Fireraiser

by Torkil Damhaug

  – And Elsa’s been looking after you, he smiled.

  – I wasn’t going to …

  Adrian waved it aside, got him to sit back down again. – And quite right too.

  – I’m going upstairs, said Elsa. – Then you two can talk in private.

  Karsten glanced at her. In among the brown, almost black hair he noticed a few thin wisps of grey.

  – More trouble? Adrian asked once she’d disappeared.

  – Someone’s scratched up my dad’s car.

  He explained. Adrian’s eyes narrowed. Afterwards he said: – Well from all this I deduce that you have had another meeting with a certain girl from a different ethnic background, to put it formally.

  – In a way, yes.

  – And have you in a way been making out with her?

  Karsten nodded.

  – Or in a way gone further than just snogging?

  – Nothing happened really. Almost nothing, he corrected himself silently.

  Adrian smiled broadly and it made him look even more like Elsa. – Let’s have the details.

  Karsten hesitated. He started to describe the encounter outside the library. Left out most of it.

  – And you’re wondering if this has something to do with the car being trashed?

  – It hasn’t been trashed. Just the paint scratched.

  – And at home they’ve no idea why?

  – They work a lot, Mum especially. And my sister might have some kind of illness. They’ve got enough to think about.

  Adrian poured himself coffee, offered Karsten a refill. He couldn’t bring himself to say no, even though he could feel his hands shaking. Coffee always wound him up, and he was pretty worked up to begin with anyway. He needed to go the other way, get things to slow down.

  – What kind of illness does your sister have?

  Karsten squirmed in his chair. – She has these attacks now and then. She falls out of bed. Once she passed out at school and hit her head. It’s possibly a rare form of epilepsy.

  Adrian leaned back and looked up at the ceiling. – What you’ve just told me is very interesting.

  – Is it?

  – You learn something about the world you otherwise wouldn’t’ve known anything about.

  Karsten didn’t know what to say to this. – I don’t know how they can do something like that, he complained.

  Adrian ran his fingers down his close-cropped beard. – The girl is their property. You offend them, they take revenge and their honour is satisfied. That’s what it’s all about in the world outside this little Toytown: honour and vengeance.

  – I’ve got to report them.

  Adrian laughed. – The police will arrive with lights flashing and start looking for fingerprints and traces of DNA. By the end of the evening, the entire Chadar family will be under arrest.

  Karsten couldn’t sit still any more; he had to get up. He was bursting with caffeine. He needed to run more.

  Adrian stood up as well. – I understand you’re pissed off. I would be too.

  Karsten wasn’t sure if pissed off was the right expression for how he felt. – I shouldn’t’ve come, he apologised. – It’s really nothing to do with you.

  Adrian put his hand on his shoulder. – You did absolutely the right thing in coming here. It sounded as if he meant it. – It’s too bloody bad them trying to drag your family into this. But I can assure you, the kind of thing that happened to your car will never happen again.

  Karsten looked over at him. He couldn’t understand what Adrian meant, or how he could be bothered to get involved at all. But he felt a sense of relief.

  He heard footsteps on the staircase. Before he could ask Adrian what he was thinking, Elsa came back into the room.

  – You could ask Karsten if he wants to stay for dinner, she suggested.

  – Could do, Adrian replied without sounding too enthusiastic about it.

  Elsa brushed a lock of dark hair off her forehead. She had rather slanting eyes that weren’t like Adrian’s at all. But the mouth was the same.

  Suddenly Adrian said: – Karsten and I have been discussing the conditions of love.

  – Have you?

  – The question is, should culture and religion be allowed to stand in the way of a young couple?

  Elsa turned to Karsten. – Have you met someone from an immigrant family?

  Karsten felt himself shrinking.

  – Relax, said Adrian. – Elsa will never tell anyone. He smiled at her. – Karsten and Jasmeen Chadar are in the process of becoming sweethearts.

  Something in his voice suggested that he was amused. Karsten glanced across at Elsa. She stood in the middle of the floor, looking at him with an expression close to surprise. Then abruptly she turned and went into the kitchen.

  15

  After three attempts, he gave up trying to start the Chevy. Not so much as a cough from under the bonnet. He’d trawled the net and still not found the right type of window winder. And now the battery was flat too. He let himself into the house. Listened. All still. Elsa had been on night shift and was probably sleeping now. In the cabinet he found the spare key to the Peugeot. No hesitation from the tiny French engine once he’d turned the ignition; it was still warm and purred like a lazy cat between his knees, weak and feminine.

  At the building materials store he chose the planks of the size he needed and cut them to length. They just about fitted into the little boot. As he started up the engine again, thoughts of the night watch came to him. He wasn’t dead; smoke divers had pulled him out of the changing room. He was in intensive care at Ahus. Still critical; that was how his condition was described in VG’s digital edition.

  He got the three fence posts up, knocked in the last nail. Let his fingers glide over the impregnated wood before getting into the Peugeot and reversing it into the garage. Was the night watch conscious, even if in bad shape? Had he been able to tell the police anything? Did he remember the face he caught a glimpse of in the mirror before the lights went out? He’d been thinking about that for the last twenty-four hours, how to get inside the hospital and find the right room and make sure the guy would never say anything.

  The girl would never talk again. He was almost surprised to find that all he felt was relief. There was a picture of her up on VG’s website. She was a Somali. Didn’t matter how often they said she was a Norwegian with a Somali background, or bilingual, or a girl with parallel cultural connections; she was a Somali, and not even her name had any effect on him. She was called Abiya. Fourteen years old.

  After leaving the basement, he’d driven on in the direction of Hadeland, turned back after an hour. On the journey back, a roadblock had been set up. As he parked further off, he looked at his watch and registered that she’d been dead for almost three hours. As though time meant anything to her. A crowd of people had gathered, moths, drawn by the light. He slipped in amongst them, pulled out his mobile and starting filming. Two lips of fire stretched up into the deep purple sky, turned into a mouth that sucked at it and left floating dark specks in its wake. When he played the recording back, he could see how, behind the exterior wall that was still standing, the flames worked their way through wall panels, cut through piping and cables, chewed their way in towards the heart of the building, where the material now and then gave off hoarse, groaning shouts. He’d read that the temperature inside a burning building could reach over a thousand degrees; metal, concrete, all structural material, no matter what it was made of, had to admit defeat. The fire could develop unfathomable warmth; it could reshape anything.

  When he transferred his pictures to the computer and screened the film, the sounds were so greatly amplified that behind the hollow coughing of the building, he could make out that same whisper as before: the sound of the fire itself. He lets it lead him on from the schoolroom and up the staircase. Walking with the fire, searching each room for something to devour, and in the fourth room on the left they come across a lifeless arm hanging down towards the floor, and fi
nd the body in the bed. The fire enfolds it, melting the skin, melting the hair, the nails, the eyes, softening the skeleton until it can be bent.

  This trip into the heart of the burning building kept him awake for the rest of the night. He played the video segment over and over again as he pictured her, how she had moved around inside that building before the fire came, talked, laughed, eaten, showered, used the toilet. He went through the whole story, got out her panties, which he had stored in a box at the back of the cupboard, sat with them in his hand, the smell now even sharper and stronger. Abiya was the girlfriend of Bizhan in the next room, he imagined; they used to visit each other at night, he used to undress her, and the thought got him excited in a way he hadn’t known since he lay in that bed and heard Siv’s footsteps outside, or followed her down into the basement and stood outside the girls’ changing room with his ear pressed against the door. The same door he had tricked the night watch into opening.

  He was still seated behind the wheel of the Peugeot. And he still had the hammer in his hand. He tossed it aside on to the seat, turned off the engine. For a few more minutes he remained sitting in the dark garage, staring out through the windscreen. The fence posts couldn’t be painted for months, maybe not even until the autumn. He could offer to do the whole fence. Was suddenly consumed with the desire to do more for Elsa. He got out of the car, stepped into the light. For a few seconds there was no room for any other thought than this, of doing something for Elsa. He took hold of the newly repaired fence, closed his eyes, breathed in the clear air. The wind was different now, raw and sharp, and yet warmer. He had never liked the spring, but this one would be different, he decided. He forgave Elsa for having neglected him these last few weeks, because she was so preoccupied with someone else. He would win her back, once and for all.

  The day grew lighter as he jogged towards the centre of town. The heat of the sun made the gables drip, and the light from the steaming asphalt was so strong he had to half close his eyes against it. He stopped by the corner shop. The fire was front-page news in the national dailies too. The general view was that it was probably an arson attack. The police were looking for the perpetrator. He had to laugh. Good luck with that. The only thing was that night watch, if he should ever regain consciousness. If he remembered. If he was able to identify him. He’d managed to find out what his name was. The brief glimpse the guy had got of him, it couldn’t possibly be enough to cause any trouble. Yet there was still that little jab of doubt. One way or another, he had to get rid of it.

  He spent a lot of time warming up. Increased the resistance and kept the bike going at over thirty kilometres an hour. Watched his pulse monitor closely, kept it at around eighty per cent of max for ten minutes. His phone vibrated. Without stopping, he took it out. Sæter had said not to put his name on his contacts list but he recognised the number anyway, jumped off the bike and went over to a corner of the hall.

  – It’s me.

  Sæter didn’t even like people to use names in conversation. Ridiculous, bearing in mind that not a single soul in the whole bloody country cared what he was up to.

  – You sound out of breath.

  He explained why.

  – It’s about the meeting this evening. We need to move it.

  He forced himself to breathe normally. It wasn’t the first time Sæter had decided at the last minute that they had to move a meeting. He was convinced that the security services expended a lot of resources in keeping track of him. He went in for diversionary manoeuvres and cover operations in the obvious belief that this made him important.

  – I’m sending you a message from a second phone, Sæter said in a low voice. – Pass it on. Yellow alert.

  He smirked, making sure it couldn’t be heard at the other end.

  – Everyone needs to take this check, no exception.

  – Check?

  – You’ll get a message, said Sæter, and disconnected.

  He positioned himself in front of the mirror to work his biceps. Lifted the dumb-bell. He’d increased fifteen kilos since he started bodybuilding again. Each time he flexed, the muscle came bulging out of the arm of his vest, like the belly of a giant fish. He increased another five kilos. The sweat marked out a deep, wide gorge from his neckband down across the chest of his vest. As he was about to lift again, he saw her in the doorway, Monica with a c, tripping along on high heels towards reception, probably headed for the changing room first: change, go to the toilet and all those type of things women did before starting a workout. He could use the time to get out of there, pull on his outdoor clothes and disappear without her seeing him. He followed her in the mirror on the opposite wall. Her body was firm, not over-muscular. Knowing she was going with someone else made him hot. The thought that it was a policeman who was looking for him brought on a feeling that was almost like wanting to have her again.

  Horvath, that was his name. He noticed the names of everyone who had dealings with these fires. Had a separate file on his computer with a list of them. Fire brigade people, police officers, journalists, relatives of the victims. It was already a card index. This policeman was under control. And as he stood there watching Monica disappear into the changing room, he knew what it was he wanted her for. If that night duty guy regained consciousness and started remembering things, he would be one jump ahead of them.

  He did another two rounds on the bench press. Then he got up and opened the door to the main hall. She was sitting with her back to him on one of the machines, working on her abdomen and chest. He slung the towel around his neck, strolled over to her.

  – Not bad, he nodded.

  The weights she was lifting tumbled down and hit the metal block with a nasty crack. She sat there staring at him and said nothing. Not until her pupils had started to narrow again did he let one hand brush past her thigh.

  This one’s gonna be for the night watch, he said to himself.

  He chose the sofa in the living room because of the strong smell of leather. From the kitchen the sounds of the percolating coffee had just started, but he had no intention of sitting there and waiting to be served. He pressed her down on to the cold leather; she was still wearing the training pants, but no panties. The previous time her comb of hair had been dark and trimmed; now it had been shaved off entirely. He let her keep her top on, spread her out below him and forced his way inside. Same biting of the lip as last time, he noticed. He waited for it to start to bleed, and suddenly he saw in his mind’s eye the mouth of the girl at Furutunet, smeared with his own blood. Abiya, he thought, and maybe he said it out loud, because Monica opened her eyes and he had to put a fist over them to close them again. Then she began babbling beneath him, and he grabbed hold of her hands and held them in an iron grip above her head. She twisted from side to side and he let her do what she wanted until she was finished.

  Afterwards he got up and stood by the window, which was slightly open. He listened to the voices down in the square, music from a café, a road-sweeping machine approaching from the other end.

  – What was it you called me?

  He turned with wrinkled brow.

  – Did I call you something?

  She nodded decisively. Around her neck was a ring of tiny bruises. – You called me a name.

  He laughed, shook his head and glanced at his watch.

  – Have you got a partner? she persisted. – Sabina or something like that?

  – You’re the one with the partner, he countered.

  She thought about it. – Not necessarily.

  A ridiculous answer. – How far have they got with their investigations? he asked.

  – Of what?

  – Isn’t your bloke still working on these fires? You must have noticed that there’s been another one.

  She waved an arm. – What do you think? That’s all Roar ever talks about.

  – Not surprising really. When a young girl gets burned to death like that.

  He was still standing by the window, looking out, the sun just
making its way through the cloud cover high above the roof on the other side of the square.

  – They don’t think she died in the fire.

  He acted startled, exaggerated his surprise. – What do you mean?

  She got up, picked her exercise pants up from the floor. – Roar would be furious if he knew I was talking about it.

  She went out to the bathroom, left the door half open. When she came back, she was wearing a G-string.

  – What killed her if it wasn’t the fire?

  She sat on the glass-topped table. – You still on about that girl?

  He stepped across the floor, stood naked above her.

  – I guess they did a post-mortem on her, she said as she lifted a hand and stroked his underarm. – Where did you get these scars?

  – When I was a kid. An accident.

  – Don’t look like that.

  He withdrew his arm. – What did the post-mortem show?

  She gave an exasperated sigh. – They believe she was dead before the fire started.

  – Which means?

  – I’ve said enough now.

  – That she was murdered?

  – That’s what they think. I don’t know any more than that.

  – And that the fire was started to cover the traces?

  – Can’t we talk about something else?

  She leaned back, her thighs parting and taking on a different shape against the brownish glass. A gap opening beneath the silky material of the G-string.

  – Thought maybe the fire might be connected with the nursery school, he said vaguely, and it was not the sight of the naked lips beneath the material that made him decide it was time for another round.

  – They think there is a connection, she said. – Even if the girl was murdered.