Hell Is Open (Tommy Bergmann Series Book 2)

by Gard Sveen

  “No, what makes you think that?”

  “It’s important that you tell me everything, absolutely everything. You’ll also have to look through the photo registry down at the police station.” The person who called Dispatch when he found the girl upstairs could be her pimp. With any luck, he was in Kripo’s digital photo registry.

  Bergmann called Reuter on his way to the car. It was so cold that the patches of snow on the sidewalk crunched. It reminded him of his childhood. Of his mother.

  He explained the situation to Reuter. Reuter responded with silence.

  “Put surveillance on him, okay? I don’t want him to know yet, or everything is shot. Make sure he doesn’t leave the country.”

  “The lady was quite sure she’d seen him in the entry?”

  “Yes.”

  “Doesn’t have to mean anything.”

  “No,” said Bergmann. “But there’s something wrong with him. Something he’s hiding from me.” Of course, Reuter didn’t know that Alexander Thorstensen was Høgda’s son. Or that Høgda was from the town next to Nordreisa. Had Høgda been acquainted with his own mother up there? Could he possibly be his father?

  The thought almost made him vomit.

  “Hell open,” said Reuter suddenly, out of the blue. “That’s one hell of a strange word order the lunatic chose in the letter to you, don’t you think?”

  Bergmann didn’t want to talk about that letter. It made him feel as though he was being slowly suffocated, as if someone had tied steel wire around his throat and was slowly, slowly winding it around. Someone who knew more about him than he did himself. Someone who had taken the life of these girls, or at the very least knew who had.

  “Yes, it’s strange. ‘I have seen Hell lying open’ sounds more natural. What does Flatanger have to say about it?”

  “He agrees. He thinks it’s deliberate. I’m not so sure.”

  “I’ll mention it to my wife,” said Reuter. “She should have my job. Does nothing but read and think.”

  “What do you think of what Flatanger said? Two persons in one mind. Or the other way around?”

  “A man who thinks he’s a woman,” said Reuter. “Man by day, woman at night?”

  “Yes.”

  “Just find that confused bastard, then I won’t give a shit if there’s one or two or three people in his head, or if he parades around in skirts at night, okay?”

  “Just find Høgda. Then I think we have him,” said Bergmann.

  “For that matter, Kripo is planning to capture Rask before they get to Trondheim. They flew the SWAT team up there too, it’s getting to be a real circus.”

  Bergmann did not answer. He thought they were making a mistake. But maybe not. He no longer knew up from down. Could Rask be on his way to see Alexander Thorstensen? Bergmann no longer thought so.

  To be on the safe side he called the university hospital in Tromsø from a concealed number at Gardermoen Airport.

  “Alexander Thorstensen? He’s on his shift. One moment, I’ll see if I can transfer you.”

  He hung up and ordered another pint, wondering how many times he’d sat like this before.

  He fell asleep before takeoff and dreamed that Elisabeth Thorstensen was holding him. That the case was solved, that she was living with him.

  That she was sitting in his hallway with a knife to her wrist saying, It’s all your fault. Your fault, Tommy.

  53

  The National Library reminded her of an old asylum, though she’d never actually been inside one. Susanne assured herself yet again that her phone wasn’t turned off, just the sound.

  She got help from one of the librarians. Nordlys, early sixties? There better be something there, Susanne thought, smiling as innocently as she could. A tired smile was all she got in return.

  An hour later, her eyes were so tired from skimming the cursed microfilm that she was about to give up. It was noon. She should have been searching through the census for that needle in a haystack.

  She worked fast, checking just the front page and the first few news pages, figuring that’s where a murder story would appear. She didn’t have time to sit and study the Christmas sales or the washing machine and liquor ads from 1961.

  At one o’clock, she realized she hadn’t eaten anything all day.

  When she got to October 1962, she thought that enough was enough.

  She left the reading room and went over to sit down on a sofa with a view of the beech trees and Hydro Park on the other side of Drammensveien. She entered Torvald’s number.

  “Is everything okay?” he asked. Once again she wished that he had been born with different genes. That he liked someone like her.

  “Are you busy this evening? I need childcare.”

  “Oh?” he said. “Hot date, I hope?”

  “I’m going to look up a hundred and ten names in the census registry.”

  Torvald was silent.

  “I’ve got a customer. I’ll call you back,” he said without managing to conceal a certain disappointment in his voice.

  A few minutes later a text message arrived: All fine with Mathea, darling. But didn’t we have a deal that you would get yourself a life . . . life after Nico?

  I will, thought Susanne. Just let me find this lunatic who’s been killing these girls.

  She checked the clock on the wall and sat down at the microfilm reader again. Foolish chore. From a man who was just then walking around Tromsø.

  She opened the newspaper for October 2, 1962.

  The words in the right-hand column made the hairs on her neck stand up.

  16-Year-Old Girl Killed in Nordreisa

  A black-and-white picture of some buildings.

  An introduction.

  Sixteen-year-old Edle Maria Reiersen was found murdered in Storslett yesterday morning. The police have no leads in the case. The circumstances around the killing are unknown, but according to what Nordlys has learned, the girl was badly disfigured.

  54

  Few places in the world had more beautiful light than Tromsø in the middle of December. It was the middle of the dark season, but even so, the landscape appeared to be painted in blue, white, and pink. The Arctic landscape worked like a sedative and told him one thing: maybe he felt more at home up here than in the south. He got off the bus at the university hospital almost reluctantly, disappointed that the trip hadn’t been longer.

  In the reception area there was a Christmas tree—not a plastic one like at the police station in Oslo, but a stately, genuine spruce that smelled and glistened with authenticity and strength, more or less like the landscape itself. Bergmann introduced himself at the counter and said he wanted to speak with Alexander Thorstensen, even if he had to wait until his shift ended at midnight to do so.

  He told himself that it couldn’t be Alex. He was eighteen when Kristiane disappeared. But he was a surgeon. He couldn’t ignore that.

  The woman at the reception desk didn’t seem to notice the slight absurdity of his inquiry; she simply referred him to the waiting room and said that Thorstensen was very busy, but she would call him. Bergmann repeated that he had all day. He got no reaction other than a half-raised eyebrow.

  He had only been browsing through Nordlys for a few minutes when he heard someone clear their throat behind him. He turned and jumped at the sight.

  The slightly feminine features were unmistakable. He so closely resembled Elisabeth Thorstensen that he probably could have been taken for a girl in his younger years. The idea suddenly seemed plausible. He was only Kristiane’s half-brother, and he had the kind of appearance that teenage girls always fell for. Why wouldn’t Elisabeth Thorstensen tell the truth?

  “Alexander Thorstensen.” He extended his hand, large with well-groomed nails and a broad wedding ring. The white coat gave him an air of authority, despite his unlined face. Bergmann felt like a ravaged old wino alongside Elisabeth Thorstensen’s picture-perfect son.

  “You’re not from the department up here,” said Alexande
r, releasing his gaze.

  “It’s—”

  “Kristiane,” Alexander completed the sentence quietly. For a moment he was so like Elisabeth Thorstensen that Bergmann almost felt a surge of longing in his belly for her. He was really sinking into the quagmire now; he would look up Viggo Osvold as soon as he was back in Oslo.

  He tried to detect a resemblance to Morten Høgda in Alexander’s face, but found none.

  “I just have one question.”

  “Which you couldn’t ask on the phone?”

  “I prefer to see who I’m talking to. Besides, a little fresh air does me good.”

  The pager in Alexander’s coat pocket beeped. He sighed and walked quickly to the phone on the counter.

  “You’ll have to wait,” he called to Bergmann, trotting down the corridor. Bergmann followed him with his gaze until he disappeared behind a double door.

  He sat down in the cafeteria and read all the newspapers he could lay his hands on and smoked five or six cigarettes outside the entrance. The woman who’d been at the reception desk earlier finally came into the cafeteria with a message for him.

  “Telephone,” she said.

  “Meet me up in Anatomy,” said Alexander when he picked up the receiver. Then he tried to explain how to get there.

  “I’ll find it.”

  Bergmann finally found the right staircase. On the landing he stopped and looked out the window. He just caught the last remnants of daylight. A slalom hill on the other side of the sound looked like an overgrown glowworm in the twilight.

  “Come with me.”

  He turned and looked up the stairs. Alexander stood on the top step. He appeared to have aged in the few hours since Bergmann had last seen him.

  They walked in silence to a door marked Anatomy Hall. Alexander exchanged a few words with two young women walking toward them, apparently students. They glanced at Bergmann, then disappeared down the stairs. At the bottom he heard quiet laughter, the kind of girl laughter that men would never understand.

  He stopped in the doorway to the enormous room. Alexander walked on in, clearly unfazed by the sight of the twenty or thirty glass display cases showcasing different body parts in formaldehyde.

  The first thing Bergmann saw was a fetus that appeared to be floating, its thumb in its mouth, its neck bent. Then an amputated arm, and alongside it a torso. He took a few steps into the room and studied the fine cut where the arm had been attached to the body, then moved his gaze to the throat. The head was nowhere to be seen. He thought of the girl on Frognerveien. Of Kristiane.

  This is all a person is, he thought, standing behind the showcase that contained the torso and studying the back of the man who had donated his body for medical research and ended up in the Anatomy Department as a monument to human perishability, cut up like an ox, each body part frozen in time and space.

  “Why didn’t you study in Oslo?” he asked Alexander, who had sat down at a table at the far end of the room.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did you want to come up here, or did you not get accepted to medical school in Oslo?”

  Alexander held Bergmann’s gaze for a moment, then fixed his eyes on the weightless torso floating in formaldehyde in front of him.

  “I had to get away. I was suddenly nothing more than the brother of the girl who was killed, do you understand?”

  Bergmann studied the man before him. Yes, Kristiane could certainly have fallen in love with him, once she had crossed the threshold between right and wrong.

  “Was that why you came all the way up here?” said Alexander. He laughed quietly, underscoring the faint hint of sarcasm in his voice. “To ask me about my studies?”

  Bergmann shook his head.

  “You know as well as I do that Anders Rask has escaped, even though he got Kristiane’s case reopened.”

  Alexander nodded. “A paradox, don’t you think?” he said. “He escapes even though he maintains that he didn’t kill my sister.”

  “Was he one of your teachers in school?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you have any contact with him after you finished school?”

  Alexander snorted.

  “What do you think?”

  There was a pause.

  Alexander supported his hands against the tabletop, pushed himself up, and started walking toward the glass showcase with the torso. He leaned his head against the glass, his face distorted through the liquid.

  “When did you find out that Morten Høgda is your father?” said Bergmann.

  “Right before I turned eighteen.”

  “The spring of 1988?”

  “Yes. But I’d suspected it for many years. It showed, somehow. And on Dad too.”

  “What did you think about that?”

  “About what?”

  “That Morten Høgda is your father?”

  “What would you have thought?” Alexander pushed himself off the display case. He walked with his hands behind his back between the many cases, as if he were an old schoolmaster walking around among his pupils.

  “What do you think of your mother?”

  Alexander smiled.

  “What are you? My psychologist? Mom has always been nuts. Really nuts. It’s just that no one is able to see that.”

  Bergmann followed Alexander, who appeared to be intensely preoccupied by the contents of the various cases.

  “Did you ever tell Kristiane that you were only her half-brother?”

  Alexander opened his mouth to say something, but evidently changed his mind.

  “What kind of question is that?” He ran his hand over the case with the sawed-off torso. “I’ve always liked it in here,” he said. “It tells you so much about life, don’t you agree?”

  “Did you ever tell her? That you were only her half-brother?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “Once.”

  “When?”

  “That last summer.”

  “1988?”

  Alexander was now looking at the case with the dead fetus. It must have had its thumb in its mouth when it was removed from its mother. Imagine seeing something like that, thought Bergmann. A stillborn child with its thumb in its mouth.

  “This is the most beautiful one,” said Alexander. “I often think about this little guy when I’m alone with my son. The boundary between life and death is so thin.”

  He stopped talking, as if he had run out of words. He stared at the dead fetus for a long time before he opened his mouth again.

  “We were alone at the cabin one weekend, and—”

  “At Hvaler?”

  He nodded toward the glass.

  “Mom and Dad were gone all weekend. The weather was nice, Kristiane was off from handball for once. I said she could bring a girlfriend along, but she didn’t want to. She’d had some trouble with a boyfriend or something.”

  “So you were there alone?”

  He didn’t reply.

  “Did anything happen at the cabin that weekend?”

  “What would have happened there?”

  “Your mother said she thought Kristiane had fallen in love with you.”

  Alexander’s expression did not change.

  “A lot of girls were in love with me. But they weren’t interesting.”

  “But your fifteen-year-old sister? Was she interesting?”

  “She knew what she was doing.”

  “So what your mother said is true?”

  “What did she say?”

  “That you slept together. You and Kristiane.”

  Alexander laughed quietly.

  “Didn’t you hear what I just said? My mother is not in her right mind, Bergmann.”

  The door behind them flew open. Two students almost fell into the room, a boy and a girl.

  “Oh, sorry,” the boy said. The girl started to laugh, at first tentatively, but increasingly hysterically as they left.

  An alarming silence settled over the room when they had
gone.

  Bergmann and Alexander Thorstensen studied one another. Alexander turned his head slightly to the left. Bergmann had to concentrate not to do the same.

  “You were alone the evening she disappeared? Did you pick her up anywhere?”

  “Listen here,” said Alexander. His voice was still controlled, but under the superficial coolness of it something quivered that Bergmann thought was fury. “What exactly are you insinuating?”

  “I just want to know if it’s true that you slept together and where you were the night she disappeared. No one can remember seeing you before midnight at the party you claimed to be at.”

  “Are you saying that I killed Kristiane?”

  His voice cracked, as though he were an adolescent, but it wasn’t fury, only a kind of defeat—as if he’d been cornered and knew that there was no way out.

  “Were you going to meet her somewhere that evening?”

  Alexander shook his head.

  “The party was in Nordstrand, Bergmann. She took the train from Nordstrand, didn’t she?” He smiled faintly. “You ought to focus your attention elsewhere,” he said. “Such as on the fact that my mother needs help. You mustn’t believe everything she says. Haven’t you realized that? She’s not healthy. She’s been hospitalized before, don’t you know that?”

  Bergmann took a deep breath. Who’s the one who’s crazy here?

  “Did your mother tell anyone else about it? Per-Erik? Morten Høgda?”

  Alexander turned on his heels and walked toward the door without a word.

  Right before he came to the last display case, he stopped. For a moment Bergmann thought that he was going to knock over the one with the sawed-off leg, shattering the glass and spilling the leg and formaldehyde out over the green linoleum floor.

  He seemed to regain control over himself, but when he came to the door, he struck his hand against the frame so hard that Bergmann feared he’d broken it. A surgeon with a broken hand was worth nothing. Then he was out the door and disappeared from sight.

  Bergmann waited a little while before starting after him. When he came out into the corridor, Alexander Thorstensen was gone. There were three ways he could have gone: straight ahead through a double door, to the left down the stairs that they’d come up earlier, or to the right through an emergency exit, which would have triggered an alarm if he’d opened it.