Ferhat carried on looking at him, said nothing.
– The patient didn’t die that evening when he fell on me. He isn’t dead.
Instantly the thought came again: – The ring!
He held up his hand in front of Ferhat.
– The ring is gone, the Kurd nodded.
– It all adds up, muttered Arash, but he didn’t understand how. They were after him in the forest. Ibro Hakanovic was cut up, but walking around in Lillestrøm. Now they’d done the same thing to Marita, cut her up. Was she not dead either? If it wasn’t Ibro Hakanovic lying in that hospital bed, it could have been the prison guard at Evin. They had done as they promised: to come after him even if he fled to another country, find him no matter where in the world he was.
– You’re sweating, said Ferhat. – Du bist krank. Ring the doctor. Krank.
Arash shook his head. Don’t ring. The ring. Without the ring he was nothing. His power would desert him, he would shrivel. Sit there and watch them come.
– You must sleep, Ferhat said again, and now Arash could see that he was lying. They had been there. Paid him to wait. Paid him to ring and tell them. He, Arash, was the one they were after. They had sent the pursuer into the forest to find him. The eyes in the opening in the black hood. He had seen that look in the stream, when the one in black stood over him with the knife in his hand. The knife that slashed Marita. She lay and bled to death at his feet. His ring on her thumb.
He had to find it.
In the bathroom, he washed away the blood that was still trickling from his leg and from his arm where the bullet had caught him. Ferhat came in. Talked more than he had done in the whole week since he had first shown up, and using a lot more Norwegian words. Arash let him. Not for one second could he trust Ferhat. They had given him money.
He dressed, took his old shoes from the back of the wardrobe, the spare keys from the drawer.
– Where are you going?
He waved three fingers in the air, back and forth five times, studied the Kurd, watching for signs. The traitor revealing himself.
– Ring them, he said, suddenly had to laugh out loud. – Ring and tell them I was here. Ferhat, Freund.
Ferhat took a step closer, had the same look in his eyes now as the patient in the bed, as the guard at Evin.
– Man tara nemikosham, muttered Arash. I’m not going to kill you.
Ferhat tried to touch his arm. Arash whirled round, stared into his eyes, deep into them, beyond the traitor, beyond the basement at Evin, beyond the darkness when they took him out into the yard and pressed the barrel of a gun against his head.
He ran. His leg wasn’t painful any more, nor his shoulder. Light flared across the sky, grew fainter, flared up again. As though it were his own pulse that made it flash. Are you still there, Marita? Are you sitting by the stream looking at me? Did you go there to drink, and something in the water spoke to you and made you sleep? Because you cannot walk around wearing that ring.
He crossed the main road, carried on up the farm track where he’d walked with her over twenty-four hours ago now. But that might have been a dream too. He ran past the farm furthest from the main road, his breathing quicker, the pulses of light through the sky too, but he didn’t tire. Could carry on running like that. Then he heard the hum of an engine and knew it was a sign, because cars weren’t allowed up here in the forest. He stopped and listened. It came closer. He turned towards the rocks on one side of the track, took hold and pulled himself up, climbed three metres up in a straight line. Snaked over the top and curled into a ball. Peered out between two thin birch trunks. A car appeared around the corner, a police car. He lay beneath the trees, listening. The sound of the car faded. No voices, no footsteps through the moss.
He could hear every sound in this forest. Insects and predators. And birds, not only those close by, but all of them. As though they were singing simultaneously, warning and gossiping, the ones he could trust, the ones he must avoid. He had learnt how to understand them now, and followed them further up the track. Stopped when the warning notes grew loud, continued once the volume had dropped. Turned off the track, clambered up a rise, saw the tarn through the branches, approached in an arc. Suddenly the sound of voices. Two white-clad figures by the stream. They were wearing hoods. The kind of suits policemen wore. But they were something more. It occurred to him that he had seen similar figures clad in white long ago. Maybe it was in a dream, and maybe they were still part of that same dream. If I don’t wake up soon, he whispered, if I don’t wake up now, and his voice had become loud, as though it had flown down to the people in white, along with the gossip birds, the ones who were announcing his presence, the ones telling everyone he was to be picked up and shot. He turned, ran on into the forest.
Darker by the time he approached the flat again. He waited behind the wall of the neighbouring block. No lights in the windows. Maybe Ferhat was sleeping. If he crept up on him while he was asleep, he could end the wretch’s life before he had a chance to ring the number they’d given him.
He sneaked into the kitchen. The drawer made a scraping sound as it glided open; he sucked it in, held it down, wouldn’t let it out into the room.
Listened. No sounds, only the birds, those that warned him. But Ferhat always slept soundlessly. Maybe he never slept, maybe he was always watching him. Maybe Ferhat had been sent to make all this happen.
He took out the breadknife. As soon as he felt it in his hand, he didn’t need to breathe, didn’t need to draw breath for a long time, had enough breath to do what he had to do. The curtain in the room closed. The sofa in the darkest corner. Ought to say something first, wake Ferhat, ask a last question, let him confess. But then he remembered the look in his eyes, the same as the patient’s, and the guard at Evin. And now Marita was dead. If he closed his eyes, he could see her. And the snake coiled on the flat stone, the little back-and-forth of the head. The same rage overcame him, and he charged across the floor towards the sofa, ripped away the blanket.
No one there.
No Ferhat. No Ibro Hakanovic. Everything still. Even the birds had flown.
The phone in the bedroom rang, making him jump. He dropped to the floor. The light was dimmer again, as though the day was suddenly over before it had begun. Or as though someone had recalled it. The morning he had seen coming had still not arrived. Silence from the floor above now, no crying child.
The ringing didn’t stop. He crawled over to the window, couldn’t answer the phone, but if he didn’t answer, they would come and check. The temptation birds were still there, on the roof right outside, a magpie gossiping, another one a little further down spreading it.
– Arash? Are you there?
He had to calm his breathing before he could speak into the phone.
– Why aren’t you at work? Are you ill?
– Not too good.
– Why didn’t you tell anyone?
He had no answer. But it was okay to carry on. Benjaminsen was his boss, but he wasn’t one of them, he could hear that at once.
– If you’re ill, that’s all right, but you have to let us know so we can rearrange things. Will you be in tomorrow?
– Yes, Benjaminsen. I’ll come if you need me.
That was a good thing to say. He was going to be able to manage this. Get through it. Sleep. Back to work. Because on the other side of sleep, everything would fall into place again.
– I realise it hasn’t been easy for you after what happened in the basement, said Benjaminsen. – Have you talked to anyone about it?
– Yes, I have talked to someone.
– So it’s probably just as well if you don’t come today. More bodies keep arriving. They arrived with another one just a few minutes ago.
Benjaminsen said this as though he were proud of it. As though he stood there directing all these vehicles arriving with bodies inside, telling them where to go with them.
And in that moment, Arash could see the scene. They were arriving with her.
>
– A woman? he asked.
– Correct. They found her up in the forest.
She lay in the stream, blood pumping from her open throat, down into the water. On her thumb she was wearing his ring.
– She’s going for a post-mortem? he managed to ask.
– A full-scale investigation. Call me early tomorrow, Arash, so I know that you’re coming in.
– I will do that, Benjaminsen. Trust me.
A promise should not be given if it couldn’t be kept. But he was into the lie now. Needed more cunning than the magpie balanced on the guttering. More venom than that snake.
He turned to look into the mirror on the wall. Saw no one there.
– The ring, he said in Farsi.
– I quite agree, Arash. Get well soon.
Long after Benjaminsen had hung up, Arash stood there staring. Then he opened the drawer, took out his ID and his keycard.
17
Jenny removed the canisters with the test material from the fridge where the student had put them, took them into the lab, sat there looking out at the greying sky. If the clouds kept low and thick, the evening would be dark, which meant the possibility of a few hours’ sleep.
The student had spent the week comparing results from fertile women and women unable to have children. She was obviously unsure what she had seen and wanted Jennifer to have a look at five of them. Jennifer sighed at the prospect of everything that had to be excluded again, and then again, before arriving at some conclusion they had already reached. It was evident that Lydia Reinertsen never for a moment doubted the importance of the research they were conducting. She remained a source of wonder to Jennifer. Lydia was colourless and formless, the kind of person who never stood out in any way. But she had real ambitions for this research project. She seemed to be convinced that they were on the verge of discovering a type of genetic disorder that predisposed to childlessness, and that it was going to be possible to demonstrate the condition. If she was right, it would be possible to develop a treatment.
Jennifer had allowed herself to be persuaded, and yet her involvement remained only moderately enthusiastic. And every time Zoran asked how the project was going, she felt the same pang of jealousy. Every time he praised Lydia’s intelligence and perseverance. Once he said that it was researchers like her who helped us really progress. Not at the individual level, because that was our own responsibility, but as a species. Lydia was childless herself, and her involvement in the research was easy to understand. And maybe in the final analysis this was why the really good researchers succeeded, because something hugely important was at issue for them personally, something that was a matter of life and death. But no matter what the final results, Lydia would be too old to benefit from them herself. She was working for other childless women, others who felt that growing emptiness at being unable to bring forth a life formed and developed within their own body, the material inside them, the proteins, fatty acids, membranes, the DNA codes, cell by cell. And Jennifer had no problem in understanding a need that she herself had satisfied. Because the thought of withering away and disappearing was countered, to some extent, by the thought that she herself had been a nesting place for the life that would take over from her.
She turned on the microscope and entered the world of events in the Petri dish. Egg cells gliding slowly around, big as whales, seemingly impregnable for the little suitors swarming around them. But they were not impregnable. The most persistent of the sperm cells forced a way in through the membrane. At the same instant this membrane closed up again, preventing other sperm from entering, a complex system of signals that caused the proteins to bind together and form a barrier against competitors. The start of a new life, that was what she was sitting there watching, and she could not understand why it was she had devoted herself to the other end of life. Why death had always preoccupied her more than birth.
Within a few minutes she had seen it. Half an hour later she was certain. In three of the five dishes something was happening that shouldn’t be happening. It was clear that the cell membrane was not closing up again after the first sperm had forced its way inside. Several others passed through, meaning that the fertilised egg would fail to develop. Maybe Lydia would turn out to be right, and they were on the trail of one of those countless tiny and crucial mistakes nature made all the time, marking the difference between a life that would develop, and one that would die out within the first few seconds.
She looked up, suddenly aware of how alone she was in the room. It was almost six o’clock, and there was rarely anyone around on a Sunday. She wouldn’t have been there either if she hadn’t been delayed in her work and expected to present the results at a meeting the following day. And if she had not been thoughtless enough to accept the two forensic jobs over the weekend. She stood up, packed away the dishes she had marked, satisfied that she would now be able to ring Lydia and tell her that they had probably made an important discovery.
As she was heading for the staff exit, she heard footsteps behind her.
– Excuse me, you’re a doctor, aren’t you?
The person addressing her was a thin, pale boy wearing white work clothes. Across his forehead a broad band of infected pimples.
– That’s right.
– In pathology?
She confirmed that too.
– Something’s happened. Can you come and take a look?
– Is someone hurt?
– I’m not quite sure.
Jennifer couldn’t work out what that meant, but followed him down the basement corridor. He stopped outside the door to the cold storage room.
– You’re a porter?
He nodded. – I was fetching some empty bags. His lip was trembling. – Can’t get hold of my boss. Not quite sure what to do.
– About what?
He slipped the keycard into the lock, opened the door to let her in. – Can you have a look?
She hadn’t been in the cold room before. It was like entering a winter’s day, and she pulled the thin jacket closer to her body.
One wall was covered with metal shelving. There were cloth bags occupying some of the bays. She knew they contained dead bodies.
The door slid closed behind her. She grabbed the handle, couldn’t open it from the inside, knocked hard.
– Sorry, said the pale youth when he had finally got the door open again. – Didn’t mean to … He held the keycard up in front of him, as though it was to blame for her being locked in.
– Bit early to be leaving me down here, don’t you think?
He shook his head, probably more from confusion than as a response to her comment.
Jennifer looked round the room. Only now did she notice that two of the bags on the uppermost shelf were open. She could see something in one of them, a glistening white scalp. From the shelf next to the wall, an arm dangled towards the floor.
– Crazy, muttered the boy.
His phone rang.
– Can I take this outside? His eyes were remote and terrified, as though he were about to have a panic attack.
– Okay, just so long as you don’t lock me in here for good.
As she approached the shelf, the smell of putrefaction grew even stronger. The protruding arm was bluey-black, with some dark fluid slowly dripping from it on to the linoleum floor. A little of the hair was also visible. Jennifer lifted the edge of the bag, uncovered the face.
It was easily recognisable. A few hours earlier she had been bending over it out in the forest. The auburn hair, the gaping neck. The gases escaping into the room had not yet been muted by the cooling process. The woman lay there almost squinting at her, a glimpse of grey showing between the swollen eyelids. Does death have a special gaze? Jennifer thought. Doesn’t it just have a smell? Thoughts like this suddenly surprised her. But they led nowhere, because death wasn’t an opening to anything else at all.
She was about to turn away, but stopped, her attention caught by the arm hanging out of the bag. It took he
r a few moments to realise that the hand had been mutilated and something was missing.
The thumb.
18
Sigurd stood by the window. The wind took hold of the trees outside. An old woman opened her umbrella, but he couldn’t see that it was raining. His mobile rang several times as he stood there. Must be Trym. Sigurd had sent him a text; he was going to cover his brother’s debts. A lot more than he had imagined: forty-nine thousand kroner. He knew he ought to be present when Trym paid off the debt, because the temptation to use the money to gamble would be great. Sigurd was going to help him, he was going to give his brother more support. Standing there looking out on to the summer evening, he knew it. Saw it in the green light in the trees, in the movement of the wind. Not because he had killed a person, but because the life he had been leading was over. An ache in the feeling, a faint nausea. And somewhere behind it, something that might have been relief.
He turned and looked at the apartment, seeing it as though for the first time. As though he were at a flat-showing and was wondering if this were a place where he could live. That was something else he’d have to think about. He didn’t need a living room and two bedrooms, could manage with something half that size. Less furniture. Not fashionable designer names chosen so that other people would notice them. As if the apartment, and the rest of his life too, had been nothing but window-dressing.
He glanced at his phone. It was Katja who had been calling. He rang her back.
– Something happened? he said, getting in before her.
– I’ve been trying to get hold of you all day. Why don’t you answer?
– Is anything wrong?
He shouldn’t ask that, shouldn’t open up areas in which it would be easy to trip himself up. Unless that was what he wanted.
– I don’t know. Someone I know. From Malmö.
– What about him?
She hadn’t said it was a he she was talking about.
– I can’t get in touch with him.
Sigurd bit his lip, forced himself to keep quiet.
Certain Signs that You are Dead Page 15