– Gunnhild and Tord Hammer, said Dan-Levi. – They have a son, too.
Elsa gave a slight nod.
– Your nephew, then. Maybe I know him. I think he was in some sort of institution. When your sister fell ill.
– Excuse me a moment, said Elsa, and stood up. She turned and went out into the hall. Moments later she was standing in the doorway. – Sorry, I have to make a phone call.
He stepped past her and out towards the front door. – I’m the one who should apologise. Turning up at your door with no warning.
She gestured with her arm. As he was putting on his shoes, he added: – I’ve been thinking about those cards you showed me. That thing about the Lovers. You mentioned it could also relate to love in a wider sense. Like faith.
She gave him a long look.
– I can see that there is doubt in you, she said. – That’s what the card wanted to tell you. That it will grow.
20
The light at the far end of the corridor was gone. Synne stood in semi-darkness outside the bathroom. Strong smells came from the kitchen. Saffron or turmeric, she couldn’t tell the difference, garlic and cooked meat. And from the floor above, the sound of bangra music. A burst of laughter. Passing Maja’s room, she saw that it was locked. Certain that her friend had reappeared, she knocked, waited. No answer. The previous evening she had again contacted the police, was asked the same questions, could tell them nothing new. Tried to accept what they suggested, that Maja had returned home because of an emergency, that she would probably get in touch soon, they usually did. Who are they? she asked, but by then the conversation was over.
She let herself into her own room, locked the door behind her. Bent over the machine, tried to read what she had just written as though seeing it for the first time.
You don’t deny you met Karsten that evening?
Shahzad Chadar takes a step closer. Again Janus starts to tremble, and I think that this horse, my horse, is wiser than any thought, it can fathom the depth in what is said, the truth of it, more reliably than any lie detector.
As you say. I met him.
You were waiting for him. You were going to get him.
That’s right. We were going to get him. Make him understand what he’d done.
You were going to kill him.
Shahzad Chadar puts his hand on Janus’s muzzle, strokes him.
We were in your garden. He came up the drive. We surrounded him. He tried to yell but my cousin stopped him. When he let go of him, Karsten said: ‘I know who started the fire.’
‘Started what fire?’
‘Your shop, and lots of other places.’
We weren’t going to let him bluff his way out of it, but I told him to tell us what he knew. Then he turned, dashed away and threw himself over the hedge. We were after him, but of course he knew the area well and we didn’t find him. My cousin and another guy headed up the road and caught sight of him. They caught up with him as he was trying to start a van, a huge van. One of them smashed the front windscreen with a club. When I got there, they were sitting on top of Karsten. We put him into my car.
I remember that, I say. Karsten was bundled into a car. You bundled me in there too. In the back seat next to him.
Now Shahzad Chadar stares at me.
You don’t mean that, Synne.
The moment he says my name, I know he’s right. He didn’t bundle me into any car.
You weren’t there.
You’re lying, I say, or perhaps I shout it out, because I want him to be lying, I want it to be the way I think it is, that I was on my way home, that I saw what Shahzad and his gang did, that they dragged me into the car and threw me out by the school.
Shahzad Chadar offers to drive me home from the stables. I’m still not certain he’s telling me the truth, but would I have gone with him if I really believed he was the one who killed Karsten? He talks as he drives, giving me the circumstances of the case. Maybe this is what he sounds like when he’s pleading a case in court. I let him get on with it. He talks about his father, who came to Norway in the seventies, how honesty and hard work got him where he was, the same story I heard Khalid Chadar himself tell, how he sacrificed himself so that his children would have the opportunities he never did. Then Shahzad talks about himself, what he’s become, and about his own son.
I’ve taken a big step, he says. And this is true of many others besides myself. Do you understand what it will mean if I am successful?
I do understand. But there is another story in there too, enclosed within the one he has just told me, lying there like a serpent’s egg.
You still haven’t told me what happened to Karsten.
A long silence ensues. It lasts until he passes the turn-off to Oslo and carries on in the direction of Fetveien.
I’m going to town, I protest.
He doesn’t answer, drives on for a while, pulls into a bus bay and stops.
Come with me. I want to show you something.
He gets out. Would I have gone with him if I still believed he was a murderer?
I follow him in the low evening light, across a muddy field, towards a stand of trees. I can hear the sound of birdsong through the noise of the traffic from the road behind us. It’s late April, a few days until Easter, it will be even later this year than it was eight years ago.
Here.
Shahzad Chadar stops and points. The river is brown and dull, it twists its way through the trees like a slow, half-frozen snake.
I brought Karsten here. I was alone, the others stayed in the car. I was the one who had to do it, for our honour to be upheld.
Honour?
That’s the way we used to think. Not even think, it was more a way of speaking. We didn’t understand ourselves what it would lead to.
I look down into the water streaming by at our feet.
Karsten was terrified, I say.
Shahzad nods.
He was afraid. His hands were tied behind his back. He thought he was about to die. He was still raving on about those fires, that he knew who was responsible. He wanted to show me something he had in his pocket. He called it an ignition device. I said I wasn’t interested. Then he started to talk about you.
I turn towards him.
About me?
He said that if he died, there would be no one to take care of you. He said you were ill, that you had no friends. I was certain he was bluffing. But it worked. He stood there sobbing and certain he was going to die, and then started talking about his little sister.
You killed him, I say again, and hear the way it almost sounds like a prayer. Admit it.
Shahzad Chadar looks back in the direction of the road, where his car stands with the engine still going and the headlights peering blindly out into the spring night.
When I think back over my life, he begins, and then falls silent for some moments. When I think back to the moment when everything changed, I realise it was that evening. If I’d cut his throat and let him vanish into the river, my life would have been ruined.
You killed him.
I pulled out the knife, cut the tape that held his wrists together. Told him to lie there until I’d gone. I knew something decisive had happened. I wanted a day before the others realised I hadn’t done what I said I would do. I used that time to make up my mind to take another road.
But he was dead, I shout.
Shahzad Chadar turns towards me.
Perhaps Karsten jumped into the river. Or fell. Perhaps he met someone who did him harm. I did not kill your brother.
21
She had created a new document the previous evening. Kai opened it. She was writing about Shahzad Chadar. He had followed her to the stables.
‘I know who started the fire.’
‘Started what fire?’
‘Your shop, and lots of other places.’
Kai jumped to his feet and ran into the kitchen, refilled his coffee cup, put the cup down, went out into the yard, over to the gate, ran up the str
eet and then ran back. By the time he returned to his room, he was calm enough to read through it again. Karsten had the ignition devices with him. That was why they hadn’t been in the car. It sounded as if he was trying to tell Shahzad what he knew about the fires, but Shahzad wouldn’t listen to him.
Kai drank his coffee in two deep gulps, had to get up and pace about again. It took a while before he was able to concentrate on what else Synne Clausen had written.
Shahzad Chadar threatened her. Still she went with him to the place where Karsten disappeared. Perhaps Karsten jumped into the river. Or fell. Perhaps he met someone who did him harm. I did not kill your brother.
Kai scowled at the screen, annoyed that Synne Clausen had been taken in by that slimy toad. But it made no difference what she believed or didn’t believe. From now on, he would be the one who made things happen.
Synne was working now; he put what she was writing up on his screen and read it. Word by word it appeared before his eyes. He was deep inside her thoughts; he could see them in the moment of their being born.
This is what I remember from the evening of Karsten’s disappearance: I wake up in a car, lying in the back seat. Outside it is dark. Street lamps approach and pass across my face. There is a smell of vomit and sweat. Perhaps I’m the one who has vomited. Perhaps it’s the seat that smells. When I come to fully, it is always the smells that hit me hardest. Unbearable, but these are what draw me back into this world. My senses wake first, and they wake up my thought. Is this all there is to me? I’ve always felt a compulsion to lie. That is why I write. I can create a world in which there is no difference between what I lie about, what I remember, what is happening around me right now, and what I think is going to happen. When I write, no one can insist that I distinguish one from the other.
Kai hit the table with his fist. She was sitting there with what looked very much like a confession from Shahzad Chadar, and then she started making things up, mixing up her fantasies with things that actually happened. For a moment he saw her sitting there typing, the sentences tumbling out of her fingers. No earthly use could be made of the things she wrote.
I’m lying in the back seat. The man driving is wearing a cap. I can just see his eyes in the mirror. Or perhaps I can’t see them. An animal dangles below the mirror, a spider made of fabric or plastic or something. When the car drives over a bump, the spider dances.
We stop, the doors open. The driver leans over to me, the smell is unbearable. He tugs at my arm. I want to scream but I daren’t.
Where am I? I might possibly ask.
Home, he answers, but I don’t believe him.
He drags me to my feet, lifts me. He’s where the smell comes from. His pullover is drenched in sweat, that’s where the vomit smell is coming from, as if someone has puked rotten apples all over him. I feel nauseous, can’t move, flopping in his arms.
I know Kasten.
He has a lisp, I remember that now. Without saying anything else, he carries me up the driveway, and I see that he is telling the truth. I am home, but I can’t bring myself to think the thought yet, that I’m not going to die after all.
What else can I remember? Dad’s frightened face when he opened the door. That I heard the sound of sobbing and didn’t realise that it came from me. Dad taking me in his arms and talking to the stranger. The stink of apples, rotten apples mingled with vomit, and the weariness that overcame me and swamped everything, sleep for the rest of my life, never wake up again.
Kai sat staring at the screen. Of all the things whirling around in what she was writing, it was the spider dangling and dancing below the mirror that arrested his attention.
He got to his feet. Heard himself swear. He was agitated. Not angry. Not yet, but something was growing inside him, and he knew it would turn into anger.
He shouldn’t ring Adrian now. Should wait until he was calmer. Go down to the gym for a while. He should only talk to Adrian when he was in control. But he couldn’t wait.
– What’s new?
Whenever he heard Adrian’s voice, something happened to him. As if he was being held down. Just through the tone of his voice Adrian could put him way down beneath him. Kai imagined him sitting there in his office in the middle of Birmingham, leaning back in his armchair. Prince Adrian, who had turned into a king now; Adrian the Lionheart.
– I’m inside Synne Clausen’s computer, he answered quietly.
Two or three seconds passed before Adrian’s reaction came.
– Shit, you’re kidding, right?
– I’m sitting here reading her thoughts just as soon as they come to her.
Another pause.
– You make so much trouble for yourself, Adrian said patronisingly. – Is that the idea?
It was the tone of voice rather than what he said that caused Kai to explode.
– Now you just shut up. He took a few deep breaths. Discovered a pocket of silence, a place in which he could portion his anger in a way that left him calm enough to speak. – Just shut up, he repeated so calmly that it brought a cold smile to his face.
Adrian was about to say something, but let it drop.
– Shahzad Chadar followed Synne. He confronted her in the stables.
He waited, feeling his way towards another pocket in which he would be able to continue.
– Did he threaten her?
– I told you to shut up and listen. His anger had thickened to something almost solid, something he could shape and put to any purpose he wanted. – He told her what happened that night. What he wants her to think happened.
– What else did you expect?
Kai fished the Zippo lighter from his pocket, lit it, closed the cap, lit it again.
– Maybe what he says is true. He was going to kill Karsten. He let him go.
– Well it’s obvious the girl is sitting there and making things up, Adrian objected. – Isn’t it a novel she’s writing?
– There’s more, Kai interrupted. – It looks as though she’s remembered things that happened to her that evening.
– And this is not just stuff from her imagination?
– She describes someone driving her home. He smelled bad. Stank of vomit, and his pullover was soaked in sweat. He lisped, said Kasten instead of Karsten. And then suddenly she mentions something else. In his car there’s a fluffy toy hanging from the mirror. A spider.
– Shit.
– Don’t try to tell me she made that up. There’s someone out there who knows something and he’s keeping quiet about it. And I’m going to make it my business to squeeze it out of him.
Adrian didn’t answer straight away. Kai studied the flame from his lighter and enjoyed the silence, enjoyed hearing Adrian struggle to take all this on board. No way was he still lounging back in his armchair; now he was up and walking about, Kai could hear it in his breathing.
– Maybe it’s not such a good idea to go digging up all that old stuff right now. If you chase the rats out into the light, a lot of other things might show up there too.
– That we knew Sæter? That we did a bit of target practice? Who the hell cares about that after eight years?
– For God’s sake keep Elsa out of this, Adrian warned him.
– For God’s sake, Kai mimicked, though he agreed with him about that. Elsa had enough troubles already. He grunted irritably. – I’ll do it my way, he announced. – The guy we called Sweaty was named Morten. What was his surname?
– I don’t go around keeping stuff like that in my head.
Adrian never forgot a name. Kai didn’t know anyone with a better memory for names than him.
– You know I’ll find out. Think hard.
Adrian was silent for a few moments.
– There’s something you need to think about, he said finally. – You were involved in some stuff back then.
– Was I? Kai hissed.
– Easy now, I’m trying to help you. Sweaty found out you were up to something or other. He was going to use it against you. I ma
de sure that never happened. You understand?
Kai grunted. – Am I supposed to be grateful for that?
– I don’t give a shit what you get mixed up in, Adrian snapped. – I’m thinking about Elsa. So I’m asking you to stay away from Sweaty and the rest of that gang. He did what I told him back then. There’s no guarantee he will now.
– We’ll just have to find out, said Kai, and closed the lighter.
The time was five past ten. He had the whole day ahead of him. With a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a growl, he turned to the computer and navigated to the phone book.
22
Synne picked up her phone and stood up, clicked down to Erika’s name on the recently used list and then stood looking at the display. She forced herself not to ring, forced herself to put the phone down again, stood over by the window and looked out at the fir trees, the needles vibrating almost invisibly. It was the wind showing itself. It always had to show itself through something; by itself it was invisible.
This was no longer a literary project she was working on; it wasn’t something she had control over. She was in thrall to what lay behind the text, what drove it on, the thing that manifested itself through the words. Memories. Everything she wanted to remember. Did she want to remember? Why couldn’t she recall more of what had happened to her that night? She was supposed to be circling in on the emptiness left behind by Karsten, centring on it. Instead she had ended up talking to people who had known him, and left herself out of it completely. There was a shadow there; it followed her as she wrote, stopped when she stopped, carried on when she did, always a pace or two behind, and if she turned around, she saw nothing.
The shadow is me, she thought. It’s myself, that evening.
Where were you, Synne? she tried to ask.
I was at Tamara’s.
You left there.
I left. I got on my bike.
Why were you going home? Wasn’t the idea to stay the night?
Don’t know.
You don’t want to know.
Fireraiser Page 41
