by Thomas Enger
‘I don’t think so,’ Kovic answered behind his back. ‘She had a blog that she updated fairly regularly – Sex Y – until she stopped all of a sudden last week. No farewell instalment. She had just over a hundred and seventeen thousand followers on Instagram. Apparently there’s money to be earned from that, or so I’ve heard. From advertisers and suchlike.’
Blix got to his feet again and scanned the rest of the room. The cabin was small and sparsely furnished. In addition to the sofa Jessica Flatebø was sitting on there was a coffee table and two armchairs. Mice had nibbled the cushions. A couple of simple landscape paintings and a yellowed map of the Nordmarka forest region hung on the walls. A variety of trinkets and ornaments were displayed on the dusty window ledges, which were sprinkled with dead insects. The kitchen area consisted of only a few cabinets, a worktop and a hotplate, with a small fridge.
‘Who owns the cabin?’ he asked.
‘The original owners died three years ago, only a few weeks apart,’ Kovic explained. ‘They hadn’t used it for the last few years of their lives. They had two children, but neither lives in this part of the country, though they’ve kept some heating on to prevent the pipes from freezing in winter.’
Wibe, pulling on a pair of gloves, had moved into the hallway to inspect the music equipment. ‘An old iPod,’ he said, as he picked up the player.
‘Don’t touch anything!’ Ann-Mari Sara instructed.
At that moment, old-fashioned dance-band music thundered out of the loudspeakers. Blix was startled.
‘Turn that off!’ he shouted.
Wibe fumbled with the iPod, but ended up resorting to yanking out the cable.
Silence descended. Kovic stood with her mouth open.
‘Fucking idiot,’ Sara raged.
Blix gave Wibe a stern look then looked across at Kovic, whose eyes were wide with alarm.
‘That music,’ she said. ‘No one mentioned it was that particular song.’
‘What about it?’ Wibe asked, clearing his throat, still slightly embarrassed by his blunder.
‘The press conference,’ Kovic said, but stopped herself – as if she needed a few more seconds to prepare what she was going to say. ‘You weren’t there, but a phone rang while Fosse … the ringtone was…’ She nodded at the stereo unit. ‘It was the same tune as you just played here.’
‘I don’t understand what you mean,’ said Blix. ‘Tell me again.’
Kovic recounted what had happened at the press conference.
‘So, whose phone was it?’ Blix asked.
‘No idea; no one seemed willing to claim it.’
‘Where’s that phone now?’ Blix motioned to Kovic that they should step outside.
‘I don’t know,’ she said, moving out of the room. ‘No one’s come back for it as far as I know.’
‘Call Fosse,’ Blix said swiftly. ‘Or Nøkleby, or anyone at all – just somebody who was there – someone with responsibility for the press room.’
Kovic already had her phone to her ear.
Blix led the way back to the car. This is all linked, he thought. Nordstrøm’s disappearance; her phone, switched on at 8.00 p.m. on the dot and laid inside an open grave. Jeppe Sørensen, strangled, deep frozen and then left at Nordstrøm’s summer cottage – so that anyone could stumble upon him. Another phone ringing at the police press conference about Sørensen’s murder; the ringtone identical to the melody used to alert casual passers-by to find yet another dead body. A body with a copy of Nordstrøm’s book on her lap.
And still there was not a single trace of Nordstrøm. That in itself was disquieting. But what worried Blix the most was that someone seemed to be directing what was happening. And so far that person had complete control over events. They’d wanted them to find Jessica Flatebø exactly like this.
Kovic finished her call. ‘They have the phone at the station,’ she said eagerly. ‘It was just left lying there.’
‘Good,’ Blix said. ‘I’ll bet a hundred kroner it belongs to Jeppe Sørensen.’
32
Emma browsed through her blog archive, alarmed at how many times she had written about Jessica Flatebø – mainly before her disappearance, but there had also been a number of articles during the six days that had elapsed since she went missing. Stories about Flatebø always attracted a lot of readers, generally because they were about her latest capers on social media, and were often illustrated with a photo, the main focus being either her lips, plunging neckline, backside or legs.
Flatebø had become a phenomenon: overnight, seemingly, everyone had known who she was, mainly because she had entered Paradise Hotel with an insatiable appetite for both sexes, but also because of her model looks and notoriously unrestrained behaviour – whether the cameras were on her or not. It had been a winning combination, getting clicks from both women and men, who would have liked to find themselves the targets of her sexual appetite, but also from the morally righteous contingent, who just had to see what she had got up to this time.
Younger readers, on the other hand, apparently looked up to Flatebø for everything she did. In their eyes she was cool, funny, exciting and inspirational. Far too many wanted to be like her one day. It was their comments that had made Emma regret having given Flatebø an even broader platform.
When it was reported that she may have disappeared of her own free will, people immediately began to suggest suicide, so Emma had been given strict instructions to give the story a wide berth, since Anita didn’t want news.no to profit from a personal tragedy, no matter how well known the person might be.
However, the Oslo Police had now issued a bulletin saying a dead body had been discovered in Nordmarka, and that ‘it is suspected that Flatebø was the victim of a crime’. The pendulum had swung back, and Anita had asked Emma to assemble as much material as she could, and was happy for her to recirculate old articles as well.
Emma had considered sending a message to Alex Blix to ask whether he knew anything about Flatebø, but decided against it. He probably had more than enough on his plate with Nordstrøm and Sørensen. What’s more, she didn’t want to give him the impression that she was trying to exploit him. She found some comfort in the fact that none of the other media outlets had broken any stories about it either.
It was nearly seven o’clock when her mobile phone buzzed.
It was Kasper: I need a guide to Oslo’s restaurant scene.
Emma gave a fleeting smile before answering: Have you tried Yellow Pages?
She waited on tenterhooks for his response.
Too many to choose from. Need a good recommendation. And preferably a blonde, beautiful woman to share a meal with.
Emma hugged her mobile phone for a few seconds. Even though a lot might still take place in the course of the evening, she did have to eat.
Three quarters of an hour later she stepped into Villa Paradiso in Grünerløkka, taken aback by how nervous she felt. On other dates she’d had in the past few years, her expectations and conditions had been crystal clear in advance. A drink or five, food, maybe sex – at his place or some other neutral location – if he behaved himself and fulfilled all her other criteria. Now she had no idea what she wanted. But she was pretty sure what he had in mind.
As usual the restaurant was packed to the rafters, but Kasper had arrived early and bagged a table for two in the far corner of the ground floor. He stood up and waved as Emma spotted him. They greeted each other with a tentative hug. Kasper smelled fabulous – shampoo and toothpaste. Smelling good was criterion number one.
‘Brilliant that you have time for a bite of food,’ he began.
‘In fact, I’m not entirely sure of that,’ Emma answered. ‘I might have to get up and run at some point.’ She held up her mobile phone.
‘You’re pretty good at that, as I recollect. Or was it cycling you did?’
Emma nodded and gave him a smile.
‘In Copenhagen we understand bike lovers very well,’ he said. ‘No one cycles as much as we do
, as you know.’
He smiled broadly as he pulled out a chair.
‘So gallant,’ Emma remarked.
‘Yes, you’d think a poor guy from Denmark was trying to impress someone.’
Emma smiled again. Humour – criterion number two.
‘How’s he doing?’ Kasper asked as he sat down.
‘It’s really too early to draw conclusions.’
All around them the air was filled with the hum of voices. Outside the window, people sauntered in and out of Olaf Ryes plass, a small, circular park in the heart of Grünerløkka. The restaurant’s wood-fired pizza oven gave off an enticing aroma.
The waitress, a short woman with close-cropped, raven-black hair, arrived with the menus. Kasper ordered a beer, Emma a glass of dry white wine. Kasper asked Emma to recommend something from the selection of pizzas.
‘The one with four cheeses is pretty good,’ she said.
Kasper took her at her word, while she chose a Margherita.
‘So…’ Kasper said once the waitress had left with the menus ‘…how are things with you?’
Emma had no desire to talk about her life, so she replied merely with ‘fine’ and turned the question back on him.
‘Things are … “fine” with me too.’
‘Do you have any good material on Jeppe Sørensen for tomorrow?’
‘Not really,’ he answered genially. Emma had the feeling he was reluctant to give anything away, now that they were essentially competitors.
The waitress returned with their drinks. Kasper gave the woman a smile too. Polite – criterion number three.
He raised his glass eagerly and said: ‘What about you? Have you any hot topics ready for the morning?’
Emma shook her head. ‘We don’t let things lie in my line of business,’ she said. ‘We publish as soon as we get hold of something.’
‘So what’s the latest?’
Emma told him about Jessica Flatebø. Kasper hadn’t heard of her, but spoke in a resigned tone about a similar celebrity blogger in Denmark. Both young girls who had nothing to offer apart from their looks.
He took a gulp of beer from his glass and leaned slightly towards her. ‘How have you been since … Gothenburg?’
Emma quickly looked up at him, aware that her cheeks were burning. ‘Well, there’s been a lot on at work and loads of…’
‘Cycling?’
‘Yes,’ she said, grateful to him for giving her something to laugh at.
‘Have you…?’ He paused for a moment before completing the question. ‘Have you thought about me during all that time?’
Emma took a sip of her wine to buy herself a moment or two. She shot him a look over the rim of her glass, noticing that he didn’t seem nervous about what her answer might be. On the contrary: he was self-assured, but not in an unpleasant way. Criterion number four: she liked men who exuded confidence.
Emma didn’t know how honest she should be. A ‘yes’ would put more significance on their affair than she was willing to admit. A ‘no’ would seem dismissive.
‘As I said, there’s been a lot of…’
She couldn’t find the right words to round off her sentence. She could have said her grandmother, Martine, work. She could have said Emma, but she wasn’t prepared to open up to him about herself just yet.
‘Well, I, at least, have been thinking about you,’ Kasper said, in a quiet, warm voice. Emma had hoped he wouldn’t – that they wouldn’t – arrive at this, at Gothenburg, at such an early stage in the evening. ‘I’ve been wondering what you thought about … us.’
Emma refused to meet his eyes. ‘I haven’t thought much about it, in fact,’ was all she said. ‘You went to Copenhagen, and I went home.’ She lifted her gaze, briefly, and saw that he’d been hoping for a different response.
‘Do you want to know what I thought?’ he said after a lengthy pause.
‘I’m not really sure,’ Emma answered, after a few seconds hesitation.
‘I thought it was a wonderful evening. A wonderful night. With a girl I’d love to get to know a bit better.’
‘Isn’t that what you’re doing right now?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Am I?’
Emma would have liked the opportunity to let her eyes wander, but she was sitting with her back to the rest of the restaurant. All she could see was Kasper.
They sipped their drinks without a word.
‘So what do you think might be the connection between Sonja Nordstrøm and Jeppe Sørensen?’ he asked.
Emma was pleased he had changed the subject. ‘Other than being superstars in their homelands and involved in sport?’ she asked, pondering this for a few moments. ‘I don’t really know,’ she added. ‘I haven’t a clue.’
‘Jeppe was down in the dumps, psychologically,’ Kasper said. ‘But there was nothing of that kind in Nordstrøm’s case, was there? Was she suffering some sort of depression because her career was over?’
Emma shook her head. ‘It’s been a long time since Nordstrøm quit competitive sports, and she’s never been the kind to let things get her down. Quite the opposite: whenever she’s had problems, she’s just worked her way through them. Moved on without a backward glance.’
‘You’ve been reading her book.’
‘Yes.’
‘I must get round to doing that too.’
‘I’ve got a copy at home,’ Emma said, but regretted it immediately. She didn’t want to open that door. Definitely didn’t want to open the door to her own home – it would be too difficult to get Kasper to leave afterwards. Especially as she possibly wouldn’t want him to.
‘And why should the perpetrator go after famous people with depression, anyway?’ she continued. ‘That makes no sense.’
‘I can only agree with you there,’ Kasper said.
But he’d given Emma something to think about. For a killer, it could be a smart move to find a victim whose mental problems were already well known. Missing-persons cases often turned out to be suicides, and even though the police and friends would conduct a search, they wouldn’t necessarily do it in the expectation that anything criminal had happened. And the media would more or less take a back seat, making it easier for a perpetrator to slip through the net.
In the case of Jeppe Sørensen, however, there was little doubt that everyone would find out that he’d been murdered. This made Emma wonder how Jessica Flatebø had been found – was it in the same obvious way as Sørensen? Jessica too had struggled with her mental health in the past few months.
33
‘Will he be finished anytime soon?’
As Blix gathered up his dirty plates and cutlery, he glanced out into the corridor towards the video room. Øyvind Krohn, the Violent Crime Unit’s ICT expert and photo analyst, had been called back to work to trawl through the CCTV footage of the room where the police press conference had been held.
‘I don’t think it’ll take too long,’ Kovic said.
Blix took the dirty dishes upstairs to the deserted canteen, where he sorted the plates and cutlery into the baskets at the kitchen sink before taking out his phone and opening the latest exchange of messages with Emma. She’d asked if there was a connection linking Nordstrøm, Sørensen and Flatebø. All he’d answered was Yes. She’d not asked any further questions. Not yet at least.
Despite Fosse’s explicit warnings, Blix couldn’t supress the urge to help her in some way. Feed her some titbits, something that couldn’t be traced back to him. The information that Sonja Nordstrøm’s book had been found with Flatebø’s body was a rumour already circulating in the police station. In fact, the first patrol to arrive on the scene had assumed it was Sonja sitting there. Lots of people knew about the book being at the scene, including the paramedics who had been inside before the police.
He was starting to write a new message to her when his phone rang in his hands. It was Kovic.
‘Krohn’s ready,’ she said.
‘Coming,’ Blix replied and disconne
cted.
He deleted what he had begun to write. As he did so, he told himself that he was acting unprofessionally. Which is why he also deleted his most recent messages to and from Emma.
Krohn sat hunched over the keyboard in the video room, flanked by Wibe, who made room for Blix as he approached.
‘It all seems so well planned,’ Wibe commented. ‘That the phone is lying where it is, that it starts ringing just there and then, playing that particular tune. It’s not by chance; just as it wasn’t by chance that Nordstrøm’s mobile was found where it was and at that exact point in time.’
Blix agreed. ‘The phone left in the press conference has to belong to Jeppe Sørensen. It was there as part of the plan. Which is precisely why I’m not expecting the technicians to come across anything on it – unless there’s something the perpetrator wants us to find.’
Krohn turned up the volume on the computer. Gard Fosse’s voice could be clearly heard; he was lecturing about the discoveries the police had made and how they needed the public’s help. Then the music began to play. Fosse stopped. Blix leaned closer to the screen.
‘Go back,’ he said. ‘And zoom in on the area where the phone is situated.’
Krohn followed Blix’s instructions, rewinding one minute back in time, and then playing the recording again.
‘Where is it lying, exactly?’ Kovic asked.
‘It’s impossible to see,’ Krohn said. ‘But it looks as if that woman picks it up from the floor.’
He used the cursor to circle one of the journalists.
The next minute passed without them spotting anything notable.
‘OK – rewind it all the way back to the beginning,’ Blix said. ‘Before there was anyone in the room at all.’
Krohn moved the play button and wound back until people were starting to arrive. First they saw a man in uniform setting out name markers and glasses of water on the podium. Then the reporters entered. Some sat right at the front, whereas others were busy setting up cameras and microphones. Minute by minute, the rows filled up.