by Helene Flood
“Not long after their first meeting came the first e-mails. Vera declares that she loves Sigurd. She doesn’t hold anything back. She’s never met anyone like him, she writes, what they have is unique. Their love is special – that kind of thing. At first, Sigurd plays along. He reciprocates – not in such a florid way, perhaps, but he follows her lead. Sometimes he tries to tempt more from her: “What do you think about when you’re missing me?” And – let me put it this way – she could be counted on to reply.”
I nod, my head heavy. Sigurd, who needed a code word to tell me he loved me. “Hey, love.” And me – who needed the same.
So Vera, who in her own estimation is more intelligent than the rest of us, underestimated the importance of lived experience. She probably entered into this adult affair with self-confidence, perhaps just to see what it was like. Perhaps she thought she was stronger than the kind of people who fall in love with someone they can’t have. Didn’t understand the potent situation she was in before it was too late. Her parting words to me at our last session, on the Friday Sigurd was killed: “All I need is love.” I think: that must have been just before she went up to Krokskogen to shoot him.
“But little by little it seems that Sigurd cools off,” Gundersen says. “He doesn’t ask Vera to stop, but he no longer responds to all her declarations of love, or not unless she asks him to. This is a few months in, around November, perhaps. Her declarations are now more specific. She wants them to run away together, and this isn’t just a metaphor – she actually has plans for how they might do this. A savings account, a friend of the family who has an apartment in London, that kind of thing. She wants him to divorce you; she wants to marry him. This, I have to say, is the predictable continuation of the story of the man who falls in love with a young girl who demands nothing. And Vera is more intense than most. When she writes to Sigurd to thank him for a piece of jewellery he gave her, she calls it ‘a symbol of the very deepest love’. I don’t think it ever crossed her mind that Sigurd might feel differently.”
“What was it, the piece of jewellery?” I mumble. I already know the answer, but need to hear him say it, nonetheless.
“The gift? A bracelet with a pearl on it.”
I say nothing more. Again, I know that I will feel the true weight of this later.
“Anyone reading their exchanges can see that he starts to tone it down as the autumn progresses,” Gundersen says. “All three students agree on that. As Christmas approaches Sigurd only ever says ‘I love you’ when prompted to do so by Vera. And in the middle of December he ends their relationship.”
It must have been just after we decided to go away between Christmas and New Year in an attempt to save our relationship, I think. When, beneath the fireworks in Tenerife, we’d promised to turn over a new leaf, and Sigurd had said: “I’m done with Atkinson.” I’d listened and nodded, still believing it was all about architecture, about work. Didn’t understand what he was actually saying to me.
“The break-up itself doesn’t happen via electronic communication,” Gundersen says, “but the chat logs enable us to follow its repercussions. Vera begs him to take her back, declares her love for him, and threatens suicide. Sigurd tries to explain himself, asks her to speak to someone if she’s finding it difficult, becomes shorter and shorter in his replies.
“When I speak to Vera about this period, she puts all the blame on you. Sigurd broke up with her because he was worried about you, she says. She was worried about how Sigurd was doing – even feared for his life. While you were on holiday in December she installed tiny, wireless cameras in your house, so she could make sure that he was ‘doing O.K.’. She also says that she made a copy of Sigurd’s house key fairly early on in the relationship. Her explanation of how that happened is a little sketchy, so I’m guessing that she stole it from his pocket.”
I know all too well what’s coming next. The start of our therapy sessions, in which I believed myself to be her psychologist. In which I acted as the therapist while she sat there knowing all kinds of private things about me. Had seen me naked, quite literally, given that she had access to surveillance footage of my bedroom, had also seen me crying in bed while Sigurd was still downstairs on the computer. Heard me tell Sigurd that I was lonely, taken note of this, and thrown it in my face in a moment of anger – “Do you even have any friends at all?” Able to hit me where it hurt the most. No wonder I often felt uneasy before our sessions. She sat there in the chair in my office, knowing that I’d been betrayed by my husband. What could I have said, what kind of wisdom about life and love could I have offered her, while she sat there nodding, accepting my advice, all the while knowing the most intimate aspects of the man who was mine?
“In January, contact between the two of them resumes,” Gundersen says. “Vera takes a different tone in their chats; she’s more measured. She just wants to be friends, nothing more. But over the course of a few weeks they slip back into a relationship. Then Vera calls you and asks for an appointment. To see who you are, she says. To understand what Sigurd sees in you.”
I don’t have the strength to talk to Gundersen about this. No matter how understandable it is that I believed her, it still feels as if I’ve been taken in. As if I’ve been gullible, revealed too much. Since I don’t want to explain this to him, I quickly say:
“But why did she kill him? Did he try to dump her again? Or – what was it that triggered it?”
“Ah,” says Gundersen, straightening the papers in front of him. “Well.”
He remains quiet for a while, looking at his papers and saying nothing. Then he looks up at me with the expression that crosses his features from time to time, his eyes honest, crystal clear. I’m unsure whether this is some kind of technique, whether it’s something he learned at the police academy, or whether it comes naturally to him, but it’s impressive – it’s impossible to protest when faced with that kind of honesty.
“Unfortunately, Sara,” Gundersen says, “I don’t think Vera did kill Sigurd.”
At the weekend I sat on the floor of Annika’s living room, playing with a train set with my two eldest nephews. Building bridges over the tracks that curved around chair legs, immersed in this activity and nothing else: to think like a child with my sister’s two little boys. I was part of a simple world: ice cream and fairy tales and a neighbour who might be a witch. And now, as the consequences of what Gundersen is saying begin to dawn on me, and I think of my frightened eyes in the kitchen window that night in Nordstrand and start to wonder whether I did see something outside, after all – whether someone is still out to get me. This is all I want: to go back to that moment with my nephews on the living room floor, when all that mattered was how to get the train tracks to lie flat across the edge of the rug.
“I don’t understand what you’re saying,” I say.
There is something almost apologetic in Gundersen’s expression. He presses his lips together into a thin line beneath his moustache, all the while maintaining that honest gaze.
“She was watching us,” I say. “She threw the key to the cabin through the glass panel of my front door, lured me up there, and I know she intended to kill me. I mean, I’m sure she’s saying it was self-defence or something like that, but, Gundersen, you didn’t see her.”
“I know what you mean,” he says. “And if it’s any comfort, you have an ally in Ingvild Fredly. She said the same as you – that it must be Vera, because she wanted to shoot you up there in Krokskogen, without a doubt.”
“But,” I say, and now my voice is trembling, it’s a struggle to stop the tears coming, “but then who could have done it? Because, I mean, surely it’s pretty unlikely that Sigurd, a common architect from Røa, would know not only one but two potential murderers?”
“I understand your objections,” Gundersen says. “But the facts simply do not indicate that Vera killed him. It would have been almost impossible for her to manage it.”
<
br /> “But surely there must be a way she could have done it? Something you haven’t considered?”
Gundersen is silent for a while – he’s waiting for me to calm down, I think, and I try to regain control.
“I’m a simple man, Sara,” Gundersen says. “I look at what I have in front of me, and I ask: is it possible that X could have done it? Did X have a real, physical opportunity to perform this act? And if not, well, either we have to find a way in which X did have the opportunity, or we have to set aside that hypothesis. In my line of work, it’s easy to be blinded by the answer that seems most obvious. When you first have a suspicion, you see only the evidence that supports it. You disregard everything that indicates you’ve made a mistake, and selectively look for the details that suggest you are right.”
“Confirmation bias,” I say. “That’s what it’s called. The tendency to look for evidence or information that confirms what you already know.”
“It’s a very easy mistake to make,” he says. “A fundamental error, but that doesn’t stop experienced investigators storm-ing head first into the wrong conclusion. It would be fitting if it was Vera, wouldn’t it? But the trouble is that it just doesn’t add up.”
He leafs through some of the documents in front of him and pulls out an Excel spreadsheet.
“Let’s start with what we know about Friday, March 6; we can summarise that fairly quickly. Let’s see. Sigurd gets up at five-thirty in the morning. He showers, gets dressed, gathers up some of his things, gulps down a cup of coffee and says goodbye to you – we can see from Vera’s footage that he leaves at 06:10.
“We know that he then arrives at FleMaSi around six-thirty. He parks his car at the kerb, well within view of the camera above the entrance to the office. He’s in there for around an hour and a half, until 07:53 – when the camera shows that he returns to the car.
“At a couple of minutes past eight the car is registered on the toll road at Majorstuen, on its way west. Sigurd goes through the toll on the road to Kleivstua at 08:44. This is the last hard evidence of Sigurd’s location that we have.
“But we can follow the G.P.S. on his mobile. This isn’t idiot-proof, because a person’s mobile isn’t part of their body. But we have a witness – you – who puts Sigurd with his mobile at 09:40. The G.P.S. on the mobile indicates that Sigurd stops the car on the road below Kleivstua nine minutes after he goes through the toll, and that he then walks through the forest for fifteen minutes before he reaches the cabin a little after nine. From this point on, the mobile doesn’t leave the cabin.
“Sigurd and Vera have agreed that she’ll come up to the cabin at around eleven or twelve. A little after nine, Sigurd sends Vera a message via Skype, letting her know that he’s arrived and asking her to message him before she gets on the bus, so that he can drive down to the bus stop and pick her up. And then there’s an outgoing call made from his mobile to yours at 09.40, which aligns with your statement about the voicemail message. Unfortunately, the telecoms company have been unable to retrieve the message, Sara, so I’m still upset that you chose to delete it, but as things stand, I’m inclined to believe you regarding its content. But this deleted voicemail message is the last trace left by Sigurd. The pathologist and our forensic physician agree that the murder took place no later than three, so he must have been killed just a few hours after that call.
“Vera says that after her session with you, she walked to Holstein station, took the T-banen to Oslo Central Station, and tried to contact Sigurd to say that she was ready to make the journey up to Krokskogen.
“She had accidentally left her mobile at home that day, which meant that we couldn’t trace her via G.P.S., as we did with Sigurd. Fredly has pointed out on more than one occasion that this is very convenient, so before you draw any similar conclusions let me just say that Vera’s chat logs make clear that she had a habit of leaving her mobile, wallet and keys here and there – but yes, noted. So Vera tried to get hold of Sigurd in another way – she rented a computer in an Internet cafe at the station; she borrowed the telephone in a clothing store and tried to call – but was unable to get hold of him. She let one bus go, and when she’d waited so long that the next bus had also gone, around two hours later, she went back to school. She therefore arrived at Nydalen Secondary School at around 11.45.
“Luckily for Vera, that day was the day on which students at her school were having their school photographs taken. And the image files contain information about exactly when each photograph was taken. For Vera to make the round trip to Krokskogen to kill Sigurd after her session with you would have taken her two and a half hours. With luck and no delays at any point along the way, she might have managed to get back to school at 12:15. At the absolute earliest.
“But the first photograph of Vera’s class was taken at 12:03, and in it is Vera, standing right there between your average Kari and Ola Hvermansen, smiling wanly towards the camera.”
Gundersen places the palms of his hands on the table. I look at them, trying to gather myself to make a counter-argument.
“Now,” he says, formulating it for me, “you may be thinking that the margins here are fairly narrow. If the first photograph was taken at 12.03, then we’re only talking about twelve minutes. But I’ve performed the calculation using the minimal time required at every step of the way. A couple of red lights, a queue in the traffic through Sollihøgda, a conversation to lure Sigurd out to the forest, just one slow-moving driver a little further along the road beside the Tyrifjorden or an extra trip around the car park in Nydalen to find a vacant space – any of these and the timeline shatters. I’d say it’s improbable that she could have been at school by quarter past twelve, even if it’s technically possible. And I’ve spoken to the photographer. If the first photograph was taken at 12.03, that means that all the students had to have been getting into position a few minutes earlier. Vera is in the middle of the group. She hasn’t dived onto the end of a row as the last person to arrive.
“So I don’t know. If I were a prosecutor, I might be able to build a case on this. But if you ask me, I don’t think she did it. She didn’t have the time. It seems she almost could have done it. But not quite. Unfortunately.”
“But,” I say, “you said before three. She could have done it after the class photograph was taken.”
“Yes,” Gundersen says, “but the thing is that the photog-rapher wasn’t finished after the class photo. Between 12:24 and 12.29 the photographer took at least four portraits of Vera. And between 14.19 and 14.30, he took a range of pictures of all the students at the school together. After the last whole-school picture was taken, she wouldn’t have made it up there until well after three o’clock – by which point Sigurd was already dead.
“Furthermore, we can follow all her attempts to reach him from Oslo city centre. All the logins, all the calls to his mobile – they fit with her story as she tells it.”
“But she could have got someone else to do it,” I say. “A friend, or someone she manipulated, something like that.”
“Well,” he says, shrugging. “Of course, she could have. But there’s nothing to build a case on until we have a candidate. There’s nothing that gives us reason to believe that Vera’s been in contact with a hit man, and when it comes to friends, it doesn’t seem as if she has many close ones. Certainly nobody she could go to for help to commit murder. And besides, the bullets found in Sigurd’s body are not from a revolver like the one that was stolen from you. Of course, this means nothing more than that if Vera killed Sigurd, she must have had two weapons – and she may well have done – but it doesn’t exactly support your hypothesis, either.”
I sigh deeply, glance at the dusty rubber plant in the corner.
“So what now?” I say. “Does that mean that I’m still a suspect?”
“Actually no,” Gundersen says, and he smiles now, albeit faintly. “You know, despite how violated you must feel by th
e surveillance, that is in fact what clears you here. Technically, you could have gone up to Krokskogen and killed Sigurd between, what were their names?”
He turns to his papers.
“Between Christoffer and Trygve. But thanks to Vera’s surveillance cameras, I have video footage of you pottering around in the living room, preparing meals, surfing the Internet, emptying the dishwasher and so on, all during that period. I’m guessing you don’t feel any particular gratitude or warmth towards Vera right now, but if you ever find yourself wanting to reconcile with her, you might bear this in mind: she gave you an alibi.”
“Confirmation bias” is the seeking of information that confirms what you already believe. As I did that Friday when I waited at police headquarters. It’s about ignoring information that doesn’t support what you believe. Just as everything within me now wants to dismiss Gundersen.
But the more he explains, the harder this becomes. While Gundersen goes on talking my mind tries to rationalise away everything he has told me. It’s certainly possible that Vera did it. She had an accomplice. She killed him somewhere else, then moved the body. There must be something we haven’t thought of. She must have killed Sigurd – because who else could have done it?
As I refuse to believe him, Gundersen tells me what that week was like for Vera. If we accept her version of events, as he says. He tells me that she went home from school that day and waited all evening for Sigurd to call and tell her why he broke their agreement. That she started to worry when she didn’t hear from him. She watched me via her surveillance equipment, heard me speaking to Thomas on the telephone, and to the police the next day when I reported Sigurd missing. On Saturday afternoon she took her mother’s car without asking and drove up to the cabin; found Sigurd’s things, but the cabin was abandoned. As if whoever was staying there had just popped out for a moment, Gundersen says. Sigurd’s mobile lying there on the table. The document tube containing his drawings leaning against the window. His bag open; a plate with a half-eaten sandwich on the kitchen counter. As if he might come back and finish eating it at any moment.