“When you say ‘wrong’ you don’t mean in a legal sense, do you, Singsaker?” said Gregersen, who had been sitting in silence for a long time, just listening.
“Of course not. And besides, the police don’t have the professional training to fully evaluate the psychological state of a witness. At that point Stang was a witness and nothing else. From a legal standpoint, and maybe even a moral one, there was nothing wrong with leaving him there.”
“What did the two of you do after that?”
“We went to have a cup of coffee in the waiting room. Jensen filled me in on the Rosenborg Park case. I hadn’t known much about it before listening to him question Stang. Then we discussed the interview we were going to do with the next witness.”
“The man in the motorboat? Who was in the other room in the clinic?”
“That’s right. But we never got that far. While we were sitting there, a nurse came running to find us. She said she’d heard a crash in Stang’s room, and when she went in to see to him, she found him lying there with his wrists slashed. Jensen and I jumped up and ran to his room. And there we found him, just like the nurse had said. Blood was still gushing out over the sheet on the bed. He had knocked a pitcher of water off the nightstand, and it fell to the floor, presumably at the moment of death. That was the noise the nurse had heard. And the worst part was…” Singsaker took a cough drop out of the package he’d bought at the railway station a short time earlier.
“The worst part was?”
“The worst part was that he was smiling as he lay there. Of course, that was just a result of the death throes. But he was grinning from ear to ear. He almost looked happy.”
“Death is often very strange,” said Melhus. “Sometimes it reveals the truth about a person.”
“At any rate, the nurse had tried to revive him, but it was too late, and he’d already lost too much blood. When the doctor arrived, there was nothing for him to do but call the time of death. I’ll never forget what the doctor did. First he reached out and closed Stang’s eyes. Then he pressed the palm of each hand on the boy’s cheeks and pulled his lips down. Then he wasn’t smiling anymore.”
Singsaker thought back to that scene. Afterward it almost seemed as if what the doctor did had finally killed the young man.
“We found a note on his chest. It said:
“It was Gjessing’s plan all along. He wanted this to happen. He even reported me to the police before we left on the fishing trip, so I would be arrested for his murder when I got back.”
“Do you consider that a confession of murder, Singsaker?” asked Melhus.
“Hard to say. Maybe he was just feeling guilty. Gjessing is a thousand feet down in the sea. We may never know for sure. But I think Stang was right about Gjessing playing a deadly game with him.”
“What happened after you and Jensen found the note?”
“We searched the room. Under the bed we found a scalpel. The doctor acknowledged that it must have been taken from his office. He’d stepped out for a short time to have a smoke while all of this was going on. I put the scalpel in an evidence bag, labeled it, and then put it in my pocket.”
“Why didn’t Jensen do that? He was the one on duty.”
“I don’t remember. I suppose we were just following old habits.”
“Then what happened?”
“We went back to the waiting room. Jensen and I. Drank our coffee in silence, as far as I recall. You’ve been a policeman for a long time yourself, Melhus. You know how something like that affects you. It’s your job, but still. You’ve been there before. It doesn’t feel good. You feel like it’s your fault.”
“And you weren’t even on duty,” said Melhus with no trace of sarcasm in his voice.
Singsaker nodded. How often was Melhus going to repeat that fact?
“Was it a long time before you and Jensen got moving again?”
“No, not long. In fact, no more than fifteen minutes before the same nurse came back to tell us something else. This time she said that the second witness, the man in the other clinic room, was gone. She’d actually seen him jump out the window, run over to the doctor’s car that was parked outside, and take off in it.”
“So this is when things really took a dramatic turn, am I right?”
“Yes, I suppose that’s an accurate description.” Singsaker sighed.
“The fifth element. Things start to happen that neither of you could have foreseen, things that result from an inexplicable connection between events, things that you can’t control.”
“Up until then we didn’t know much about the man in the other clinic room. The doctor was able to tell us that his injuries were not consistent with a boating accident, but otherwise there was little to indicate that he was behind any of the other events that had occurred before then.”
“But that would eventually become clear.”
“Yes. Very clear.”
“I think this would be a good place to take a break,” said Melhus, looking from Singsaker to Gregersen. “Why don’t we meet again in half an hour? At one thirty?”
Singsaker nodded with relief.
PART IV
YELLOW BILE
Most types of fever arise because of yellow bile.
—Hippocrates
17
Three weeks before it happened …
They lay on the floor around a low table, half-asleep, like neglected farm animals, stinking of urine and vomit, wearing down jackets because of the ice-cold air indoors. There were food stains and blood on their clothes, dark blotches with colors of the life they lived.
Beer bottles covered the table along with cigarette butts and syringes.
A child was crying in a crib in the corner. The toddler’s head had gotten stuck in the gap left when one of the bars had broken.
He stepped over the people scattered over the floor. They didn’t notice him at all. Then he went over to help the child get free. He picked up the toddler, who stopped crying but refused to look at him. The child’s eyes flickered from lack of mother’s milk and heroin. Impossible to tell whether it was a boy or girl. The child stank. A brown streak ran down the inside of the nightie all the way to the footies. He carried the child out of the room. At the bottom of the stairwell he found a baby buggy and inside was a pacifier, which he stuck in the toddler’s mouth before heading back to the apartment. The child sat quietly in the buggy, staring after him, like a tiny sprout someone had stepped on.
“Which of you zombies goes by the name of Tjoms?” he said in the voice he’d developed during his time as a sergeant in Poland.
One of the people on the floor roused himself enough to sit up halfway. Didn’t look at him, but reached for a joint on the table. His hands were shaking as he tried to flick the lighter, but it wasn’t working.
He leaned down over the guy, sticking a baseball bat under his chin. Then he got out his own lighter and lit the joint for the poor schmuck, who took a toke. They were garbage, these people. Nothing but garbage, but he felt sorry for them. Occasionally, that is, when he allowed himself to think about it. He could have been one of them. It took so little. He’d once held a syringe in his hand too, when he was staying with his uncle in Gdańsk. But he’d made a different choice.
The guy with the joint showed a glimmer of light in his eyes after the first toke.
“Are you Tjoms?”
“Tjoms?”
He seemed to be thinking about it. The guy was only a kid, not even twenty. And that didn’t fit the description he’d been given.
“Shit, no. Is Tjoms even here? Oh yeah. He’s over there.”
The kid pointed at a guy with long, greasy hair who was lying under two gray woolen blankets. He was the only one who seemed to be sleeping with his eyes closed. Next to him lay a woman with blond curls. She was awake but didn’t say a word, just stared up at him with a surprised expression, as if she thought she had dreamed him.
“Over there? That’s Tjoms?”
The ki
d nodded. Took another toke on his joint.
“Are you sure?”
Again he nodded.
“Shit, why wouldn’t I be sure?”
He straightened up, switched the bat to his right hand, and went over to Tjoms.
“Please move over,” he said to the blonde.
She merely stared at him.
“Didn’t you hear me?”
He leaned down and grabbed her arm, squeezing it hard. He was starting to get tired of these people. He hated these sorts of assignments. And the pay was lousy.
The woman moved away. He took up position over Tjoms, his legs astride. Then he began poking him in the stomach with the bat.
Slowly the man woke up and threw off the woolen blankets.
“Tjoms?”
“What do you want?”
“What do you think I want?”
“Is this about the money?”
“I don’t know. What do you think, Mr. Louisville Slugger?” he asked, speaking to his baseball bat. “Could it be about the money?”
He raised it up and struck. First in the man’s stomach a couple of times. Not hard. But enough to knock some air out of the guy. Then he moved down his body, increasing the force of each blow. The first one that really hurt struck him in the hip. Then he started pounding on the man’s knees, trying to crush them.
“I’m so fucking sick of people like you!” he bellowed, the way a sergeant yells at recruits on the first day of boot camp. It was the voice used to weed out the weaklings.
“I hate you! You’re all scum! Nothing but shit! Human waste!” He raised the bat and walloped the guy one last time. In the jaw. He heard it snap.
Tjoms spat out blood and teeth.
Then he took out a handkerchief from his jacket, wiped the blood off the bat with it, and put it back in his pocket. He stood there staring down at the poor wreck wriggling on the floor like a worm.
“Tomorrow. Karlstad wants the money tomorrow. So get the money.”
Not a sound in the room as he left. But they were all awake now.
The toddler was howling as he came out into the hall. The pacifier had fallen on the floor under the buggy. He wiped it off with a clean handkerchief—luckily he had more—and gave it back to the child. Then he rocked the buggy for a few minutes until the child had calmed down. After that he left the building.
Near Lademoen Park he found a public telephone. There weren’t many left, but for someone like him it was sometimes necessary to make an anonymous call. He dropped in a few coins and phoned child protective services to tell them about the little tyke in the stairwell of the apartment building. When they asked for his name, he said Jonas Berg. That was a lie.
In reality, his name was Jerzy Malek, and he worked as a blaster in a mine. An important job that required security clearance from the police.
People called him Sving.
His cell rang just as he was stepping out of the phone booth. It was Karlstad.
“Did you deliver the message?”
“Loud and clear.”
“Good. Are you coming in soon? There’s a woman here who wants to meet you.”
“A woman?”
“Does that surprise you?”
“Not really. But I don’t usually meet girls that way.”
“She’s an old acquaintance of mine. I told her a little about you. She said she’d like to meet you.”
“Really?”
“I guess she likes bad boys.”
18
Six weeks before it happened …
“When are we going to see Pappa again?”
The mother looked up from the book she was reading. Love Can Be Murder by Raymond Chandler. It wasn’t his best. She gave her daughter a somber look.
“Soon,” she lied. “We’ll see him again soon.”
“Pappa was going to take me to the park tomorrow.”
“I don’t think that’s going to happen. Some other time.”
“Are we almost there?”
“We’ll be in Hamar soon. So about four more hours after that.”
The girl didn’t know how long four hours was. Only that it was a really long time.
“Will Aunt Liss be waiting for us?”
“Yes. She’s going to meet us at the station. Then we’ll drive straight to her house.”
“I’ll be happy to see her.”
“Me too.”
She sat there looking at her daughter. I’m doing this for her, she thought. He’s pretty much knocked the life out of me. But there’s still hope for her. I’m doing this for her. He’s never going to be allowed to see her again.
Then she picked up her book and went back to reading. It was hours ago that they’d left the apartment in Homansbyen. He was at work. She hadn’t told anyone where she was going. The plan was for him to find her in the end, but not until everything was ready. Not until she’d made all the arrangements up there. She had decided who she would talk to. There was really only one person who could help her with this.
19
Three weeks before it happened …
Karlstad was leaning against a pile of tires, smoking a cigarillo as he talked with a guy at the repair shop, presumably about one of the cars. Some mechanical problem. Karlstad was genuinely interested in car repairs. He spent more time in the shop than anywhere else. Sometimes it felt like drugs were just a sideline for him. That might be how he made the big money, but it wasn’t where his heart was. And half the time his mind wasn’t there either. Dealers, rip-off artists, snitches, ass-kissers, wasters, and cops. Sving knew there were days when Karlstad didn’t even want to think about the problems inherent in this business of his. Maybe that was why he’d been so successful. In a business like this it was important never to put in more or less than was required. People who strove too much, people who put their whole soul into it, they either got caught or croaked. Karlstad didn’t like having to use excessive force either. But he was a pragmatist and knew that sometimes it was necessary. He mostly left that to Sving. It was the time he spent under the hood of a car that he lived for. And Sving liked that about him.
Right now Karlstad was grinning as he talked. His smile got even bigger when Sving came into view behind the old van.
“Sving, you’re looking good!”
They shook hands. Then Karlstad turned to the young guy he’d been talking to, a promising mechanic, one of the ones he was careful to keep out of all the shit, and always would. The young mechanics were off limits. They were meant to become decent citizens.
“Call the customer and tell him we can put in the springs we’ve got here. They’ll work like a charm. If he wants original springs, he’ll have to wait a week or two. Right now I’ve got to talk to Sving.”
The mechanic nodded and headed for the reception area, a glassed-in corner next to the doors, to speak to the customer.
Karlstad and Sving went into the office at the back of the shop. It was looking less spartan than the last time Sving had been here. Karlstad had bought new chairs at IKEA, three of them in dark brown leather, much too stylish and modern for the old office with its veneer-topped table, the ugly mahogany desk in the corner, the Penthouse calendar on the wall, and the plastic coffee cups.
A woman was sitting in one of the chairs. She didn’t look like she was very comfortable. She was thin, bordering on gaunt, and even though she had her feet tucked up, Sving could tell that she was tall. He also realized at once that she was not one of Karlstad’s customers. Her gaze was sharp, almost intense; her hair was long and thick. Her clothes were neat and clean; in fact, they looked quite expensive. She wore no makeup. A plus in Sving’s opinion. A little girl was playing with her dolls as she sat on the floor near the woman. She was whispering to herself as she played.
“This is Ane. Ane Fagerhus,” said Karlstad. The woman in the chair unfolded her legs and put her feet on the floor, but she didn’t get up. Merely held out her hand. Sving looked her in the eye as they shook hands.
“Nice to
meet you.”
“Let’s hope so,” she said.
Karlstad pointed at the girl on the floor.
“This little sweetheart is Tina.”
The girl looked up when she heard her name.
Sving leaned down.
“Tina. That’s a great name. How old are you?”
“Five,” she told him.
“A big girl. Almost old enough to go to school,” said Sving.
The girl nodded. Then she went back to playing with her dolls.
Sving looked at the mother, who was now sitting up straight. Her expression had changed. He saw an inquiring look in her eyes. It suited her.
“Ane may have a business deal for us.”
“It that what you call it, Geir?” Ane laughed.
She must know Karlstad well. Nobody called him by his first name. In fact, Sving didn’t think he’d ever heard anyone do that before.
“We’ve talked it over, Ane. If we’re going to do this, it’s a business transaction. Nothing more. It’s for your sake that we treat it this way. You and I are friends, but when we do business together, we have to put our feelings aside. Isn’t that right, Sving?”
Sving nodded solemnly.
“Did I mention that Ane and I go way back? We’ve known each other since sixth grade. In the eighties. Bell-bottoms and Sesame Street. Prince Light.”
“What’s wrong with Prince Light cigarettes? I still smoke them.”
The Fifth Element Page 18