Death Deserved

by Thomas Enger

  Blix stood up.

  Three contestants were left. Three who had to become two.

  Toralf Schanke.

  Jonas Sakshaug.

  And Iselin.

  The thought made him ill, and he had to pay a visit to the toilet to splash cold water on his face. The first investigators had appeared by the time he came back. As soon as Gard Fosse arrived, Blix requested a meeting to present his theory.

  ‘The fact that three have to become two doesn’t give it a direct connection to the number two,’ Abelvik objected. ‘It’s the person who loses in the final who becomes number two.’

  ‘In a sense,’ Blix agreed. But he was prepared for this counter-argument. ‘But just think about it: it’s the perfect arena for someone determined to knock out celebrities. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the person who ends up as number two who he goes after. The chef, for example, is contestant number two.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Fosse demanded.

  ‘There were originally ten participants on the show,’ Kovic explained. ‘They were each issued with a number when it all kicked off.’

  ‘What number does your daughter have?’ Pia Nøkleby asked.

  ‘Three,’ Blix replied. ‘So you see there are loads of opportunities here for a perpetrator with our man’s profile. He has several options that would fit into his “project”, if I can call it that. The one who becomes number two, or has the number two, are only two of them. He could also make up his mind to go for two of the contestants, for instance. Then it would be a double murder. He hasn’t done that before. It would also be something of a statement – taking the lives of two of the finalists on live television.’

  The mere thought made Blix’s stomach churn.

  ‘I hear what you say, Alexander, but I’m not sure you’re looking at the potential threat here in an entirely objective way,’ Fosse said. ‘Given that Iselin is in the midst of it all.’

  ‘That may be, but it’s a solid theory all the same.’

  Kovic nodded in agreement.

  ‘There’s a little more than nine hours until the semi-final,’ Blix went on. ‘A lot could happen in that time, but if we don’t make a dent in what we’re working on in the course of the morning, then we ought to decide whether we should approach the production company and the TV channel, and persuade them to postpone the semi-final.’

  ‘They’ll never go along with that,’ Wibe said, unscrewing a cola bottle. ‘There’s far too much money and prestige involved.’

  ‘They won’t have any choice if we put our foot down,’ Blix said.

  ‘How many does the studio seat?’ Fosse asked.

  ‘Three hundred,’ Blix answered. ‘At least.’

  ‘We couldn’t check every single one as they enter,’ Wibe commented. ‘We’d have to go through all their belongings.’

  Blix eyeballed everyone around the table. He still didn’t have the support he’d been hoping for.

  Fosse broke in: ‘There’s still plenty of time,’ he said, making eye contact with Blix. ‘See that the broadcast goes out with the highest possible level of security. Until then, we’ll chase up all the leads we can.’ He stood up, signalling that the meeting was over.

  Blix needed a breath of fresh air so he went up to the canteen, which was deserted, it being Sunday, and walked out on to the terrace. There, he filled his lungs and let his eyes feast on the city below as he exhaled again. He repeated the action three times before taking out his phone and calling Merete.

  ‘Hello,’ she said. Her voice was gentler than usual. ‘How are you doing?’

  He heard her move into another room and close the door. She had to be at her boyfriend’s house in Holmenkollen.

  ‘You know,’ Blix said. ‘There’s a lot on at work. Especially now.’

  ‘You’re working on the countdown case,’ she concluded.

  ‘A lot of us are involved in it,’ Blix answered.

  A tentative silence ensued, as if both were waiting for the other to speak.

  ‘Are you thinking of going to the live transmission tonight?’ he asked in the end.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Of course I am, it’s the semi-final – I’ve been at all the broadcasts so far. Why were you wondering about it? Aren’t you coming?’

  ‘I…’ Blix had no idea how to express himself in words that would avoid terrifying Merete. In fact he’d called to ask her not to attend, but he realised that wouldn’t work. ‘I will, yes, of course,’ he finally said. ‘How … do you think it will go?’

  ‘Well, when she’s come as far as this, anything could happen,’ Merete said.

  That was exactly what Blix was afraid of.

  75

  Towards the top of the slight incline Emma stood up on the pedals, trying to raise her pulse even further. In addition to the physical benefits, she found cycling therapeutic. It was always so much easier to think when she was on the move. When she didn’t consciously intend to think over something, the thoughts just came by themselves, when she least expected it.

  After the night at her sister’s she’d eaten breakfast with Martine and returned home, intending to do some work from her sofa, but she’d found it difficult to collect her thoughts. She knew a hard training session would sharpen her up for the editorial meeting later that day.

  Her body hadn’t had enough rest, though, and she tired much faster than usual. By the time she passed the car park at Bjerke, she was breathing heavily. She braked and dropped her left foot to the tarmac. As she waited for her lungs to recover, her thoughts turned to Jessica Flatebø, and how she’d been found in the summer cabin in Nordmarka earlier that week. It felt as if it had taken place in the distant past. New victims had been discovered since, so Emma hadn’t had a minute to stop and reflect on Flatebø’s murder, but now it struck her that the killer must have had intimate local knowledge to know exactly which cabin would be unoccupied – when, and for how long.

  Maybe Dahlmann was holed up somewhere in there, she thought, looking towards the forest.

  She knew Wollan was very familiar with Marka. She could discuss it with him. It also gave her an excuse to phone Blix.

  She turned the bike around and began to make her way back home, keeping close to a group of three men in identical cycling gear on their way down into the city. Once inside her flat, she took the opportunity to do three sets of pull-ups and push-ups before making for the shower. When she arrived at the editorial offices, she felt fit and fresh. It had been several days since she’d last felt so good.

  Henrik Wollan peered up at her with tired eyes from the other side of a computer screen.

  ‘Any news?’ she asked.

  Wollan shook his head. ‘Everyone’s waiting for the next move,’ he replied. ‘The only question is whether there’s more to come. Or whether it finishes with Nordstrøm.’

  ‘It’s not over yet,’ Emma told him. ‘There are two numbers missing – two and ten.’

  Wollan agreed with her, and for once his tone was not sarcastic.

  ‘Coffee?’ she asked, walking towards the coffee machine.

  ‘Yes please,’ he replied.

  She filled two cups and handed one to Wollan.

  ‘What are you working on?’ she asked him, with a nod at his computer.

  ‘A sort of biography of each of the victims,’ Wollan said. ‘It’s something Anita wants,’ he added, as if he felt little interest in it himself.

  ‘You know Nordmarka well, don’t you?’ Emma went on, pointing at a picture of Jessica Flatebø lying on his desk. ‘Didn’t you invite our class to a cabin somewhere out in Marka a few years ago?’

  Wollan sucked some of the foam from the top of his coffee cup. Emma knew the answer, because she recalled all the chat there had been about the outing afterwards. She hadn’t gone herself.

  Wollan nodded.

  ‘Does your family still have that cabin?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, slightly hesitant.

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Nea
r Mylla,’ he said.

  ‘Is that far from where Jessica Flatebø was found?’

  Wollan shrugged. ‘Not very. Why do you ask?’

  ‘I was wondering whether you were familiar with the area where Flatebø was found,’ she told him. ‘Whether you knew any of the neighbours.’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t,’ he replied.

  ‘OK, then,’ Emma said and went into a conference room and gave Blix a call.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘Has something happened?’

  ‘No,’ Emma said, with a smile. ‘No fear of that, I’m at work. I just wondered how things were going.’

  ‘There…’

  Emma picked up on his hesitation.

  ‘There’s nothing new,’ he said. For the first time since they’d become acquainted, she was unsure whether he was telling the truth.

  ‘Have you looked into the possibility that the person you’re looking for might be hidden away somewhere in Nordmarka?’ she asked, and went on to explain her theory that the perpetrator must have local knowledge.

  ‘We’ve created a list of everyone who owns property there,’ Blix answered. ‘We have a team working on speaking to every single one of them.’

  Emma nodded. Of course this was something the police had looked into.

  ‘Well, I have to go now,’ Blix continued. Emma noticed the disquiet in his voice. He seemed nervous or anxious.

  ‘OK,’ she said, faltering. ‘Sorry for disturbing you.’

  76

  At 2.00 p.m. Blix locked himself in a vacant interview room to phone Enter Entertainment. He searched through the call list on his mobile and located the number for ‘TV-Eckhoff’.

  ‘Yes, hello?’

  Blix introduced himself.

  ‘You’re Iselin’s father,’ the other man said.

  ‘That’s right. But I’m calling in my capacity as a police officer this time. I was wondering what security measures you’ve taken in connection with tonight’s broadcast?’

  There was a moment’s silence at the other end.

  ‘Well … we have our usual security here – guards who watch over the entrances and so forth.’

  ‘You don’t check people’s bags?’

  ‘No.’

  Blix gave this some thought before adding: ‘How easy or difficult is it for outsiders to get on to the actual stage – or behind the scenes, even?’

  ‘There’s no physical barrier between the audience and the stage,’ Eckhoff explained. ‘But we do have security guards present. After all, we can’t risk just anyone appearing in front of the cameras. To access backstage you need to have your own pass.’

  ‘What about the house itself?’ Blix continued. ‘Is it possible to get in there somehow?’

  ‘Not for outsiders,’ Eckhoff assured him. ‘There are two entrances: the security door we use to send in food and other equipment to the contestants, and the stage door that we only use during live broadcasts.’

  ‘And they are locked?’

  ‘They’re regulated from the control room,’ Eckhoff clarified. ‘You can’t just pop in or out.’

  Blix jotted this down on the notepad in front of him.

  ‘The people working on the production side, have they been security cleared? Have you checked everyone’s background?’

  ‘We’ve checked their references and so on. We haven’t run them through criminal records, if that’s what you’re wondering. We don’t have access to them, anyway.’

  ‘Can you send me a list of everyone who works on Worthy Winner?’

  Silence again.

  ‘Why do you need that?’ Eckhoff asked at last.

  For a moment Blix considered how he should answer this. ‘We’re taking special measures, in light of what’s happened to other celebrities in Norway recently,’ he replied. ‘So we’re going to need extra manpower in the studios for today’s broadcast.’

  Eckhoff seemed to consider this for a few moments.

  ‘We mainly use our own staff, but I’ll see what I can organise,’ he said in the end.

  ‘You’ll have to do more than just see what you can organise, Eckhoff. This is critical.’

  ‘Yes, yes, OK, I’ll get cracking on it. It’s just that there are a hundred and one other things to do on a day when we have a live broadcast.’

  ‘I understand that, but the safety of your participants must come before everything else.’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course.’

  They hung up. Blix ran his hands over his face. He needed food. He needed sleep. But most of all he needed this case to be wrapped up ASAP so that he could relax in the knowledge that Iselin was out of danger.

  Eckhoff’s list arrived less than an hour later, and Blix skimmed rapidly through it. There were twenty-five people involved in the actual production unit. He appointed a small group consisting of Kovic, Abelvik and himself to go through all of them, checking them against criminal records, and investigating whether they had any links to Walter Georg Dahlmann or any of the victims. By 6.00 p.m., they had checked the whole list. One cameraman had a previous conviction for violent crime from eight years earlier, but nothing more than that.

  Blix took one last look at the list, scanning from top to bottom.

  ‘Hm,’ he said. ‘Eckhoff didn’t include himself.’

  Kovic gave him a questioning look.

  ‘Do you think he has anything to hide?’

  ‘It wouldn’t surprise me if he has something on his conscience,’ Blix said.

  He dug out Eckhoff’s date of birth and conducted the usual searches. There was nothing in criminal records. A wider search came up with several results in film and actor databases. In a profile photo in skuespiller.no, where Norwegian actors were listed, he had long hair, and reminded Blix of someone famous, but he just couldn’t remember who.

  He sat back a little and rubbed his face with his hands.

  ‘When do the doors open?’ Kovic asked.

  ‘In an hour,’ Blix said. ‘I’m going up there shortly.’

  ‘I’m coming with you.’

  77

  Blix was restless; and the closer he drew to TV headquarters, the worse he became. He thought of Iselin. The participants had been completely isolated from the news in recent weeks. They’d had no access to newspapers and had only communicated with viewers via a restricted Facebook page. Unless one of them had informed the participants about Dahlmann or the countdown, they knew nothing about what was going on. Maybe that was just as well.

  Outside the entrance to the TV building, crowds were already gathering. Several had homemade placards to cheer on the contestants. Blix couldn’t help feeling disappointed that none mentioned Iselin, but he quickly shook that off.

  Blix and Kovic approached the public entrance. On Fosse’s orders, they were both dressed in uniform. The idea was that a visible police presence might scare off any potential perpetrator. At the same time they couldn’t turn up with too many uniformed officers as that would generate panic. Instead they were letting plain clothes police officers monitor most of the crowd without them being aware of it.

  Inside, Blix located Even Eckhoff, who referred him on to the producer, Petter Due-Eriksen.

  Blix had met him once in connection with the promotion and editorial discussions about the programme concept.

  ‘We have plenty of security,’ Due-Eriksen said. ‘We don’t need any outside help.’

  ‘We’re not here to help you,’ Blix said. ‘We’re here to keep the spectators and the contestants safe.’

  ‘Believe it or not, officer,’ Due-Eriksen replied, looking at his mobile phone at the same time. ‘Our staff are more than capable of doing just that. It’s why we hire them. I don’t want your people to interfere with their work.’

  ‘Believe it or not,’ Blix answered straight back, ‘I don’t need your permission. Just tell them to meet me.’

  Due-Eriksen grinned, clearly not impressed, but made a nodding motion with his head and then took them to a meeting room,
where he assembled all the guards and a few key players from the production side.

  Blix spent ten minutes with them, briefing them on the situation. He made sure he created the impression that all of this was normal procedure in the circumstances and merely a preventive measure.

  Blix devoted the next half hour to acquainting himself with the layout of the building. The control room for the online transmission was located beside the stage. Inside, three men and two women followed the twenty-eight cameras that produced the live stream twenty-four hours a day.

  Iselin was in the centre of the picture on one of the screens on the wall.

  Blix approached one of the staff who had attended the briefing meeting. ‘Is it possible to stop the live stream if we need to?’ he asked.

  The employee, a man in his early twenties, turned to face him. ‘The main broadcast is easy to pull the plug on, if anything happens,’ he answered. ‘It’s a slightly more complicated process with all the images that go out on the Internet. We’ll manage it, of course, but it takes longer.’

  On screen, Iselin walked up to a table and took an apple from a bowl. The camera followed her every move.

  ‘Who controls the cameras?’ Blix inquired.

  ‘Most of the cameras are triggered by movement. They automatically follow the contestants when they move. We also have two cameramen behind the one-way mirrors in there.’

  He nodded towards a door. Blix crossed over and peered inside. It was a cramped back room with cables snaking over the floor. A man with a camera on his shoulder was filming through a mirror wall into the house. Iselin was laughing at something Toralf said.

  Blix put his fingertips on the glass and stood watching her. She was so close he could almost touch her. The fact that he couldn’t made him blink rapidly several times. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d given her a hug. Or received one.

  The cameraman turned towards him. Blix gave him a brief nod, then withdrew and closed the door behind him before moving on. He toured the rest of the studio, speaking to everyone wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the word CREW, in order to gain an impression of who they were, what kind of job they had, and where in the building they would be located during the show.