by Thomas Enger
The man removed a candlestick, a newspaper, a glass and a ballpoint pen from the table. Emma’s bag lay on the floor beside the fridge, with her laptop jutting out. The man picked up the bag and placed it on the table before her.
‘What is it you want with me?’ she asked again.
The man gazed at her for a long time before answering.
‘I want you to interview me.’
88
‘Interview you?’ Emma asked in confusion.
‘Isn’t that your job?’ he asked, pushing the bag nearer. ‘The media have been talking and writing about me for days. Speculating about who I am and why I’ve done what I have. Someone has to write the true story. I’ve chosen you.’
Emma gulped. Stared at him.
‘Take out your laptop.’
The man pulled up a chair and sat facing her, letting the hand with the pistol rest on the table.
Emma drew the bag towards her.
‘There’s no point looking for your panic alarm,’ the man said, as if reading her thoughts. ‘I’ve got it here,’ he said, patting his trouser pocket.
Emma met his gaze and slowly took her laptop out of the bag.
Emma had no idea what to do or say. He smiled at her, before checking the time again and telling her to begin.
Emma stared blankly into thin air for a few seconds and then said: ‘Do you think … would it be possible to have a glass of water?’
He looked suspiciously at her.
‘I’m thirsty,’ she said.
He took several seconds to make up his mind, and then stood up and crossed to the sink. Soon he returned, the gun still in one hand, a glass of water in the other.
Emma tried to give him a grateful smile. Her hand was shaking when she picked up the glass and lifted it to her lips. She spilled some water, and used her hand to wipe it away. She put down the glass.
‘Thanks,’ she said.
The man gestured at the laptop with the pistol. Emma opened the lid. She had fifty-four per cent battery power left, enough for a couple of hours.
‘I need electricity,’ she said all the same, pulling a cable from her bag.
The man pointed at a plug point beside the bench. Emma pushed in the plug, connected it to her laptop and opened her word processing program.
‘OK,’ she said hesitantly, as she moved the cursor to the network icon and clicked. The machine began to search for Wi-Fi networks. ‘Maybe we could begin with who you are? What’s your name?’
‘My name’s not important. That’ll come to light in the fullness of time.’
No Wi-Fi networks.
She cleared her throat. ‘I see,’ she said softly. ‘Where were you born, then? Where did you grow up?’
‘That’s of no consequence either.’
‘What kind of education did you have?’ she asked tentatively. ‘Where did you attend school?’
‘To hell with that.’
Emma shifted in her seat. ‘I have to start somewhere,’ she said, glancing up at him. Waiting for him to take the initiative.
He was quiet for a moment. Then he cleared his throat and said: ‘When I was younger, I wanted to become a film director. Steven Spielberg, Ingmar Bergman. I was keen to use my talent, and to be recognised for that. For the person I really am.’
‘And who are you?’ Emma ventured. The man didn’t answer.
‘Some people achieve positions they don’t deserve,’ he said instead. ‘They become rich and famous without possessing a single talent, other than tits they’ve paid good money for, or songs someone else has written for them. And at the same time there are talents, geniuses, who are never noticed.’
‘Like you?’ she asked, typing.
He didn’t answer for a moment.
‘They never noticed,’ he said, his voice angrier. ‘They never … fucking … noticed.’
‘What should they have noticed?’ Emma said.
‘My talents!’ he yelled. ‘My genius. But no one cared. No one. And then…’ He shook his head.
Emma continued typing as he elaborated on how he’d come to despise people who’d excelled and succeeded while he was left to dream.
‘But look at me now,’ he said proudly. ‘Who are they talking about out there? Who’s on everyone’s lips? Who are they desperately trying to figure out? Who,’ he said, ‘are they afraid of?’
He paused briefly.
‘I’ve done them all a favour, you know,’ he said.
Emma knew he meant the celebrities he had killed.
‘I’ve given them immortality. Because of me, people will talk about them for years. I’ve freed them from the miserable lives they were living,’ he said breathlessly. ‘Take Sonja Nordstrøm, for instance. Who’d won everything it was possible to win, but who never managed to live like a normal person. Who pushed away everyone she loved. Her daughter. Her husband. Her colleagues. Her competitors. Even when she wrote her autobiography, her main concern was to denigrate other people. It says something about the kind of life she led, how incredibly cold she was. I don’t think I could come across a lonelier person.’
Emma couldn’t figure out how the man felt that killing Nordstrøm could be regarded as a compassionate act. Her typing faltered for a few seconds.
‘And Ragnar Ole Theodorsen, who’d spent the past twenty years of his life trying to recreate a hit that consisted of four chords. Four! How difficult can it be?’ He raised his voice a notch. ‘And Calle Seeberg chipped in by giving talentless people like Theodorsen airtime and an audience. What sort of life was that?’
He gave a loud snort.
‘He was in ill health too, you know. Maybe he was keen to prolong his life, but he didn’t have the discipline to go through with it.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ve seen his training runs, if you can call them that. Calle Seeberg was a feeble person. Losing people like that is no great loss to humanity.’
Emma saw how completely wrapped up he was in his own narrative. No matter what she said, it would never persuade him to examine his own actions in a different light.
‘Exactly the same as Jeppe Sørensen. He was already suicidal. He’d given up. I just nudged him over the finishing line.’
He raised his eyes to the left, as if a memory had appeared there.
‘Jessica Flatebø, she’d also given up. The poor soul was so sorry for herself over all the hatred aimed at her because she stripped off on TV. No one believed her when she said she wasn’t trying to attract attention. Boo hoo.’
Emma gaped at him. What terrified her most was the total lack of regret.
‘I knew Jeppe, you know,’ the man said in an aside. ‘Jeppe was an idiot. A scumbag.’ An angry expression came over his face. ‘He injured his knee. Same as me. He … behaved as if his problems were greater than everyone else’s. That he was greater than everyone else. Just because he was a footballer and had scored a couple of goals for the Danish national team? I’ve met more than enough people like that in my life.’
He was fuming now.
‘Jeppe Sørensen was an arrogant piece of shit.’
Emma wrote as fast as she could, realising that what the man was saying about Jeppe was the first thing he’d let drop that might be used to identify him.
‘So you received treatment at the Athlete’s Retreat too?’ she asked carefully, hoping that Kasper had managed to obtain a list of patients and found the name of the man now sitting opposite her, holding a gun.
His eyes flickered and he swallowed a few times.
‘What happened to your knee?’ she asked, hoping to distract him from his thoughts.
He shook his head. ‘I twisted it,’ he said. ‘The cruciate ligament tore right off. I got a tidy sum through insurance, fortunately.’
He fell silent, smiling in satisfaction.
‘But it happened in Denmark?’
‘That makes no odds,’ he said, becoming serious again.
Emma let it go. ‘Was that when you began to make your plans?’ she asked instead. ‘While you were recovering
from your injury?’
‘More or less.’ He exhaled audibly, almost a groan. ‘Jeppe Sørensen was such a moron, I wanted him to die. And everywhere they were going on about “number seven will never return to the football field”. The Danish newspapers were full of it. TV as well. His club decided to retire his shirt number, to honour him. It made me throw up. I could see that fucking number seven all over the place.’
‘But he wasn’t the first?’
He raised his eyes to meet hers. ‘What do you mean?’
‘No one starts a countdown with the number seven,’ Emma said. ‘You normally begin with ten, five or three.’
‘He wasn’t the first, no, you’re right about that.’
He didn’t elaborate. Instead he continued talking about himself in grand words and phrases. Emma had changed to noting only key words now. His story described a quest for attention. The murders and the way the countdown was managed were ways to draw the spotlight to him. So he’d picked victims who fitted his overall project: people who either didn’t deserve to be celebrities, or who handled their elevated status badly. Emma’s part was to tell the world what a genius he really was. ‘I’ve always been left to my own devices,’ he said with a trace of bitterness. ‘I’ve always stood in the shadow of others. But not anymore. All I’ve done up till now, I’ve done entirely on my own.’
Emma didn’t want to ask him anything more, but she had to keep him talking – it seemed to her the only way to stop him hurting her, or to give the police time to find her.
‘Can’t you tell me something about that?’ Emma asked.
The man heaved a loud sigh as he mulled this over.
‘I was a wimp as a child. Skinny and delicate. One day I decided to do something about it. To grow big and strong. It requires discipline to do that. Self-discipline and stickability.’ He nodded with pleasure.
‘What else have you managed to do?’ Emma asked.
He glanced at the clock as he answered: ‘That’s beside the point.’
Emma thought about the countdown, which was now almost complete. Dare she mention it?
‘Who is number two?’ she asked carefully.
He met her gaze.
‘You just killed Sonja Nordstrøm, so I presume you’ve already killed number two. Who was she? Or he?’
He gave a lopsided smile. ‘Have you really not worked it out yet?’
Emma shook her head slightly. He went on smiling, but made no sign of answering.
‘Who did you begin with, then?’ she asked. ‘Who was number ten?’
Something glinted in his eyes. His self-satisfied smile vanished. ‘Are you nearly finished?’ he asked.
Emma looked at him in bewilderment. After all, they’d only just started. He stood up abruptly and paced around the floor, before standing at the window, staring out.
‘That’s enough for now,’ he said, looking at the time.
‘But…’
‘You probably need some time to edit and polish the interview,’ he said, motioning at her with the pistol. ‘So get cracking. I’m running out of time.’
89
At 11.32 a.m., Gard Fosse gave Blix permission to report Emma Ramm missing. Afterwards Blix sat leaning over his desk, studying the picture of her used in the all-points bulletin. There wasn’t much more he could do. He and Kovic had been to her door, called into Kalle’s Choice and paid a visit to her sister.
Their routine inquiries had not yielded anything substantial. No activity had been noted on her phone or bank account, and none of the hospitals had her name listed as a patient. The personal safety alarm still did not respond when pinged.
Striding across the room, Wibe approached his desk. ‘She’s working with an interesting guy,’ he said.
Blix looked at the papers Wibe held in his hand.
‘He turned up on Dahlmann’s prison visitors list,’ Wibe explained. ‘Henrik Wollan. He works for news.no.’
Blix nodded. He was familiar with the name.
‘What was he doing visiting Dahlmann in jail?’ he asked.
‘No idea, but he’s the only person on the visitors list who also turns up in our investigation material.’
‘How is he part of our investigation?’
‘He was at Hvaler when Jeppe Sørensen’s body was found. He was first to report on it.’
‘He is a journalist, after all,’ Kovic commented.
Blix sat back in his chair and stared doubtfully at Wibe.
‘All the same, we should have a chat with him,’ Wibe countered.
His phone rang. It was Merete. She probably wanted to talk about Iselin and the final episode of Worthy Winner. He let it ring out.
‘Yes, OK. Will you do that?’ he asked.
Wibe nodded. Blix’s phone began to ring again. Not Merete this time, but Øyvind Krohn.
‘You asked me to track Emma Ramm’s personal safety alarm,’ Krohn said.
‘Yes?’
‘It was activated fifteen seconds ago.’
90
Emma was writing.
Trying to write, at least. Trying to believe this was just an ordinary article she was working on, but her fingers were cold and her thoughts far from the words in front of her. It didn’t help that the man the piece described was pacing impatiently to and fro across the kitchen floor with a pistol in his hand. Her mind continually returned to the idea that this would be absolutely the last thing she would do in life. She would function as a microphone for him, a killer.
The thought made her feel sick. She tried to think of a way to smuggle information into the text to reveal where she was, and who the man was standing at the kitchen window. But she knew neither his name nor their location. She had no messages to hide.
Emma tried to build up the article in chronological order, focusing on the murder victims. He’d simply pushed Mona Kleven in front of a subway train after sabotaging the CCTV cameras. She’d been given many chances in life, but according to the killer her fame had brought her nothing but sharp elbows she used to push other people aside so that she could get ahead.
She included a digression he’d interjected about how unfair life was. That someone could smoke and drink and live a morally reprehensible life until they were a hundred, while others ate and lived healthily, but nevertheless died before they were thirty. She wove in the preposterous information that someone could win 183 million kroner in the Viking Lottery, while others struggled to balance their books. She described how he’d killed Thor Willy Opsahl by hanging him from a hook in the roof of his garage, and leaving him dangling there while he drove away in the dead man’s elegant Audi.
She repeated word for word his contemptuous words about the televangelist, together with his description of how satisfying it had been to see him ‘meet his Maker far earlier than he’d ever imagined’.
She refrained from mentioning that the numbers two and ten were missing from his great project.
‘You can call me the Stage Master,’ he said all of a sudden.
‘The Stage Master?’ she asked.
‘Use it as your headline,’ he said, as if he had been considering this for a while. ‘That’s what I’ve done – put all this on a public stage.’
Emma did as he requested. She typed the headline and inserted a paragraph to explain the title.
‘Don’t make it long-winded or elaborate,’ he warned her, looking at the clock. ‘You’ll have to round it off now.’
‘What’s the hurry?’ Emma asked meekly.
‘You’ve got two minutes,’ was all he said.
‘Two minutes?’
Emma was overwhelmed by panic again. She felt as if she were being strangled. In two minutes he would no longer have any use for her.
She tried to swallow, force back the tears, but she couldn’t resist them; she began to sob and shake. When he aggressively told her to quit that, she just began to cry even more.
Emma had thought, and hoped, that she would be able to offer more resistance, to fight him, p
hysically even, but it was as if the muscles in her body failed to obey or even understand what they were supposed to do. Her brain didn’t function either; she was unable to think rationally.
‘What…?’ Her throat was dry. ‘What will happen afterwards?’ she asked in a quivering voice. ‘To me?’
He did not answer. The tears poured from her eyes. He put his hand down into his trouser pocket and took out the panic alarm. Left it on the table in front of her and smiled.
‘They’ll think you’re the one who’s set it off,’ he said.
Emma looked at him in disbelief. ‘Have you switched it on?’
He nodded, still with a smile on his face. Emma couldn’t understand any of it; this would summon the police here. Immediately.
‘I did it ten minutes ago,’ he said, sounding pleased with himself. ‘They’ll be here in…’ he glanced at the clock again ‘…twenty minutes or so. Maybe a bit more.’
Emma shook her head. She understood nothing of what was going on in this man’s head. Unless his plan all along had been to be shot and killed by the police when his work was complete. Then he’d avoid being tried for any of the things he’d done. Or else he had a plan for the police as well when they arrived on the scene.
Twenty minutes, she thought. She must stay alive for twenty minutes.
She looked at the text in front of her. Far from finished.
All at once she closed the screen. Snapped it shut.
‘Are you done?’ he asked.
‘No,’ she said.
‘But…’
She grabbed the laptop and hit it hard on the table, over and over again, trying to smash the screen. Without an interview he wouldn’t achieve what he desired.
It was clear from the panic in his eyes that he understood, and he launched himself at her. Emma shoved the table towards him, but it was big and heavy. She couldn’t manage to move it more than a few centimetres, but it was enough to slow him down a bit and provide more room for her own legs, so that she could get to her feet. Then she threw the laptop at the window with all her might.
The laptop bounced back and fell on the floor. It didn’t shatter, only cracked. It seemed as intact as ever.