Death Deserved

by Thomas Enger

  ‘That would destroy my relationship with my source.’

  ‘Your source…?’ he said with a touch of sarcasm. ‘You’ve been working on crime for exactly one day, and you’ve already got a source?’

  Emma had no reply. She regretted involving him, but there was no going back on that now.

  ‘Don’t give it another thought,’ Wollan went on. ‘I’ll put it out; that way you avoid any problems.’

  ‘It’s not been verified yet…’ Emma began.

  ‘Call me if you find out anything more,’ Wollan said. Emma didn’t get as far as voicing her objection before he rang off.

  23

  The traffic ahead of him veered to one side when Blix turned on the sirens and blue light. He wound his way from the city centre up on to the motorway. Exit signs with the names of the various towns around the capital whizzed by: Kolbotn, Ski, Ås, Vestby, Moss and Rygge. As he approached Fredrikstad, he phoned Gard Fosse.

  ‘Are you far away?’ Fosse asked.

  ‘Maybe twenty minutes or so,’ he answered. ‘Is there any news?’

  ‘Only that the media have got wind of us finding Nordstrøm’s phone,’ Fosse snorted. ‘Call me as soon as you know any more.’

  Blix flicked off the blue light and dropped his speed as he opened his phone browser and clicked into news.no.

  ‘Nordstrøm’s Phone Found in Open Grave’.

  He scanned the phone screen as he drove, reading a sentence or two at a time. According to what news.no had learned, Sonja Nord­strøm’s phone had been used on Sunday evening. A police source indicated it had been located in an open grave.

  He tossed his phone on to the seat beside him and picked up speed again. Of course she’d published it, he thought, pounding the steer­ing wheel with his fist.

  The first sign for Hvaler appeared. Ten minutes later, Blix was drawing up behind a row of police patrol cars. No reporters seemed to be on the scene yet, but that wouldn’t last long.

  As he stepped out of his car, he was met by a biting blast of sea air. The sky had clouded over. If they were unlucky, it might start raining during the afternoon. Blix hoped the Hvaler police had made good progress with their crime-scene work.

  He greeted a uniformed policewoman and skirted around to the rear of Sonja Nordstrøm’s cottage. He introduced himself to another officer and asked for directions.

  ‘Just follow that path,’ the officer told him.

  Blix made his way along a narrow footpath lined with low bushes and sparse trees, which sheltered him from the worst of the squalls. He was careful where he put his feet: roots and twigs protruded here and there. Soon he reached a smooth expanse of rock. A number of police officers were huddled several metres from a rowing boat, which was moored beside the rock, bobbing lethargically on the waves. One of the crime-scene technicians was holding on to a rope that was attached to the boat, while another took photographs.

  Blix nodded to them all and introduced himself to the local officer in charge. He seemed flustered, somehow, as if he’d made a mistake that Blix hadn’t yet discovered.

  ‘We were here yesterday,’ he explained. ‘At your request. The boat­house was locked then, and the boat was safely inside.’

  ‘So it’s Sonja Nordstrøm’s boat?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Blix took a step closer to the craft and peered down. The body lay on its stomach, with the face turned sideways towards Blix.

  ‘A man?’ he said, looking back at the local officer, who responded with a nod.

  Blix crouched down. There was something familiar about the dead man’s ashen face. He had short, fair hair and blue eyes.

  ‘Do you have any idea who it is?’ Blix asked, turning to face the local officer.

  ‘My lad at home’s a fan,’ he said, sighing, as he pointed at the corpse. The man was wearing a football top with the number seven on the back.

  ‘It’s Jeppe Sørensen,’ he went on. ‘The Danish football player, from the national team. I think he’s been missing for a week or so.’

  Blix wasn’t particularly interested in football, but he’d heard that Sørensen was AWOL.

  ‘He was supposed to sign a professional contract with Borussia Dortmund a while back,’ the officer added. ‘But then he suffered a knee injury. It destroyed his career. There’s been speculation that he fell into a depression because of it. And when he disappeared people even suggested he’d taken his own life, but … we can knock that theory on the head now at least.’

  Blix watched the crime-scene officers continuing their work for a moment. On a rocky foreland fifty metres away, a man appeared, holding a camera. The first journalist, Blix thought, turning his back on him slightly.

  ‘He’s cold,’ one of the technicians shouted from the boat.

  ‘What do you mean?’ the local officer asked.

  ‘This isn’t normal rigor mortis,’ the technician explained. ‘He’s frozen, and has just begun to thaw out.’

  Blix took a deep breath and then exhaled slowly.

  One of the crime-scene officers supervised as the local police of­ficers lifted Jeppe Sørensen on to a body bag. They zipped it up and then brought him on to the rock before four men carried him away from the scene.

  Blix dipped his head and followed in their wake, a gust of wind sweeping in from the sea, propelling him forwards.

  24

  ‘Auntie Emma!’

  Martine leapt up from the playroom floor at Svingen nursery. Emma had been leaning against the doorframe for the past minute or two, watching her niece as she sat in a circle with three other children – two girls and a boy – playing with toy figures. Emma couldn’t make out what they were meant to represent. Now Martine was rushing towards her. Her face had erupted into a grin displaying her tiny teeth – at least, the ones she hadn’t lost yet. She hurled herself into Emma’s arms.

  Emma picked up her niece and held her for a few moments, hugging her close. ‘Hi, sweetheart,’ she whispered into her ear. ‘Oh, I’ve missed you.’

  ‘Am I coming to your place today?’ Martine demanded expec­tantly, pulling back a little.

  ‘Well … OK, then,’ Emma replied and set her down.

  Martine jumped for joy. ‘Can we have pancakes?’ she asked.

  ‘I thought we would have fish today instead.’

  Martine’s smile of anticipation vanished immediately.

  ‘Fish, carrots and potatoes – isn’t that your favourite?’

  Martine was about to protest.

  ‘I’m only joking; of course we’ll have pancakes.’

  Martine was jubilant again.

  ‘Are you ready to go?’

  She agreed excitedly. Emma signalled to one of the staff members, received a nod of acknowledgement and they headed out to the cloakroom to fetch Martine’s belongings.

  They’d barely entered Emma’s flat when Martine kicked off her shoes and ran inside. She knew exactly where Emma’s iPad was and had learned the code into the bargain, so it wasn’t long before she was engrossed in one of the fifty or so games her aunt had allowed her to download.

  Emma had only just managed to throw together the pancake mixture when the phone rang. She picked it up with some trepidation.

  ‘Hi, Emma,’ Kasper Bjerringbo began – she could hear from his voice that something serious had happened. ‘Have you heard?’

  ‘Heard what?’

  ‘You remember that footballer I told you about? Jeppe Sørensen?’

  ‘Yes?’ Emma said.

  ‘He’s been found dead. Murdered. In Sonja Nordstrøm’s boat.’

  Emma needed a second or two to digest this information.

  ‘What the hell are you saying?’

  ‘Auntie,’ Martine yelled from the living room. ‘You’re not allowed to swear.’

  ‘They found him a couple of hours ago,’ Kasper went on. ‘Lying in Sonja Nordstrøm’s boat. I just received a tip-off from one of my police sources.’

  Emma swallowed hard. ‘What on earth
has a footballer got to do with Sonja Nordstrøm?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. But you should maybe write a story about this your­self. That report you guys have splashed with is pretty speculative.’

  Emma picked up her laptop and fired up the screen.

  ‘Hang on a second,’ she said, waiting impatiently for her computer to find the network. Then she clicked into news.no. Henrik Wollan had already published something.

  ‘Body Found’.

  That was all it said, in big, fat block capitals, above a picture of the Hvaler archipelago and a white body bag being carried across the flat rocks on the shore. Inserted below it was a photo of Sonja Nordstrøm.

  ‘Good grief,’ Emma said under her breath as she scrolled down and noticed that Wollan had included her by-line too. She skimmed through the brief article he’d written. The police at the crime scene refused to make any comment about cause of death or the sex of the victim, but the way the story was angled gave a clear indication that this was Sonja Nordstrøm encased in the body bag.

  ‘I’ll write something myself – get it sorted out,’ Emma said. ‘Can you send me a link or a text with a summary of what you have on the footballer?’

  ‘Give me a couple of minutes, and I’ll see what I can find.’

  ‘Brilliant, thanks for letting me know.’

  ‘My pleasure.’

  ‘Have the relatives been informed yet?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘In Denmark – have the footballer’s relatives been informed?’

  ‘I don’t know. Let me check.’

  ‘OK. Terrific. Thanks.’

  They wrapped up the call.

  Before she started writing, she rang Blix. She wanted another source to confirm the discovery, preferably a Norwegian one. It rang for a long time. Bloody hell, Emma said to herself, pick up the phone. But it just went on ringing.

  She sent Blix a text asking if Jeppe Sørensen was the body they had found. While she waited for a reply, she began to write. It only took a few minutes to set up a new story with a headline and introduction, and a line in the body of the text to tell readers that more was to follow. She nudged the mouse’s cursor up to the ‘publish’ button, and felt a tingling in her fingertips as she pressed it.

  Her phone buzzed. Kasper: Relatives informed.

  Excellent, she could go ahead and publish; she trusted Kasper.

  Emma decided that she didn’t have time to phone Anita before going into news.no’s desktop publishing program and removing Wollan’s story from the top of the front page. She didn’t give two hoots that it was neither her job nor her privilege to do so.

  She couldn’t recall the last time she’d felt so elated. It was almost un­comfortable to have to admit it, but her whole body was trembling, as if what she was doing was fun. She typed as fast as her fingers allowed, click­ing into her email and opening the four links Kasper had just sent, but she didn’t get as far as reading any of them before her phone rang again.

  ‘Hi, Anita.’

  ‘What the fuck’s going on?’

  Emma explained what she knew about the discovery of the body.

  ‘And you’re absolutely certain of this?’

  ‘I’m working on finding a source to confirm it, but I’ve no reason to doubt the source I already have.’

  ‘Shit,’ Anita said. ‘This is just…’

  For once it seemed that Anita was lost for words. Emma went on writing while her boss collected herself.

  ‘OK,’ Anita said at last, ‘just give it full throttle and I’ll delete that other story.’

  Emma pictured Wollan’s face, burning with anger, when the facts of the matter were made known to him. But this was no time to gloat. It was time to write and in the next ten minutes she hammered out 842 words about Jeppe Sørensen, taking chunks of Kasper’s reports and translating them into Norwegian.

  ‘Auntie, will we be eating soon?’ Martine shouted through from the living room.

  ‘Not long now, darling,’ Emma replied. ‘I’ll start cooking very soon.’

  Emma was no longer hungry, though. All she wanted was to drive to Hvaler, speak to Blix and try to find a few more sources to inter­rogate. But she’d promised Martine pancakes, so instead she had to get moving with the frying pan.

  As she poured out the lovely thick batter, she wondered what her next steps with the story should be. She had little doubt that this would blow the whole of Scandinavia to kingdom come. Not to mention the whole of Europe. Sonja Nordstrøm and Jeppe Sørensen were both famous sports personalities, and that was the only connec­tion between them she could discern.

  But something very odd was going on here, she thought, as she flipped the first pancake. Something really weird.

  25

  ‘Everybody.’ Gard Fosse clapped his hands three times in succession.

  The whole room turned to their boss as he pointed at a TV screen showing a woman with dark, mid-length hair, who was staring straight at them.

  ‘This is Lone Cramer,’ said Fosse. ‘She works in the Danish Na­tional Homicide Section. Did I get that right?’ Fosse asked, turning to face her with a genial smile.

  ‘Perfect,’ Cramer said, clearing her throat.

  ‘She is central to the Danish investigation into Jeppe Sørensen’s disappearance,’ Fosse went on. ‘She’s going to give us a brief summary.’

  Typical of Fosse, Blix thought, to turn on the charm when detec­tives from abroad were taking part in a videoconference. It was never more noticeable than when the on-screen officer was female.

  The Danish investigator sat up straight and cleared her throat again. ‘The last known sighting of Jeppe Sørensen was made by his live-in partner just before eight o’clock on the evening of the twenty-ninth of September,’ she began.

  Cramer spoke quickly, making no allowances for the fact that her listeners were Norwegian. Blix had to concentrate to understand it all.

  ‘Sørensen went out to meet a pal of his in Nørrebro, so he took the lift down to his car in the underground garage. The car never left the building.’

  Cramer went on to give an account of the steps taken by the inves­tigators: examination of CCTV cameras, credit-card check, survey of taxis and public transport. None of it yielded anything relevant.

  ‘His phone has been switched off from the time he disappeared,’ she added, glancing down at her papers. ‘But an hour ago we were notified by the phone operator that his mobile was activated last night at eight o’clock, and that it was located in Oslo.’

  Blix sat bolt upright. ‘Do you have his phone number to hand?’ he asked, riffling through his notes.

  Lone Cramer read the number aloud.

  Blix got to his feet and took a step towards the TV screen. ‘That’s the number Sonja Nordstrøm’s phone was called from last night,’ he said. ‘At the graveyard.’

  The gravity of what he said sank in around the table. Blix gave Cramer a quick summary of the Nordstrøm case.

  ‘So someone has kept Jeppe Sørensen’s mobile ever since he dis­appeared,’ Kovic commented. ‘And they’ve chosen to use it to call Sonja Nordstrøm’s phone at the very moment we were in the grave­yard. That’s sick.’

  Silence fell around the table.

  ‘Our hypothesis until now has been that Jeppe Sørensen took his own life,’ Lone Cramer said. ‘He was depressed because of his injury. He thought his career was over. And there was nothing to suggest any kind of crime had been committed down in the garage. No sign of a struggle, traces of blood or anything like that. Nothing whatsoever.’

  Blix put his hand in the air. ‘We’ve found burn marks on his neck that suggest he was knocked out with an electroshock weapon,’ he said. ‘And our pathologist thinks he was probably strangled after that. This could mean the garage is, in fact, a possible crime scene.’

  Cramer nodded in agreement.

  ‘But the only thing that links Sonja Nordstrøm and Jeppe Sø­rensen, apart from the phone call, is that both are sports celebrities w
ho have been abducted,’ Blix went on. ‘Or have you come up with anything else?’

  Cramer shook her head. ‘Sonja Nordstrøm’s name doesn’t figure in any way in our investigation,’ she said. ‘I just checked to confirm.’

  Kovic stood up. ‘I need to take this,’ she said, holding up her vi­brating phone.

  ‘Who was this friend he was supposed to meet?’ Blix asked, staring hard at Cramer.

  ‘Dennis Carlsen,’ Cramer replied. ‘An estate agent. He was ob­served in a café at the time in question. But he’s been eliminated from the case.’

  They exchanged several more practical details then ended the vi­deoconference with the Danish detective.

  Their discussion continued, however.

  ‘It’s one thing to attack Jeppe Sørensen,’ Tine Abelvik remarked. ‘It’s another thing entirely to transport him across the border to Norway, and then keep him in deep freeze for a week or so before putting him in a boat that belongs to our missing person.’

  ‘We don’t know if that’s what happened,’ Wibe objected. ‘We don’t know when he was killed, or when he was frozen.’

  ‘No, maybe not, but all the same we must be talking about a pretty unhinged person. He pays a drug addict ten thousand kroner to put Nordstrøm’s phone in a graveyard at a particular time. Why not do it himself?’

  ‘Maybe he couldn’t,’ Blix said. ‘Maybe he was busy with something else right then.’

  The comment was left hanging in the air.

  ‘We’ve one thing we can do,’ Blix ploughed on. ‘Nordstrøm’s boat was in the boathouse as late as yesterday, and there are very few roads leading out there. You have to pass a toll booth to get over to Kråkerøy and on out to Hvaler, unless you travel by boat, of course.’

  ‘I can check the toll stations,’ Abelvik volunteered.

  ‘Coordinate with Kovic,’ Blix said. ‘She’s already started to chart the vehicles that passed the toll stations in the vicinity of Nordstrøm’s house the evening she went missing. Cross-check the lists and see if the same vehicle has been in both locations.’