‘What the hell have you gotten yourself involved in, Sophus?’
He could feel his eyes welling up. Afraid of what was going to happen in the next few hours, in the next few days, what Knut Ivar would say … or do.
‘You can still turn around,’ he said in a trembling voice, ‘and then you’ll never know what I’ve done.’
‘Come on,’ Knut Ivar replied. ‘I’m here, aren’t I? I’ve told the wife that I’d be away for a few days anyway. I can’t go home now.’
Ahlander sighed. There was really no going back.
‘You’ll regret saying that when you…’ He sighed. ‘Just … come in.’
52
‘How did Knut Ivar react when he saw Patricia in the cabin?’
‘He…’
Ahlander stopped, thought back.
‘He was in shock, naturally. At first. But Knut Ivar had been involved in a lot of shady things in his time, so he knew that he was basically an accomplice the second he’d entered the cabin. So, after yelling at me for a few minutes, he got on with it.’
‘He … got on with it?’
‘Yes, taking care of her, that kind of thing. Bathed her, sorted her nappy out, put it on properly. He found some sort of cream thing in one of the bags from the pushchair. She was sore, obviously. Poor thing. He knows what to do, with kids. And he made me go to the shop to buy some dummies for her.’
He nodded at the picture on the table between them.
‘I soon realised that it would be a good idea to buy several of them. She kept losing them everywhere, all the time. Dummies,’ he said, a small smile appearing on his face, ‘must be the world’s best invention. Stopped the screaming anyway.’
Neither Blix nor the lawyer smiled back. Ahlander waited a few moments before carrying on:
‘Didn’t take him much time to get some food in her, and for her to get used to him too, comfortable. He played with her. Messed about and made funny faces. Got her to smile. It … was nice to see.’
‘But Knut Ivar couldn’t stay for long?’
‘No, and I didn’t want Ruth-Kristine to see him there either.’
‘So he left. Eventually. A few days later?’
‘Yes. He showed me how to do everything. With her, I mean. I got the hang of it in the end. And kids adapt to change quite quickly.’
‘And then Ruth-Kristine finally came?’
‘Yes. Probably about a week or so later.’
‘How did she know where the cabin was?’
‘She’d been before. We would drive up every once in a while, whenever I had found myself a nice car.’
Blix looked down at the notebook on his lap, before carrying on:
‘What we, and by that I mean all of Norway, want to know is what happened after that.’
Ahlander stared at the floor. He grabbed the glass of water in front of him and drained it. Let out a deep sigh.
‘It was like she was a completely different person that day.’
‘In what way?’
‘Didn’t give me a kiss, or hug or whatever when she got there. Nothing. Just parked outside and marched towards me with these brisk, determined steps. Screamed at me: “Where is she?” Aggressively as well, as if I’d done something wrong? Didn’t say hello or thanks or anything either. I asked her why she’d taken so long. “Have you not seen the newspapers?” was all she said. “Have you not watched the news?”’
Ahlander imitated her, putting on a waspish voice.
‘Then she went into the cabin, walked into the back room and snatched the girl off the floor, as if she were picking up a jumper she had left behind. Didn’t hug her, didn’t talk to her. Just said: “You can go now.”’
‘She said that to you?’ Blix asked. ‘That you could go?’
‘Yeah, I hadn’t understood what she meant either, or what was going on, so I … asked.’
‘What did she say?’
‘That it wasn’t any of my damn business. And that she didn’t have much time.’
Blix lowered the pen to the notepad, but didn’t write anything.
‘Then she asked for the keys to my cabin.’
‘Why did she want the keys?’
‘She wouldn’t say at first. She answered eventually, sneered at me: “Do you want me to leave the door unlocked when I go?”’ Again, imitating her sharp tone.
‘So you gave her the keys?’
Ahlander sat in silence for a few moments. Then he nodded.
‘You just drove away? Alone?’
‘Yes. At that point I was just happy to leave, get out of there.’
‘Did you never find out what happened to Patricia?’
Ahlander shook his head, answering ‘no’ as he did.
‘You didn’t find out afterwards, either?’
He recalled the drive home. Of how he had thought about Ruth-Kristine and everything she had promised him. How loving she had been that first time, how hostile the next.
When the coverage of the case began to calm down, she’d turned up at his doorstep with the money – less than the amount she’d originally promised.
‘We can’t be together,’ she had said. ‘Not right now, anyway. It … just won’t work.’
He had accepted it, at that time. He had understood. And as the weeks and months came and went, it was just as well. He had gotten away with what he’d done. What had happened to the girl remained a mystery to the police and the media, to Christer Storm Isaksen and everyone else.
But Ahlander thought he knew.
‘What do you mean?’ Blix asked. ‘What do you think you know?’
Ahlander took a deep breath. ‘A few days before I … kidnapped the girl, Ruth-Kristine had asked if…’
He stopped himself.
‘She asked you what?’ Blix pressed.
Ahlander locked eyes with him before he answered:
‘She asked if I kept a shovel at the cabin.’
53
A bouquet of festive flowers stood wilting on the table of the therapist’s office. A small, folded card had been fastened to it with a strand of gold thread. A thank-you gift from another patient, perhaps.
When Emma had accepted the offer of therapy sessions, she had envisioned herself lying on a couch, the therapist sat nearby, writing notes and analysing her very soul.
That was not the case with Gorm Fogner. He had a regular office, with a small seating area, just a few sofas and chairs. Nothing weird or intimidating about it. It was like going to an informal doctor’s appointment, without the doctor urgently rushing through everything because they had more patients waiting outside.
At her first appointment, she had been given some forms to fill out and a sheet with a set of standardised questions to answer. It had felt strange, categorising her feelings. On the other hand, it was easier to do that than try and explain in her own words what she was finding so painful and difficult.
It was pure luck that she had ended up with Gorm Fogner. He was one of several therapists the police had recommended, and he could see her right away. He was in his early forties. Meaning that he was old enough to have gained some experience, but not so old that he was set in his ways, or was tired of meeting with patients.
She soon realised that talking to Fogner was almost like doing a spring clean of her mind. It helped her to sort through her thoughts in a faster, more thorough and more gentle way than she would have done alone. She was always the one to choose the topic and lead the conversation, basing her decisions on what she thought would be most important to explore. Gorm Fogner listened, reflected on what she said, proffered ideas, contributed suggestions and helped put things into perspective. They weren’t all that different from the conversations she would sometimes have with her sister, except for the fact that the therapy sessions were solely about her, so there was no two-way communication that required effort on her part. That was why she liked it. There was no Irene to burden with her issues, so she didn’t have to worry about what her sister would think and feel, s
he could just concentrate on herself and what she was struggling with. It felt good to put her own experiences into words, with someone she had no contact with otherwise in her everyday life.
‘I don’t know how it must feel, but I do understand that you are hurting,’ Fogner said as she sat down.
Emma was aware that this was probably something he said to all his patients, but it still did the job, made her relax her shoulders.
‘Would you like to go through what happened?’ he added.
She hadn’t felt as if she had wanted to before, but she realised then that she did need to talk through the events of New Year’s Eve, one more time.
New details emerged. A used-up sparkler sticking out of the snow, a scarf floating on the surface of the water as Blix plunged into it, a champagne cork on the ground next to Kasper.
It was easy to repeat the facts, but it was harder to verbalise the grief, the heartache. To describe the fatigue that had taken over her body, the mental turmoil, the lack of motivation and how difficult it was to do anything. It felt like a tsunami of excruciating emotions, and the one thing that made everything so much harder was the overwhelming guilt.
‘I feel like it’s my fault Kasper died,’ she said.
‘Why do you think that?’ Fogner asked.
‘He wouldn’t have been there when the bomb went off if it hadn’t been for me,’ Emma explained. ‘I left the party. He came looking for me.’
‘Why do you think he came after you?’
The question made Emma reach for the tissue box. Kasper had come after her because he cared about her. Because he wanted to be with her.
The realisation of what she had actually meant to Kasper didn’t help lessen her feelings of guilt; knowing that she wasn’t thinking about him the entire time just weighed even more heavily on her conscience. It had only been four days, barely even that, but she was already busy with other things that felt important to her. Patricia’s disappearance from 2009. The mother’s disappearance ten years later.
She tried to describe this feeling – that she was neglecting Kasper because she was keeping her mind occupied with other things.
‘A lot of people expect someone who is grieving to behave in a certain way, as if they know how that person should heal, but there is no single solution for how one deals with grief,’ Fogner assured her, smiling as he did so.
‘I was laughing about something Anita said yesterday about my driving skills,’ Emma continued, explaining how she had driven the company car into a ditch. ‘It was like I’d forgotten.’
Gorm Fogner moved his head from side to side. ‘I have also experienced loss and mourning,’ he said, bringing up something personal for the first time. ‘I know what it’s like to feel such intense sorrow, even though I can’t describe what the grief you are going through must feel like. What I do know is that you will smile and laugh long before you feel any happiness. But it will come. The happiness will return.’
Emma wanted to ask who he had lost, but decided against it.
‘I’m just so tired,’ she said instead.
Fogner studied her.
‘Are you having trouble sleeping?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ Emma admitted.
‘Dealing with grief uses up a lot of energy,’ Fogner said. ‘I can fill out a sick note for you.’
Emma shook her head. Taking time off work was not an option.
‘You can get medication to help you sleep,’ Fogner suggested. ‘Grief is not only mentally draining, it can make you physically ill too. It’s vital that you get some rest.’
Emma thought about how hard the nights had been, and how good it would feel to wake up rested.
Fogner stood up, pulled a set of keys out of his pocket and unlocked a drawer behind his desk.
‘You can get the first few tablets from me,’ he offered. ‘Then I’ll write a prescription for you, and you can use it if you feel like it.’
Emma nodded. Gorm Fogner sat at the desk and filled out all the necessary forms.
‘You don’t have to wait until tonight,’ he said, handing her a strip of four tablets. ‘You should try and sleep once you get home.’
Emma took them. She didn’t know whether it was the conversation with the therapist that had been exhausting, or whether it was the accumulated lack of sleep that was catching up with her, but she wasn’t going to say no to the advice. She wanted to go home and lie down.
54
‘I need to get the search dogs out to the area as soon as possible. Immediately. Today.’
Blix took a few steps towards Gard Fosse’s desk.
‘The last time you were in here, you said you thought that Patricia may still be alive,’ Fosse reminded him. ‘Isaksen had received a school photo of her at the prison, with Ruth-Kristine’s fingerprints on it.’
‘I don’t know who the girl in that photo is,’ Blix replied. ‘But we’ve just discovered where Patricia was kept after she was kidnapped, and that Ruth-Kristine had been there with a shovel.’
Fosse said nothing.
‘More snow has been forecast for tomorrow,’ Blix added. ‘For Vestfold too. I don’t think they’ve had any snow there today.’
The police superintendent shook his watch out from the sleeve of his uniform and returned Blix’s gaze with his own sceptical one. ‘It takes over an hour to drive down to Undrumsåsen,’ he began. ‘And it’ll take a while to rally the dog patrol.’
‘I know. That’s why I’ve paused the interview. To get the ball rolling.’
Fosse looked as if he were contemplating the idea.
‘It starts to get dark down there by about four o’clock, if that—’
‘The dogs can work in the dark,’ Blix interrupted. ‘And it isn’t exactly the world’s largest forest. If Patricia’s buried in there somewhere, I can’t leave her in there any longer than I absolutely have to.’
Again, it took a few seconds for Fosse to answer.
‘I’ll see what I can do.’
‘Great. Thank you.’
When Blix returned to the interview room, some of the colour seemed to have returned to Sophus Ahlander’s face.
Blix got him to go through his story one more time. Asked him to elaborate.
‘When she kept calling you before New Year’s Eve, what did she want?’ he asked.
‘It was hard to understand what she was after,’ Ahlander replied. ‘But she needed help again. She was probably hopped up on pills or some other shit, but she was saying that I had helped her with Patricia that time, and she needed me to help her again now. There was no one else she could go to, she said.’
‘What did she need help with?’
Ahlander paused.
‘She was scared of a guy.’
‘Scared?’
‘Yes, I don’t know why, or who it was – I didn’t ask. I tried to hang up after that. But she just continued to screech at me. She was pretty incoherent.’
‘Describe the screeching … even if it was difficult to work out what she was saying,’ Blix requested.
Ahlander sighed.
‘The only thing I managed to figure out was that she was going to meet someone or other and needed help from someone else who she could trust. I’d done enough for that woman already. I told her that, but she didn’t let up.’ He rolled his eyes.
Blix checked his notes before continuing.
‘When was she planning on meeting whoever it was?’
‘New Year’s Eve, I think. Which made it all the more unbelievable.’
‘Did you get the impression that the meeting had something to do with Patricia, seeing as she had used her as an excuse to try and rope you in?’
Ahlander hesitated before he answered:
‘I didn’t really think about it that way at the time,’ he began. ‘But now you mention it … maybe, yeah. But I couldn’t possibly say it was definitely to do with Patricia.’ He shook his head. ‘I’d tried to forget about everything that happened back then, but she wouldn’t stop c
alling. Turned up at my house a few times too, calling as she stood outside. I pretended I wasn’t home. In the end, I went to the cabin, for some peace. And then some woman turned up at my door one night, who, from a distance anyway, looked like Ruth-Kristine, so I thought, for fuck’s sake, that’s enough now.’
He sighed heavily.
‘I hope she wasn’t too shook up afterwards, that journalist.’
Blix’s mind momentarily diverted to Emma.
‘Did Ruth-Kristine say anything about what was planned after this meeting she had to go to?’
‘No. And I didn’t ask either.’
Blix glanced down at his notebook.
‘Where do you think Ruth-Kristine is now?’ he asked.
Ahlander shrugged.
‘I have absolutely no idea.’
55
Emma stood with the small, white sleeping pill resting in the palm of her hand as she let the water run, waiting for it to turn cold. She was reluctant to swallow it, but felt drained all the same. She was tired, but not in a way that meant she was sleepy. That said, she wouldn’t get anything done until she had managed to get a few hours’ sleep, she told herself.
She filled the glass, placed the pill on her tongue and washed it down.
A second later, the phone rang. Emma took a deep breath before answering.
‘Hi, it’s Asta.’
Asta. Kasper’s mother.
‘Our plane landed a little over an hour ago,’ she said, ‘and we didn’t have any luggage to pick up. We’ll be in Oslo slightly earlier than planned. Where are you?’
Emma wasn’t sure how to answer. She looked around. Her eyes rested on the computer, the loose notes on the kitchen table.
‘I’m at work,’ she said.
‘We’re meeting with the police first, one of the family liaison officers,’ Asta continued. ‘He’ll be telling us how he can help with the case and everything, and then we’ll go to the University Hospital afterwards, where … Kasper is.’
That was as much as she could bring herself to say.
‘I can’t join you, unfortunately. It … I can’t, I don’t have time.’
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