Death Deserved

by Thomas Enger

  Then the clock vanished.

  Instead a strapline appeared beneath the photograph of the athletics star.

  SONJA NORDSTRØM (1968–2018)

  The text remained there for perhaps half a minute. Then both photo and text disappeared. In their place was merely a black screen. The connection to the feed also seemed to be broken.

  ‘We’ve killed her,’ Abelvik said. ‘We’ve fucking killed her.’

  71

  For the next few minutes no one said a word. They all stared blankly into thin air. Then they walked, one by one, to their desks.

  It was as silent as a church in the open-plan office. Emma had never participated in team sports, but she could imagine it must be like gathering in the changing room after losing an important match. But this time it had been a life-or-death showdown; the feeling of emptiness was not mere disappointment.

  Those who dared to make conversation did so in whispers. The phone rang, it was answered immediately, with a ‘wait a minute’. Then whoever it was disappeared out of the office and continued their conversation elsewhere.

  Gard Fosse headed in the direction of his own office. Blix slumped into a chair. Emma could see how exhausted he was. His head was bowed. He seemed totally drained of energy.

  Emma longed for a shower and her own bed. But she had a job to do. What had happened in the last twenty-four hours was red-hot news.

  ‘You know I’ll have to write about this?’

  Blix lifted his head to face her.

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ he said. ‘It will simply put more pressure on us, and hassle from the media, relatives, everyone. It will hold us back. Make it even more difficult to bring all this to an end.’

  ‘I know that,’ Emma said. ‘But I’ve no choice. Anita has phoned me four times in the past hour. She’s wondering what on earth I’m doing. This is a huge development in what may be the biggest news story we’ve had in Norway for years. I’ll lose my job if Anita finds out I’ve been right in the centre of events again without telling her about it. As far as she’s concerned, that may be a bigger crime than not writing about it.’

  Blix lowered his eyes again. It looked as if he appreciated her dilemma.

  ‘We need to keep your computer here for a while longer,’ he said finally.

  ‘That doesn’t matter. We have others at work.’

  Sighing, he repeatedly rubbed his hands over his face.

  As Emma headed for the door, Blix called after her:

  ‘I don’t want you to be on your own,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll let you know if he contacts me again,’ she told him. ‘Even though there’s scarcely any reason for him to do that now.’

  ‘He could—’

  ‘And if he does,’ Emma interrupted, ‘I’ll let you know. At once.’

  Blix seemed to take a few moments to think this over.

  ‘I want you to take a security alarm,’ he said, getting to his feet.

  Emma looked at him. ‘A personal safety alarm, you mean?’

  ‘Call it whatever you like.’

  Emma was not keen on the idea. ‘Isn’t that a bit over the top?’ she said. ‘Nordstrøm is probably dead. It’s surely only a matter of time before Dahlmann dumps her body somewhere. It’s over and done with, isn’t it? All he’ll do now is make the most of number two – whoever that might be.’

  ‘We don’t know that,’ Blix said. ‘And we’re not sure it’s Dahlmann we’re looking for either.’

  He gave her an earnest look.

  ‘Dahlmann might be a pawn too, just like you,’ he went on. ‘We don’t know who’s behind all this, and as long as we don’t, I’m not taking any chances.’

  Emma bit her lower lip.

  ‘It’s been a long day,’ he went on. ‘A long night. Can’t you just do as I ask? It’s not as if you’ll be going around with a fucking medallion round your neck.’

  A discouraged expression had appeared in his eyes, one that Emma had not seen before. And his voice was more assertive than she had previously experienced.

  ‘Most people just wear it on their wrist, like a watch,’ he added, more gently.

  Emma hoisted her shoulders before dropping them slowly. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘If you insist.’

  ‘I do,’ he said, giving her a smile.

  ‘Is this an official police theory, by the way?’ she asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That there may be a previously unknown perpetrator?’

  ‘No,’ Blix replied, with a sigh. ‘It’s my theory, and no, you can’t quote me on it.’

  72

  The autumn wind had picked up again. Leaves whirled up from the dry pavements. People walked to and fro, and there was constant traffic on the roads. Everything was as before. Just not.

  Emma clambered into a taxi and asked to be driven to the news.no office. She thought the driver gave the alarm a strange look when he turned round to take her credit card. It made her feel like a victim, and she didn’t want that, so she took it off and put it in her bag. If a dangerous situation arose, it would be close at hand all the same.

  As she let herself into the building, someone called out behind her: ‘Wait!’

  Henrik Wollan ran up to her, caught the door and held it open as she stepped inside. ‘Where have you been?’ he asked, as his gaze took in her crumpled clothes. The same ones as yesterday. Emma had hoped to avoid this, but now that he was here, she would have to involve him.

  ‘I’ll explain up in Anita’s office,’ she said, letting him lead the way up the stairs.

  Anita ushered them in and Emma spent the next few minutes explaining what had happened in the past twelve hours or so.

  ‘So Dahlmann has sent you pictures of Sonja Nordstrøm?’ Wollan asked. He was standing at Anita’s coffee machine picking out a capsule.

  ‘I don’t know if it was Dahlmann,’ Emma replied, thinking of what Blix had said about another, unknown perpetrator. ‘But they were live video images.’

  Anita leaned forwards over her desk. ‘Can we see them?’ she asked, making an energetic hand movement, as if to prise Emma’s laptop out of her bag.

  ‘The link’s dead now,’ Emma explained.

  ‘The police killed her,’ Wollan concluded, firing up his laptop. ‘Tell me you at least took a screen shot.’

  Emma shook her head.

  ‘He sent me a still picture as well,’ she explained as the coffee machine buzzed. ‘But the police still have my laptop. I can’t access my emails from my phone now either. It’s possible the police have removed them from the server.’

  ‘So you don’t actually have anything to back up your story?’ Wollan said, bringing the coffee cup over to his seat.

  ‘No physical proof. But Gard Fosse can’t refuse to answer specific questions. And since he knows I was there, he has no other choice than to confirm it. If he doesn’t, he’ll be lying.’

  ‘I’ll call Weedon,’ Anita said. ‘Find out if he can retrieve your emails.’

  ‘Who’s Weedon?’ Emma queried.

  ‘The computer guy we use,’ Anita said, turning to face Wollan. ‘We’ll take a two-pronged approach. First we’ll report that the perpetrator has contacted one of our journalists with photos of Sonja Nordstrøm in captivity. Then, once the police have confirmed that, a story about the kidnapper’s demands, the police’s handling of the case and Sonja Nordstrøm’s uncertain fate. Start by ringing Gard Fosse.’

  ‘Do I have to do everything all of a sudden?’ Wollan objected.

  ‘Emma’s by-line can’t go on this,’ Anita said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because this time Emma herself is part of the story.’

  73

  Emma leaned her back against the door of her flat and dropped her bag on the floor. She felt bone weary in a way she’d never experienced before.

  She stood there for almost a full minute before kicking off her shoes and hanging up her jacket. The rest of her clothes she stripped off on the way to her bedro
om. She could allow herself to relax now, she thought, and she took off her wig before crawling into bed.

  When she awoke four hours later, she lay contemplating the ceiling for a while, before reaching out for her mobile phone attached to its charger on the bedside table. A message from Blix, wondering whether she’d got home safe and sound. An unanswered call from her sister. That was all. The call had been followed by a text message in which she asked if Emma would spend Saturday evening with her and Martine and stay overnight.

  She wasn’t sure she wanted to do that, so instead of responding she ventured on to the Internet and saw that Wollan had still not posted anything about Sonja Nordstrøm. Maybe Gard Fosse had made himself uncontactable.

  She checked the other online newspapers but none had any news about the case to report.

  Emma lingered in bed with the phone in her hand. After she’d answered Blix, she decided to send a text to Kasper.

  Any feedback from your Danish sources about Jeppe Sørensen’s Norwegian friends?

  It pinged back shortly afterwards.

  Nothing so far. It’s the weekend, you know. My sources are taking time off.

  She weighed up whether to confront him about his silence on his childhood relationship with Jeppe Sørensen. But that would reveal that she’d searched for his name.

  She swung her feet out of bed, headed for the bathroom and got straight into the shower. Closed her eyes and leaned back into the hot spray. She stood where she was for a long time before turning off the water, drying herself and wandering out into the kitchen wrapped in nothing but a towel.

  The fridge was almost empty. She didn’t like the idea of all the people she’d have to mix with if she went out shopping. Instead she sent a message to her sister, writing that she would be over at eight o’clock.

  Just as Emma was about to call for a taxi, a message from Anita appeared: Out now.

  Emma checked news.no. The font used in the headline was larger than she could ever remember seeing before, and she felt instant distaste for reading about herself as part of a news story, even though she was not named. Gard Fosse was tight-lipped, pointing out that a press statement would be issued in the course of the evening.

  The phone began to ring almost as soon as she’d finished reading. It didn’t require much imagination for her press colleagues to work out which of the news.no journalists might have been contacted by the person who had abducted Sonja Nordstrøm.

  She let the calls divert to voicemail, eventually switching off the sound and vibration functions, but the disturbance nevertheless meant it was half past eight before Emma arrived at her sister’s. Martine had already gone to bed, worn out after a long day at a water park out in Asker.

  ‘I didn’t say anything about you coming,’ her sister explained. ‘It can be a nice surprise for her when she sees you in the morning.’

  Irene served the rest of the lasagne that she and Martine had eaten. Afterwards she opened a bottle of red wine.

  Emma told her about the uproar of the last twenty-four hours. Her sister listened wide-eyed, then got up to make sure the main door of the flat was locked, before checking on Martine.

  They sat in the living room edgily zapping between TV channels.

  ‘Go back,’ Emma said.

  Irene did as she was asked. It was an edited transmission of the events of the last twenty-four hours on Worthy Winner. The three remaining contestants were seated around a table.

  ‘That’s Alex Blix’s daughter,’ Emma said, pointing at the screen. ‘The guy who shot dad.’

  Irene didn’t comment. Emma replenished their glasses.

  ‘I’m supposed to be covering the semi-final tomorrow,’ she added, feeling how strange it would be to return to that type of journalism.

  ‘Can’t someone else do it?’ Irene asked.

  ‘There aren’t many of us,’ Emma replied. ‘It depends what else is on the go.’

  They watched to the end of the programme, then changed to a music channel.

  ‘There’s something I thought I should speak to you about,’ Emma said after a pause.

  Her sister waited for her to continue. Emma moved her wine glass slightly further across the table in front of her.

  ‘I think Martine may have the same hair disorder as me,’ she went on.

  Irene glanced up at her sister before lowering her eyes.

  ‘I found a few clumps of her hair in my bed last time she stayed the night with me,’ Emma explained.

  Irene said nothing. Not for a long time.

  ‘You didn’t mention it to me,’ Emma said. ‘Or maybe you didn’t know about it?’

  Irene quickly lifted her gaze. ‘Don’t you think I’ve noticed it?’

  Emma splayed out her hands. Her sister’s eyes glittered with embarrassment.

  Her voice was angry when she continued: ‘I just wanted Martine to live as normal a life as possible for as long as possible. Is that so odd, do you think?’

  ‘No,’ Emma said, making small circular motions with her red wine glass. ‘It’s not.’

  Neither of them spoke for a while.

  ‘How old were you when it started?’ Irene asked in a conciliatory tone.

  Emma hesitated. ‘Some time in my teenage years,’ Emma said. ‘Thirteen or fourteen or thereabouts.’

  ‘That was when you … changed as well.’

  Emma knew what her sister was referring to. For a period Emma had felt as if the whole world was against her. That everything was unfair.

  ‘You only saw half of that,’ she said. ‘You saw me going to a lot of parties and coming home late and so on, but you didn’t see all the other stuff.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Irene stared at her.

  Emma hesitated again before continuing: ‘I … harmed myself, among other things. I didn’t cut myself, because I didn’t want to end up with sores and that kind of thing. I didn’t want other people to see them. I just needed to feel the pain. And when I’d managed that, I did all I could to deaden it. I drank. On my own, too. From the age of fifteen. I either helped myself to some of Grandpa’s booze, or I got people to buy it for me.’

  ‘Where did you get the money for that?’

  Emma stared intently down into her wine glass. ‘I stole it,’ she said, shamefaced. ‘The money, that is.’

  ‘Emma…’

  ‘From Grandma.’

  She held her glass and swirled the wine round and round. Took a swig. ‘I did a lot of fucking dreadful things that I’m not proud of. It’s actually a wonder everything didn’t go to hell in a handcart.’

  They sat for a while in silence.

  ‘Do you still think life’s unfair?’ Irene eventually asked.

  Emma gave some thought to her answer.

  ‘I try not to think too much about it. It doesn’t help. The hair problem is something I just have to live with. After all, there are worse things.’

  ‘But you don’t do that, Emma. You don’t live with it. Not really.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Emma looked up at her sister.

  ‘You’ve just put a lid on it. You’ve never been open about it, for instance, not to anyone apart from me. That’s not the same as living with it.’

  ‘I’ve no need to share my illness with the outside world. Everything doesn’t have to be paraded in public. I’ve chosen to deal with it in that way. And it’s my choice, no one else’s.’

  They drank up the rest of their wine.

  ‘Of course, you can decide for yourself,’ Irene said after a while. ‘But if Martine has the same condition as you, I’d like her to have a positive role model. Someone who knows what problems she’ll face in the years ahead, and who can give her advice about how to tackle them. I don’t want her to harm herself, the way you did, and I don’t want her to hide herself away either.’

  ‘I don’t hide myself away.’

  ‘No?’

  Irene put down her glass. ‘How many boyfriends have you had in the past few years, Emma? How many of t
hem have you dared to spend the night with? How many have you allowed to stay the night at your place?’

  Emma gave no answer, quite simply because she had no good answer to give.

  ‘How many have been permitted to see who you really are?’

  74

  Blix couldn’t recollect the last time he’d spent the night at the police station, but at some point around the crack of dawn he’d let himself into a conference room and slept on a mat from the gym, with a blanket pulled over him. The wee small hours spent poring over the case files had failed to yield anything useful, apart from an even stronger conviction that Dahlmann was not operating alone.

  Stiff after several hours on the hard mat, he got to his feet and took a shower, found a clean T-shirt in the cupboard, and headed into the main office for a coffee. The office was empty, so he took the opportunity to have a look at the news before clicking on to the Worthy Winner pages.

  The three remaining contestants sat in the kitchen, tucking into an omelette. Apparently Jonas Sakshaug, the chef, had whisked it up for breakfast. Iselin could barely boil an egg.

  Blix took the liberty of turning up the volume to hear them complaining about having woken early. He was looking forward to the whole reality show being over, but did hope that Iselin would get one of the final two places, now that she had come so far. What the actual final would comprise was top secret, but the producer, Petter Due-Eriksen, had promised viewers something out of the ordinary. Something no one had ever seen before in the context of a reality show. But first there was the semi-final.

  A sudden thought made him sit bolt upright.

  Three had to be reduced to two.

  Two.

  A number still missing from the perpetrator’s calculations.

  In many ways a reality show was the perfect scenario, Blix thought – and he was as excited as he was scared by the idea that had seized him. A reality-show participant would certainly fit the bill for a perpetrator who consciously pursued celebrities. And now that he had not managed to broadcast to the public live coverage of Sonja Nordstrøm…