by Samuel Bjork
52
Munch had just parked a short distance from the apartment building, with a view of the entrance, when Mia’s phone rang.
“Yes?”
“It’s Curry.”
“Is she at home?”
“No, there’s no reply. We’re waiting for you, can you see us?”
Mia glanced down the road and spotted the black Audi. “Yes.”
“What do we do?”
She looked at Munch. “Do we go in?”
Munch shook his head. “We must remember that this woman might be innocent. All that we know is that she used to know Roger Bakken and that she might have had access to Veronica Bache’s cell phone. I’m not putting my neck on the line with as little to go on as this.”
“No, we’ll wait a little longer,” Mia said on the phone. “Do we have units on all streets?”
“Yes.”
“Send in Kim,” Munch said quietly.
“Send in Kim,” Mia repeated into the phone. “See if one of the neighbors will let him in.”
“Okay,” Curry said.
Soon afterward the back door of another Audi opened and they saw Kim head for the entrance. He rang a couple of the bells before the door was opened, and he disappeared inside.
“He’s in,” Curry said.
“Yes, we saw,” Mia said.
They had done this many times before. Both during training and in real life. One or two men would go inside while the rest waited outside, in cars or on foot. Now there was a knock on Mia’s window. She opened it. Kyrre slipped a small bag inside and disappeared again. Mia opened the bag and handed the second set of earphones to Munch.
“We’re up and running,” she said, ending the phone call. “Kim, can you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“What’s on the inside?”
“Door to the basement. Elevator. Stairwell.”
“Take the stairs to the second floor,” Munch said.
“Okay.”
They waited until Kim reported back.
“I’m here.”
“Is it the right door?”
“The sign says ‘M. Stoltz,’” Kim confirmed.
“Ring the doorbell.”
They waited a few more seconds.
“There’s no reply. Do I go in?”
Mia and Munch looked at each other.
“Yes,” Munch said.
Mia was reminded of Anette’s warning. Perhaps Munch was too close. Was he capable of making the right call?
“I’m in,” Kim said.
“What have you got?”
There was silence for a moment.
“Oh, my God,” Kim finally said.
“What is it?” Munch demanded, louder this time.
“This is just . . . You have to see this for yourselves.”
“What is it?!”
Munch was shouting now, but Kim did not reply.
53
Malin Stoltz suddenly became aware again and discovered she had a plastic shopping bag in her hand. She must have been to the shops. She did not even remember going outside. She looked around. She was outdoors. The last thing she remembered was a strange dream. An angel had come for her. She would not have to be here much longer, it was just as she had planned, but after that she did not remember very much. She opened the bag and peered inside it. Four boxes of eggs and a loaf of bread. Good Lord.
It wasn’t the first time this had happened, but it scared her just as much all the same. One time she woke up on a tram. Another time she’d been on her way to Tøyenbadet Swimming Pool. She took a deep breath and sat down on a bench. Perhaps she ought to go see her doctor again. She hated going to the doctor’s, but perhaps it was about time. The blackouts had become more frequent, especially on the days she didn’t go to work; as long as she was at work, she could manage, but at home was another matter. Where she had to be herself. That was the tricky part. She was pleased that it would soon be all over. Not long to go now. Soon she could rest. Soon she wouldn’t have to go on being Malin Stoltz. Or Maiken Storvik. Or Marit Stoltenberg. She tried focusing on the walk home, but images kept cropping up in her head. She tried concentrating on her shopping bag instead. She touched the plastic. That was tangible, wasn’t it? It was here? Yes, it felt real. She looked down at herself. Matching shoes. Very good. Pants. Excellent. T-shirt and a thin sweater over it. She had done well. She hadn’t gone outside naked. She’d gotten herself dressed. She was a little cold, that was all, but at least she was dressed. She patted herself to warm up and tried once again to conjure up images of how to get from the bench back to her apartment. She looked at the shopping bag again. It said REMA SUPERMARKET. She had been to Rema. To get home from Rema, she had to walk past the pizzeria. She looked around and saw a neon sign on the corner. Pizzeria Milano. She knew the way from there. Well, kind of. She rose quickly from the bench and crossed the street. She was very chilly now. She wanted to get home as quickly as possible. She did not want to catch a cold. If she had a cold, she could not go to work—they were strict about that. The old people were frail. They could not have germs at the nursing home. She reached the pizzeria and paused while she scouted for the next landmark. The one-way street. Walk in the opposite direction of oncoming traffic. Down the street with the red sign with the white bar. She saw the sign and aimed for it, but then she stopped.
Something was wrong. Something was not right. The neighborhood seemed different. Different from how it usually was in the morning. There were no people in the parks. There were no people sitting in their cars, looking around. Slowly it dawned on her. Very slowly. Then she realized it.
She dropped the shopping bag on the pavement, spun around, and started running down the street in the opposite direction.
54
Sarah Kiese was standing outside a brick building in Mariboesgate, waiting for a woman named Anette. She had tried calling for several days, but the line had always been busy.
You have reached Oslo Police Incident Line. All our operators are busy taking calls. Please hold.
Eventually, after trying for three days, she got through. That last time she was on hold for more than forty minutes, but she didn’t give up; she waited patiently, and finally her call was answered. She’d expected the voice on the phone to be pleasant, but it was not. The woman had sounded irritated. Abrupt, like, What do you want? Sarah Kiese was starting to think that she was doing the wrong thing. That the woman assumed she was calling because of the reward, but she was not. She didn’t care about the money. One million kroner for anyone who can provide information that leads to a conviction in this case. She had read about the reward in the newspaper, and that was when it started to dawn on her.
Her husband had died almost a year ago. He’d fallen from an unsafe building that was under construction. Sarah Kiese was glad he was dead. He’d been a terrible husband. He had nearly ruined her life. She’d wanted nothing more to do with him. She hadn’t even attended his funeral. The smell of other women. Money disappearing from her purse, from the jar on top of the fridge, money she had saved up to pay the bills. The disappointed expression on her daughter’s face on the rare occasions he came home but refused to play with her or talk to her. A memory stick from a lawyer containing a blurry film about something he had built. An underground room. She’d put it out of her mind. Forgotten about it. She had her own life now. She had a new apartment. She was happy for the first time in years. But then it came back to her. The movie on the memory stick. The one she’d deleted. They were offering a reward of one million kroner. Perhaps she had lied to the surly woman on the Incident Line. Perhaps the reward had prompted her to call. It had certainly caught her attention. Her husband had seemed terrified. And he used to be a tough guy. His trembling voice had told her to go to the police should anything happen to him. He had built a room underground, in the middle of nowhere. With
a service elevator and a fan. She had deleted the film. She wanted nothing more to do with him. She felt clammy just thinking about him. More than anything she wanted to throw up. She did not want him in her head or in her life anymore, so she’d deleted the film, and that made it all go away. Right until last week, when she saw the newspapers. A reward of one million kroner to anyone providing information leading to a conviction in the case. Pauline, Johanne, Karoline, and Andrea. And that was when it hit her.
Her husband had built the room where the girls had been held prisoner.
Sarah Kiese found some chewing gum in her handbag and glanced around. She’d been told to wait in the street. She thought Oslo Police had their headquarters in Grønland, but it would appear not. No, that was still true, but perhaps they had other offices. Suddenly a door opened and a tall woman with blond hair and plenty of freckles came toward her.
“Sarah Kiese?”
“Yes?”
“Hi, my name is Anette,” the police officer said, showing Sarah her ID card.
“I’m sorry for not calling earlier,” Sarah apologized. “The lines were busy the whole time, and . . . well, my husband and I weren’t exactly friends.”
“Don’t worry about it,” said the policewoman with the freckles. “It’s great that you’re here now. Did you bring the laptop you told us about?”
“Yes.” Sarah Kiese nodded, showing the policewoman the bag.
“That’s great. Follow me.”
The policewoman named Anette gestured to a door in a yellow brick building and held her card up to a scanner.
They waited quietly in the elevator. Anette was much nicer than the woman on the telephone. Sarah was pleased about that. She’d been worried that she might be criticized for contacting them after such a long time. She had been criticized so much her whole life. She couldn’t take any more.
“This way, please.” Anette smiled and led the way down the corridor.
They reached another locked door, and Anette ran her card over another scanner. The door opened, and they entered a large, airy, modern office landscape. It was buzzing with activity; people were practically running back and forth, and the phones rang nearly all the time.
“In here.” The policewoman with the freckles smiled again and showed her into an office behind a glass wall.
A young man with short, tousled hair was sitting with his back to them in front of several computer screens. It looked almost like a scene from a movie, with all those screens and boxes and cables and small flashing lights and plenty of modern technology everywhere.
“This is Gabriel Mørk,” Anette said. “Gabriel, meet Sarah Kiese.”
The young man got up and shook her hand. “Hello, Sarah.”
“Hello,” Sarah said.
“Please take a seat,” Anette said, sitting down herself in one of the chairs. “Please, would you tell us again why you called?”
“Yes.” Sarah coughed.
She gave a brief account of her situation. The death of her husband. The lawyer. The memory stick. The movie. The room he’d built. How scared he’d been. That she was now thinking it might have been about the girls.
“And you deleted the film from your computer?” the young man asked her.
She nodded. “Was that wrong?”
“Well, it would have been better if you had kept it, but we’ll find it. Did you bring your laptop?”
Sarah Kiese took the laptop out of her bag and gave it to the young man.
“And you obviously don’t have the memory stick?”
“No, that went out with the garbage.”
“Ha, ha, yes, unfortunately, I won’t be able to find that,” the young man said.
Sarah started to smile. They were so nice in here. She felt as if a huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders. She’d been scared that they would be strict, tell her off, like the woman on the phone.
“I would like to take a written statement. Is that all right with you?” Anette asked.
“Yes.” Sarah nodded again.
“Would you like a cup of coffee?”
“Yes, please.”
The police officer with the freckles smiled and left the room.
55
After morning prayers Pastor Simon told Lukas that the two of them would be spending the day together. Lukas could hardly believe his own ears. Together? Just the two of them? He felt flushed with excitement. Lukas was often near Pastor Simon, but the pastor was always busy with something or other, usually in conversation with God or preaching the word of God to the apostates who needed to hear it, and Lukas was mostly told to carry out other important tasks, such as washing the floor or doing the laundry or making sure that Pastor Simon had clean bedlinen. One evening some years ago, Pastor Simon had said that Lukas was the person closest to him, his second-in-command, and since that day Lukas had walked tall; he had stood by the pastor’s side, his back straight and his chin up. But there was one thing he’d been longing for—not that he wanted to complain about the past, indeed not, that would never occur to him—but if there was one thing he was lacking, it was that he would also like to be by the pastor’s side when it came to spiritual matters.
And that was what Pastor Simon had implied today. Lukas had seen it in his eyes. Today you and I will be together, Lukas, just you and me. That was what the pastor had meant. Today Lukas would be initiated. Today he would learn the secrets and hear God speak. He was sure of it. They had left the farm, Porta Caeli, after morning prayers and breakfast. The women on the farm really knew how to cook. Lukas was proud of Pastor Simon for picking such wonderful women. Fifteen women who obeyed the word of God, who could cook, keep house, and do laundry—they were hard workers. The kind of women they’d need when they got to heaven. Not self-obsessed, vain women who spent their time lying in front of the TV, painting themselves like whores, demanding that the men do all the work.
Lukas started the car and drove through the gate. God had given them lovely weather, the sun was high in the sky, and he was increasingly convinced that today was going to be the day. Today he would be initiated. He didn’t know very much about it, for obvious reasons. The pastor had dropped a few hints, and Lukas had also overheard him talking to God several times. Lukas felt a little guilty for eavesdropping, but he couldn’t help himself. The pastor would often talk to God in his office. Lukas always made sure he was washing the floor outside the pastor’s office when he heard voices in there. In that way he could be on his knees scrubbing while at the same time being filled with the word of God without there being anything improper about it. It was the pastor who had paid for Lukas’s driving lessons. He had also paid for everything else that Lukas had. A black suit for special occasions. A white suit for prayer meetings. Three pairs of shoes. And a bicycle. And his food, obviously, and his room in the attic of the chapel. The pastor was rich. God had given him money. Pastor Simon was not one of those people who didn’t believe in money. Many people would preach about this very subject, how you would not need money if you had God, but the pastor knew better, obviously. In the next world, you won’t need any money. There we will be taken care of, but in this world different rules apply. Lukas never read the newspapers, and he didn’t watch television, but even so, he knew that this world was founded on money. Some people were poor and others were rich. Poverty was often a punishment from God. There could be many reasons that people had to be punished. They might be homosexuals, or drug addicts, or fornicators, or blasphemers, or they might have spoken ill of their parents. Sometimes God would punish whole nations or continents. Often with floods or droughts or other plagues, but mostly by making sure they were poor. It was not the case that all rich people had been given their money by God, Lukas knew that. Some of them had stolen the money from God. It was straightforward. All money belonged to God, and if someone had too much and had not been given it by God, as Pastor Simon had been, then that
person had acquired it dishonestly and so needed to be punished.
Lukas drove according to Pastor Simon’s directions. They were not going back to the chapel; instead they headed upward, deeper into the forest, to a small lake. Lukas parked the car and followed the pastor down to a bench by the water. He glanced furtively at the pastor. Pastor Simon’s big white hair was like an aerial, Lukas had often thought. A kind of angelic aerial that put the pastor in direct contact with God. The sun was in the middle of the blue sky now, shining directly behind the pastor’s head. Lukas’s skin was prickling. His fingers were tingling. He could barely sit still, and he was grinning from ear to ear.
“Can you see the devil in the water?” the pastor said, pointing.
Lukas looked across the lake, but he could not see anything. The water was dark and quiet, not a ripple on the surface. He could hear the birds chirp in the trees around him. There was no sign of the devil.
“Where?” Lukas asked, looking even harder.
He did not want to say that he could not see him, that would be stupid. This might be a test to find out if he was ready to be initiated.
“Out there,” the pastor said, pointing again.
Lukas still could not see anything. He didn’t want to lie or to say no. So he tried his hardest. He stared and he stared, he narrowed his eyes in the hope that the devil would appear, but nothing happened.
“You don’t see him, do you?” the pastor said at length.
“No,” Lukas said, and hung his head in shame.
“Would you like to see him?”
Lukas had half expected to be told off for not looking hard enough; the pastor could be like that sometimes toward people who were not close enough to God, but he didn’t get angry. He simply continued.
“I believe you, Lukas,” the pastor said in his warm, mild voice. “But we can’t take anyone with us who can’t see the devil, because if you can’t see the devil, you can’t see God either.”