– Is that any way to treat my clothes? he grinned.
She gave a quick smile. – He very nearly went into the bathroom. I said I’d just been.
He glanced over at the bathroom door. Not difficult to tell from the outside whether it was locked or not. A policeman should notice something like that.
– He hasn’t got time to go to the toilet. Not with all these fires, I mean.
She glanced at him. – Have there been more?
He hesitated. – One up at Stornes farm, last week.
She took the rest of her clothes off.
– I need a bath.
– Isn’t that what the police think? he wanted to know. – That there’s a connection.
– Yes.
He looked for a way to keep going, ask without seeming all that interested in the answer.
– Because both are arson attacks, right?
She glided past him into the bathroom, put the plug in and turned on the taps.
– Don’t you ever think about anything else? she said and turned towards him.
For a few seconds he stared at her. Something stirred in him, began to whirl, brought his muscles into a state of readiness. He calmed himself and forced a smile. – Obviously your boyfriend tells you just about everything.
– A lot more than he should, if I can put it like that. Sounded as if she was boasting about it.
– That’s why I picked you up, he said as he grabbed her by the arm. – To talk about a few fucking fires.
– Wait, she groaned and pulled down the toilet seat, slipped down on to it. – My bladder is pleading for mercy.
He stood in front of her, feeling her breath against his stomach. As it streamed out of her, she took hold of the elastic in his boxers and pulled him in towards her.
11
Dan-Levi arrived for work two and a half hours late. Rakel had been awake half the night. She didn’t have a fever, and there didn’t seem to be anything else wrong with her. But she was thirsty all the time and Dan-Levi had to get up and bring her water at least three times.
On the way up the steps to reception, he met Stranger trotting down.
– You need to follow up that nursery school fire.
– Didn’t you say last night that Gunders should do it?
The thought of what had happened just a few hundred metres from his own home was disturbing enough.
Stranger raised both his hands in the air. – The rest of us have had a meeting since last time you and I spoke. He shook his head. – It’s sheer hell up there at Maura.
Dan-Levi had heard about the car crash on the local radio station. The mental picture he had formed of events corresponded pretty accurately to the reference to hell, and Gunders had probably been on to it the moment he caught a whiff of impacted bonnets and diesel mixed with blood.
– And another thing.
Dan-Levi turned. Stranger came back up the steps, stopped just below him.
– That piece you did about gangs, he said, coughing in a way that sounded more like a snarl.
Dan-Levi had been satisfied with the article. He had interviewed two researchers who were working on a project about gang-related violence in the community. Kids could form a mob just by punching in a few numbers on a mobile phone. It was all about vengeance and honour. Politicians and police alike were taken unawares and powerless to prevent it, and the thought of his own child growing up in the middle of all this made him despair.
– Anything wrong with what I wrote? he asked the editor.
Stranger lowered his voice. – We can’t print something like that. You’re getting very close to the edge there. Quite okay that you dislike Islam personally, but for Chrissakes, Dan-Levi, we’re not exactly a mouthpiece for the Progress Party, are we?
– All I did was report the research findings.
– All you did? All you did? Stranger was getting angry. – Take a look on your desk. I’ve deleted the sort of formulations we can do without, thank you. Gang violence may be related to certain ideas in Islam. Pull yourself together.
He turned and resumed his dancing little run down the steps, even though there was no way he could be busy.
The entrance to the nursery school was still cordoned off. Dan-Levi left his car in the industrial park on the other side of the road. Crossing the muddy plot of grass where ripped-up shreds of a home-made football goal fluttered in the wind, he became aware of a sweet and synthetic smell such as might come from burning plastic. He stopped in the middle of the field, took out his camera, photographed what was left of the building: the collapsed roof and the front wall like a worn-down gumshield against the green copse behind. It struck him that it could have been Rakel’s nursery school, if she hadn’t had grandparents who were willing to help. Suddenly these images connected: his daughter lying asleep in her bed, and a house on fire. He had always been afraid of fire. He could go back to check the hotplates on the oven and the light switches several times before finally retiring for the night. Sara said he was neurotic.
He dismissed the thought, applied himself instead to wondering how to take the story further. The fire service, the police, talk to the nursery head, maybe a few of the teachers. It was doable, and once he’d dealt with his pictures he’d have no problem in popping back home for a while. Sit down on the edge of the sofa, stroke Sara’s pale forehead. Place his hand across her tender stomach.
Back in the car, he sat looking out at the scene for a few moments. He had worked till past midnight on his article on the Romerike gangs. It was unquestionably the best thing he had ever written. Stranger had cut most of it. Dan-Levi could admit that here and there his scepticism in regard to a religion that would not accept his own showed through. A religion whose standard-bearers went to war to establish a worldwide caliphate in which the Koran and a few other texts decided what was punishable under the law. In which lawbreakers were punished by whipping, stoning, the amputation of hands. And in which all who refused to convert would have their heads chopped off. But he had been careful to keep his feelings in check.
He could junk the article, but compromises make the world go round. He decided he would tone it down a bit. What he couldn’t write in the newspaper he could take up at the meeting at Bethany that evening. There was no culture of political correctness in the youth group. The dangers of real life could be discussed there, while elsewhere kids were lulled to sleep with a lot of waffle about being tolerant and how everything was equal.
The phone rang and he saw that it was Roar Horvath.
– Hello, Eggman, he said by way of greeting.
He heard his pal groan at the other end. – I haven’t got time to babble on about moustaches. It’s bad karma. He made no attempt to explain what he meant. – I hear you were up taking pictures while that fire was actually burning.
Dan-Levi was able to confirm this. – I’m there now, he added. – Needed a few more.
– It’s your pictures from yesterday I’m interested in. Can you send them to me?
Dan-Levi had nothing against helping the police, but he didn’t like handing over material just like that. At work they’d had discussions about the problems associated with the blurring of roles. In the old days there were some who thought the paper was too close to the police, and Stranger had made it his business to do something about it.
– I just need to look at them first. Does this mean you’re searching for an arsonist?
– Too early to say.
– But you’ve found something.
– Listen here, Dan-Levi. You know perfectly well that fires are just about the most difficult cases we have to deal with.
Dan-Levi persisted. – You’re not getting any pictures unless you tell me what it is you’re looking for.
Roar gave his throat a thorough clearing. – How does a fire start spontaneously in a rubbish bin standing outside on an April evening?
– Is that all? Dan-Levi urged him on.
After several more exasperated groans, Roar gave i
n. – We’ve found something. Looks like the remains of a primitive ignition device. And now you already know more than you should do.
– Might there be a connection to the fire at the Stornes place? Nod your head twice if I’m close.
Now Roar chuckled at the other end. – No comment. How about a beer tonight?
It was a while since they had last been out together.
– Got a youth group meeting. Maybe later this week?
– I’m off to Trysil on Thursday, Roar informed him. – Need to get away for a couple of days. You could come along.
– Bit short notice.
– That’s family life for you, you can never get away.
Roar never missed an opportunity to complain about the trip to America they’d had planned for a couple of years that had been cancelled the first time Dan-Levi became a father. They both felt drawn to the USA: motorcycles across the prairie, crossing the Rocky Mountains, down through California, end up at the Pacific.
Dan-Levi distracted his pal before he could start getting into it. – I seem to recall you were taking your lady up to the mountains?
Roar grunted. – Something cropped up.
– Not over, is it? Dan-Levi wondered.
– No, no.
– But?
– There are no buts.
Dan-Levi let it drop even though he could hear that something wasn’t quite right. A certain tone always crept into Roar’s voice whenever there was any trouble on that front. Dan-Levi had never understood his friend’s relationships with women. Even less how Sara and Roar once, albeit for a short time, could have been a couple.
One of the few things they never talked about.
12
According to the passage in the exam paper, Archimedes wanted his tombstone to be a sphere enclosed within a cylinder and touching its edges. How high should the cylinder be for the relationship between the volume of the two bodies to be equal to the relationship between the surfaces?
Karsten set out the formulae and solved the problem using half a page, but knew that there was a simpler way. Though who actually believed that Archimedes sat down somewhere in Greece and poked with a twig in the sand to work out the height of his own tombstone?
Yet it wasn’t primarily this that was bothering him. What he called his mathematical brain, which was usually allowed to work undisturbed, was being invaded by all the other parts of his brain. He’d been trying to contact Jasmeen all day, but she’d been with people every break time, Pakistani girls from other classes. He needed to say something or other to her about what had happened last night. Again he turned towards her desk; she sat there concentrating, calculator in one hand, pencil in the other, and didn’t look up. He made a last attempt to concentrate on the height of Archimedes’ tomb, gave up the idea of finding the simplest solution, strolled up to the teacher’s desk and handed his paper in. Still not so much as a glance from her. He could have gone home, but sat down again, took out a history book and began leafing through it without reading.
Tonje packed up her things and headed for the door. At some point last night he had decided not to delay any longer in telling her what had really happened when they abducted Lam. He couldn’t bear the thought of Tonje believing that he had tried to help his friend, that he had fought with the Pakistani gang and had his face cut with a knife.
He hurried after her. Had nothing against Jasmeen noticing, but even now she didn’t look up from the paper she was writing on.
Tonje stopped and turned at the end of the corridor when he called her name.
– How are things at home? he asked, and was about to go on, say something that meant he couldn’t back out.
She walked out on to the balcony above the assembly hall. – It’s good of you to care, Karsten, she sighed with a glance at her watch. – Dad has reported it to the police. They were in shock the whole weekend.
I am such a jerk, he was going to say. A jerk and a coward. Instead he asked: – Did you manage it?
She looked at him in surprise. – The test? Think so.
– What did you get for the last question?
– Surely you don’t need to ask me that? Again she checked her watch. – The square root of something or other. What did you get?
– Two r.
– Thought I’d got it wrong, she said with a wan smile.
– I haven’t seen the answer, he said, trying to comfort her.
She sighed. – If my answer’s not the same as yours, then I’ve got it wrong.
He liked her saying that. – What method did you use?
– Are there that many different ways?
He nodded. – A lot of complex ones, and one very simple.
Suddenly she stood on tiptoes and gave him a hug.
– Have to run, I’m meeting Thomas.
– Thought that was over, he blurted out; someone had said so in the canteen.
She shrugged her shoulders and disappeared down the stairs.
After a visit to the toilets, he went back into the classroom. Couldn’t have been gone more than three minutes, but Jasmeen was no longer there. It occurred to him that she’d grabbed the chance to slip away. There were two sides to it, he reasoned. All in all, the advantages weighed most, the sum of things he wouldn’t have to go through. He chucked his books into his rucksack, glanced out of the window. Then he saw her at the main entrance, in front of the white plaster horse in the winter garden. She was talking to someone. Really it was a matter of complete indifference whom she was standing there with. It was the supply teacher, the history teacher. He was a good head taller than her, wearing a black combat jacket, his longish hair swept back. It looked as though Jasmeen was doing most of the talking; she kept moving her hand and looked very worked up about something. Yet another reason to steer clear of her, Karsten decided. In a couple of months’ time they would be leaving school, and after that, there was little chance they would ever meet again.
When he came down a few minutes later, there was no one in front of the winter garden, and he was relieved. He needed a run, needed to feel exhausted, decided to do his usual circuit, even though it was a breach of his weekly routine.
As he was unlocking his bicycle, he noticed that the rear tyre was flat. He checked the valve; the lock nut was still screwed tight. The front tyre was flat too. He started to wheel the bike through the slush, tried to figure out what the odds might be against something like that happening by chance.
A black Golf with its engine running was standing outside the school gates. Two guys leaning on the bonnet. They were Pakistanis. Karsten recognised one of them. By a bit of pure bad luck he’d spoken to him on the phone yesterday evening. And in the same instant he realised what had happened to his bicycle, and why they were standing there.
As he walked by without looking at the two boys, the taller of them said: – Stopped saying hello to people?
Karsten glanced at him without stopping. Shahzad Chadar was wearing a suit with a white shirt beneath it, open at the neck. He nodded to the other man, who strode forward and stood in front of the bike.
– Busy guy.
Shahzad’s pal was short, his round face framed by a pencil-thin beard and eyebrows that met in the middle. He wore an earring with a dark stone.
– It’s you, muttered Karsten, because at that moment he knew where he had seen him before. He could feel the little cut on his cheek begin to itch. He had never been able to stand the thought of physical pain. He used several tactics to avoid such thoughts, because they were much worse than the pain itself. Thoughts could make a slight burning in the throat or an inflamed pimple unendurable. Not to mention toothache. From his early childhood, he had refused to go to the dentist. He always brushed his teeth thoroughly, three times a day, but still he got cavities. In the end they had to give him a general anaesthetic before he could be treated. Something like that was starting to whirr about in his head now: if only somebody could anaesthetise him until this was over.
Shahzad
Chadar came swaggering towards him. He was still not much taller than Karsten, but he had grown a lot sturdier since the last time they met.
– Almost thought you were going to make a run for it. Done something wrong?
Karsten made a face that might have passed for a smile, because it was still possible that all Shahzad Chadar intended to do was muck him about a bit. The chances were more than ten per cent, less than twenty, but the whole calculation was founded on a pretty shaky base.
– I heard you’ve started taking an interest in the ladies. Shahzad winked. – Always had you down as a homo. You’re that type.
He jerked his hips. The other one gave a thin snort of laughter.
– Don’t have the balls, do you. Or at least not enough of them.
Karsten pulled the handlebars to move on. The other guy blocked the way.
– You’re a snob, Shahzad said, his voice darker now. – The kind who can’t even bring himself to talk to people he once went to school with. Won’t even say hello. Calls up and then slams the phone down.
– What do you want? Karsten said, hearing at once how wrong the question was, because that was precisely what he did not want to know.
Shahzad leaned his head in towards his pal. – The guy’s asking what we want.
– It doesn’t matter, Karsten mumbled.
Shahzad turned slowly towards him. – You’re asking what I want right now? He pushed his face up close. – You are bothering my sister.
– Bothering?
– She’s got enough on her mind without having someone like you pawing at her, Shahzad growled. – I’ll tell you what I want. And I will show you what I want. Motherfucker.
– Everything all right, Karsten?
He turned. The supply teacher was standing there eating a piece of fruit; it looked like a nectarine. Karsten suddenly remembered that his name was Adrian. The way things were looking, it was probably as well to be on first-name terms.
– Don’t quite know.
The teacher threw away the stone, stood alongside him. He looked straight at Shahzad Chadar.
Fireraiser Page 8
