Medusa

by Torkil Damhaug

  A man emerged from a car parked half up on the pavement. He was fat and grunted like a sumo wrestler. He was holding a camera.

  – This is Villy, he works with me. We’ll drive you home and we can talk on the way.

  Axel turned and was about to walk on. The journalist still had hold of him.

  – Or we can just do it in here in the café, she suggested. – Looks like you’ve been enjoying yourself there.

  Axel pulled himself free and pushed her. She staggered back a few paces and somehow or other managed to trip over a kerbstone. As Axel rounded the corner, he heard her shouting something to the photographer.

  He asked the taxi driver to stop at the bus bay in Helgesens gate and continued on foot. The gate was half open; he slipped through and let it swing shut behind him.

  On the landing outside her doorway, there was no sign of the mangled corpse that had been lying there when he’d left the flat two days earlier. A bouquet of flowers hung from the door handle. He’d sent them himself, before his arrest. He rang the bell, tried the handle at the same time. The door wasn’t locked.

  Her smell in the hallway. Her perfume. Faint smell of damp from the bathroom. All the lights in the living room were on. The bed was made. He lifted the blanket; a T-shirt on the pillow. Surgical textbook on the shelf above. And the photo of the man in naval uniform. The coffee machine in the kitchen was on, the glass jug half full. On the table, a dish with a packet of lasagne, ready for heating, and a piece of crispbread with a bite taken out. Next to it was a white A5 envelope. He picked it up. There were photos inside. Four of them. The first showed the terrified face of Hilde Paulsen, the physiotherapist. She was lying on the floor, up against a stone wall. On the back of the photo the number 1 had been written with a black marker pen. The second picture showed the face of a dead person, with bloody scratches running from the jaw down over the neck. He recognised Cecilie Davidsen. She lay propped up against what had to be the same stone wall. On the reverse the number 2, again written with a black marker pen. The third photograph: the head of a woman with fair hair. He was in no doubt that this must be Anita Elvestrand. The eyes stared at him – he could tell that she was still alive – but the mouth had been ripped open at one side and the tongue protruded from the gash. On the back, the number 3.

  The fourth picture was of Miriam. She was smiling and looked happy. Bright sunlight caused her to peer into the camera, and her hair was shorter than it was now. The photo was taken standing against a creosoted wall. Half of it had been cut off. Someone was standing next to her; a bit of the hand holding her shoulder was still visible. On the back, in the same felt-tip writing: And the fourth will be …

  He dropped the pictures on to the table and stumbled out into the corridor and down the twisted staircase without closing the door behind him.

  58

  AXEL WAS RUNNING through Sofienberg Park. Suddenly he stopped and pulled out his phone, punched in the police station number. He couldn’t face the thought of talking to Viken so instead asked for the young sergeant, whose name, he now recalled, was Norbakk.

  – I’ll put you through to the operational leader, the woman at the other end told him.

  – I want to talk to Sergeant Norbakk, Glenne insisted. – Nobody else. Call him and tell him that Axel Glenne is trying to get in touch with him.

  Within half a minute his call was returned.

  – Glenne? Where are you calling from?

  Axel recognised Norbakk’s voice.

  – It’s about Miriam Gaizauskaite. You know who that is? He carried on walking through the park.

  – What about her?

  – I think she’s been abducted. She left a message on my voicemail.

  – Message?

  – She was screaming, calling for help. Someone attacked her. It must have been last night. In her flat there’s an envelope with photographs of the dead women. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?

  – I understand. We’ll send a car up there. Can you come to the station and make a statement?

  – I’ve got nothing else to say.

  He terminated the call, switched off his mobile.

  Rita stood in the doorway and stared at him, her eyes wide.

  – What do you look like? Has someone beaten you up?

  He tried to smile through his swollen lip.

  – You’d make a pretty convincing tramp.

  – The envelope, he said.

  Rita pulled her dressing gown tight around her.

  – What is it, Axel? Aren’t you well?

  He was neither well nor ill. Fear had made him alert, cleared his head. He explained the situation in a few words.

  – That is the sickest thing I’ve ever heard, Rita declared. – You know what, now, for the first time, I really do feel afraid.

  – Where is that envelope Miriam rang you about?

  – It’s still in the drawer in Ola’s office.

  – Can I borrow your car?

  – Yes, but have something to eat first. You stink of alcohol. It can’t be all that urgent now you’ve told the police.

  He allowed himself to be persuaded. While he waited, he sat at her computer and logged on. He was the lead story in all the online editions. Police release accused, he read in Aftenposten; 43-year-old doctor is still suspect. VG ran with a different story: Furious suspect attacks journalist. He had to read it through twice before he realised what it was about. Beneath the headline, a photograph of himself. An old one that Bie had taken at Liseberg. He was standing by a merry-go-round, laughing. The light in the room seemed to change as he looked at it, becoming brownish and dreamlike, the shadows deepening. He was losing everything. He thought of Bie. The children. Mostly of Daniel. This is your father, Daniel. Miriam’s voice came to him: If I close my eyes in the dark, Axel, I see your face. He stood up, went out to the bathroom. Pulled off his jacket and vest and stuck his head under the shower. You’ve got to wake up now, he growled. Axel Glenne, you’ve got to wake up.

  Rita put a plate of chicken breast in mushroom sauce on the table. She glanced at the computer screen.

  – So proud I know such a famous person, she remarked drily.

  Axel managed a brief laugh.

  – How about the patients? he wanted to know.

  – Not a single one of them believes you’re capable of anything like that. Not one, take my word for it. Quite a few have called in just to say so. A couple have cancelled their appointments, but only for practical reasons. Not more than three or four.

  – Have you heard anything from Solveig Lundwall?

  – Come and sit down and eat. You look like death warmed up standing there.

  He did as he was told.

  – Her husband called. Solveig’s been sectioned.

  Axel tore off a piece of chicken.

  – Good news.

  – Apparently it was quite dramatic. She was going to hang herself from a tree. She’s got some idea that somehow she has betrayed you. That it’s because of her you wound up in jail.

  – She’s in a terrible state, he said, chewing away. – They must be quite sure they don’t release her until she’s been given the help she needs.

  Rita said: – By the way, Seen and Heard called me last night. They want to do a feature on you.

  – That rag. He glanced across at her. Nothing surprised him now.

  – They said they’d give it a positive spin. Something people would enjoy reading, in spite of all the terrible things.

  – What did you tell them?

  – I told them to go to hell and take their enjoyment with them to spread it where it’s needed.

  He put his hand over hers.

  – Without you that’s where I’d be too.

  He would have liked to say more, but instead he stood up and turned to the window, looking out at the night sky shaded with hints of orange.

  59

  RITA HAD TIDIED his office after the search, but it was still chaotic. The computer had not yet been
returned. Some of his books and folders were still missing. He let himself into Ola’s room. It didn’t look as though the police had been in there.

  The envelope lay in the middle desk drawer, where he had seen it earlier. He opened the flap, pulled out the pile of smaller envelopes. All were stamped and addressed to Miriam. There was also a single sheet of paper. He unfolded it, recognising her handwriting. It looked like the beginning of a letter.

  I received your most recent letter today. Yes, I’ve met someone else! It’s horrible of you to spy on me, but I’m not going to let you spoil things. No matter what you do, I’ll never tell him about you. You don’t exist when I’m with him. Not even in my thoughts.

  Are you trying to scare me? I thought you’d understood. I don’t wish you any harm. You’ve suffered enough as it is. I wish you well. But I can’t do any more for you. Not after what happened in the cabin that time. You told me about your family; I know I’m the only one you’ve dared to talk to about them. I’ve thought a lot about what you told me. Your grandfather, who helped so many refugees to freedom during the war, how he was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to a concentration camp. When he got back he was a wreck, but never a word of thanks for all the lives he’d saved. And your father, the best father in the world, you said, but he drank and kept you both locked up in the cellar. I remember as though it were yesterday when you told me about it. We were sitting on the steps outside the cabin, and I didn’t understand how you could think such a thing, that it was all your mother’s fault because she left you, and that your father always meant well by what he did. I was stupid enough to say what I thought of him, and then you seemed to turn into another person completely. I can’t forget it, even though I want to. I’ll always see your eyes the way they were that night in the cellar. You hated me then, you wanted to destroy me. A thousand apologies can’t make up for something that has been crushed. I know you trusted me more than any other girl you’ve ever met. And that was why you told me about your family. I can understand you and forgive you, but I can never trust you again. You must go to a

  That was obviously as far as she’d got. He looked through the envelopes. The last one was stamped 27 September this year. It contained a folded sheet of paper.

  This is the last letter I’ll write to you. Don’t know if you’ll read it. Makes no difference. I’ve started talking to you instead. Have found a way to get you to listen to what I have to say. Get you to listen to every fucking word. With no chance to get away. I waited for you yesterday. You said back then that you needed time before you were ready. Now that time has passed. I wanted to surprise you. You came out and got into a car with a man. Drove to Aker Brygge. You sat half a bloody hour in that car. Today he drove you home, and as you were about to get out, he took a sniff at you and then I knew what was going on. He’s forty-three. Seventeen years older than you. He earns eight hundred and fifty thousand a year and has seven million in the bank. He’s married and has three kids. I guess that’s all okay by you. And then I think how I should never have let you out of the cellar in the cabin that time, that the one night you spent down there wasn’t enough. That maybe I’ll come and fetch you from your bed one night when you think you’re safe and take you back to that cellar, and who knows whether you’ll ever get out again.

  Axel sat there looking at the letter. It had been typed on a computer and wasn’t signed. No sender’s name on the envelope. Posted the day after she started her training with him. Several times Miriam had wanted to tell him about something that had happened to her. Something she was afraid of. Each time she’d got close to it she’d pulled away. That last night he’d spent with her, she had said something about a cellar in a cabin she’d been in. Close to the Swedish border. What were you doing out there? he should have asked her. But he hadn’t. He’d guessed it had to do with a man. He didn’t want to know anything about her past. About the men before him. What the two of them had together existed on a tiny island in the present moment. Both past and future could wipe it out at any time. But he had wanted to talk about himself. Something from his own past. Had he been using her? He saw her in his mind’s eye. The way she looked when she was listening. She took it all in, didn’t try to change anything.

  The next letter he opened was more than two years old.

  When you left, it was allegedly because you needed time to think, but more than a year has passed now and I think you were lying. It’s not a good idea to lie to me. I know you thought it was horrible to be left sitting down there in that cellar, but I didn’t know what I was doing. When you come, you’ll see that I’ve changed. You didn’t believe me when I told you that you were the first girl I’d ever been with properly. There have always been women I could have had; I got plenty of offers but I was never interested. After that first night in Sandane when we walked along by the fjord, I told you it was you I wanted. Nobody else. And you said that made you happy. You said a lot of other things too. That there was nobody else you wanted either. That you would stay with me for ever. That we were twin spirits, and all that kind of girl talk. That you liked having sex with me. That it was the best you’d ever had. Killing someone is no worse than giving them something and then suddenly taking it away again.

  Dated 19 August last year:

  I know you saw me today. You walked right past the car. You saw me and then pretended you hadn’t seen me and crossed over the road with your friend. You took the Metro down to the Storting and then walked to Alexis’s. You spent an hour there and then you went home. There was a light on in your window until ten past eleven. Then it was dark. You were sleeping. Or else lying there thinking. I’ve been off work all this week. There hasn’t been a single second of the day when I haven’t known where you are or what you’re doing.

  On 9 June:

  If you can just manage to forget what happened, this is my plan. I’ll sell the cabin and borrow from the bank and buy a place in town. Big enough for two. Please forget what happened. I made a mistake and I’ve really learned my lesson.

  He flipped back through the bundle of letters. Flipping his way back through a relationship he didn’t want to know about. He knew that what he was reading could tell him what had happened to her. Suddenly it dawned on him that it might also tell him something about where she was. He recalled what she had said about the cabin she’d been in. Had to be the same one that was mentioned in the letters. A cellar that had been used during the war. The former owner of it had been a border guide, she’d told him. The grandfather of someone she knew.

  As he read back through the letters, more and more of them were written in an untidy scrawl. The tone of them changed too, the threats disappearing as he reached a time before what must have been the break-up. He opened an envelope stamped 16 July, five years ago:

  I’m still sitting here on the steps and looking down at the path. Then I look at the finger with the ring I got from you. Engaged. Imagine if you’d got the weekend off and decided to come out here again. Surprise! You like to surprise me. What you wanted to do the night before you had to leave, I never would have believed it …

  Axel skimmed ahead.

  I knew you’d like it out here in the forest. Best cabin in all Hedmark. We can stay up here for months and years with no one ever disturbing us. Maybe we should move out here, settle down, go hunting, live off the forest. The way my father did. Leave the rest of the world behind.

  There was a photo with the letter. Axel held it under the light from the desk lamp. It was the same picture that had been in the envelope in her kitchen, only this one wasn’t cut in half. She was standing in front of the creosoted cabin. The person with his arm around her looked to be twenty or thirty centimetres taller than her. From his features it was clear he had Down’s syndrome. On the ground in front of them was the shadow of a head and a hand. Thrown by whoever was taking the picture. On the back of the photo was written: Oswald doesn’t have the words to say so, but he likes you too.

  Axel tore the letter out of the envelope that w
as date-stamped four weeks before the last one he had read.

  Pottering about here and counting the days until you come. Looking forward to showing you the real me. I know of a great place to swim that nobody else knows about. A tarn not too far away. Then we can head on towards the border, and I’ll show you a bear’s hide. Maybe the mummy bear herself will be there. Saw the tracks of a female and two cubs not long ago. You say the bear is my inner animal. Yours too, if you ask me. Have fixed the car and will pick you up at the station as planned. But that old bus isn’t reliable. If it breaks down on the timber road, you’ll have to take the bus to Åmoen. The cabin is nearly ten kilometres further north and deep in the forest, so don’t try getting there by yourself. Ask one of the guys at the Esso station to drive you up here. I worked there every school holiday when I was a kid. Ask for Roger Åheim and say hello from me.

  He read through the last lines again. She’s in that cabin, he thought with a jolt. And in the same instant: I know how I can find it.

  It was just after midnight. After the phone had rung for the seventh time, he began to doubt whether anyone would answer. Another ten rings and he was about to give up. Then he heard a grunt at the other end.

  – Tom? It’s Dad.

  No answer, but he could hear his son’s breathing. Imagined him standing there in the dark in his boxers and T-shirt, trying to figure out what was going on.

  – Dad, he muttered. – Christ …

  His hair would be dangling down over his eyes as he stood there, thin and pale, shivering with cold. When was the last time Axel had felt the need to put his arms around his son? Hold him close, hold him tight so that he wouldn’t disappear.