The Fifth Element

by Jorgen Brekke

  Fagerhus knew that the police would come after him when he took off with his daughter. But he’d been prepared for that. He had a good plan. Two sets of passports, so they could switch identities halfway to their destination. The route he’d chosen was complicated, involving a long stretch of traveling by train across the continent before flying the last part of the way. He’d also decided on the right country in Central America. A place where no one would bother looking for a father who’d run off with his own child, and where none of Casaubon’s cronies could reach him. But if the police came after him for murder, it was a different story. He had no plan B for that scenario. And he also had a witness. What was he going to do with the boy?

  While he was thinking about this, Fagerhus lost control of the car. He was driving on a fairly straight road, feeling confident and in command, until there was an unexpected curve in the highway. He tried to slow down too abruptly, and the brakes locked and the car began to skid. Before he could recover he was crossing at full speed into the oncoming lane. The snowbank left by the plows on the other side of the road rose seemed to grow to the size of a glacier in the headlights. Automatically, as if driving a car were a primeval instinct, he took his foot off the brake and threw himself over the steering wheel. The car doors scraped against the snowbank on the shoulder of the road. He saw the side mirror get smashed against the windowpane next to him, but he managed to get the car back on the highway.

  He was still speeding along as he returned to the proper lane.

  That was when it appeared. He saw it in the distance, where the beams of his headlights met the darkness. A deer. A creature magnified by the lights into something unreal, something that had wandered out of one of his father’s stories, something recounted at a campfire, back when stories had made a strong impression on him. A wild thought flew through Fagerhus’s head. It was the young buck from that time out in the meadow, come back as a king, with an enormous rack of antlers gleaming brighter than the snow.

  Then the car swerved.

  It skidded onto the edge of the road, the right front headlight taking the brunt of the blow. This time the car plowed right into the snowbank. He was thrown forward, feeling the seat belt pull taut across his shoulder. The air bag embraced him like a maternal gust of air and synthetic fibers.

  Dazed, he sat still, listening to the front tires spinning crazily in the loose snow beneath him. The driver’s-side window was a web of cracks, but the piles of snow hadn’t shattered the glass. He turned off the ignition and took several deep breaths. When he looked around, he could see that more than half the car was buried in snow. But the back window and the left rear door were still free, sticking out into the winter darkness under clouds heavy with snow.

  Fagerhus crawled into the backseat and then climbed out of the car. Once outside, he inhaled and then watched the frosty vapor billow as he exhaled. He examined his arms and legs, his slender fingers which she had once loved, his face and ears, his nose, which had ended up askew after an involuntary brawl in a bar in Belize many years ago. Nothing was broken, nothing had been wrecked that couldn’t be replaced.

  He didn’t bother with the clothes he’d taken off inside the car. Wearing around his torso only the strap of the heart monitor, he walked down the road to the spot where the deer had stood, but he couldn’t find a single trace of it in the snowdrift. Slowly he made his way back to the car, looking over his shoulder. He saw no sign of any traffic coming from either direction. No sounds other than those made by nature on a winter night. But that wouldn’t last forever. It was now three thirty, though that didn’t mean the road would remain deserted until dawn. He had to consider the possible appearance of some nocturnal truck driver, jacked up on caffeine, dance music, and stored-up cholesterol. Guys like that could be way too helpful. And the last thing he needed was someone stopping to help him.

  When Fagerhus got back to the car, he leaned inside and took out the sweater and jacket he’d tossed onto the backseat. He put them on and checked his pulse monitor. Thirty-nine beats per minute. As usual, his heart ticked slower than time. On that score, everything was as it should be. Then he got out the duffel bag and went around to open the trunk.

  The boy lay very still. He wasn’t even shaking, even though it had to be fucking cold in there. The only signs that he was still alive were the fact that his eyes were open, cautiously scrutinizing Fagerhus, and the vapor coming from his nostrils. He was bleeding from a cut on his forehead. It must have happened when the car crashed.

  He took a knife out of the duffel bag and cut the plastic ties binding the boy’s legs together. He didn’t touch the ones around his wrists. Or remove the gag. Then he lugged the boy out of the trunk and ordered him to stand up. He exchanged the knife for the shotgun, slung the duffel bag over his shoulder, and gave the boy a light shove between the shoulder blades with the sawed-off muzzle. He didn’t have to say anything, he just pointed. With the boy walking in front, the two of them walked along the road to a spot where the hill sloped downward, away from the asphalt, and the drifts weren’t as high.

  There he led the boy out into the snow toward a grove of trees below. Before they reached the trees, he took a look around. In the distance, on the other side of the valley, he could see lights shining from a few remote farms and houses. He saw headlights as a car drove along a narrow road up on the slope, and he could just make out the sound of an engine. Otherwise nothing but darkness and silence. Only the snow gave off a faint glow, as did the moon when it appeared for brief moments from behind the drifting clouds.

  The wind subsided as they entered the forest, and the snow floated almost straight down. He kept on walking as he listened to the boy breathing hard and gasping now and then. He sounded like he was crying. Then the boy stumbled in a deep snowdrift and plunged forward without being able to use his hands to stop his fall. His face was covered with snow, and more snow had probably gone down his neck and under his sweater. He turned over. His face was red above the gag as he shook off the snow, as if after a fierce snowball fight on some playground far from here. The boy got up without any help and stood still, staring wide-eyed. Again those eyes. Fagerhus tried to decipher his expression, but couldn’t. Had the boy given up? Had he lost hope? Or was he planning to take off suddenly? The gasping sound grew louder, less controlled, less comprehensible.

  “Calm down,” he said, his tone both soothing and commanding at the same time.

  He kept on talking as they started walking again.

  “It’s important to breathe calmly. Concentrate on the here and now. The next step you take. What comes after that, neither you nor I can tell. The important thing is to breathe.”

  He spoke more and more quietly, and he didn’t think the boy was listening any longer. His voice faded to a whisper, merging with the wind.

  “Breathe in and out, in and out,” he whispered, now mostly to himself.

  Fagerhus thought: What the hell were you doing in the back room? You shouldn’t have been there.

  After about a kilometer they stopped. They were in dense forest and could no longer see beyond the trees. At one place they’d crossed a ski trail. At another spot they’d passed a dark cabin, maybe a hunter’s cabin or a summer vacation home, now merely a frozen smudge in the woods, a mausoleum to dead memories. Otherwise they’d seen little trace of any people.

  He caught sight of a hill not far from where they stood. The incline was steep, and only a single lonely birch stood at the top. He ordered the boy to go up the hill. When they reached the top, he stopped and looked around.

  The birch trunk was thin enough that he could tie the boy to it. He put the shotgun down in the snow, dropped the duffel bag beside it, and got out the knife. He’d bought it on Crete last summer, during the vacation that really tore them apart. It was handmade. It took five different craftsmen to make a Cretan knife. No better knife could be found south of the Arctic Circle. It was a showpiece that had cost him more than a thousand euros. His father would have liked this
knife.

  “If you even think about running, I’ll cut you to pieces,” Fagerhus said, placing the blade against the boy’s skinny throat.

  He sliced through the ties around his wrists. In a flash he switched the knife to his left hand and used his right hand to grab the boy’s upper arm. Maybe he gripped him too hard. The boy gasped louder than ever. It was almost a scream. But Fagerhus didn’t understand what this half scream meant. Was it despair or hatred he heard? Or something else altogether? Hope? A survival instinct that had no other means of expression?

  “You weren’t supposed to be in the shop,” Fagerhus said. His voice was calm. But inside he was beginning to feel something he’d felt only a few times before; that strange swimming sensation he’d had that time in the woods with his father. The first and only time his father had ever invited him to take the life of a deer. It had been a phony invitation, a test.

  Now he tied the boy to the trunk of the birch.

  Then he went over and picked up the shotgun. He made sure it was loaded before he raised it and took aim. The boy started to shake. He suddenly noticed how skimpy the boy’s clothes were. He was dressed for the indoors. Again he wondered what the boy had been doing in the back room. What was that book he’d been holding? Where did it come from? Fagerhus vaguely recalled something from the prep work of the investigative team, something about Casaubon being a book collector. In addition to his legal and illegal shop activities, he frequently trolled through used bookstores and went to London and Madrid to attend book auctions. Was he genuinely interested in old books, or was it only for money-laundering purposes? Did the boy share his father’s interest in books? Was the boy old enough to care? The only thing Fagerhus knew was that the kid wasn’t dressed for winter nights in Østerdalen. He was freezing. His head had started to droop, and he was shaking terribly.

  “Do you realize that we’re at the edge of the taiga? Behind you is an enormous expanse of forest that covers vast parts of Sweden, Finland, and Russia. It stretches all the way to Siberia. Just think of all those trees. At this time of year, their roots are frost-bound deep in the earth. In permafrost. Frozen decay, the remains of animals and trees that once lived in the forest, life that has perished and revived, either unchanged or changed.”

  Fagerhus had a faint memory of his father once saying something like that. Maybe the words would offer the boy some comfort. He aimed at his head. Then he was seized by nausea, dizziness, a trembling in his legs. Sensations that were foreign to him.

  “Pull the trigger, you ice-cold bastard,” he whispered to himself.

  But he knew he couldn’t do it. He took a step closer. Then a bigger step back. Then he lowered the gun, only to raise it again. This time he placed his finger firmly on the trigger.

  “Breathe calmly,” he told himself. “Very calmly,” he went on, in a voice that quavered for the first time in his life.

  * * *

  Only much later when he once again stood next to his car in the gray light of dawn did his pulse return to what it should be. Fagerhus thought about everything that had gone wrong. As soon as he solved the problem of the boy and gone back to the car, the American woman showed up, coming around the curve. If she hadn’t been so damned quick and well trained, he would have handled things. But she was as slippery as one of his fucking colleagues. She almost got away. He didn’t dare think about what the consequences might have been. But in the end he’d managed to limit the damage here too. At least he hoped so.

  Now he got out his cell and called the emergency number for Viking road service. He couldn’t leave his car here. It was registered in his name. That would connect him too closely to this place and the forest where someone might eventually find something of interest to the police.

  “Call 06000 night or day—from anywhere in Norway,” he murmured to himself as he tapped in the number. He chuckled and glanced at his heart rate monitor. Thirty-eight regular beats.

  They had a tow truck available in Åsta. It would take half an hour, the woman on the phone told him. He killed those thirty minutes, which stretched into a whole hour, by jogging back and forth along the road to stay warm. Big semis had begun roaring past. Only three of the drivers stopped to ask if he needed a hand. Now that he cleared away the buckshot and all the bloodstains in the snow, he had no trouble convincing them that everything was fine, and the help he needed would soon arrive.

  * * *

  The man who climbed with surprising grace out of the tow truck was over forty. He had lips that were stained with snuff but otherwise seemed energetic.

  “Jeez, looks like you took quite a hit. Is the injury serious?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your arm.”

  Fagerhus looked down at both arms. That was when he noticed the bloodstains on the right sleeve of his jacket. He’d been so preoccupied with getting rid of all traces on the road and snowbank that he hadn’t paid any attention to his clothes.

  “It’s nothing. Just a superficial cut.”

  “I’ve got a first-aid kit in the truck.”

  “No, that’s okay. I put a bandage on it.”

  “You should have a doctor take a look at that. After a crash like this, you never know. Internal bleeding. Shock.”

  “Thanks, but I think I’m fine. My pulse is normal.”

  “Christ, look at that. A heart rate monitor. Not bad. I’ve heard about people who wear that sort of thing when they go skiing. But when you’re driving a car? That’s a new one on me.”

  “Let’s just say that I have some particular habits.”

  “So tell me this. Were there two vehicles involved in this accident? I only heard about one car being stuck in the snow. And I assume that’s the one.”

  He pointed at the one car buried in the snowbank and then turned to look at the other vehicle that was parked neatly at the side of the road.

  “That one’s a rental. I need to get going.”

  “A rental? You managed to get a rental car out here even before a tow truck? This early?”

  “I’ve got connections.” He held his breath. Glanced surreptitiously at his Polar RS. Thirty-nine. It was going up.

  “Connections? Don’t tell me you know Fredriksen in Koppang. I wouldn’t rent a car from him even if it were free.” The tow truck driver bellowed with laughter, a frosty vapor gusting from his mouth.

  “Okay, well, I can get your car out of the snowbank. Do you want me to take it all the way to Elverum? They have the best mechanics.”

  “That sounds good to me,” Fagerhus said. “But tell them I won’t be able to pick it up for a couple of weeks.”

  “They’re not going to be happy about that. Give me your phone number so they can get in touch with you.”

  3

  In the morning, the day it happened …

  It really was a rental car. That much was true. A discreet tag from Hertz was on the key ring that he’d taken out of her pocket. He got behind the wheel and glanced in the rearview mirror, watching the taillights of the tow truck vanish around the curve. Then he turned around and placed the duffel bag with all the essential equipment on the backseat.

  Fagerhus started the car.

  What was a woman who spoke Norwegian with an American accent doing in a rental car driving up through Østerdalen? He wondered where she’d been headed. To Trøndelag, which was where he was planning to go, or even farther north? Why hadn’t she seen him and kept driving? How had she almost been able to get away after he’d overpowered her? He had a strange feeling that she was a cop. Something about the way she fought back to the very end. But there was nothing on her to prove that. She wasn’t on duty, that much was clear. If she was, she’d have had her ID with her.

  None of that matters anymore, he thought as he put the car in gear. The storm was letting up. Now it was only a light snowfall, with sporadic gusts of wind. He looked at his watch. Even if he didn’t drive fast, he could make it there early in the day, while there was still daylight. He didn’t know whet
her that was an advantage or not.

  As Fagerhus drove, he thought about his father. In the car on the way back to Oslo after that hunting expedition so long ago, he’d asked his father:

  “Did you know the rifle wasn’t loaded?”

  His father didn’t answer for a moment. Then he said:

  “You don’t know whether you really want to kill. You won’t know that until you’ve pulled the trigger. And now you have. Now you know.”

  “So it was a test to see if I could shoot?”

  “No, not to see whether you could do it. I knew you were capable of bringing down a deer. What neither of us knew was how you would feel about it. Whether you really wanted to pull the trigger. What if at the decisive moment you realized that you didn’t want the deer to die, but you shot it anyway?”

  “Do I know now? Do I know if I really wanted to do it?”

  “Yes. Now you know.”

  “So will the gun be loaded next time?”

  “If there is a next time,” said his father.

  The following year his father went hunting alone. He never returned. He disappeared into the forest for good.

  * * *

  The weather and the road conditions continued to improve. He could drive faster, even though he wasn’t very happy with the car. A Subaru, probably a 2010, not much pep. He thought it felt tinny, too lightweight for the road, not suited to winter driving in spite of the four-wheel drive.

  The letter had been postmarked in Trondheim. Before it arrived he’d already called her sister, who lived on the island of Hitra. At the time, he didn’t think it could really be that easy. And her sister had said that she hadn’t seen her. But the whole time they talked, he felt she was lying. So when the letter came, he phoned Eirik. That was a good place to start. Eirik was a former colleague who was now on the Trondheim police force. He’d been friends with both Fagerhus and his wife, and he’d had dinner at their place on numerous occasions. He told Eirik a story about her being in Trondheim on vacation, and he was driving up there to join her. He suggested they meet.