– Your son tells me that Axel has a twin brother.
Vibeke Glenne refilled their coffee cups.
– There hasn’t been any contact for years. Brede is an alcoholic, or a junkie, or I don’t know what. Been in and out of institutions all his life.
– The lad says he’s never met him.
She stared off into space.
– Neither have I actually.
Viken looked at her in astonishment.
– In twenty-three years?
– They lost touch when they were in their teens. Brede wouldn’t see Axel any more. Jealousy and all the rest of it. Axel has managed to make something out of his life. Brede didn’t care about anything.
Viken sat thinking about this as Norbakk wrote something in his notebook.
– So you don’t actually know if they resemble each other?
– They’re identical. I’ve seen photos of them when they were children. It’s impossible to tell the difference between them.
– Can you show me some of those photographs?
– Childhood photographs? Now listen here, I’ve still not even been told why you …
She broke off, got up and went into the next room. Viken heard her opening drawers. She returned with three or four photo albums in her arms.
– Here. I’m sure you’ll understand if I say I’m not in the mood to sit here reminiscing with you.
– That’s perfectly all right.
The photographs were from the early days of colour film. The colours were dull and had acquired a yellowish patina. Days by the seaside, celebrations of National Day in May. A woman with blond hair gathered in a braid, and a much older man whom Viken seemed to recognise.
– Axel’s parents, I presume.
Vibeke Glenne leaned over the table.
– That’s right. He was twenty years older than her. Famous for being in the Resistance; later became a supreme court advocate.
– Torstein Glenne? exclaimed Viken, astonished that the connection hadn’t occurred to him earlier. – Is your husband Torstein Glenne’s son?
He composed himself and flipped on through the album, stopping at a page with a number of swimming scenes. Fjord, smooth sloping rocks.
– Where were these taken?
Vibeke Glenne cast a quick glance.
– At the cabin. The summer place down in Larkollen. We’ve still got it.
Viken’s eyes narrowed.
– Summer place? Does it have a basement?
– A creep-in basement. Why on earth do you want to know that?
Viken didn’t answer.
– How old is the cabin? he wanted to know.
Vibeke Glenne raised her chin, obviously a mannerism of hers when she was thinking about something.
– It’s been in the family for a long time. From when Torstein was a child, I should think. From about the twenties or thirties.
– Is this Axel or Brede?
Viken held the album up so she could see.
– Axel, she decided.
– Show me a picture of Brede.
She pointed lower down on the page.
– But they’re absolutely identical, Viken protested, – even got the same swimming trunks. How can you be sure?
– Axel told me who was who.
Viken flipped on. Father, mother and one of the twins.
– Are there no pictures of them together? he wondered.
– What do you mean?
Viken searched back through all three albums.
– Dozens of pictures of twin brothers, but not a single one of them both together.
Vibeke Glenne looked exasperated.
– And what’s supposed to be the significance of that?
Viken mulled it over.
– You tell me. Probably none. Who have you talked to about Brede?
– Talked to? Actually, no one other than Axel.
– Are you telling me that you have never heard his parents or other members of the family say anything else at all about this twin brother?
She said: – Brede was sent away from home when he was fifteen. According to Axel, it was impossible for him to go on living there. He was beyond control. It was something that was never talked about in the family. Brede was, and is, taboo. Axel said I wasn’t to mention him to other people.
– So the parents sent their fifteen-year-old son away and never wanted to see him again?
– Axel’s family are a little unusual, Vibeke Glenne confirmed. – Not exactly awash with love and affection. I’ve never known my mother-in-law, Astrid, to care in the slightest about anyone other than herself. Not even her grandchildren. And old Torstein was, of course, a god. Remote and severe.
After a short pause she added: – Axel never talks about it, but I have noticed that he is still preoccupied with his twin brother. When he called yesterday, he mumbled something about finding him. It’s almost certainly got something to do with what happened when Brede was sent away.
– And what did happen?
She leaned back in the chair, crossed one leg over the other. Norbakk stood up before she began to speak.
– Afraid I’ll have to use your toilet too. No, don’t get up, I can find my own way.
48
– GET ANYTHING OUT of your visit to the toilet? asked Viken once they were seated in the car again.
Norbakk swung the vehicle down towards the gate and out on to the road.
– Mostly just the usual stuff, he said. – I presume you don’t want the brand names of a lot of shampoos and hairsprays and skin creams.
– Could probably use a few tips, said Viken. – What about medicines?
– Paracetomol, ibuprofen, stuff like that. A couple of things I didn’t recognise; I’ll check them when we get back.
– Doctors want to stuff us full of chemicals for the slightest thing, Viken observed. – But when it comes to their own family, they shut up shop. You said mostly the usual stuff?
Norbakk accelerated out of the roundabout.
– Well, not all parents with a family of young kids have a pair of handcuffs hidden away at the back of the wardrobe in the bedroom.
– Handcuffs? And in the bedroom?
– I got mixed up with all the doors and by happenstance ended up in the wrong room.
– I didn’t hear that, Arve, Viken grinned. When the sergeant was still wet behind the ears, he was the one who had taught him the use of the word happenstance. It had served him well many times himself.
He sat there scratching his jaw.
– So Axel Glenne allegedly has a twin brother, he said after a while.
– Allegedly?
Viken started humming a melody. Even the most fervent Stones fan might have had difficulty in recognising ‘Under My Thumb’.
– I have very clear memories of a case we worked on when I was in Manchester. Chap who had been knocked down and stabbed, had his credit card and all his ID stolen. He didn’t know who the attacker was, but he was able to give a very detailed description of him.
He carried on humming, possibly the same song. Norbakk glanced over at him.
– Was the case solved?
– Indeed it was. The description fitted the victim himself so well that some bright spark thought of checking it out. And it matched.
– He’d stabbed himself and stolen his own ID?
– Exactly. But it was impossible to get him to see it. He’s still walking around believing he was attacked. If, that is, the shrinks haven’t managed to get his head sorted out. And now I’m going to reveal to you why I’m telling you this entertaining little tale. Imagine a man in his forties. He has a twin brother no one in his family has ever seen hide nor hair of.
– His brother hates him.
– All right. But there is not one damn picture of the two of them together.
– Chance is what rules almost everything that happens in the world.
Viken gestured with his arm.
– Don’t get me wrong, A
rve. I’m not the type that takes the long way round. The simplest answers are always the best. But this business about the twin …
– Was he thrown out of the house? I didn’t hear the whole story.
Viken took a box of pills out of his pocket and tapped out a couple.
– Acid indigestion, he explained. – Bananas are just as good, but I can’t go around looking like a starving ape.
He found a bottle of dead fizzy water in the glove compartment.
– The Glenne family hardly sounds like the best family in the world to have grown up in. But everyone has some sort of cross to bear. You know about the father. One of the heroes in the Resistance, and after that, a big cheese in the supreme court for years. They still called him Colonel there, long after the war ended. And the mother, according to Vibeke Glenne, was an immature and self-centred upper-class woman. But there again, it’s by no means certain a daughter-in-law is the most objective person to provide that kind of description. The older Mrs Glenne apparently didn’t want children. And when she suddenly found herself with two, that was at least one too many. It was worse for the twin who was disciplined according to Old Testament principles. Naturally he grew up to be the terror of the neighbourhood. The good twin, Axel, always tried to defend him – this is still according to the younger Mrs Glenne – but the whole thing exploded the summer they turned fifteen.
He put the tablets in his mouth, swallowed them down with a swig of water, and made a face.
– Would have been better off using wiper fluid, he groaned.
– What happened that summer?
Viken started chewing on a salt pastille. He noted with satisfaction that his story about the twins had captured Norbakk’s full attention.
– Vibeke Glenne says that at one time old Torstein had a dog. Apparently he was more devoted to it and treated it better than his wife or his kids. It wouldn’t surprise me if that was true. I was fortunate enough to meet Colonel Glenne on several occasions before he retired. The rumours I had heard were by no means exaggerated: he was not the sort of man you messed about with, if I can put it like that.
He looked out across the fields, up to a copse under the bright evening sky.
– Quite nice out here, he mused.
– What about the dog?
Viken turned towards Norbakk.
– You want to hear the end of the tale? Short version, Brede got pissed off with the animal, almost certainly with good reason. He shot it with one of the colonel’s own guns. Axel pleaded for him, his wife says, but his pleas fell on deaf ears and the lad was packed off to what used to be called in those days an approved school. He never came back home.
They drove over the crest of a hill. On the other side, at the edge of the road, a number of floral bouquets were gathered, a few small lighted candles beside them.
– Accident black spot, said Norbakk. – This stretch here is supposed to be highly dangerous.
Viken didn’t hear what he said. He continued on his own train of thought.
– My idea goes something like this: imagine this twin has not merely disappeared, but never even existed in the first place.
– That ought to be easy enough to find out, Norbakk countered.
– Probably. A run through births, marriages and deaths ought to do it, even if he changed his name.
– What about asking the mother? Isn’t she still alive?
– I gather she’s senile, yodelling away in some posh rest home somewhere in the west end of town.
Norbakk appeared to be thinking about this.
– The three killings we’re working with are unlike anything else I’ve ever come across in this country before, said Viken. – We’ve been offered a profiler if we want one. But it won’t do any harm if we think along psychological lines without having so-called experts breathing down our necks. You remember the profile I made of the perpetrator after the first two murders? A highly educated man in a well-paid job, a family man with a split personality, someone who grew up with a cold and unemotional mother who tyrannised him. When you’ve got a serial killer, be sure to take a very good look at the relationship he had with his mother. That’s where you’ll find the skeleton in the cupboard.
– Are you trying to say that this doctor, Glenne, has an imaginary twin brother who carries out sick stuff like this for him?
– I’m not saying anything, Arve, but there’s no law against thinking out loud. Often very necessary, in fact. When Norbakk didn’t respond, he added: – System is alpha and omega in our kind of work, I’ve been telling you that ever since you left school. But at the same time it’s important not to overlook your gut feeling. In the end, most cases are solved by the gut, Arve, whether we like it or not.
He laid a hand on his own, rumbling and growling like a leaden sky on a late summer’s day. Maybe it was protesting about the part it had been given to play.
49
FOR THE SECOND day in succession, Axel woke up on Rita’s sofa. He looked at his wristwatch. Thought it had stopped, but the clock on the wall showed the same time, and afternoon sunlight streamed in through the living-room window.
He hadn’t told Rita he would be coming back, but when he peered into the kitchen he saw that the table was laid for him. There was a note next to the plate: You’ll find what you need in the fridge and in the cupboard on the right.
He swigged down two glasses of cold orange juice, made himself a muesli mix and started the coffee machine going as he waited for the muesli to swell. Glanced through Aftenposten. Police have important leads in bear-murder cases. On page 4 was an identikit drawing of a person they wanted to talk to, a man seen near the scene of the crime that morning. – Is that what I look like? he murmured. Wide face and curly hair flopping over his forehead.
He took his coffee into the living room, sat back down on the sofa, turned on his mobile. No message from Miriam. Three from Bie. He listened to the first of them … And the police have been here looking for you. Asking where you were when your patient went missing. They looked through the photo album and asked all sorts of things about Brede, wondered if he existed at all. It was horrible. Please come home, Axel. Now.
He sent a text in reply: Be home this evening. Couldn’t face the thought of what it would be like. An unfaithful husband. A father wanted by the police. You’re a good boy, Axel. You’ll always do the right thing. He’d reached some kind of limit. If he went any further, he’d end up losing everything he had. Was that why he was still sitting there? Did he want to give everything up? Want Bie to be so crushed that she wouldn’t have him back? Want her to do what he wasn’t capable of doing himself, breaking up? You must be a very happy man.
He waited another half-hour before ringing Miriam. Was about to disconnect when she finally answered.
– I miss you, he said.
She said nothing.
– Miriam?
– Why did you disappear yesterday?
There was a note in her voice he hadn’t heard before.
– Couldn’t you have stayed and talked to the police?
She was right. He had been cowardly.
– They found out someone had been here, Axel. I had to tell them it was you.
He looked out of the window. In the next-door garden there was a climbing frame with a swing and an orange plastic slide.
– You’ve got every right to be angry with me.
– I’m not angry, Axel, I’m afraid.
– I understand that.
– No, you don’t understand.
Between the rooftops he could make out the trees in the Nordre cemetery, and a chimney sticking up from Ullevål hospital. The sky was pale grey, with a hint of yellow.
Without knowing why, he said: – Is it me you’re afraid of?
He heard her draw breath.
– You must go to the police.
If he didn’t turn himself in, they’d soon be publishing his name and his photograph. But he sat there listening to her voice, and he couldn’t b
ring himself to regret any of it.
– I want to see you one more time, he said. – Then I’ll go to the police.
– It’s my fault.
– What is your fault, Miriam?
– If it hadn’t been for me, none of this would have happened.
She’s the one regretting it, he thought. I can’t bear to hear her saying that.
– I must see you.
– I’ll call you this evening, she muttered.
– Are you at home now?
She hesitated before saying: – I’m at a friend’s house. Slept here last night. I have to pull myself together and go back home soon.
– I’ll come over.
– No, Axel. I daren’t.
She ended the call. He rang her again, but she didn’t answer.
Rita arrived at 5.45. He was still sitting on the sofa, looking out at the evening sky. It had turned a dark yellow.
– Are you still sitting here, Axel? she exclaimed. – You’re becoming a fixture.
He smiled feebly.
– Don’t worry, Rita, I’m not moving in.
She carried in some bags of shopping.
– I didn’t mean it like that. Have you spoken to the police yet?
He didn’t answer.
– Axel, for God’s sake. They’re all over the place looking for you. I had to tell a little white lie at the office. Actually, it was more dark grey.
She was getting in trouble too because of him.
– You’ve got no call to be in hiding. What’s the matter with you?
She sat down in a chair.
– Is it that student? Miriam?
He leaned his head back.
– I don’t expect you to understand it, Rita. I don’t understand it myself. I turn my back on Bie and the kids, spend the night with a student seventeen years younger than me. I stumble over a dead woman and run off. Last night I was wandering about up in the Nordmarka and terrified the life out of some old tramp.
Rita leaned towards him, put a hand on his arm.
– Sounds like the worst kind of mid-life crisis to me. Maybe you’d better pick up the pieces before it’s too late.
He had to smile. Just for a moment he felt he was standing on something firm that wouldn’t give way beneath him. A place where it was possible to take a decision. Doubt is what makes you crack up, he thought. You’ve never been the brooding type. You’ve always acted. Always moved on.
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