So this is a project that was evaluated in the ordinary way by the ethical committee of the regional research body, and which was awarded funding by the Norwegian Research Council.
As we know, all the data from Lydia Reinertsen’s computer was deleted on 19 June. Similarly the data from Jennifer Woods Plåterud’s computer. We have no certain knowledge as to the current possible whereabouts of this data, even though one of our sources indicates research institutions in two different countries. This leads to speculation concerning Plåterud’s role in Lydia Reinertsen’s research. It has been reported by Romerike police that Plåterud obtained access to important information, and also that she withheld information at a critical phase of the investigation that could have brought it to a more rapid conclusion. Her motives were apparently personal, but this is only one of several possible explanations. As of now, there is insufficient evidence to take the case to court, but we recommend that she be kept under observation.
From an internal Police Security Service memorandum, 20 August 2014
Jennifer couldn’t have gone there without him. She told herself that was why she had waited so long.
But there were others reasons, too.
– Are you comfortable?
She looked at him sitting there buckled up in the passenger seat. Perhaps he nodded. At least she couldn’t see anything in his eyes to indicate discomfort. She had taken him out in the car once before; he’d been sick and thrown up. This time would be better, she had decided.
She turned off the motorway, drove on over the top of the hill. The cornfields were beginning to yellow, and the light above the copse was a darker, deeper grey.
– I have to tell you this, she said suddenly. – That day in the flat. You lay there unconscious. Every second mattered.
She slowed down.
– I could have called an ambulance. Lydia wouldn’t have been able to stop me.
He sat there looking out the front window. No movement in his face at all.
– Afterwards she locked me in the bathroom. It was over an hour before someone came. That time could have been yours. You could’ve been helped.
He made a noise down in his throat. Perhaps he was trying to protest.
– You know why I let her go?
She turned into the car park.
– It was the only hope I had.
He turned his head towards her now. There was a light in his eyes she hadn’t seen since it happened. He lifted a hand, moved it about as though writing something.
– Pen, she almost shouted, braking so sharply he was slung forward in his safety belt. – You want a pen.
She found one in her bag, put it into his hand. Found an envelope in the glove compartment, put it on the dashboard.
He leaned forward, his hand shaking, held the wrist with his other hand, forced it to be still. When he sank back again, the envelope fell to the floor. She picked it up.
You did right, she managed to read. That’s why I lo
She turned to him. He had closed his eyes, as though the effort had drained all his strength.
She took out a handkerchief, dabbed a corner of his mouth, the one that drooped.
– Is that why? she said, and took his face in her hands. He opened his eyes again. He nodded, this time she was certain, and she heard a sound from his mouth, a word. Jenny, it might have been.
She wrapped a woollen blanket around him before getting out of the car.
As she passed the church door and carried on up the narrow gravel pathway, she pulled the thin jacket tightly around her and buttoned it up. It was the first day this year she’d felt the wind like that, the way it could blow through your clothes, all the way in through your skin.
Zoran was not the reason she hadn’t been there since the burial. She hadn’t been able to face it. Hadn’t even been able to think about it. Not until that morning. She woke up and knew: I’m going there today. Didn’t understand how she would manage. But she had slept. A few hours’ continuous sleep. It had something to do with the light, that there was again a blind darkness there, in the depths of the night, a deep hole she could be drawn down into, without any thought of ever returning.
She walked among the graves in the lower part, with no memory of where they had walked the last time, that morning at the end of June. It didn’t matter if she had to search for it. There was still a part of her that didn’t believe there was a grave there at all.
At the top of the grassy slope there was an area that had recently been readied for use, and even before she saw the figure over by the fence, she knew where it was. But as she got closer, she felt an urge to turn back. To come here and meet Trym at the same time might be just too much. She stood there in the chilly wind until she felt the sweat freeze on her back.
He’d seen her by then. Raised a hand, and that movement was enough for her to get a grip on herself and walk on up.
He was standing there with a watering can in his hand. The ground in front of the gravestone had been turned over, the spade lying next to it. The flower bed dense with tiny flowers, all different colours. They formed an oval silver wreath, darker and darker towards the centre, and at its heart a deep yellow.
– Did you do that, Trym?
He looked down at her, seemingly embarrassed.
– It was all I could think of. And I owed him money, too.
She moved close to him, took his hand.
– My boy, she said.
He half turned away.
Keep reading for an extract from the
first novel in the OSLO CRIME FILES
Available from Headline
1
Monday 24 September
THE WOMAN SAT motionless with her back to the window. Her arms hung straight down. Her pale grey face seemed frozen. She was dressed in green trousers and blouse, with a jacket the same colour loose over her shoulders. Her cheekbones were high and prominent and her eyes still greeny blue, but now the iris was narrowing inside a milky white rim. Outside, the wind lifted a bare birch branch behind her head.
Suddenly she glided her tongue over her teeth before opening her mouth and fixing her gaze on her visitor.
– I’ve been waiting all day, she said. – About time someone from the police could be bothered to turn up.
She stood up, tottered across the floor on her high-heeled sandals and checked that the door was closed behind him, came tripping back and sat down in the other chair, the one next to the writing desk. In flashes she still had that energetic way of moving, and she brushed a lock of her perm from her forehead with a gesture he knew well.
– The reason I have asked you to come … She interrupted herself, again went across the floor, opened the door and peered into the corridor outside.
– I don’t trust anyone in this place, she declared, closing it with a bang that was perhaps intended to underline what she said. Back in the brown leather chair, she smoothed her trousers over her knees.
– I’ve been waiting all day, she said again, now in a despairing voice. – I’ve got a missing person to report. The police must do something soon.
Her visitor was a man in his forties. He was wearing a hand-made suit, with a pale grey shirt underneath it. It was open at the neck, not that this made him look any the less well dressed.
– I came as quickly as I could, he said, and cast a glance at the clock.
– It’s about my husband, the woman went on. – He didn’t come home last night.
– I see, the visitor answered, and sat on the side of the bed, directly opposite her.
– He’s very particular always to let me know. But I haven’t heard a thing from him. Now I think something terrible has happened.
She moistened her dry upper lip with her tongue and smiled bravely.
– Do you know what the worst thing is?
The visitor passed his hand across her shortish hair, obviously recently cut. He knew what was coming.
– The worst thing is … The woman groaned as
she opened her eyes wide, as though afraid.
– Have you had enough to drink today? the visitor interjected with what seemed like genuine concern. – I think you’re thirsty.
She didn’t seem to hear what he said.
– The Gestapo, she whispered as her eyes filled with tears. – I don’t think my husband will come back again ever.
The visitor remained sitting with his mother for almost three quarters of an hour. He poured her orange juice from a carton on the bedside table and she emptied two glasses. Having expressed her fear, she was finished with it this time around and opened a copy of Allers. It had been there on the table the last time he’d visited, a week earlier, and all the weeks before that. She didn’t say another word, as though she was completely engrossed by this single page she happened to have opened the magazine at. Now and then she looked over in his direction, her gaze diffuse, a slight smile playing about her mouth; she seemed to have descended once again into that remote calm that spread through her more deeply with every passing week, killing off everything else. He’d remembered to buy Dagbladet on the way and now leafed through it. When there was a knock on the door and the nurse came in with her medication – a man with greying hair, possibly a Tamil – he quickly got to his feet and gave his mother a hug.
– I’ll come back again soon, he promised.
– Judas, she hissed, her eyes transformed into glowing embers.
He swallowed his surprise, struggled not to laugh. She raised the half-full glass of juice, looked as though she were about to throw it in his direction.
– No, Astrid, the nurse scolded and took the glass from her.
She stood up and shook her fist.
– Brede is evil, she shouted. – It wasn’t the Gestapo, it was Brede who shot.
The nurse got her down in her chair again. She continued to gesture with her arms.
– Twins, that’s one too many kids, that is. But you wouldn’t have a clue what I’m taking about, a Negro like you.
The visitor glanced at the nurse and shook his head apologetically. The nurse opened the dosage box.
– Negroes are from Africa, he said with a broad smile and handed her the juice glass.
She swallowed one of the tablets.
– Because you are Brede, aren’t you? she said, peering in confusion at the visitor.
– No, Mother, I’m not Brede. I’m Axel.
He knocked on the charge nurse’s door and entered the office. When she saw that it was him, she swung her chair round from the computer desk and gestured with her hand towards the sofa.
– Sit yourself down a moment.
She was in her thirties, tall and athletic, with a face that he found attractive.
– Mother seems much more disturbed these days.
The charge nurse gave a quick nod.
– She’s been talking a lot about the war recently. Of course everyone here knows who Torstein Glenne was, but is there anything in all this about the Gestapo?
Axel pointed to the plastic plate of Maryland cookies on the table.
– Mind awfully if I take one? I missed lunch today.
He said no thanks to offers of coffee and blackcurrant juice, and was amused by the nurse’s further attempts to make up for her initial lack of hospitality.
– It is true that the Gestapo were after my father, he confirmed as he munched away. – He managed to cross the border into Sweden at the last moment. But Mother knew nothing about it at the time. It was fourteen years before she met him. She was four years old.
The charge nurse struggled to fasten her smooth hair at the neck in a hair band.
– It’s tremendously useful to know things like that. She’s always very uneasy whenever there’s anything about war on the TV. Recently we’ve had to switch off when the news comes on. By the way, who is Brede?
Axel Glenne brushed the biscuit crumbs from his lapels.
– Brede?
– Yes. Suddenly Astrid has started saying lots of things about this Brede. That he isn’t to come here, that she doesn’t want to see him any more and God knows what else. She actually gets quite worked up about it. When she’s really in a state we have to give her a Murelax. Of course we don’t know if this Brede really exists, so it isn’t easy for the nurses to know what to say.
– Brede was her son.
The charge nurse’s eyebrows shot up under her fringe.
– You have a brother? I had no idea. There’s never been anyone else but you come to visit. And sometimes your wife, and the children.
– It’s been more than twenty-five years since Mother last saw him, said Axel.
He stood up and rested his hand on the doorknob to indicate that the conversation was over.
2
FROM THE BACK seat of the taxi he called Bie again. She still didn’t answer and he sent her a text saying he would be late. It was Monday, football practice and violin lesson. Bie was going out this evening, but she’d have time to drive to the violin lesson first. Picking up afterwards was his responsibility.
The ship’s bell had already started ringing as the taxi turned into Aker Brygge. He had a few notes in his card-holder and paid cash, didn’t have time to wait for the receipt, scrambled aboard just as the barrier was about to be lowered. He wouldn’t be home until close on 6.30; Tom would have to go to practice by himself, if he could be bothered. He felt a twinge of guilt and send him a message too.
He knew a lot of the other passengers, perhaps even most of them. But this particular evening he made his way quickly through the salon and settled out on deck. It was warm for late September. A thin, creamy layer coated the sky above the fjord, the evening sun still visible behind it. He heard the echo of a voice in his thoughts: his mother calling him Judas. His mother thinking he was Brede, and being angry with him.
A group of men in dark suits were gathered around the peace torch at the end of the quay. One of them raised a hand as the ferry glided past, and from where Axel Glenne stood by the railings aft, it looked as though he were putting it into the flame.
The house was empty when he got home. Only now did he remember it was half-term holiday. On the kitchen worktop was a note from Bie. Marlen is spending the night at Natasha’s. Tom will be home before ten. Spaghetti in the microwave. Be back late. B. Alongside she’d drawn a little heart, from which something red dripped. A tear maybe; it was definitely not blood she had in mind.
He sat down at the kitchen table, listened to the silence in this house in which he had grown up. He still got that feeling when he was alone here, a sudden urge to do something naughty. When he was a child, it might be to go poking around in the kitchen cupboard, or in the drawer of his father’s bedside table, where there was always a magazine with pictures of nude women, or else to go up into the loft and do the most forbidden thing of all: take one of Colonel Glenne’s pistols from the drawer in the box room where his uniforms still hung … Actually, Brede was the only one who dared do that.
After the spaghetti, he wandered out on to the terrace. The sun had set behind the hills above Asker. There was a touch of cold in the air; it was clear and sharp to breathe in. Bie hadn’t replied to his message and he didn’t know where she was, and this thought was calming: that she lived her own life and he didn’t need to know what she was doing at every moment.
He sat down with his back to the empty house. It was full of their presence; he felt it even more strongly than usual. It was as though Bie were padding about in there, whispering to her orchids, or else was curled up on the sofa with a book. Tom sat playing in his room, the guitar plugged in to the little amplifier, and down in the basement Marlen was holding a meeting with Natasha and the other members of her club. Daniel was there too, even though it was now almost two months since he’d left for New York to study.
Axel was forty-three. He had always had the feeling of being on a journey. Was this his destination, this terrace with its view across the fjord to the distant hills on the other side, this presence of ot
her people who were not there but who would presently enter the house and call to him, and when he answered they would find him out here, and he would hear in their voices that they were glad he was home? He would ask Marlen to show him her maths test, and when she asked him how he thought she had done, he would say, Well, I expect you got over half of them right, and she would nod and keep her lips pressed together and try to hold out as long as she could before telling him her result. And when she couldn’t contain herself any more and was forced to tell him, he would shout out, What are you saying? I just can’t believe it, so that she would have to run off and fetch her satchel and get the book out and open it for him, and he would shake his head in disbelief and ask how on earth she had managed it. And Tom would lounge in the door opening, Hey, Dad, and wonder why he hadn’t been home to drive him to football practice so that he wouldn’t have to cycle, but wasn’t so bothered that he wouldn’t ask him to come to his room and listen to a new riff with him, singing along in his hoarse adolescent voice.
He went inside and fetched a bottle of cognac and a glass. It was an unusually fine cognac, bought on a trip abroad. He’d been waiting for a special occasion to open it, and decided now that this sharp autumn evening, this Monday evening on the terrace, with the sky still high above the fjord, was precisely the right moment. He left the bottle standing, gathering the evening light to it. Sat and watched the boats down on the fjord, a container ship on its way towards the city, a few sailing boats. The psychiatric hospital was in a bay on the other side. He’d worked there about ten or twelve years ago; he needed the subsidiary training to complete his course as a specialist. A few years before that, he’d visited the place. Quite by chance, he’d heard that Brede was a patient there. It was not long after 17 May, National Day, he remembered. There were still a few leafy braided wreaths hanging on the doors with ribbons in red, white and blue. It was two days before his father’s funeral, and that was why he had gone there, to try to persuade his brother to attend. The nurse who opened the door to him stood there gaping: Jesus, has Brede got a brother? And came back again a few minutes later: Sorry, he doesn’t want any visitors.
Certain Signs that You are Dead Page 37