I'm Traveling Alone

by Samuel Bjork

  Pastor Simon looked straight at him and took his hand. “I am God,” the pastor said.

  At this Lukas felt the warmth instantly return to his body. He started tingling all over, more strongly than ever. From his toes up to his ankles, his thighs, his stomach up to his throat, his face was flushed and now also his ears.

  “I am God,” the pastor said. “And you are my Son.”

  Lukas sat with his mouth hanging open. The pastor was God. It was obvious now. This was how it was. It made perfect sense. When he talked to God in his office, he was talking to himself. The pastor was God. And he, Lukas, was the Son of God.

  “Father,” Lukas said in awe, and bowed his head.

  “My Son,” the pastor said, placing his hand on Lukas’s head.

  Lukas felt the warmth from the hand of God spread across his scalp.

  “You passed the test,” the pastor said. “You put your life in my hands. And I hope that you trust me now. I could have killed you, but I didn’t. Because you have greater tasks to accomplish before we go home.”

  “Home?” Lukas said cautiously.

  “To heaven.” The pastor smiled.

  “Am . . . am I really the new Jesus?” Lukas stammered.

  The pastor nodded. “Twenty-seven years ago, I sent you to earth.”

  Lukas could barely believe his ears. Of course. It all fit! And it explained why he had no parents.

  “And I found you again.” Lukas nodded reverently.

  “You found me again,” the pastor agreed.

  “But the first Jesus accomplished great things. What have I done?” Lukas said.

  “It will happen.” The pastor smiled. “Today.”

  “Today?” Lukas said with anticipation in his voice.

  The pastor walked back to the car. He returned holding a small bundle, which he placed carefully on the bench.

  “For me?”

  “Open it,” the pastor told him.

  Lukas unwrapped the bundle with trembling fingers. His eyes widened when he saw the contents. “A gun?”

  The pastor nodded.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  The pastor leaned toward him and took his hand. “Last week an intruder came into the House of Light.”

  “Who?”

  “A boy, sent by the devil.”

  Lukas could feel the rage explode inside him. The devil had sent a boy to stop them from traveling. He knew it. The pastor and Nils had been so quiet recently.

  “But fortunately I am stronger than the devil.” The pastor smiled. “I know him, but he does not know me.”

  Of course, Lukas thought.

  Deo sic per diabolum.

  The path to God is through the devil.

  Understand the devil. Get to know him. This was what the pastor had meant.

  “And where is the boy, now?”

  “He’s being held in the safe room.”

  “And what are we going to do with him?”

  “You are going to kill him,” the pastor said.

  Lukas looked at the gun in front of him and nodded softly.

  “There is just one small problem.”

  “What is that?”

  “He has taken Rakel prisoner. My Rakel.”

  “Vile demon,” Lukas sneered.

  “So you must be careful. Kill the boy, but don’t harm Rakel. I need my Rakel in heaven.”

  “I promise to do my best.”

  Lukas bowed and kissed the pastor’s hand. The pastor rose. Lukas wrapped the pistol in the cloth again and carried it back to the car.

  “When we get to heaven, you’ll have your very own Rakel.”

  “Oh?” Lukas said.

  “I promise,” the pastor assured him. “You know the little angels who have been hanging from the trees?”

  “The girls everyone is talking about?”

  “Yes,” the pastor replied. “They will meet us up there. You can choose one of them.”

  His very own girl? But he didn’t want a girl. God was enough for him. What on earth would he do with a little girl? Lukas decided not to say anything; he didn’t want to argue with the pastor. He put on his seat belt, started the car, drove calmly down the forest track to the farm.

  69

  Kim Kolsø sat at the back of the incident room listening to everything falling apart. Not for him, but for Munch and Mia. And not that either of them was there. Had they been, they might have been able to answer some of Mikkelson’s questions. Mia had been unavailable all day, but Kim believed that Anette had spoken to her and learned that Mia had been to Åsgårdstrand and was now on her way back. No one had heard from Munch.

  Kim Kolsø sighed and drummed his fingers on the table. He looked up at Mikkelson, who was pacing to and fro in front of the board like a teacher, his forehead furrowed above his glasses and his hands behind his back. They had been cast as his pupils who were about to receive a telling-off. Kim glanced at Curry, who mouthed Bullshit and rolled his eyes. Kim had to look away so as not to laugh, but he totally agreed. Their workload was insane. Not one member of the team was able to sit still. Not even Ludvig, who was coming up for retirement; he was squirming like a fidgety little kid on the edge of his chair. Gabriel Mørk seemed to have borne the brunt of it. He’d been dragged out of his office, where he’d been Skyping with a friend, who was cleaning up the sound on the Kiese movie. The young man was rocking back and forth in his chair and looked as if he were on the verge of a meltdown.

  “Right,” Mikkelson said, glaring across the room. “Is everyone here?”

  No one said anything. If Mikkelson was the teacher, they were the naughty kids who’d been put in detention due to their lack of respect for authority. The room was a powder keg. The air was laden with tension.

  “Can anyone update us?”

  Mikkelson pushed his glasses up his nose and glared across the room again. No one said anything. The class rebellion against the teacher continued. It was childish, but the anger was real. Munch’s and Mia’s most loyal friends and colleagues sat in this room. No one had any interest in seeing them discredited.

  “Where is Holger Munch?” Mikkelson said. “Where is Mia Krüger?”

  At length Anette rose to her feet. “We haven’t heard from Holger,” she said calmly. “I have spoken to Mia.”

  “Status?”

  “She was on her way here the last time I talked to her.”

  “And Munch?”

  “We haven’t heard from him for a while, but Mia had a theory,” Anette continued.

  “I bet she had,” Mikkelson said sarcastically, without getting much of a reaction from the team. “And what was that?”

  “That Munch must have received a call from the killer,” Anette said. “That the killer ordered him to meet up alone, and that’s what he has gone to do.”

  “But all our phones are being monitored. Is there anything to suggest that this might be the case?” Mikkelson said.

  “No,” Gabriel Mørk said. “Nothing from his phone before he turned it off.”

  “Couldn’t the killer have contacted him some other way?” Ludvig Grønlie ventured cautiously.

  “What do you mean?” Mikkelson said.

  “Well, I don’t know, but there are private email accounts—I mean, on the Net, Gmail, and so on. We don’t have access to those, or do we?”

  Grønlie looked tentatively at Gabriel Mørk; he was well aware that he belonged to a different generation of police officers and hoped that he’d not been mistaken.

  “Are you telling me that everything we do online is being monitored? I certainly hope not,” Curry quipped.

  A few of the others tittered.

  “No, we don’t have access to those,” Gabriel Mørk said.

  “So Munch could have gotten a message,” Anette said. “
Something that meant he had to turn up for a meeting alone?”

  Mikkelson sighed. “And is that how we work?”

  He looked across the gathering, still without getting the response he was seeking.

  “And is that how we work?” he said again, a little louder this time. “No, it is not. We’re a team. A team. We don’t have room for maverick operations. Here we keep each other informed about what is happening and we work together. No wonder you haven’t come up with anything.”

  “Actually, we’ve discovered quite a lot.” Ludvig coughed and got up.

  Kim really liked Ludvig Grønlie. He had exactly what it took to belong to the special unit. It was odd, really. Several people had joined the unit only to leave soon afterward because they just didn’t fit in. No one could quite put a finger on what it was. It was more than ability, age, background, or specialization, it was also chemistry. A shared tacit understanding. This is what we do, and this is what we don’t do. Kim had met several talented colleagues who’d joined them but never settled in. People who couldn’t stand the sight of Munch. Who thought that Mia Krüger was the most overrated investigator of her generation. Kim had worked with both Munch and Mia for a long time. And he couldn’t imagine doing any other job in the whole world.

  Ludvig Grønlie gave Mikkelson a brief account of what they had discovered so far. Malin Stoltz. The apartment filled with mirrors. The link between Høvikveien Nursing Home and a support group for childless women in Hønefoss. The Kiese movie, which, if Mikkelson hadn’t insisted they all sat here like naughty children, would soon provide them with a location where Stoltz was holding Marion Munch.

  “Right, right,” Mikkelson said, pushing his glasses back in place. “And where do we stand?”

  “Can I go now?”

  It was Gabriel Mørk speaking. Kim Kolsø smiled discreetly to himself. He liked this young man. He had appeared out of nowhere and in no time become an important member of the team. A Munch special. Munch had brought in Mia Krüger in the same way. Rumor had it that she wasn’t even required to complete her training at the police academy.

  “Why?” Mikkelson said with a frown.

  “Munch has gone someplace to find the killer, so it might be a good idea for us to know where that place is,” Gabriel Mørk said. “We’re in the process of cleaning up the film—I have a pal who’s brilliant at this. We’ll have the GPS coordinates soon. Perhaps it would be a better use of my time than sitting here.”

  Kim laughed to himself. When he’d first met Gabriel Mørk in the street, the lad had looked afraid of his own shadow. Now it was as if he’d been with the team from the start.

  “And who are you again?” Mikkelson said, taking off his glasses.

  “Gabriel,” Mørk replied.

  “How much police experience did you say you had?”

  “Two weeks,” Mørk replied, deadpan.

  “I have twenty years,” Mikkelson said, putting on his glasses again. “Perhaps I should be the judge of what we should be spending our time on, don’t you think?”

  His attempt at sarcasm landed on stony ground. Kim could see Curry winking at Gabriel Mørk, who responded with a shrug.

  “Anette?” Mikkelson said, seeking support.

  “Gabriel is right,” Anette said, getting up. “The Kiese film is important and should be our number-one priority. If Munch has chosen to shut us out because Stoltz gave him an ultimatum, it’s understandable. He loves his granddaughter. I would have done exactly the same.”

  Kim could see the color change in Mikkelson’s face. If he’d thought that Anette Goli was on his side, he’d been very much mistaken.

  “I see,” Mikkelson said, sounding wounded as he looked down and flicked through some papers. “So what do we do now?”

  Kim Kolsø had turned off the alerts on his cell phone, but he’d forgotten to turn off vibration. His phone suddenly jumped on the table in front of him, displaying an unknown number.

  “Yes?” Mikkelson said irritably, glaring at him.

  “I have to take this one,” Kim said, getting up.

  “Really?” Mikkelson said.

  “Yes,” Kim insisted.

  “Then . . .” Mikkelson said.

  Kim left the room and never heard the rest. He went to the kitchen to make himself a cup of coffee as he took the call.

  “Kim Kolsø speaking.”

  The caller was a woman.

  “Yes, hi, my name is Emilie Isaksen.”

  “Right, hi. What can I do for you?”

  Kim opened the fridge and found a carton of milk. If there was one thing he and Mia Krüger agreed about, it was that you risked your life drinking the stuff that came out of the coffee machine.

  “I found your business card inside a mattress,” the woman said. “And I don’t know what to do. I’m hoping you might be able to help.”

  “I might well be. What do you need help with?” Kim said, adding some milk to his coffee.

  70

  Tobias passed the blanket to Rakel and turned off his flashlight. This made the safe room seem completely dark, but they had no other choice. They had to conserve the flashlight’s batteries, and their eyes quickly adjusted. Tobias didn’t know for how long they’d been held prisoner in the underground room, but he estimated four to five days. He had opened the hatch and peered inside. He had whispered the name Rakel, the name of the girl he’d just met, the Christian girl behind the fence, the girl in need of help, when someone had come up behind him and pushed him down inside. He had felt frightened and stupid, and he had hurt himself. He had fallen a long way, past a ladder, into a black hole where he’d ended up on a hard concrete floor. Fortunately, he’d landed not on his head or his arms but on his side, and he believed that this had cushioned his fall, because he wasn’t in too much pain, only a bit in one hip and one leg.

  “Should we try the hatch again?” Rakel said in a soft voice through the darkness; he could barely make her out, although she was not sitting far away from him.

  “I don’t think there’s any point,” Tobias said.

  He didn’t want to come across as defeatist, but they’d made several attempts, most recently a few hours ago. He had climbed up the ladder and pressed his shoulder against the wooden hatch, but it wouldn’t budge; it had been locked from the outside again, and having the lock pick was no use with the lock on the other side.

  Fortunately, they had food. And blankets. And a flashlight. They had decided to conserve the batteries because they hadn’t found any spares. They were in a safe room. Rakel had explained it all to him. She’d been down here several times. This was where they normally locked up naughty children. The ones who refused to do as they were told. Normally they didn’t have to sit there very long, depending on the offense. As far as Tobias had gathered, there were lots of different punishments on this farm. Being banned from talking for one week was one of them. Hence the notes Rakel had written and stuck through the fence. She was able to talk—she hadn’t lost her voice, which was what he had first assumed—and then he wondered if she was being difficult on purpose like Chief Bromden in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. No, Rakel could talk, all right, and after someone pushed him down into the safe room where she was, she talked almost nonstop. Tobias liked hearing her voice. She was unlike any other girl he’d ever met and nothing like the ones at school, who mostly giggled or said silly things. Rakel spoke properly, almost like an adult. And she knew where everything in the safe room was. There was food in the boxes and large canisters of water and gasoline and clothes. Everything you might need, although they had yet to find more batteries, but they surely had to be there somewhere.

  Tobias had been inside a safe room before; they had one at his school, and it had formed part of a drill. The Home Guard would sound the alarm, and everyone had to walk in single file and pretend that war had broken out. The safe room at his school contain
ed nothing but old PE mats and hockey sticks—not like this one, which was fully equipped. He’d been scared for the first few days, but the feeling was subsiding. After all, nothing bad had happened so far, and they’d been there for a long time. They will let you out again, Rakel had said. They let you out in the end. Sometimes it just takes time. He was more worried about his brother. Torben would be upset when he came home and found Tobias missing. Tobias had written him a note, at least he’d done that, and hidden it inside the mattress on his bed, the one with the zipper, which was their secret hiding place. “I’m going to spy on the Christian girls, I will be back soon,” he had written. He hoped it would reassure Torben a bit.

  “I don’t think God exists anymore,” Rakel said, fumbling for his hand.

  Tobias had held a girl’s hand before, but this was different. Rakel liked holding his hand, and he liked holding hers. Her fingers were soft and warm, and when she sat close to him, he could also sense the heat from her body. It was almost cozy; he wouldn’t have minded the two of them sitting like this for a long time. That is, if they weren’t trapped underground.

  “I don’t believe in God either,” Tobias said, and not for the first time.

  They had discussed this at length. It seemed important to Rakel. Talking about God. Sometimes he felt that she spoke mostly to herself, but he tried to reply to the best of his ability.

  “If there really is a God, he wouldn’t let people do horrible, disgusting things, don’t you agree?”

  Rakel moved a little closer and squeezed his hand. He squeezed back. They would do this from time to time.

  Everything will be fine. We’re together.

  “When do you think they’ll let us out? What’s the longest anyone has ever sat here?”

  “I’m not sure,” Rakel said. “There was a girl named Sara, and she was here for two weeks, I believe, but she wasn’t here when I arrived.”

  “What did she do?”

  “They said she tried to run away.”

  “Like you?”

  “Yes.”