Fireraiser

by Torkil Damhaug

  But then something else appeared. She tried to keep it away.

  – Karsten came, she said, and couldn’t take it back.

  He loosened his hold on her hand; she wouldn’t let go of him.

  – Will you do something for me? she heard him say, and when she didn’t answer, he said it again, said her name too. – Will you do something for me, Synne?

  She could feel his breath on her face, his mouth coming closer. Maybe he said her name several times, maybe it was the echo in her thoughts: Synne, Synne.

  – That was the worst night of my life, he said. – Will you help me to forget it?

  Was he asking for help? – It was you, she murmured. – You were in the room when Karsten came in. It was you he was shouting at.

  She could see it now, a film flickering and juddering, but now with a soundtrack.

  – He was furious, he attacked you. You grabbed him and pushed him to the floor.

  His mouth was very close now, the lips brushing against her ear.

  – Yes, I pushed him to the floor.

  She saw him raise his fist. – Did you hit him?

  He put his arm around her, pulled her close to him.

  – I hit him, he said in a low voice. – I kept on hitting him until he was dead.

  – I was there. I saw it.

  – You were lying right next to him. And no one else in the world knows. Just you and me, Synne.

  He said it as though it was a pact, something that would bind them together.

  – I was thirteen years old, she said, and felt his grip tighten around her neck. – Now I’m disappearing, she whispered, and heard the words repeated in the tiny voice of the girl on the floor.

  31

  Dan-Levi is on his way home. The thick grey clouds have sunk to ground level and are all around him. But there are pockets within them with light from some unseen source.

  – Right-hand side, says a man’s voice. – Start over on the right-hand side.

  He turns in that direction, but the smoke is thicker there, and he doesn’t know if he can trust the voice.

  – Give more, it says, and Dan-Levi is glad when he hears these words, because this whole thing is all about giving more. That’s the way it has always been.

  – How much?

  The woman’s voice comes from a different place, further above him and to the left. It is as though the pockets of light form wherever he hears it, and he raises his head to see.

  – Ten milligrams, says the man’s voice, and that makes Dan-Levi laugh, because it is such an easy answer. He laughs and laughs at the thought that there are such easy answers to questions he has always struggled with. His laughter comes from below, opposite where the woman’s voice is. He decides to make his way over in that direction. The smoke is now even denser, but he can still just make out a way through the pockets of light, and if he follows that then he will reach the house.

  – Pastor Jakobsen, says the man’s voice. – This is the way you spoke of, isn’t it?

  – Yes it is, but it’s blocked further ahead. To his surprise, Dan-Levi hears that it is his father who answers. – It’s that road-building they never get around to finishing. He mustn’t go there yet.

  – But that’s exactly what I have to do, Dan-Levi protests. – I have to get home, they’re expecting me.

  It feels as though he has been away from them for a long time. He has no idea how long. Months, years maybe. He looks down, realises that he is barefoot. He can’t remember where he took off his shoes.

  – You can’t go here, Dan-Levi.

  – As long as the fog is this thick, I can’t see any other way.

  – Then you must turn back. The road isn’t ready yet.

  This looks to be the case. The asphalt hasn’t set; it’s soft and full of bubbles that he treads underfoot.

  – My feet, he groans. – They’re burning to pieces. But he feels nothing. – That’s serious, isn’t it? If I can’t feel the boiling asphalt?

  – How is he reacting?

  The man’s voice is back; now it’s hidden in the thickest layer of cloud to the right.

  – No reaction, says the woman’s voice, and that surprises him, because he’s moving all the time, and for a moment he wonders if she’s talking about someone else, but then who could that be?

  – The pressure? Even that gruff male voice becomes friendly when it talks to the female voice.

  – We can’t keep it up.

  – That’s all right, says Dan-Levi reassuringly. What she can’t do doesn’t need to be done. And as long as he can hear her voice, he’ll be able to find his own way through the dense smog.

  – Then they should be allowed to see him.

  He’s reached a hill. He notices how much harder it is to keep going, but he’s also glad because it means there isn’t far to go.

  – Dan!

  It is Sara calling out his name, and only now does he realise that the woman’s voice up on his left has been Sara’s the whole time. He can’t understand why she sounds so worried, because he’s on his way home, and it’s actually clearing up now, it’s as though those pockets of light are about to shatter the grey smog from within.

  He could have told her where he’s been all this time, why he had to leave, about the Lovers upside down, but none of that is important any more.

  – Is everyone there? he asks.

  She doesn’t answer, but he can hear them. Ruben talking about a game of football. Ruth humming quietly, and Rebekah asking Sara something.

  – Rakel? says Dan-Levi, but Sara doesn’t answer.

  – Why can’t you tell me?

  Finally she responds. He feels her leaning in towards him, senses her shadow in the flickering light.

  – She’s at home, Dan. She’s the one who’s coming to meet you.

  – No!

  He wants to stop, but can’t. His feet burn when he isn’t moving them; they are black with tar, and where his toes should be is only a row of gaping wounds.

  – I don’t want to go there, he shouts, but carries on up. Just then the clouds part, and the house on Erleveien comes into view.

  32

  Synne opened her eyes, recognised the horse racing over the grassy moors on the mountain plains, mane flying. Lay there looking at it. She remembered the day she had been given that poster, how happy she had been when she unrolled it. It was her father who had bought it for her, and he’d helped her hang it up on the wall opposite the bed, so she could look at the horse until she fell asleep, and look at it when she woke up.

  She heard sounds from below and swung down on to the floor, realised she was standing there in panties and a T-shirt, her jeans hanging over the back of a chair.

  Her father was sitting at the kitchen table, sunlight from the window behind him so sharp it made her squint.

  – Now that is what I would call a really good night’s sleep, he said.

  – What time is it?

  – Ten past ten. You’ve hardly made a sound for the past day and a half.

  – Someone was here.

  He nodded. – I called a doctor.

  She could vaguely remember it.

  – You’re to call and make an appointment with your own doctor. He gave me a list of the tests they should take.

  – I didn’t have a fit, did I? Not anything like I had back then?

  Her father scratched his unshaven chin. – You seemed far away when I got down to the petrol station. I’m not sure you knew where you were.

  – But I didn’t have any seizures? she asked, and had to struggle not to drift back into that greyness she’d been floating about inside for the last forty-eight hours.

  – Not as far as I could see.

  She sat down opposite him at the table, Aftenposten open beside him and a steaming mug. He peered at her over the rims of his spectacles. Tell him now, she thought. If I wait to tell him how Karsten died, I’ll never manage it. She rehearsed how she would say it. I know what happened to Karsten. Who ki
lled him.

  – Dreadful tragedy, he said.

  She took a drink of the orange juice he had poured for her. Not until a few moments later did it dawn on her that it couldn’t be Karsten her father was referring to. And then she remembered it.

  – The fire …

  He turned the newspaper towards her and pushed it across the table.

  – Died in fire, she read in a weak voice.

  – Maybe we should talk about it later.

  She pulled her hair back, so hard that it burnt at the roots. – Who is dead, Dad?

  Romerikes Blad was lying on the table too. He pushed it in front of her. Then he took off his glasses and began to clean them.

  There was a black border around the whole of the front page. One of our own died in the fire.

  – Dan-Levi, she murmured, and the siren from the ambulance she had heard as she sat in the car at the petrol station sounded in her ears, as though the echo had been there all the time.

  – Didn’t he manage to get out? she sobbed, and in her mind’s eye she saw the burning house, the shower of sparks breathed up through the roof and scattering across the dark sky.

  – He wasn’t home when the fire started.

  – What do you mean?

  – By the time he got back, the fire was out of control. No one knew where Rakel was. He ran inside to look for her.

  – Rakel too? cried Synne.

  Her father put his spectacles back in their case, wedged it down into his pocket. – She wasn’t in there, he said, his voice expressionless. – She’d run outside but no one saw her, must have used the veranda door. And then she probably just ran off in panic. They found her not far from the footpath. She was sitting by the river talking to herself.

  Synne collapsed, laid her head on the table, heard her father stand up. Felt his hand stroke her back a couple of times.

  – I’ve ordered flowers from us, he said, – but there’s nowhere to send them.

  She almost flared up and started shouting at him, how could he think about flowers when something like that had happened? And then it passed, and her head felt heavy again. The newspaper crackled as she rubbed her forehead against it.

  – Why aren’t you at work?

  He was still standing behind her. – I’ve taken a couple of days off. Had to make sure you were all right. I might go out for a walk in a while.

  – You can go, she snuffled into the table. – I’ll be all right now.

  She sat on the sofa looking out at the evening light. There was a cup of tea on the table. She’d taken a few sips; now it was cold. Call Erika, she thought again. In the few seconds it took to pick up the phone her father had left on the table before going out, she changed her mind, suddenly couldn’t bear the thought of talking to her. She looked through the list. Instead called the number Dan-Levi had given her.

  – Horvath.

  It sounded like a threat; she felt like hanging up again, forced herself to say who she was. Remembered that Dan-Levi had said this policeman was a good friend of his.

  – I’m so sorry about what happened, she said. – About Dan-Levi.

  – Is that why you called? he said abruptly, and she felt suddenly weighted down with guilt. As though not just Karsten’s death but Dan-Levi’s too was her fault.

  – There’s something else, she stammered.

  It had to be said, and once it was said it would unleash an avalanche of events over which she had no control. In its wildness it could easily blow her away too.

  – This is a pretty unusual day for me, said Horvath. – You’re going to have to tell me why you’re calling or else report it at the police station.

  – I know who killed him, she said quietly.

  – Are you talking about Dan-Levi?

  – I’m talking about my brother. Karsten Clausen.

  She was led down a corridor painted red. Other corridors were painted in other colours; it made her think of the toy houses in a theme park they’d visited one summer. It had been cold, she didn’t want to swim, but her mother had kept on at her. Karsten went down to the chutes with her; he helped her up the ladder and disappeared down, vanished round a bend. She couldn’t remember what had happened, if she’d closed her eyes and gone down behind him, or just stood there, or turned round and climbed down again. Only that she woke up in a bed, with everybody standing round her and looking sad.

  She couldn’t climb back down from this red corridor. The man named Horvath was walking ahead of her. His greeting had been brisk, not a word in the lift on the way up. She felt she was bothering him, stealing his time, intruding on his grief for his dead friend.

  The door to his office was ajar. She looked at the nameplate; his first name was Roar, she remembered that was what Dan-Levi had called him. She would prefer to do the same. Horvath still sounded like a threat.

  There was a man standing there when they came in. He was short, skinny and slightly stooped. She recognised him from the kitchen at the student village. He held out his hand. – How are you? My name is Viken, in case you’d forgotten. I’ll be conducting this interview.

  Interview, she thought, as though it had only now dawned on her why she was here.

  The inspector pointed her to a chair by the table. Horvath sat down at a computer. Clicked and clicked with the mouse. Sat there staring into the screen, his face closed, waiting. Waiting for her.

  The man named Viken smiled, and his upper teeth became visible. They looked artificially white. – I’d like you to begin by repeating what you said earlier today on the telephone to Horvath. Then there’ll be some questions.

  She dragged it all up again, began uncertainly with her father’s phone call, going over there, meeting someone in the crowd outside the burning house, someone she recognised, getting closer to what he said to her as they sat in his car.

  – I should probably tell you what happened eight years ago … She broke off with a pleading look into the inspector’s bony face, as though she thought she couldn’t manage the trip back there without his help. Again he smiled. She couldn’t tell if it was friendly, but it didn’t seem like the opposite of friendly either.

  It was a long story, beginning with the time she first met Adrian Wilkins, and the evening at Tamara’s when she’d rung him. Horvath kept typing away, never moving his eyes from the screen. The detective inspector appeared to be listening, but one leg was bobbing up and down, and she had the feeling she ought to frame what had happened as a story, one that built to a climax, so that they would understand that something of crucial importance was about to happen before they grew impatient and lost interest. She thought she made a reasonable job of it, at least managed to tie the threads that connected the two evenings, that Maundy Thursday eight years ago, and the one two days earlier, when she sat in that dark blue Audi at the Statoil station and realised who her brother’s killer was.

  Afterwards she felt naked and ashamed. She needed a blanket to wrap round her, outside the jacket and the thick pullover.

  Viken cleared his throat thoroughly. – So on both evenings, the evening of your brother’s disappearance and the one two days ago, you suffered some kind of attack. Has that been diagnosed?

  She shook her head.

  – And we can’t rule out the possibility that other factors might have been involved. I’m thinking of various types of stimulants, hallucinogenics.

  – I don’t use anything like that. And I hardly drink at all.

  – Medications?

  – Paracetamol for my headaches. But I haven’t had any of those for years. Not until just very recently.

  – But back then you did use something?

  She had done. They made her try several different tablets to control the epilepsy. She refused to swallow them, but resistance was useless. Viken lingered on this subject. Medications, her physical condition, what she could remember, what she couldn’t remember, why it had taken almost two days for her to get in touch with them, how unreal she had felt in the car, whether her
hearing had been affected, her sight, her general awareness before the attack. He stopped a couple of times and stressed that he wasn’t dwelling on all this because he didn’t believe her, and she tried to hang on to this, because if he didn’t believe her then she knew she could never again face telling the story of what had happened.

  Suddenly Horvath interrupted. – A few days again, you contacted Dan-Levi and said you knew who had killed your brother. You gave a different name on that occasion than the one you’re giving now.

  She would have preferred to carry on talking to Viken, and looked over at him. He nodded slightly, indicating that he too was interested in hearing what she had to say about this. So she told once more the story of how Jasmeen Chadar had contacted her, and about Shahzad coming to the stables.

  – And you were convinced that this particular person you mention was the one who murdered your brother, Viken said.

  Synne thought his tone of voice had changed.

  – Not convinced. Thought it was likely, though. Right up until he took me down to the river.

  She noticed the way the detective inspector’s lips moved, had the impression he was sitting there and tasting what she was telling them.

  – I gather that you’re in the process of writing a novel.

  She started breathing quicker, felt as though she needed more air. – Not exactly a novel. I don’t know. I wanted to write something about Karsten.

  – Will you be including this episode in the car?

  She slumped a little.

  – Will you be writing that this person you mention by name confessed to the killing of your brother?

  – I don’t think so. I don’t know. Can’t decide things like that beforehand.

  – I understand, said Viken. – Something to do with inspiration, I suppose.

  She had always loathed that word.

  – As you may have read in the newspapers, two people were found dead in that house, he went on.

  She didn’t know that.

  – One of those was Dan-Levi Jakobsen. The other is a so far unidentified person. We believe that this person may have had something to do with the outbreak of the fire. I’d like to ask you a few questions about that. It also concerns your brother.