vibeke Hanstveit concluded with a heavy sigh. ‘He couldn’t have.’
‘Not unless someone else was sitting there in Tobias’s place, chatting to Ruben.’
Which is highly unlikely, Yngve thought.
‘Maybe he was just depressed, then,’ Therese said. ‘Like Davidsen first suggested.’
Yngve could tell that a lot of energy had left the room. Åse was standing at the back, urging him to say something �
� something positive to motivate them all. He went over to the whiteboard where the names of the people most important to the case were written in capital letters, with a few keywords underneath each one.
‘Let’s first see if Tobias makes it through this,’ Yngve said with a sigh. ‘Meanwhile, we just have to work the other clues. Let’s go through them all one more time, see if we come up with something fresh.’
His phone rang. Yngve pulled it from his back trouser pocket.
It was Reidar Lindgren. Mari’s uncle.
‘I have to take this,’ he said to the room. ‘Hi Reidar,’ he said as he walked out into the corridor. ‘What’s going on? Have you managed to get hold of your brother?’
There were traffic noises in the background.
‘No,’ Reidar said. ‘I still don’t know where Frode is. But I’ve found something in his room that … that worries me a bit.’
‘What is it?’ Yngve asked, suddenly excited.
It took a few seconds before Reidar Lindgren replied:
‘A bloody T-shirt.’
63
Susanne was looking at a picture she had taken of Tobias with her phone a few weeks before. He had been caught unawares, and he’d become angry, demanding that she delete it straightaway.
She hadn’t, though, simply because the photo had made her laugh. She needed something to laugh at from time to time. His half-closed eyes made him look drowsy. Maybe he was on drugs then. As soon as the thought entered her mind, she wanted to delete the picture immediately. She wondered if that’s how he’d looked when Imo had found him.
On the picture Tobias had just a few hairs on his upper lip, but his face in general was covered in spots. Some red, some dark purple – almost blue. He always hid his face under caps or hoodies.
Susanne drew a heavy breath. She had tried to help him as best she could, hadn’t she? It wasn’t easy when hormones were running freely, when he didn’t care about hygiene and when he didn’t eat proper food. Susanne knew the food problem was mostly her fault, but Tobias didn’t eat fish, he hated salad, and when she knew that he wasn’t doing very well in any aspect of his life, she usually ended up cooking or buying all his favourites, just to make him a little bit happier. She had done her best, hadn’t she? So how the hell could this happen?
She closed her eyes, glad she was sitting down. The words Imo had used to describe Tobias’s state bounced back and forth inside her mind. She was trying to breathe and swallow, but it was hard to do both at the same time. Something was ringing in her ears as well – loud noises, high-pitched voices. And the light, switching from bright white to pitch-black. It made her head spin.
Tobias had seemed happy to get away from his school at Solstad and that stupid thing with that phony cry-baby, Amalie. But after they had settled in Fredheim once more, he’d only isolated himself more and more. Good friends were hard to come by. Susanne knew that only too well.
She opened her eyes and walked up and down a little, stopping again in front of a mirror, where she took a good, hard look at herself. The black, short hair. The dark pouches around the eyes. The wrinkles on either side of her mouth, like two parenthesis around her lips.
She saw a mother. A terrible, despicable mother.
A human being who deserved to be every bit as miserable as she was. She had had it coming, hadn’t she, with the way she’d handled her life? The way she had acted, the choices she’d made. The way she’d allowed her children to fend for themselves. Because that was what she’d done, wasn’t it? She wanted to punch the mirror, smash it into a thousand pieces. Just to punish that ugly face.
‘When was the last time you had something to eat?’
She turned and looked at Even.
‘Last night, maybe,’ she replied finally.
‘We better get you some food, then. There must be a canteen or something around here somewhere.’
‘I’m not leaving Tobias.’
‘You need to eat, Mum.’
‘I don’t want to eat. I don’t feel like it.’
Even looked to Knut for assistance. ‘Go on,’ Knut said. ‘Get yourself something to eat. You’ve got your phone. I’ll call you if there’s any change.’
Susanne didn’t have the strength to fight the both of them. She also knew they were making sense. She’d only had a piece of bread last night with her glasses of red.
They took the elevator down to the first floor, where they found a canteen that offered soup and sandwiches. Susanne ordered a minestrone. Soup would be easy to eat. Even had a ham and cheese sandwich. He looked at it with a frown.
They took a seat at a round table covered with breadcrumbs and spots of old coffee. A small plant sat in the centre. There were some other people in the café area as well. People with grim-looking faces. They were all eating or drinking coffee almost in silence, eyes staring emptily ahead.
The soup was warm and surprisingly tasty. Susanne could feel her body responding to the sustenance it instantly gave her. She drank some water as well while watching Even try to eat his sandwich. It really didn’t look tasty. White bread with a thick layer of butter. Ham more grey than pink.
They had been sitting there for a few minutes, when Susanne finally spoke.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. She reached her hand across him, to touch his face. Laid it against his cheek, exactly where she’d hit him. ‘I just…’ She looked for the right words to explain – to defend what she’d done, only to realise that she couldn’t find them. There was nothing to defend. She’d crossed a line. A big line, and there was no way to go back over it.
‘It was just a bit too much for me at that moment.’ She lowered her gaze. ‘No child should ever be hit by their parents,’ she added. ‘I’m so sorry.’
Even looked at her. It took a while before he said: ‘But I’m still wondering…’ he took another bite of his sandwich ‘…why it’s so hard for you to talk about this, even after so many years?’
Susanne put her spoon down. She took a deep breath before saying, with a heavy sigh: ‘I guess you have a right to know.’
Susanne hadn’t shared this with many people. Her mother knew, God bless her soul. Knut had asked a few times, but she hadn’t really said anything. But people usually shied away from the topic of Jimmy, simply because they knew how traumatic it had been for her. How painful it still was.
She was certain, however, what people in town thought about her, what they said about her behind her back. That she’d never been able to cope with Jimmy’s death. How she’d drowned her sorrows in alcohol like some kind of walking cliché. That she’d simply run away from Fredheim ten years before. She was sure some even thought she was responsible for Jimmy’s death.
‘I don’t know how much you know about your father,’ she started. ‘But he was very well liked. Everyone loved him around town. Everyone.’ She lifted her chin with a sad smile. ‘Unfortunately Jimmy liked a lot of people, too. I mean, besides me. And I mean that in … well, in that way.’
Even’s jaw fell open.
Maybe, she thought, it was a bad thing to taint the memory of his father like this. But it was the truth. If Even didn’t get it from her, he would get it from someone else later. He certainly didn’t deserve that.
A part of her had always known that they somehow would end up here, back in the past. Back with all the ghosts and the demons of that horrible, horrible day.
‘You know I used to sing in a choir?’
‘Of course,’ Even said. ‘Imo was the conductor.’
‘That’s right.’
Susanne found herself thinking back with fondness. She really did love singing in that choir. Then the bad memories started flooding in again, and she had to take a deep breath before she was able to continue.
‘One day I found some sheet music in the backseat of the car. We sang songs in several voices, and Imo always gave us our own sheet with our name at the top. So we’d know who was going to sing what.’ Susanne looked at the tabletop. ‘Well…’ She stopped
herself. It was as though the words had been buried deep inside her for so long that she was struggling to unearth them again.
She cleared her throat. ‘I found a sheet of music with someone else’s name on it. So … I realised that your dad had had someone else in the car besides me. Someone who sang in the choir.’ She sighed and tossed her head as if to shake something off. ‘I also found some … condoms,’ she said. ‘Or at least, wrappers. Under the seat.’ She shook her head once more.
‘Whose name was on the sheet of music?’ Even asked.
Susanne paused before raising her head, looking directly into Even’s eyes. ‘Julia Hoff,’ she finally said.
‘What?’
‘Oskar’s mother,’ she continued.
Once again Even’s jaw fell open. She didn’t want to tell him how she’d driven home to the Hoff ’s house that day. How she’d met Ole at the door and how she’d told him everything. Every suspicion. Every hard piece of evidence. How Ole hadn’t said anything until she’d asked if Julia was in. According to Ole, she wasn’t, though Susanne was one hundred percent sure that he was lying. That he was trying to protect Julia, afraid that Susanne might do something to her. Maybe even kill her. That cowardly bastard.
‘I’m not proud of what I did that day,’ she said. ‘But I … I’d had a few drinks after I found that sheet of music. I was just so upset. I went to your dad’s school and got him out of there. Dragged him out with me, in the middle of his lunch break, with all his colleagues around.’ She shook her head again.
‘Cecilie tried to stop me,’ she continued. ‘Mari’s mother. But I was so angry, so furious. Luckily your father just came along with me. He didn’t want to make an even bigger scene.’ She was crying now, reliving everything. ‘Jimmy insisted on driving as I was…’ She made a slightly flapping movement with her arms. ‘I’m not clear on all the details of what happened that day, but Tobias was at nursery. I can’t remember where you were.’
