by Helene Flood
I take the boys to the store to buy sweets, the youngest in the pushchair and the other two babbling away on either side of me, speaking over one another – “Do you know what? Do you know what? Do you know what? Did you know that a witch lives on this street?” I pull a long, surprised face. No – really, a witch? The boys are eager, pointing and explaining, telling me about the time they cycled past one of the houses and she came out onto the steps and called out after them. It’s so nice, this. These lovely kids. So concerned with these kinds of things – cycling and football and neighbours who might be witches or wizards. I’ve never before understood the sheer variety that exists within them.
I become crazy about them. Sit on the floor and build an intricate railway around the coffee table. Get out the plasticine and Perler beads and paper and pens, settle down with them. Surprise myself by remembering old tricks – I can fold a piece of paper into a fortune teller and am good at drawing dogs. I offer to put them to bed, tell their parents to relax while I sit in their rooms with them until they fall asleep. The two older ones sleep in the same room, and I sit on the edge of the bed of one of them and read books and tell stories. Keep it going for longer than they’re used to, because it’s usually just one book and then lights out, but I tell them as many tales as they want. Deep down, I don’t want them to fall asleep. I just want to stay sitting here, telling them stories and chatting with them. But in the end they doze off, and I stroke their hair for a while before I leave the room.
The nights are hard. I don’t go to bed until I’m so tired that I’m almost falling asleep in front of the T.V., but once I’m lying on the sofa bed in the basement I find myself wide awake. I try to find strategies to stop my thoughts from churning – I count backwards from one hundred hopping over every third number, try to think of as many city names as I can that start with each letter of the alphabet. Try to trick myself into sleeping with little success. The more tired I become, the more easily Sigurd floats to the forefront of my awareness. As does Vera – I can’t stop thinking about her. When I do manage to sleep, I sleep fitfully. I wake without feeling rested, stiff-shouldered and thick-headed, but when I get up the boys throw themselves at me and I tell their parents to go back to sleep, I’ll watch them, and sink down onto the floor with the kids, grateful for the respite they give me. On the second night, I wake up thirsty. Annika and Henning’s house seems strange and unfamiliar in the dark. It’s so quiet. The family are asleep on the top floor, and when I make my way up from the basement to get a glass of water I hear only my own footsteps. Is there nobody turning over in bed? Nobody snoring, or coughing in their sleep? No indication that people are up there, no signs of life? There’s not a sound to be heard, other than a car on the road somewhere outside, and the noises I make myself.
As I get myself a drink of water I have the sense that I’m being watched. I don’t know how I come to realise this, standing there with the glass under the jet from the tap – but it’s as if I catch a glimpse of something out of the corner of my eye. For five freezing seconds I stand stock-still, staring through the window – the dark glass, the outlines of the trees outside, a street lamp and the lights of the neighbouring house. I think: is it Vera? I narrow my eyes, try to focus on the darkness, but see only myself in the light above the kitchen counter. As I take a couple of steps towards the window and see my dressing gown swinging around me, I realise that it was my own movements that caught my attention. I try to smile at this, but without managing to reassure myself. I go on looking at the window, at my reflection as I stand there in my dressing gown. Meet my own gaze as I think how disquieting it is that what I at first thought was Vera was in fact me.
The police are still busy at my house, so I have to borrow a black dress from Annika for the funeral. It hangs baggily around my hips, but that doesn’t matter.
While I’m standing in the bathroom of the house in Nordstrand and getting ready to leave, my mobile rings.
“It’s Gundersen,” the voice says. “I was wondering whether you could come in tomorrow? To the police station? Say at ten o’clock?”
“Yes,” I say, adjusting my tights around my waist. “I can do that.”
I don’t particularly want to. I wish he would just tell me whatever is on his mind right now, over the telephone.
“Good,” he says. “Then I’ll see you tomorrow. And – good luck. With the funeral service today. I mean, I hope it’ll be a nice ceremony.”
“Thank you,” I say, and then we hang up. And only then do I think, what a bizarre thing for him to say, he’s not the type.
The chapel at Vestre Gravlund cemetery is full. Margrethe leans on the son she has left. The area in front of the casket is thick with flowers. Other than that, there’s not much to say. Only that the man at the funeral home was right – “Solveig’s Song” works. The girl singing is young, with messy red hair and a deep voice. “Om det skulle gå både vinter og vår.” It’s the loveliest moment of the entire ceremony.
Afterwards we stand out on the steps: Margrethe, Harald, Lana Mei and I. We take the hands of everyone who has come. Flemming and Mammod; Thomas, Julie and Jan Erik; Pappa, Annika and Henning. All Sigurd’s student friends – their names merge into one another, I no longer remember them. For a moment I think I see Fru Atkinson at the back, there among all the people, but I can’t be sure. And if it is her, she does not come over to greet us.
But Benedicte and Ida do. I didn’t know that they would come. I hadn’t said anything to them, didn’t really know how to tell them. It’s probably Annika who called them – she told Pappa, too, sorting things out as usual. Benedicte runs up to where I’m standing on the church steps to hug me and squeeze my hands. “Sara, honey,” she whispers into my hair, and only then, in her bear hug and the familiar, dear scent of her, do I start to cry. When she releases me I try to say something about how happy I am that they have come, but all that emerges is a garbled muddle. “Of course we came,” says Ida, putting her arms around me, too, and they don’t understand, don’t know how little I feel I can expect of them.
The most surprising guest is Fredly. She presses my hand, quickly, looking about her, obviously still trying to form an overview of the situation. She’s on my side. I can see it in her eyes now, she fixes me with her gaze, as if she wants to tell me something, but when it comes down to it she only offers her condolences.
I spent the entire ceremony wondering whether Vera was there. I didn’t see her before we started, but it would have been just her style to sneak in and observe us, unseen, from a dim nook or hidden gallery. Many times, as we sat there and the priest spoke, and Harald spoke, and the red-haired girl sang, I turned, trying to make out her face from among the rest. I felt her presence in the walls – I couldn’t see her, but was sure she was there. Unless the police have her in custody. I have no idea whether this is the case; I didn’t ask Gundersen. But if she’s free, she will have been here today, watching me. Guaranteed.
Once every last hand has been shaken we go to the car park to make our way to the reception. Annika’s boys are bickering a little; Pappa puts an arm around my shoulders. I’m sure this is meant as a supportive gesture, but it’s an unfamiliar one for both of us, and neither of us quite knows how to handle it. His arm lies heavy and unmoving against my shoulders, like a dead animal – it’s a relief when he removes it. I try to smile at him as best I can, and he smiles back. A little anxiously, it seems to me. Perhaps Annika has told him he has to show me that he cares.
Later, at the reception at the restaurant, Harald speaks again, telling childhood stories – it’s like hearing about the life of a stranger. I try to say something, but don’t quite manage it – I lose the thread of what I’m trying to say, so wrap it up as quickly as possible, cheers to Sigurd, the best husband I could have wished for. Annika takes my hand when I sit down again; people clap and say cheers regardless. It’s an odd atmosphere. Some of his student friends clearly want to celebrate
him. One of them speaks, says something about it, “Let’s celebrate Sigurd’s life, rather than mourn his death.” His other friends cheer. We members of the family don’t. I catch Mammod’s eye. He’s not cheering, either – in fact, he looks a little embarrassed.
We leave shortly after that.
Tuesday, March 17: Confirmation bias
He must have been waiting for me, because he appears almost the second the receptionist calls him. He’s wearing a faded shirt and worn jeans, and has a kind of plastic card featuring his name and photograph on a lanyard around his neck, but I’ve never seen this on him before. Otherwise, he’s as he usually is, but as I follow him into the building, through the labyrinth of corridors it must take years to learn to negotiate as effortlessly as he does, I ask myself whether he looks the tiniest bit paler than usual. As if he’s worn out. Perhaps after several days of hard work with little sleep.
We get ourselves some coffee from a small kitchenette nestled between open-plan offices and corridors of cubicles, deep in the underbelly of the animal that is this building. As Gundersen goes through the cupboards to find mugs, a woman wearing a shirt and blazer comes over, takes my hand and introduces herself as a police prosecutor.
“I’m working on the case,” she says. “Gunnar here will fill you in. Unfortunately I won’t be there, but I’m sure Gunnar will be thorough and answer any questions you may have. And if you need anything further, you can always call me afterwards.”
I nod. Gundersen and I exchange a glance so fleeting as to be imperceptible to her, but we both appear a little embarrassed that she’s using his first name. Something about him makes me think that even his mother calls him Gundersen.
He shows me into a meeting room just as spartan as the one I waited in on Friday: pink chairs covered in a woollen fabric of the kind favoured by institutions in the early ’90s, a Respatex table with steel legs, a cheap-looking desk lamp on top of it, and a long, rectangular ceiling light suspended on two steel wires. In the corner there’s a rubber plant that may be artificial, its leaves covered in a layer of dust. Gundersen takes a seat and indicates that I should sit on the other side. There are two chairs there, and for a moment I think of my office. I take the one on the right, at random. Gundersen sets my cup of coffee in front of me, and there we sit.
“So,” he says.
“So,” I say.
We look at each other.
“I expect you’ve given some thought to it,” he says. “To what happened on Friday.”
I nod.
“Can I – before we start – may I ask you a question?” he says.
“Of course.”
“Did you know that it was Vera you were looking for? When you went up to Krokskogen on Friday?”
“No,” I say. “Honestly. I had no idea that it was her.”
“So as far as you knew, it might have been any old crazed murderer who invited you out into the wilderness? To the scene of a crime?”
“I didn’t know it was Vera,” I say, looking at my hands, trying to explain. “But I saw her on the video from the security firm and . . . well. There was nothing threatening about the figure on the film. It seemed more . . . pitiable than anything.”
It isn’t as if I haven’t been thinking about this since Friday. But it isn’t easy to explain, either. I take a deep breath. Try again.
“I’m not sure you realise just how afraid I’ve been,” I say. “Of course I knew that it might be dangerous. But I just . . . I needed to understand. So I decided to let things play out in whatever way they would. There was a kind of arrogance in that – and, I mean, it isn’t as if I still think it was a good idea. But I felt like I was losing my mind there at home, with the cameras and the footsteps in the loft and the fridge magnets. It wasn’t only about finding out what happened to Sigurd. It felt like it was about survival.”
He looks at me, his head cocked to one side.
“Well, everything turned out fine,” he says. “But if I was to tell you just one thing, I’d say you should be eternally grateful to that young lad who works at the security firm. Arild’s Security? That young whippersnapper there? He called us in the early hours and told us what had happened. Explained how he thought you might go up there. Sounded as if he was really struggling with the decision to contact us – as if he were breaching confi-dentiality. Sort of like you, when we spoke about your patients and their notes. Anyway, this boy notified us. Fredly threw herself in the car and was able to get help from a couple of officers from Hønefoss. Thank God, we might say. It could have ended very badly.”
He gives me a meaningful look. I nod. Gundersen has worked for the police for a long time. He’s probably seen all there is to see. A warning that you shouldn’t put your life on the line isn’t something to be taken lightly, coming from him.
“Anyway,” he says, straightening some papers on the table in front of him: a folder containing sheets of paper, something that looks like printouts of Excel spreadsheets and some pages of printed text, all with notes scribbled in the margins and blank spaces in a cramped, illegible handwriting. “Let’s start at the beginning. Vera. Do you have any thoughts about her? I mean, what do you think of her role in all this?”
“Well,” I say. “I’ve thought – I don’t know. The most likely explanation is that they were having an affair.”
Gundersen nods.
“Yes,” he says. “They were. I’m sorry to say.”
I receive this news as an expected punch to the gut. The pain is dull, although I know that I’ll come to feel it just as intensely as when I sat in the waiting room on Friday night. Only later. Right now, there is only this – a fist in the diaphragm that confirms my suspicions. I take a couple of slow, deep breaths.
Gundersen looks at me over his papers. I wonder how long he’s known. I think back to some of our conversations. The one when we sat in my office, and he asked me whether Sigurd and I had had any problems. “We’ve had a good marriage,” I had said. Did Gundersen know even then?
“She met Sigurd when he was drawing up plans for an extension at her parents’ house,” Gundersen says. “They live in a semi-detached property in Sogn. Sigurd had to stop by a couple of times to take some measurements while her parents were away, and they said, ‘Vera’s home, she’ll let you in.’ So.”
I don’t want to think about what happened next. Don’t want to imagine how it happened but know that I will, later tonight, when I’ve gone to bed and am trying to sleep – as I will every night for the foreseeable future. Instead, I think about everyone else. About the police officers who searched the house, going through our drawers last Monday as I listlessly sat there, trying to understand what had happened. Did they know? And did Jan Erik and Thomas know? Were they aware that Sigurd was having an affair when they called me that night because he hadn’t arrived at the cabin? And if they knew, did Julie?
Gundersen clears his throat.
“And I understand, Sara – and I hope you won’t mind me saying this – that there were difficulties in your marriage. In such a situation it isn’t up to me to decide what’s right or wrong, God knows being married is more than hard enough, but in order to understand how this relationship developed, I had to ask myself: what was it that made Sigurd go in for this? A grown man, married and all? With a schoolgirl? I mean, she’s eighteen, over the age of consent and an adult in the eyes of the law – but she was, after all, still a teenager.
“It isn’t up to me to tell you why, but if you want to know what I think, I’d guess he was frustrated. Marriage wasn’t as he had expected it to be. I’ve seen it many times – especially with men. You know, relationships are full of things you have to do, have to deal with. Parents-in-law and property and jobs and payslips. There are so many ways in which a couple can disappoint each other. And in which you can disappoint yourself. Then along comes someone else. Someone young and open, who doesn’t demand anything. Wh
o thinks you’re a great guy simply because you are who you are. Who thinks you’re brilliant, without demanding that you earn more or take on more assignments or improve your performance. If you’ve been feeling inadequate for a long time, it’s so tempting to accept this more generous interpretation of yourself. And if she’s young and pretty to boot, well.”
This is Gundersen’s analysis of Sigurd. Would I too have viewed him this way if I’d been looking at him as an outsider? I don’t know. I just want to hide my face in my hands. I think of previous cabin trips with Thomas and Jan Erik. Sigurd in the evening, worked up and red in the face after a couple of beers and the heat of the log burner, “Should I tell you guys a secret? Well, only if you promise not to say anything to Sara . . .” See them grinning, both of them – yes, tell us, we won’t say anything to Sara.
Gundersen continues:
“At the start it was a physical thing, at the house in Sogn when Vera’s parents were away. But then it developed into a relationship. E-mails and messages. Meetings at his office late in the evening when the others had gone home, sometimes in the car, and after a time mostly at the cabin in Krokskogen, where they were guaranteed not to be disturbed. Vera falls head over heels for him; it isn’t long before she’s convinced that they’re made for one another. One of the upsides to our age’s almost boundless opportunities for communication is all the traces we leave behind us. Mobile technology has transformed my pro-fession. It’s no longer about searching for the incriminating letter that may or may not exist. When two people enter into a relationship nowadays, there are always tracks. They open secret e-mail accounts and Skype and Facebook profiles and whatever else. We had already discovered the e-mail addresses and Skype profiles, but Vera showed us communication on a couple of other platforms. I have three students undergoing their training working their way through it all, because it truly is massive: page after page of chat logs. Through these logs, we can take the temperature of Vera and Sigurd’s relationship. Watch it unfolding.