by Samuel Bjork
It was sparsely furnished. A desk, a lamp, a chair. Everything looked brand new.
“You submitted a list of the equipment you needed?”
Gabriel nodded.
“And that was a desk and a lamp from IKEA?”
For the first time, the police officer named Kim showed signs of emotion. He winked and slapped Gabriel on the back.
“Eh, no, there was more than that,” Gabriel said.
“I’m just pulling your leg. The IT guys are on their way. They’ll get you up and running in the course of the day. I would have shown you around and introduced you to everyone, but we have a briefing in five minutes, so we won’t have time for that. Do you smoke?”
“Smoke?”
“Yes, you know, cigarettes?”
“Er, no.”
“Good for you. We don’t have many rules here, but there is one that is quite important. When Holger Munch goes outside to the smoking terrace, nobody joins him. That’s where Holger Munch thinks. That’s when Holger Munch does not want to be disturbed, get it?”
The police officer pulled Gabriel out of his new office and pointed toward the terrace. Gabriel could see a man standing there, presumably Holger Munch, his new boss. The man who had called him and had casually, just ten minutes into the conversation, offered him a job. With the police. Don’t bother the boss when he’s smoking, no problem. Gabriel had no intention of disturbing anyone or doing anything except what he was told to do. Suddenly he spotted the woman standing next to Holger.
“Oh, wow!” he exclaimed.
He thought he’d said it to himself, but Kim turned around. “Eh?”
“Is that Mia Krüger?”
“Do you know her?”
“What? No, not like that, but of course I have . . . well, I’ve heard about her.”
“Yes, who hasn’t?” Kim chuckled. “Mia is brilliant, no doubt about it. She’s unique.”
“Is it true that she only ever wears black and white?”
Gabriel had asked spontaneously, his curiosity having gotten the upper hand, but he regretted it immediately. Unprofessional. Like an amateur. He’d forgotten that they had already hired him. Kim probably thought he was a fan or something, which was partly true, but this was not how Gabriel Mørk wanted to come across to a colleague on his first day at work.
Kim studied him briefly before he replied. “Well, I don’t remember ever seeing her in anything else. Why?”
Gabriel blushed faintly and stared at the floor for a moment. “Nothing, just something I read on the Net.”
“You shouldn’t believe everything you read.” Kim smiled and took an envelope from his jacket pocket. “Here is your card. The code is your birthday, the incident room is at the end of the corridor. We start in five or ten minutes. Don’t be late.”
Kim slapped Gabriel on the shoulder once more and left him alone inside the small office.
Gabriel was at a loss. Should he stay where he was or sit down or maybe just run home and forget the whole thing had ever happened? Find another job, do something else. He felt like a fish out of water. And how could you be on time for a meeting that started in five or ten minutes?
He opened the envelope and was surprised to see a photograph of himself on the card.
Gabriel Mørk
Violent Crimes Section
He felt a sudden surge of pride. Secret doors. Secret codes. Specialist units. And he was on the inside. And Mia Krüger herself was standing outside on the terrace. He decided to make his way to the incident room in a few minutes. Being early had to be better than being late, whatever that meant in this mysterious place.
14
Tom Lauritz Larsen, a pig farmer from Tangen, had originally been dead set against the Internet. But when Jonas, the young farmhand, had moved into the spare bedroom, he had insisted that the sixty-year-old farmer get broadband or he would refuse to work for him. Tom Lauritz Larsen had been cross—that went without saying, as being grumpy was his default setting; there was never anything to smile about. And now he had managed to get this sickness in his lungs. Going on sick leave? What kind of nonsense was that? No one in his family had ever been on sick leave. What was this idiot doctor telling him? Was he suggesting that Tom Lauritz Larsen couldn’t run his own farm? There had been three generations of pig farmers on Tangen, and no one had ever been on sick leave or taken disability payments from the state. What was the world coming to? But then he had started fainting without warning. Frequently and all over the place. The last time he fainted in the pigsty with the doors open. When he regained consciousness, he was surrounded by his neighbors, the pigs were at large in the village, and Tom Lauritz Larsen had been so embarrassed that he had taken his doctor’s advice the next day. Attended appointments at the hospital in Hamar. Gone on sick leave. And found a farmhand through the employment office.
Nineteen-year-old Jonas from Stange had proved to be an exceptional worker. Tom Lauritz Larsen had taken to the boy right from the start. He was not one of those hobby farmers who did not know the meaning of hard work, no, this boy had what it took. Except for this business with the Internet, with which Tom Lauritz Larsen would have no truck. But he’d had it installed anyway because of the nineteen-year-old lad in the spare bedroom. It was something about a girlfriend and expensive telephone bills, and talking on the Internet was free, it would appear—they could even see each other and God knows what. What did he know? So Telenor had dispatched an engineer from Hamar, and now the Internet had been up and running for several months on the small farm.
Tom Lauritz Larsen poured himself another cup of breakfast coffee and searched the Norwegian Farmers Union’s website. There was a very interesting article that he had looked at briefly the night before, but he wanted to reread it in depth. According to Norsvin, as many as one in four pig farmers in Hedmark had quit farming since 2007, saying pig rearing was no longer profitable. The average for those who remained was 53.2 pigs, where the figure the year before had been 51.1. It didn’t take a genius to work out what was happening: the big farms grew bigger and the small ones went out of business.
Tom Lauritz Larsen got up for a refill but stopped at the kitchen window, still holding his cup as he saw Jonas run out of the pig barn as if the devil were at his heels. What was up with the boy this time? Larsen headed for the door and had just stepped outside when the young man reached him, sweating profusely, his face deathly pale and his eyes filled with panic, as if he had seen a ghost.
“What on earth is the matter?” Larsen said.
“Youuu . . . itttt . . . Kristi . . . Kristi . . .”
The lad was incapable of speech. He pointed and flapped his arms about like some lunatic. He dragged Larsen, still wearing his slippers, still with his coffee cup in his hand, across the yard. He did not let go of him until they were inside the barn, standing by one of the sties. The sight that met the pig farmer was so extreme that for several months afterward he struggled to tell people what he had seen. He dropped his coffee cup and did not even feel the hot coffee scald his thigh.
One of his sows, Kristine, lay dead on the floor in the pen. Not the whole pig. Only her body remained. Someone had decapitated her. With a chain saw. Severed her neck completely. The pig was headless. Only the body remained.
“Call the police,” Tom Lauritz Larsen managed to say to the lad, and that was the last he remembered before he fainted.
This time it was not because of his lungs.
15
Sarah Kiese was sitting in the reception area in her lawyer’s office in Tøyen, growing increasingly irritated. She had expressly told the lawyer that she wanted absolutely nothing to do with her late husband’s estate. What kind of inheritance was it anyway? More kids with other women? More letters from debt collectors demanding money and threatening to seize her belongings? Sarah Kiese was not perfect, far from it, but compared to her late husband she was a sa
int. Having a child with that loser had been a massive mistake. She had been ashamed of it then, and she still was. Not only had she had a child with him, she had even gone and married him—Christ, how stupid could you get? He had charmed her; she remembered the first time she saw him in a bar in Grønland, she had not fancied him right off, but she had been weak. He had bought her beers, drinks, yes, she’d been an idiot, but so what? It was over now. She would love her daughter forever, but she wanted nothing to do with that loser. When did he ever visit her? Whenever he wanted money. A loan for one of his schemes. He had claimed to be a builder, but he never had a steady job. Or started his own business. No, nothing like that, never any plans, no ambition either, just odd jobs here and there, a hand-to-mouth existence. And he would always come home smelling of other women. Didn’t even bother to shower before slipping under her freshly washed sheets. Sarah Kiese felt sick just thinking about it, but at least it was over now. He had fallen from the tenth floor of one of the new developments down by the Oslo Opera House. She imagined he had gotten himself a job of some kind there—cash under the table, no doubt, that was how it usually was with him, casual nighttime work. Sarah Kiese smirked when she thought how awful it must have been, falling ten floors from a construction site; she had chuckled with glee when she heard the news. A fifty-meter drop to his death, served him right. Surely he must have felt extreme terror while it happened. How long could that fall have lasted? Eight, ten seconds? Fantastic.
She glanced irritably at the clock in the reception area and then at the door to her lawyer’s office. No, no, no, she had said when he called, I want nothing to do with that jerk, but the sleazy lawyer had insisted. Bunch of sharks, the lot of them. There would never be another man in her life unless he was the crown prince, and perhaps not even him. No more men for her. Just her and her daughter, now in their new small apartment in Carl Berner Square. Perfect. Just her own scent under the duvet, not fifty other cheap perfumes mixed with bad breath. Why had she even agreed to come here? She’d said no, hadn’t she? Wasn’t that what they’d practiced in that class she had been offered through Social Services: Say no, say no, build a ring around yourself, you’re your own best friend, you need no one else. No, no, no, no.
“Sarah? Hi. Thanks for coming.”
The dodgy lawyer with the comb-over stuck out his head and waved her into his office. He reminded her of a small mouse. Feeble, tiny eyes and hunched shoulders. No, not a mouse, a rat. A disgusting, cowardly sewer rat.
“I said no,” Sarah said.
“I know,” the sewer rat fawned. “And I’m all the more grateful for your making the trip. You see, it turns out . . .”
He cleared his throat.
“I overlooked something when I settled the estate, a small detail, that’s all it is, my mistake obviously.”
“More debt collectors? More court summonses?”
“Ha, no, no.” The sewer rat coughed and pressed his fingertips together. “This is it.”
He opened a drawer and placed a memory stick in front of her.
“What is it?”
“It’s for you,” the sewer rat said. “Your late husband left it with me some time ago, asked me to give it to you.”
“Why didn’t he give it to me himself?”
The sewer rat offered her a faint smile. “Possibly because he got a hot iron in his face the last time he showed up at your apartment?”
Sarah felt pleased with herself. Her husband had let himself into the apartment. Startled her. Suddenly he had appeared in her living room. Wanting to touch her, be all nice like he always used to be shortly before he would ask her to do him a favor. The iron had hit his gawking face with considerable force. He hadn’t seen it coming, and it had floored him on the spot. She had not seen or heard anything from him since that day.
“I should have given it to you long ago, but we’ve been very busy,” the rat said, sounding almost apologetic.
“You mean, he promised to pay you to do it but you never saw the money?” Sarah said.
The lawyer smiled at her. “At least that should conclude matters.”
Sarah Kiese took the memory stick, put it into her handbag, and headed for the door. The rat half rose from his dusty chair and cleared his throat.
“Well, well. And how are you doing otherwise, Sarah? You and your daughter are all right and—”
“Fuck off,” Sarah Kiese said, and left the office without closing the door behind her.
Several times on her way back to the new apartment in Carl Berner Square, she considered chucking the memory stick. Toss it in a garbage can and she would be finished with him, but for some reason she didn’t. Not because she was curious, Sarah couldn’t give a rat’s ass about its contents; it was more about tying up loose ends. The lawyer was a rat, but he was still a lawyer. Her husband had been an idiot, but he’d had a last wish. Give that memory stick to Sarah and only to her.
She let herself into the apartment and turned on her computer. Might as well deal with it sooner rather than later. The black laptop slowly roused itself. She inserted the memory stick and copied the contents to her hard drive. It contained only one file, which was called Sarah.mov. A film. Okay. So she would be forced to look at his ugly mug one more time, was that it? Even from beyond the grave, he was bothering her. She double-clicked the file to play the film.
He had recorded himself with a small camera. Possibly on his phone, she couldn’t be sure. His horrible face was close to the lens, but it had an expression she hadn’t seen before. He seemed scared out of his wits.
Sarah, I don’t have much time, but I have to do this, I have to tell someone, because something here doesn’t feel right.
He filmed his surroundings.
I was offered a job, and now I’ve built this. I’m far away in . . .
She heard noises, muffled, as if he were covering the microphone on his cell phone. She couldn’t make out what he was saying. Her late husband continued filming his surroundings with trembling hands while he spoke, stuttering most of the time. So he had built something, so what?
. . . And I’m scared that . . . well, what did I actually build? Look at this. I’m deep underground. I thought that it might be a panic room, but it’s not. There’s a small hatch. . . .
The voice disintegrated again while he carried on filming. It was a kind of underground shelter.
. . . And no, it doesn’t feel right, something is going on here. Something . . . Take a look at this. Just look. You can hoist things up and down. Like an old service elevator or . . .
Her late husband suddenly jerked and looked around. The whole scene reminded her of a film she had seen years ago, The Blair Witch Project, about some terrified teenagers running around the forest filming themselves.
. . . What the hell do I know, but I’m worried that something might happen to me. I can feel it. Have you any idea how far away I am? Please, would you write down what I’m saying, Sarah? Where I am and how I got this job, and well, then you can go to the police if anything should happen to me? I got the job from someone who . . .
More scrambling. Sarah could not hear a word of what her late husband was saying; she could only see his frightened eyes and trembling lips as he babbled away. This lasted just over a minute. Then the film ended.
So who did you have to sleep with to get this job? Or was it a job in return for sex? I certainly never saw any of that money. Help you? I don’t think so.
The short film clip had been very unpleasant to watch, but she no longer had the energy to care. The whole thing could be nonsense for all she knew, some idiotic hoax. She had given up believing anything that idiot said a long time ago.
Sarah deleted the film from her computer, took out the memory stick, threw it in the trash can, went out into the stairwell, and threw the trash bag down the shaft. Just like that. The house was tidy once more. Only her. No trace of him.
Soon her daughter would come home from school. Life was wonderful. In this apartment Sarah was in charge. She went outside on the terrace and lit a cigarette. Put her feet on the table, smiled to herself, closed her eyes, and enjoyed a glimpse of the spring sunshine that had finally made an appearance.
Her life. No one else’s. At last.
16
Gabriel Mørk was about to make his way to the incident room when there was a knock on his door.
“Yes?” he called out.
“Hello, Gabriel.”
Holger Munch entered and closed the door behind him. Gabriel nodded hello and shook the large, warm hand.
“Er, right,” Holger said, scratching his head. “I see your stuff hasn’t arrived yet.”
“No,” Gabriel said. “But that guy . . . he . . .”
“Kim?”
“Yes, Kim, he said it was on its way.”
“Great, great,” Holger Munch said, now scratching his beard. “We had another guy doing your job, but he succumbed to temptation. Pity, but that’s how it goes.”
Gabriel wondered if he could ask what kind of temptation his predecessor had succumbed to, but he decided against it. There was something in Munch’s eyes. Gabriel had seen the same expression in Kim’s. The heavy, burdened expression of someone with a lot on his mind.
“I’m sorry about the somewhat unorthodox hiring process. I normally meet everyone I employ, but there was no time on this occasion, regrettably.”
“It’s fine,” Gabriel replied.
“You came highly recommended.” Munch nodded and patted Gabriel on the shoulder. “Again, I’m sorry about the rush, it’s a bit . . . well, I don’t know. Did Kim brief you?”
Gabriel shook his head.
“Okay, you’ll learn on the job. Have you read today’s papers?”
Gabriel nodded. “On the Net.”
“Any particular news that stood out, in your opinion?”
“The two dead girls?”