Certain Signs that You are Dead
Page 28
– Why am I here? asked Arash.
Knut Reinertsen looked at him. – The people who have talked to you think you need help. And protection.
– Do I need protection?
– In the opinion of the police.
– Do I need help?
– I think I probably agree with those who say you do.
– Can you help me?
Knut Reinertsen appeared to be thinking about the question. He took his time. He had enough of it. He used that time to find his answer. Anyone else besides Knut Reinertsen might have just said anything at all without really meaning it.
– I can try, Arash. If you want me to.
Arash thought it over. He too took his time, as though he and the other man shared the same quantity of time. He wanted to wait before replying, even though he knew the answer the moment Knut Reinertsen entered the room. He was Zoran’s friend.
– I found something written.
Knut Reinertsen said nothing, appeared to be waiting.
– On a mirror. In a cabin in the forest. Written in Farsi.
He stopped.
– I heard about that, said Knut Reinertsen.
Arash stared at him for a moment, and for an instant, certain possibilities arose that he did not wish to think about. Then he found an explanation.
– You’ve spoken to that other doctor. Jennifer.
Knut Reinertsen nodded. – She told me about the poem. It made an impression on her.
– And Zoran?
– He heard it too.
– Heard it?
Knut Reinertsen put his hands together in front of him, laid them on his stomach. They lay there peacefully, like intertwined sleeping lemurs.
– Of course, Jennifer couldn’t remove anything from the cell you were in. But when she told Zoran about it, he looked it up on the net. We all looked at it together. It was written by Rumi, several hundred years ago.
Knut Reinertsen said this as though he was very familiar with Rumi.
– How could I have come across this on a mirror in a cabin in the middle of the forest?
There was no answer.
– Do you believe it could have happened that way?
– I believe that is how you experienced it, Arash. Precisely the way you describe it.
– But not that it actually happened?
– The likelihood is probably remote.
Arash looked out of the window. He shouldn’t have spoken about it to this man after all.
– If it really did happen, someone must have known that you would be coming to precisely that cabin, at precisely that moment in time. Someone must have known that you would be fleeing through the forest, on exactly the same route as the one you took.
Arash observed his face as he was saying this. The eyes mostly, the movement of his gaze. And the mouth, the way it moved. As if it was in these movements that he would find the answer to whether Knut Reinertsen could be trusted or not.
– I think this happened in your thoughts. And in one sense that makes what you experienced in the cabin even more important than if it had really happened.
Arash decided he would have to think this through.
– Can you remember when you read this poem for the first time?
Bring it all together again, everything that had been torn apart. But the pieces no longer fitted.
– Yes, Knut Reinertsen. I remember.
He’s sitting at the desk in his room, doing his homework. It is afternoon. His father has returned; he hears the footsteps on the stairs, muted, leather soles on stone. Then he’s standing there, in the room.
I’ve got something for you.
Arash looks up. His father is holding something in his hands, a book. It isn’t his birthday, or a festive occasion. He never gets presents for no reason.
Rumi?
He feels puzzled rather than pleased.
His father places a hand on his shoulder.
You’re not a boy who’s easy to handle. But you are my boy.
No further explanation.
Arash sits there holding the book. Feels how heavy it is. Had no time to formulate any expectations before his father gave it to him, so he feels no disappointment. Rumi’s poems are the kind of thing they read at school. They’re old. Full of dead words.
Finally he opens it at random. Reads what’s written on the page.
This was what he told Knut Reinertsen now. A man about the same age as his own father. A man who had known Zoran for more than ten years. He still didn’t know if it was wise to tell this man things, but he had started doing so, and the story just went on by itself until he fell silent.
But there was more.
He wasn’t allowed to have books in Evin prison, but this poem was something he had inside him, and they couldn’t take it away from him. He recited it to himself every evening in the darkness of his cell. Imagined he was reading it to a large audience. They had travelled from all over the country to hear him speak, to hear his voice, because everybody on the other side of the prison walls had heard of him, he hadn’t been forgotten, and he would be returning to them. And he recited the poem to himself when they took him down into the basement and fastened the electrodes to his nipples, and when they took him out into the courtyard and put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger.
Knut Reinertsen had removed his glasses. His eyes were now large and pale blue and full of sorrow.
– Thank you for sharing this with me, Arash.
He sat there for a long time in silence. Then he got up from the edge of the bed.
– I’d like to come back tomorrow. If that’s all right by you.
Arash looked out of the window. He would not be there tomorrow.
– Ibro Hakanovic is dead.
There was still a question wrapped in what he said.
Knut Reinertsen nodded. – Yes, he is.
– And Marita.
– She is dead too.
Arash held his hand up in front of him.
– See this stain? He pointed at the sticky substance he had been unable to wash away. Knut Reinertsen bent towards him, studied the hand without touching it.
– This is her blood. She took the ring with her when she died. It has been there with her, on the other side. Now it’s back here again with me. I should have gone there too. Followed it.
Stillness in the room. But time still moving. Walk out like someone suddenly born into colour.
Afterwards, Knut Reinertsen said: – Someone wants you dead, Arash. But not you.
He had understood, without Arash having to say it. It made it possible to tell him more, perhaps tell him everything.
– I saw myself lying there that day in the woods.
Knut Reinertsen sat down on the side of the bed again, waited. The lemur hands in his lap.
– I saw myself through the eyes of the person in black. I saw myself getting up and heading into the forest. Can you tell me that, Knut Reinertsen? Does death have eyes through which it can see?
– I don’t know that, Arash.
– That is what I have to find out. Where are you when you see yourself through the eyes of death?
37
Jennifer rang the doorbell for a second time, heard the buzz inside the flat. It sounded angry, and angry was probably what she was. More anxious than angry; it had been almost five hours now since she had first tried to ring him. It wasn’t uncommon for her to have trouble getting hold of Sigurd. Days could go by sometimes without her hearing from him. His phone battery was flat, or he was busy with something or other and didn’t want to be disturbed.
But this was different.
She pressed her ear close. Heard what might have been a sound inside. Without thinking, she tried the door. It glided open.
– Sigurd? You home?
An odd thought, that he might have been sitting there and heard the doorbell and not opened up. She looked in the living room. The sofa and chairs all over the place, as though someone had started
rearranging the furniture but had not had time to finish. In the bedroom, the wardrobe doors wide open, the bedclothes on the floor. Sigurd had always liked things tidy, was almost pedantic about it. That was hardly the case with that woman who’d moved in with him. Even in her thoughts she was that woman.
There was a click from the front door.
– Sigurd?
She looked out. No one there. Opened it. Footsteps on the stairs, going down.
– Sigurd, she repeated. The footsteps halted. She leaned over the railing, thought she could hear someone panting. Again the footsteps going down, the street door opening then closing.
Her thoughts had been building through-out the day; now it was as though they had broken free and were colliding with each other. Sigurd had gone to Malmö to help that woman. All his questions about what had happened at the hospital that evening. Sigurd on the CCTV camera right by the crime scene. Because she hadn’t doubted for a second that it was him.
There were possible explanations. Chance, coincidence.
This is something else, she said to herself again as she stepped out into the light, close evening. She became aware of a figure at the end of the block, walking away. Stopped and studied her. Because it was a woman. Dark jacket, quite tall, dragging her left leg slightly. Looked to be holding a phone to her ear.
– Hey, she shouted, and set off after her, trotting in her high heels. The woman turned the corner, and by the time Jennifer got there, she was gone.
– Get a grip, she warned herself.
As she was opening the car door, Sigurd rang.
– Where the hell have you been? she shouted into the phone, realising at once how wrong it sounded. – Sorry, I’m in a bit of a state.
– I see you rang, he said quietly, as though he was in a room with someone who mustn’t be disturbed. – I’ve been very busy.
– I need to talk to you.
He didn’t answer for a few seconds. – Sorry about Trym. I just had a bit too much going on. I’ll do it as soon as I have time. Sorry. Really.
– I need to talk to you, she said again. – It’s not about Trym. Where are you?
It sounded as though he hesitated. – At home.
– I’ve just been there, half a minute ago.
– Well, actually, not quite home.
– Are you in Oslo?
– Yes.
– Tell me where we can meet.
– You don’t mean now?
– Now.
She emptied her cup and ordered a refill. Shouldn’t be drinking coffee at this time of day. But there were other things to worry about.
Then he was standing in the barroom doorway.
She was on her feet, round the table. He bent and gave her a hug, sank into a chair, looked around for a waiter, avoided meeting her eyes as he usually did. He always looked people in the eye when he spoke to them or listened to them. It was something he had learned from her.
– Hi, she said, and waved her hand, attracting his attention.
– Hi.
– You know what I want to talk to you about?
– No.
She waited until the waiter had served them coffee and mineral water.
– You’ve been in Malmö.
– I told you that.
– You were in a street where two people were killed; you were there at exactly the same time as it happened.
He jumped in his chair, grabbed the water bottle, filled his glass, sat there picking at the label.
– How did you know that? he asked finally.
She explained.
– And you haven’t answered your phone all day. So no wonder I’m worried.
Suddenly she felt out of breath, had to put down her coffee cup. Still waiting for him to say that she had got it all wrong. It wasn’t what she thought, she was wrong about the whole thing. He didn’t.
– You’re involved in this somehow, she groaned. She felt like screaming.
He sat there studying the half-peeled label.
– Say something, she almost shouted.
He ran his fingers through his short hair, scratched his head. – There was a lot of trouble. Someone we knew was killed. And then we left.
– And all because of this Katja, she said as calmly as she could. He looked straight at her, eyes full of anger, and for a moment she thought he was going to start shouting at her.
He lowered his head again. She forced herself not to put her arms around him; he had never liked that. Never went to Ivar or herself for comfort, preferred to deal with it alone until it passed.
She reached out a hand and stroked his forehead. – You can tell me, Sigurd.
He nodded a couple of times.
– What’s going on with Katja?
– She needs help. And I’m the one who has to help her. I started it all.
He leaned back in his chair, drank from the bottle.
– I had a fight with this guy. Knocked him down. He ended up in hospital.
Jennifer stared at him. – You’re not talking about the Bosnian? Ibro Hakanovic?
He looked out at the empty street, said nothing, but she didn’t give up until she had got most of the story out of him. And of course, it was all about Katja.
– Why are people from this gang after her?
No answer.
– Listen, Sigurd. I’m your mother.
He gave a quick smile, hard to interpret.
– I’ll do anything for you.
– Really?
– You know that. But you must tell me the whole story.
– I’ve told you all you need to know.
– No you haven’t.
Suddenly she thought of something.
– Do you know who these people are?
He shook his head.
– But you say you saw the ones who killed this uncle.
– A couple of them.
– Describe them.
He ran a hand through his hair. – One powerfully built, overalls, maybe Bosnian as well.
– And the other?
– Don’t know. Thinner, quite tall.
– With a limp?
– I didn’t notice that.
– Could it be a woman?
– Maybe.
– When I was up at your place just now …
She told him she’d been inside his flat, about the front door slamming. She knew now it wasn’t the wind, that the person she’d seen in the street outside had some connection with all this.
He listened, eyes wide. Suddenly he jumped to his feet, went over to the door, out on to the pavement, looked up the street, then the other way, came back to the table.
– Did anyone follow you?
– Sigurd, sit down. I’m not letting you leave here until you’ve told me everything.
– Did anyone follow you? he repeated, a note in his voice she had never heard before.
– They can’t have done.
– Do you know that?
She couldn’t know for certain, but he sat down, again scraped through his hair with both hands.
– Ibro had proof that someone in the gang had committed a murder. He had the gun that was used. It’s hidden somewhere. And for some reason these people think Katja knows where it is.
– Is that it?
– Isn’t that enough?
Jennifer drummed her fingers on the table.
– We have to go to the police, she said firmly.
– No.
– What do you mean?
– They’ll kill her.
– And what about you?
He shrugged his shoulders. As though the predicament he was in didn’t matter, as long as Katja was all right.
– If you won’t go to the police, I will.
Again he flared up. – If you do, I’ll never speak to you again.
– You don’t mean that.
He stood by the table, peering intently at her, seemed to be weighing up something or other.
– Does th
e registration number CF 30543 mean anything to you?
She shook her head.
– Renault Mégane. Blue.
Still no idea where he was going with this.
– Father away somewhere, we were at school. And you had a visitor. Have I ever asked you about that? Demanded to know who it was?
He turned, headed for the door. She ran after him, held him back.
– Sigurd, she pleaded. – Please.
She heard her own voice breaking, and maybe that was what made him turn round. She tried to wrap her arms around him; he groaned and pulled himself free.
– You’re in pain, she exclaimed, and had already lifted his jacket to reveal the bloodstained T-shirt underneath.
Zoran was still up. Muted sounds of piano music from the living room as she let herself in. It was past midnight.
He turned the sound down as she entered the room.
– Did you meet him?
– I should never have let him leave there.
He stood up and held her. – You’re trembling, he said.
– I should have made him come with me. Driven straight to the police station.
Zoran went out to the kitchen, came back with a glass with something brown in it. It was strong, burned right through her, then the churning began again.
She opened her bag, took out her phone.
– I’m calling the police.
Zoran laid a hand on her arm. – Maybe you’d better tell Sigurd first. So he won’t think you’re stabbing him in the back.
She let go of the phone, grabbed the glass and forced another mouthful down.
– Bloody bitch, she said in English.
She was furious now. Cursed Katja, reeling off the crudest profanities she could think of.
Afterwards, she lay on the sofa with her head in Zoran’s lap.
– You say they’ve booked into a hotel in town. There’s not much chance of their being traced tonight. If someone really is after them.
– Is that a chance I can take?
He ran a finger over her forehead, tracing the hairline, the rim of the ear, the outline of the face. Images flooding her mind. The boys running out into the yard. But there’s no blue car there, not in the images she allows herself to see.
Suddenly she thought of something.
– Arash.
She looked up into his eyes.
– Remember what I told you? What he heard Ibro Hakanovic talking about at the hospital? Something about a cat and a car crash.