The Fifth Element

by Jorgen Brekke

  “What do you think? Was my father the kind of man to follow the letter of the law? Was he someone who wouldn’t dream of making any changes to a gun like this? So ask yourself now: Are there any more shells in the magazine?”

  “Someone did alter the gun,” said Felicia, mostly just to buy time.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The barrel.”

  “Ah. That was me. And I regret it. But it’s easier to handle like this. Do you know what a sawed-off shotgun is called in Italy?”

  “It’s called a lupara,” said Felicia. “But that’s not a lupara.” She’d switched to English. “A lupara is made from a traditional shotgun, the kind you have to break open, not a pump-action shotgun.”

  “I’m impressed,” he said.

  “The lupara was the preferred weapon of the Italian Mafia. Armed with that type of gun, they won the war against Mussolini.” Felicia kept on talking, trying to drown out her own fear and dread. Her voice quavered.

  “It’s rare to meet a woman who knows so much about guns. But maybe that’s an American thing? Even though this is all very interesting, I don’t think it’s moving us in the right direction. What do you think? Do you want to risk me pulling the trigger? If I don’t have any more shells, you have a chance of overpowering me or taking off again. Or would you like another option?”

  He took the bag off his shoulder and dropped it in front of her.

  “Look in the bag!” He raised the gun to his shoulder. Took a step back and aimed it at her.

  She did as he said. What else could she do?

  Inside the bag she found a fanny pack.

  “Not that. The other one. The toiletry kit.”

  Felicia found it at the very bottom and pulled it out.

  “Open it!”

  Inside was the type of paraphernalia she’d seen many times before on the job, lying on filthy tables between empty beer cans, on beds with mattresses stinking of urine and blood, between used diapers tossed on the floor, underneath cribs in which sweaty babies with their hair plastered to their heads screamed like crazy hour after hour without being heard until they fell down, exhausted, malnourished, feverish, and alone. Felicia had started in the narcotics division before she became a homicide detective. She’d seen just about everything that happens in the void left behind by addiction.

  She’d only ever used this sort of paraphernalia once herself. One time in the basement of her childhood home. That awful summer after high school, during those months after the rape, when she still believed that the rapist had taken everything from her. She’d gotten the overdose of heroin from her friend, the dope dealer Brad Davis, the boy who said he’d never be like his father.

  She dumped everything out into the snow: the syringe, rubber tubing, spoon, lighter, and the little plastic bottle containing what she assumed was a mixture of lemon juice to make the drug dissolve more easily.

  The man reached under his sweater and pulled out a little container hanging from a cord.

  “You seem to know an awful lot. So do you know how to use this?” he said, dropping the container next to her.

  She nodded and opened it. She was freezing now, shaking hard.

  Soon I won’t feel the cold anymore, she thought.

  She stuck her finger inside and tasted the powder.

  “Heroin,” she said.

  “Here’s your choice. You can take the risk that my father was a conscientious man who plugged the magazine on this gun, or you can shoot up the heroin. I decide the dose.”

  He leaned down to pick up the spoon and container. He was quick, but he still left himself open. Felicia could have seized the opportunity and punched him as hard as she could in the temple, then grabbed him by the back of his neck and shaken him. But she no longer had the energy to fight anymore. It was over.

  He filled the spoon with heroin. Felicia saw at once that it was an overdose, no matter what the quality of the dope.

  He handed it to her.

  “That’s enough to kill me,” she said.

  “Most likely,” he replied.

  “Why do you want to kill me?”

  “You saw me with the shotgun,” he told her. “It’s that simple. If I’d managed to put away the gun before you ran into me, you wouldn’t have been suspicious, and I could have let you live. But you saw me very clearly. Holding the gun.”

  “There’s something you’re trying to hide,” she said, looking directly at him, holding his attention. At the same time she used her thumb to brush some of the heroin out of the spoon.

  He didn’t notice.

  “Of course I have something to hide. So, what’s it going to be?”

  Felicia picked up the lighter and began preparing the heroin.

  When she was done, she filled the syringe.

  She kept on talking to him as she spilled some of the drug from the spoon onto the snow every time she caught his eye.

  “I want you to know that at least I don’t have any children,” she said. “So you won’t be killing anyone’s mother.”

  “Shut up!” Something had crept into his voice that wasn’t there before.

  “Do you have kids?”

  “One more word out of you, and the drug option goes away.”

  By now the syringe was filled, with much less than the original dose. She pulled up her sleeve and tied the rubber tubing around her arm, but the cold made it nearly impossible to find a good vein.

  Finally, she found one and pressed the needle to her skin. She managed to spill a few more drops before the needle went in. She also left a little in the syringe. She’d reduced the dose by more than half, right in front of his eyes. If it was average-quality heroin, she was saved. If the dope was pure, she wasn’t sure how things would go.

  Felicia closed her eyes and felt the rush almost immediately.

  She saw Odd. He was laughing. His torso was bare as he sat there eating herring. Odd again. First in her dream, now with the heroin. That had to mean something. Did she love him? Was she capable of love? Questions like that would have to remain unanswered.

  The night turned as white as snow, a white night that ran straight through her.

  10

  Before it happened …

  She was lying inside a well. It must have once been a well, but it had dried up. She was lying in a circular space with walls of granite. Above her stretched gray stones, extending upward to a sky fading to dusk. The distance was too great for her to climb up the stones and get out.

  She had only a vague memory of how she’d ended up here.

  She remembered lying in the car that belonged to the man in the woods—that was the only way she could think of him, even though she’d talked to him. She was placed on the backseat, her hands and feet bound with plastic zip ties, a gag stuffed in her mouth, drugged to the edge of consciousness, adrift in reality, strangely still possessed of hope, although she had no idea whether that promise would be kept.

  Then she recalled how the zip tie began to cut into her wrists. The pain and nausea returned.

  Why didn’t he kill me out there in the forest? Felicia wondered. He could have just shot me. He fired at me up on the road. But that was when he was filled with panic. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to shoot the boy, or Felicia when he had her right in front of him, easy prey. Maybe there was still some scrap of mercy in him, despite everything. Or was it merely cowardice? Maybe it was due to something even simpler. Maybe they were no longer important to him, after he took control. It seemed like the only thing he cared about was not being stopped, not letting anyone get in his way. But what was he up to? Felicia thought the only reason he wouldn’t care whether she lived or died must be because he was planning to disappear for good, to take off somewhere. He was on the run and doing whatever he had to do in order to get to his destination. That was why he killed only if absolutely necessary. That was why he’d taken her along.

  She hadn’t been able to see out the window, so she had no idea where they were hea
ded. At last the car stopped. He got out. A few minutes later she heard an enormous crash, worse than thunder in Virginia in the fall. Then he pulled her out of the car and removed the restraints and gag.

  Then there was a boat speeding out to sea, away from her. She thought she was free. That was when she heard something behind her, turned to look, and saw the baseball bat come whizzing through the air. And everything went black.

  She must have sustained multiple blows. More than a person could normally stand.

  Much later she awoke, lying on an old mattress with blood all over her clothes.

  Someone must have used the well as a garbage dump, because there were pieces of old furniture and empty paint cans scattered about. Surrounding the mattress were discarded electronic equipment, the guts from several radios, a smashed TV, a few old-fashioned dial phones—Felicia couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen that kind in use—batteries, and other things she couldn’t identify. Everything was old and rusty. All the laughter, sorrow, and joy that these pieces of equipment had once generated were long gone. The whole mattress was covered with blood. She was spitting up blood. It ran down her throat, which she found strangely soothing. Her teeth were loose. Some of them had fallen out. Her head pounded and ached, as if fractured.

  Felicia didn’t know how long she lay there, looking at everything, as if she were merely an anonymous passerby.

  She slipped in and out of consciousness. The cold wasn’t as bad down here as it had been in the forest. It was a different kind of weather, a marine climate, and the storm had subsided. And what was left of the wind couldn’t reach her. She quickly realized that she badly needed help. And soon.

  She didn’t know how long she’d been inside the well when she heard someone up above. She tried shouting, but only a gurgle came out of her mouth. Something was tossed down to her. It looked like charred fragments of some sort of technical equipment. Something that had shattered into a thousand pieces. She brushed them off the mattress into the trash lying all around. It was probably the person with the bat who’d come back to get rid of something. Another object was tossed down from above. This one was bigger. Gray plastic, cables, a circuit board, microchips, intricate mechanisms. Felicia had no idea what it was. Only that it had been severely damaged. It was covered with dark patches, and it looked partially melted. She stared upward to see if there was more coming, but whoever had been up there left quickly, and once again there was only silence.

  In a lucid moment she discovered a cell phone. She remembered that she’d broken hers in the woods. But this one was intact and still working. How had it ended up next to her on this mattress? Was she dreaming? Had she slipped into that final slumber in which hope displaced reality and remained as the only possible form of awareness?

  No, Felicia could feel pain in her whole body, so she knew she wasn’t dreaming. Her fingers numb with cold, exhaustion, and blood loss, she tapped in the number she knew by heart. The display got smeared with blood. Someone had to pick up. Someone had to answer. If not, then it was all over. She knew that if she passed out again, she was finished. She would never wake up.

  11

  Sometime, no one knows exactly when …

  Look at the boy.

  Can you see him there in the dark? The dawn light shines through the floorboards, making a pale line on his face. His dark eyes blink rapidly, as if releasing his thoughts from imprisonment. Slowly he begins to move, sliding out of the sleeping bag that has kept him warm and given him his life back. Finally, he kicks it away. It lies there like a dark lump at the very back of the crawl space.

  Then he listens, lying very still. The boy has tasted death. It may have left some remnant inside of him, a shadowy feeling, a phantom in his mind, his stiff joints and aching muscles, in his heart, fumbling between beats. Maybe he’s no longer sure whether the world is real.

  Finally, he crawls over to the trapdoor in the wall, feetfirst, and tries to push it open. It’s latched from the outside, so he kicks and kicks until at last it gives way.

  Bright morning streams in from the room below.

  He slips out of his hiding place, hanging by his arms until he lets go and lands on the floor. Then he searches the cabin, moving quietly and cautiously. He finds some food, a few stale crackers, a can of pears that he opens with an ax.

  He eats them so fast the juice runs down his chin, slurping and swallowing, even licking up the pear juice that dripped onto the floor.

  His clothes are lying at the foot of the bunk in the bedroom. They’re still wet, but there are clothes in the wardrobe, cold garments intended for grownups, things that had been left hanging there, things that only had value out here in the forest. He puts on a jacket that is much too big and is covered with grease spots.

  Then he leaves the cabin.

  Look at the boy as he walks:

  The jacket like a coat that reaches below his knees. He doesn’t follow any of the footprints leading away from the cabin. He puts behind him the tracks left by the drama in which he’s been embroiled all night. The boy is making his own path through the snow, heading for the road. No one can possibly know what he’s thinking. He trudges onward, making his way toward something new.

  Page 10 of 48

  Melhus: February 21, in the morning. Twenty-four hours since you reported Felicia missing. The Trondheim police discovered that she had rented a car at Gardermoen Airport, close to midnight the previous day.

  Singsaker: As I understand it, this was the result of a combination of coincidence and good police work.

  Melhus: Excellent police work, considering it was a relatively low priority matter. Wouldn’t you agree?

  Singsaker: The information came to light in connection with what was then considered a far more serious matter.

  Melhus: The boy from the forest?

  Singsaker: As you know, early that morning a boy was found, cold and weak, near Highway 3 in Østerdalen. He said that he’d been taken into the forest at night and tied to a tree by a man who had apparently killed the boy’s father. It took a while for the police to make the connection with the disappearance and death in Oslo the day before. The interesting thing was that the boy said he’d been rescued by a woman, but he didn’t know where she went. He also said that the man who had tied him up was still at large. It was during the investigation of this case that a description of the car and a license plate number came in. A tow truck driver reported what he’d observed in the night. He’d become suspicious of an individual who acted strangely when he arrived to tow his car. He’d also seen blood on the sleeve of the man’s jacket. It turned out that the towed car was registered to a police officer. A narcotics detective from Oslo named Rolf Fagerhus. But the tow truck driver had also taken note of the model and license number of another car. A vehicle that Fagerhus claimed to have rented. This turned out to be false. The car was traced to the Hertz office at Gardermoen airport. It had been rented to Felicia around midnight the day before.

  Melhus: And all of this information, along with an APB on the car, was sent to the Trondheim police?

  Singsaker: That was the logical next thing to do, given these observations and considering the most likely route Fagerhus would take.

  Melhus: And at that point your wife’s disappearance was upgraded to something more than just the result of a domestic squabble.

  Singsaker: That’s right.

  Melhus: And it was then that word came from Hitra?

  Singsaker: Yes.

  Melhus: Where were you at that moment?

  Singsaker: I was at work … I mean, at the police station. Jensen had asked me to come in so he could tell me about the rental car and the possibility that Felicia might be caught up in something serious. He wanted to tell me face-to-face.

  Melhus: So you were with him when he found out. Who contacted him?

  Singsaker: Gro Brattberg. Head of the violent and sexual crimes team. The request for assistance was officially sent from the sheriff’s office on Hitra.

/>   Melhus: What specifically did the inquiry involve?

  Singsaker: First and foremost, interviewing and taking statements from the survivors out at sea. The crime techs were supposed to make inspecting the wreckage their highest priority. The site of the explosion on land was not yet considered safe enough for the police to examine. For a long time the explosion itself was thought to be an accident, since the owner of the cabin had reported that she had stored old dynamite on the premises and she wanted to turn it in to the authorities.

  Melhus: And the dynamite was still on the property?

  Singsaker: Apparently.

  Melhus: At any time did the police see a connection between the two events—the explosion and the accident at sea?

  Singsaker: No. As I said, the explosion was considered an accident.

  Melhus: What did you think about it?

  Singsaker: I didn’t give the matter much thought at first. My focus was on Felicia and the rental car that had been seen in Østerdalen. But with two such dramatic events happening in such a small area, the thought did cross my mind.

  Melhus: So Jensen was assigned to the case. Why did you go with him?

  Singsaker: He asked me to come with him. We hadn’t finished talking about the other matter, the one that Felicia was involved in. He wanted to discuss it on the drive there. Maybe he also thought it would help me to think about something else.

  Melhus: Think about something else? A bombed-out cabin? A boat sinking at sea? Didn’t he know you were still on sick leave?

  Singsaker: Yes, he did.

  Melhus: When did the two of you leave the station?

  Singsaker: Around three.

  Melhus: The vehicle was logged out at 3:15 P.M. Does that sound right?

  Singsaker: Sure.

  Melhus: According to the log book, that’s exactly one hour and five minutes after Gro Brattberg heard from Hitra for the first time.

  Singsaker: Okay.

  Melhus: What do you know about the information that was received during those first conversations between Hitra and Trondheim?