by Helene Flood
“No. It isn’t that I don’t want to,” I begin, but he waves away my words. There’s something nonchalant in his movement – or is it self-assured? He’s not interested in discussing it with me because he knows all he needs to know – or, no, I think, that’s not it. It’s that he’s convinced he’ll discover what he wants to know through other means. Yes. Gundersen will not allow himself to be disarmed by a no. Only now does it occur to me that he is not necessarily on my side. He’s on Sigurd’s side, which, until now, I had believed to be one and the same thing. That Sigurd and I are on the same side, so whatever benefits Sigurd, benefits me.
“That gives you three hours between patient two and patient three,” Gundersen says. “Three hours and ten minutes, in fact. What did you do with this time, apart from eat?”
“I wrote up my notes,” I say, “and then prepared for my next session.”
“How long does it take you to write up your notes?”
“I don’t know. Ten minutes, perhaps.”
“O.K., and then say half an hour, an hour max, for lunch. A full two hours for preparations, then?”
The feeling of being pushed against the wall drapes itself across my shoulders. I look from the policewoman making her notes – who looks up at me and scribbles some more – to Gundersen, who sits there, one leg atop the other, studying me with his unyielding grey gaze.
“No,” I say. “I mean, I must have done other things, too. Little things. I went to the bathroom, made a cup of coffee, tidied up a little and checked my e-mail.”
“And when you go to the bathroom and drink coffee, do you do that here?”
“No, I don’t have water or anything like that here. I have to go into the house.”
He nods, and his colleague jots down something else. Out of the window I see a grey Honda turn and drive up onto the grass beside the driveway and stop. Out of it comes Annika, wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase. She stands there for a moment as she gets out, her fine, high boots on the muddy lawn, and stares at the police cars, then up at the house. She’s far enough away that the details of her expression elude me, but the disbelief in her face is unmistakable – the open mouth shaped like an O, the jerk of her head as she directs her gaze back to the police cars.
Gundersen casts a glance her way, but says nothing.
“When were you finished with patient number three?” he says instead.
“At ten to three,” I say, remembering the habitual reluctance Trygve awakens in me. “No, wait, it was before that. I don’t think the session lasted for much longer than twenty minutes.”
“So, twenty past two?”
“Yes. Something like that.”
Annika walks across the lawn towards the house. She has the strange, staccato gait of a duck, the heels of her boots sinking into the damp earth, but she’s doing her best to be quick and authoritative regardless, her pace hurried. Were I not so numb, I would have found it comical.
“So just before two-thirty you were done for the day?” Gundersen suggests.
“No, I wrote up some notes first. A little after two-thirty.”
“O.K. And then?”
“I went into the house. Had a snack. Tried to call Sigurd.”
“And what happened when you tried to call Sigurd?”
“The telephone rang, but he didn’t pick up. It went to voicemail.”
“And did you leave a message?”
“No, not then. I rarely do. I generally just think he’ll see the missed call and call me back.”
“And then?”
“I don’t know. I read the newspaper. Watched a little tele-vision. Tidied up a bit, maybe put a load of laundry in the washing machine. I was online for a while, checked the online newspapers and Facebook, things like that, reserved a place at my spinning class at six o’clock. Other than that, I don’t know.”
“O.K. And your next activity?”
“Yes, that was my spinning class. At Ullevål at six.”
“So you left the property here for the first time that Friday to go to this exercise class at what time?”
“Ten past five, maybe. I take the train down there and usually arrive at around, let’s see, half past.”
“So the first certain sighting of you that day, other than by these patients who you do not wish to name, would have been then? I presume that you register that you’ve arrived at the gym in some way?”
“Yes.”
“There are cameras at Holstein station,” the red-haired officer says.
This is her first contribution to the conversation, and I’m surprised to hear that she speaks with a deep, melodic voice and in a northern dialect.
“O.K.,” Gundersen says, “so you exercise, you sweat, for, what, an hour, and when you’re done?”
“I went home.”
“Did you shower?”
“No, yes, I mean, not until I got home. I was on the train when Jan Erik called.”
“Right. And what did Jan Erik say?”
“He said what I said just now, that Sigurd never arrived at the cabin.”
“Did he say it like that? That Sigurd never arrived at the cabin?”
“No, no, of course not. I mean, he must have asked me whether I knew where Sigurd was. They were waiting for him.”
“And ‘they’ were?”
“Jan Erik and another friend, Thomas.”
“I see. So they’re sitting in a cabin at Norefjell and waiting for Sigurd.”
“Yes. He told them that he’d be there at around five in the evening. But he told me he’d be leaving Oslo before seven in the morning.”
Gundersen notes something down. Then he lifts a hand to his face and passes it along his cheek, down over his moustache. I ask myself whether this is something people with moustaches tend to do.
“So, according to Sigurd, he left Oslo before seven in the morning and arrived at Norefjell around nine-thirty or earlier. He called you from there a little after nine-thirty. But around, what must it have been, just after seven in the evening, Jan Erik calls you and says he’s at Norefjell, and that he’s still waiting for Sigurd.”
“Yes. And that he hasn’t seen Sigurd all day.”
“So this voicemail message, where Jan Erik’s supposedly messing around?
I nod. It’s as I feared. Best to just say it and get it over with. I swallow.
“So what happened was, I went home and showered, and then I thought that there must be an explanation, but then I called them again – Thomas, he’s the other friend, he’s a bit more . . . reliable . . . if you know what I mean – because at first I wondered whether it was a joke. But anyway, I was upset, because, you know, I didn’t understand. Because Sigurd doesn’t usually lie, and there didn’t seem to be any other explanation than that he was lying. So then, well, afterwards I drank some wine. And I was a bit stressed, you know, I drank too much wine, and I tried to call Sigurd again and again, and he didn’t pick up. And so I did something that may have been a bit stupid – or, I don’t know, maybe it doesn’t matter – but anyway, I deleted the voicemail.”
Fredly and Gundersen look at me. Gundersen’s eyes widen.
“You deleted the message?”
“Yes.”
Blood rushes to my head.
“But I’m sure it doesn’t matter,” I say. “I mean, surely you can retrieve the message, doesn’t the telephone company save things like that? They have data about who calls who and what they say, or at least for messages saved to voicemail. Isn’t that what we hear about all the time, mass surveillance and everything?”
I smile against my will. I can feel it happening but am unable to stop it, my nervous grin.
“This doesn’t look very good, Sara,” Gundersen says. “Especially in the light of your not wanting to give us the names of the patients you saw that day.”
There’s concern in his voice now, that of a doctor, I think, professional concern on behalf of another.
“I was angry,” I say. “He’d lied to me. I was so
upset. Can’t you understand that?”
Just then the door to the waiting room slams. His colleague and I both turn towards the door between the waiting room and the therapy room in which we’re sitting, but I can feel Gundersen’s eyes on me right until the door opens and Annika strides into the room.
The first thing that happens when she comes in, of course, is that Annika becomes the focus of our attention. She casts a glance at Fredly, who has had to move to permit Annika to open the door, and her gaze merely grazes Gundersen before she looks at me.
“Sara,” she says. “What’s going on?”
And I have the feeling of seeing the world through the wrong end of a telescope, so that everything happening around me becomes tiny and far away, but I look at Gundersen, who nods, as if giving me permission to share the information, so from the other end of the telescope I say to Annika:
“Sigurd is dead.”
What happens next is predictable, in a way, but also so bizarre. Because Annika inhales sharply in shock, hurries across the room and puts her arms around me, pressing me to her, rocking me back and forth as if I’m a rag doll in her arms. I let her sway me this way and that, really pressing the air out of me, and into my hair she says, “Oh Sara, oh Sara, oh Sara.” When she lets go of me I see that tears are already streaming from her eyes, her mascara running in black tracks down her cheeks.
And what’s strange is that Annika is demonstrating the reaction I myself should have had. While I’m numb and far away, consumed by bizarre details – the pizza delivery boy and the police officers’ dialects and who chooses which chair in the room – Annika goes straight to the heart of it. Sigurd is dead. It’s awful, terrible. So simple. And nobody loved Sigurd more than I did. So why isn’t it me that’s crying?
Annika lifts the back of her hand to her face and wipes away her tears, converting the black streams into grey smudges across her cheeks. She wipes her hand on her jacket, then holds it out to Gundersen.
“Annika Lathus,” she says, “Sara’s sister. I’m a lawyer.”
It always surprises me when people introduce themselves like this, giving their profession, as if they’re so proud of what they do they need to mention it at every opportunity. Sigurd could always be counted on to do it. He expected everyone to be so impressed that he was an architect, although why I don’t know, because I can’t remember anyone ever responding to him with anything other than friendly nodding and the usual polite follow-up questions.
Then I realise that Annika wants to protect me. She wants Gundersen to know that someone with legal competence is keep-ing an eye on him. He appears unimpressed, shakes Annika’s hand without getting up, but for a moment his colleague stops scribbling on her pad. And in some way Annika reaches me, on the desert island to which my pain emigrated when it dissociated from my body, because the gaping hole in my chest now feels a little warmer, a little more like home – somebody is on my side.
Annika sits with me as it becomes Gundersen’s turn to speak. He gets up, stretches his hands so that the knuckles of his fingers crack. He’s tall, I see now – in my office in the garage loft he has to bend his neck beneath the sloping ceiling unless he stands directly under the ridge of the roof. He speaks in a calm, monotone, plainly and to the point, without unnecessary adjectives. He paces back and forth as he speaks, uses his hands, casts the occasional look my way. His gaze is clear and direct; I imagine that he never concedes ground. I don’t know what I would have to offer such a man – in no conceivable future, I think, will Gundersen ever have any need for a psychologist.
Here’s what he tells us: a local man found the body, which they believe to be Sigurd’s, on Sunday. He was lying fully dressed just a short distance from the path, but the area is popular with hikers, and he wasn’t very well hidden. A cursory investigation revealed two gunshot wounds to his back, and the present theory is that he died as a result of these wounds, although confirmation from forensics is yet to be received.
He was lying face down in the mud, as Gundersen had said earlier in our conversation – as he’d spat at me, in fact, when I refused to give him the names of my patients. This detail has vibrated in my chest ever since he delivered it. Sigurd’s face: the crooked nose, the dimples, his beautiful, quick eyes and the mole below one of them – all this deep in the mud. I already know that I’ll never get over this image, and I hate Gundersen for using it against me. He was irritated with me over the whole confidentiality thing, but this is my life, my tragedy, and I’ll have to live with it for the rest of my days. I now have the image permanently etched into my brain. Thank you, Gundersen. Thank you very much.
He had been dead for a couple of days, Gundersen says. A more accurate time of death will soon be obtained, but based on current information it is likely he was killed on Friday, or Saturday morning at the latest. This offers some relief – on Saturday morning I’d let myself be reassured by the policewoman on the telephone who believed it wasn’t urgent to report him missing, but by then it was already too late.
“His family have a small cabin at Krokskogen,” Annika says. “Don’t they, Sara?”
“We’re aware of that,” Gundersen says.
Someone must have spoken to Margarethe; perhaps she gave them this information last night when they informed her of Sigurd’s death.
“So I have to ask you, Sara,” Gundersen says, coming to stand before me with his hands hooked to his hips – although slim, he’s a wall of a man, “can you think of anyone who might have had a reason to want to take Sigurd’s life?”
Here I go blank. I leaf through the people we know, through the things Sigurd talked about, things he said in frustration or when exhausted.
“No,” I say, “I just can’t imagine it.”
“It doesn’t have to be anything major,” Gundersen says. “Did he have any disagreements with anyone? Did he owe anyone money, or was there anyone who owed him?”
“No,” I say, “not that I know of. I know it sounds boring, but Sigurd was, well – he was just a normal guy.”
Something flickers across Gundersen’s face. A normal guy, I think – and what might that be?
“He didn’t do drugs or have a gambling problem,” I say. “He worked – a lot, and hard. He would sometimes hang out with his friends, otherwise he was home with me in the evenings, watching T.V.”
“Is there anything in particular you’re referring to?” Annika says.
“Just a routine question in murder cases,” Gundersen says.
“I can’t think of anything,” I say.
“Let me know if anything occurs to you.”
He scribbles his telephone number on a corner of the piece of paper his subordinate hands him, tears it off and holds it out to me.
“You can call me at any hour.”
He places a hand on the door handle, and I gather that the interview is over.
“Gundersen?” I say. The name sounds wrong coming from me, it sounds stupid, but he turns nonetheless. “Is it . . . ? I mean. I’m just wondering – are you sure it’s him?”
Gundersen lets go of the door handle and turns, his eyes almost friendly now.
“We won’t know for certain until the forensic report has been completed,” he says, “but if I can give you a single piece of advice, Sara, it’s this: don’t start to doubt it. The man we found is Sigurd. I’m not permitted to say this for certain – but it’s him.”
I nod, slowly, sleepily. Gundersen turns and leaves, Fredly at his heels.
Sigurd’s tiny diamond rests in the little dip at the base of my throat, where it has rested every day since he gave me the necklace. Now I fiddle with it. I’m in the kitchen with my sister. Annika has found some bread and made a sandwich, which she’s set down in front of me. I look at it, knowing that, should I manage to take the tiniest bite, I’ll throw up.
“Have you spoken to Margrethe?” she says.
“Sigurd gave me this chain for my birthday three years ago.”
“I know,” she says
.
“We were living in the apartment in Pilestredet. He was still studying, we had no money – but he bought it for me anyway.”
“Hmm,” Annika says.
She’s not interested; is stressed, it seems.
“It was so typical of Sigurd,” I say. “He thought I needed this necklace more than we needed the money, and I think he was right, in a way. Because isn’t that often the way, when you’re scrimping and saving, that you need . . .”
I search for the right words. Annika looks out of the window. She reminds me of the doctors I’ve seen on T.V. programmes about the accident and emergency departments at hospitals – always trying to find the overview in chaotic situations.
“Anyhow,” I say, “he used his savings to give me this necklace. It was for my birthday.”
“I know, Sara,” Annika says, and now she sits down across from me and takes my hands in hers. “You’ve told me several times, including when he first gave it to you. I think we should go and see Margrethe this afternoon. Don’t you think? I think it would be a good thing for you to do.”
“Alright,” I say.
I’m limp as an old towel in her hands; I’ll do as she asks. Even though I haven’t the slightest desire to see Margrethe, and I really feel that way, I realise – it’ll be a test to have to encounter her grief when I have such a poor grip on my own. But although I don’t want to, I’ll accompany Annika if she takes me there. I’m just grateful that someone is taking control.
When our mum died, Annika was the rock. Pappa was crushed, and simply sat in his study among the photograph albums and piles of shoeboxes that constituted Mamma’s archiving system – boxes containing baby shoes and locks of hair and postcards from old friends on holiday and bits of paper with phone numbers. “What am I going to do with all this?” he sighed. I was seven. A friend had told me that when people die their bodies are eaten by small insects, unless they’re cremated, in which case the body sits up once aflame. My head was full of appalling notions. Annika was twelve. She was at Pappa’s side in the meeting with the funeral home. It was she who suggested that they should play the song “Ellinors vise”, which Mamma had liked, since Pappa was incapable of remembering anything she had liked, other than that she used to play “Satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones at high volume when she was getting ready for a night out. Annika found Mamma’s address book and called the family friends who had not been informed. She chose the dresses we wore to the funeral. And in the end, it was she who sorted through the shoeboxes, whittling the seventeen boxes down to four. She’s good at things like that. Pappa became apathetic when Mamma died, and if this situation is the equivalent of that, it seems that I take after him, because I’m just as apathetic, just as helpless.