– What’s this about Midsummer’s Day? Roar asked.
Liss Bjerke appeared to think about it for a moment before replying: – She was going to get married.
Roar typed something. – Who to?
– Don’t tell me you don’t know who her partner is, said Liss Bjerke impatiently. – You’ve interviewed him at least three times. The irritation was back in her voice.
– Right, so that’s Viljam Vogt-Nielsen, nodded Roar.
– Mailin wasn’t the type to live with one person and make plans to marry someone else, Liss added, and Roar had to admit that she was right. He was already getting used to these sudden changes of mood in her. She was a bit temperamental, he thought; women who looked like that often were. He started asking her what she was doing in Amsterdam, but it quickly became apparent that she had no wish to talk about herself. At least not with him.
– Did you know Viljam Vogt-Nielsen previously? he asked instead.
She gave him a sceptical look, or maybe it was condescending, as though she was about to ridicule that question too, but she answered:
– I met him for the first time just after I came home. That’s more than two weeks ago.
Before he could say anything else, she said: – You want to know what I think of him, right? If I think he could have done this to Mailin.
– And do you think so?
– Even though he was at my parents’ when she went missing? Even though he and Mailin got on well together?
Her cheeks had grown slightly flushed. The way she defends her sister’s boyfriend, he thought. Check to make sure they never met before.
There was a knock on the door and Viken popped his head in. When he saw Liss Bjerke, he stepped inside. He was well dressed as usual: dark blue blazer and white shirt. He might have passed for some famous old crooner. He stood observing her for a few seconds.
– Viken, Detective Chief Inspector. He squeezed her hand. – My condolences, he added.
– Thank you, she said.
He carried on with a few well-chosen words, the kind of things a priest might have said, thought Roar, although Viken wasn’t subject to the same kind of censure as he had been. On the contrary, to judge by Liss Bjerke’s face, she accepted the detective chief inspector’s expressions of sympathy.
– It’s lucky you’re here, Viken went on. – I got a reply to this business of the mobile phone just a couple of minutes ago.
She looked up at him enquiringly. – Mailin’s mobile phone?
– Exactly. We’ve had an expert going over the videos. We’re very interested in trying to find out what she’s actually saying.
– It wasn’t very clear, said Liss Bjerke, suddenly keen. – And I couldn’t bring myself to play it again.
– I understand that. Viken had at once found the tone Roar had been struggling to find for almost half an hour. – And it’s not certain it would have helped you to hear it several times either. Our experts have played it over and over again, but they’re still not a hundred per cent sure.
He produced a piece of paper from his jacket pocket, unfolded it, spread it out. – It’s particularly important for us to hear what you think it is, since the video ends with Mailin calling out your name. But let me ask you one thing first. It is of crucial importance for the investigation that none of this gets out.
Liss Bjerke leaned forward, began twining a lock of hair around her index finger. – I’ll keep it to myself.
– Good. It sounds as if Mailin says four or five words. Sand, oar – maybe or – and then fare, end, she, before she calls out Liss. Did you get that?
Liss repeated: – Sand, oar, maybe or, fare, end, she, and then Liss.
– Exactly, said Viken. – Does that mean anything to you?
He sat on the edge of the table and waited, not putting any pressure on her.
After about half a minute she said: – Can I have a bit more time?
– Of course, Liss. Take all the time you need.
Roar worked away on the keyboard. He couldn’t remember having heard Viken address a witness by their first name before.
The detective chief inspector handed her a card. – I want you to ring me if you come up with anything. Whenever it might be, do you promise me that? Even if it’s the dead of night.
She looked at the card, sat there a while fingering it. – Have you found out any more about the guy who was in her office? she asked.
Viken’s bushy eyebrows curved together above his nose. – What do you mean?
– I rang you twice and told you about a guy sneaking round in Mailin’s office the first time I went there. He ripped a page out of her diary with her appointments for the day she disappeared.
Viken looked at Roar. This visitor had been mentioned in a memorandum from the crime response unit, but nothing about any appointments book. Roar wrinkled his brow to show that this was news to him too.
– I don’t think they completely understood what you were getting at, he said tactfully. – Tell me what you saw.
Liss Bjerke gave him an exasperated look, thinking perhaps it was his fault that they’d screwed up at the crime response unit. He pretended not to notice and began to transcribe her account, word for word.
– And the initials were J. H.? he said, double-checking. – And you saw this man at Central Station a few days later?
– And at a party, in a flat in Sinsen.
– What’s the name of the person who owns this flat?
Liss Bjerke’s fingers were now no longer twining one of the reddish locks of hair but a chain she had hanging around her neck.
– I can find that out.
– Who did you go to this party with? Viken wanted to know.
She gave the names of some girlfriends and a couple of professional footballers. Roar had the strong impression she was sifting through the information before she handed it on to them, and it gave him some idea of the sort of thing that had been going on in the Sinsen apartment.
– So you live in Amsterdam, Viken remarked once they had made a record of what Liss Bjerke had to tell them, or was prepared to tell them. – A lovely city.
She glanced over at him. – Does that have anything to do with the case?
Viken spread his hands wide. – Everything has to do with everything. What do you do over there?
She sat up straight in her chair, crossed one leg over the other. – Study design.
Viken said: – I’ve also heard it rumoured you’re a model.
Roar saw how her eyes widened.
– Is this part of the interview?
– Not exactly. But every witness has more to tell us than they themselves realise.
– What the fuck do you mean by that? She jumped to her feet. – I’m here so that you can find out what happened to my sister, what sort of sick bastard it was who tortured and killed her. What I do has no connection with the case at all.
For a few moments she stood there looking at a point somewhere between the two policemen. Then she turned on her heel, let herself out and was gone before they had a chance to say anything. On the floor beside the chair lay Viken’s card, squashed into a ball.
Viken was still there when Roar returned after a vain attempt to get the witness to come back and finish the interview. He was standing by the desk reading through what Roar had typed in.
– That’s one genuinely unstable young lady, Roar remarked. – The same thing happened when I asked her about Amsterdam. She clammed up completely.
Viken thought about it. – Don’t forget what she’s been through, he said forgivingly. – You’ll have to get her back in here so she can sign your witness statement. And we need her to help us find out about this guy sneaking around in the office.
Roar sat behind the desk and opened another memo. – One of her psychologist colleagues said that Mailin Bjerke might have been threatened by a patient. We need to find out if this has any connection with what her sister told us.
The detective chief inspecto
r was on his way out, turned in the doorway. – I almost forgot what it was I really came in here to tell you.
He pulled the door closed. – The Boss in his wisdom has decided to break off his Christmas holiday and honour us with his presence, he said with a phoney formality.
Viken enjoyed calling the section’s acting head Sigge Helgarsson ‘the Boss’. It was no secret that the relationship between them was a trifle strained.
– You remember I’m sure that Plåterud suggested there might be a connection with the Ylva Richter case over in Bergen.
Roar had certainly not forgotten that morning in the autopsy room. He confined himself to a nod.
– Well now the lady has got Professor Korn to get in touch with our own boss. The result of this delightful bit of meddling is that Helgarsson wants us to check out this Bergen business before we do anything else.
– All right then, Roar responded neutrally.
– Oh there’ll be some fun here all right when the whole show is run from the Riks Hospital. The Boss obviously thinks it’s quite in order, so he’s been here and said his bit and now he’s gone again, and that means we’ve got to spread ourselves even thinner. Which means a trip to Bergen for you, Roar, you lucky bastard.
Viken flicked away something or other that had landed on his lapel.
– Cow, he added testily, without making it clear who he was referring to.
14
LISS PUT THE notebook aside and looked around the café. The waiter misunderstood and was there in a flash, undressing her with his eyes. He still smelled bad.
– More coffee?
She’d been drinking coffee all day, but nodded, mostly to get rid of him. His trousers were tight fitting and his bum was small and muscular. She didn’t like men to have such narrow hips. Suddenly she recalled the policeman, the older one, the short one with the aquiline nose and the bushy eyebrows. For a moment there in the office she’d been on the point of revealing what had happened in Amsterdam.
She opened the notebook again. Could she manage to tell herself another story, one in which Zako and Rikke had become lovers? He’s moved from Bloemstraat and into her place on Marnixkaade.
Still not possible to write that story.
What happened to the ring, Mailin? she scribbled down.
Her grandmother on Mother’s side wrote books about women’s lives. She was famous and meant a lot to a lot of people. A pioneer, Ragnhild used to call her. When she died, Mailin was the one who inherited her wedding ring. A sign of the legacy to be carried forward.
Did he take it off you before he beat you to death?
Without her noticing, the waiter was there again, touched her shoulder as he put the coffee down.
– This one’s free. New Year’s present.
She was about to protest. Didn’t want to accept anything from this man, even if it was New Year’s Eve … There were already sounds out in the streets, the odd rocket shooting up in the dark grey afternoon light. She couldn’t bear the thought of being around people who were celebrating, toasting each other and shouting. She should be out of town, somewhere far away when the old year came to a close.
If you go any closer to grief it will swallow you up. Is that what you want? Never come out into the light again?
Didn’t know where that came from. Didn’t know why she was writing stuff down in this book at all. Had never been much interested in words, but now there they were.
Mailin’s book. Writing to you, Mailin. Only thing I can do now. What would you have done?
She flipped back to the page on which she had written the words the police had asked her about:
Sand, oar/or, fare, end, she.
Read them slowly, over and over again. Sand and oar had something to do with the cabin. One summer Mailin had found a rotting oar that drifted ashore on their beach. They had invented a story to go with it. A man rowing out there. The boat capsizes. He drowns but doesn’t die. Rows and rows with one oar on Morr Water by night. One day he’ll turn up on our beach. He’s come to fetch this oar. If he doesn’t find it, he’ll take us instead. They lay there telling each other this story in the evenings, listening out for the man in the boat.
Can you hear someone rowing out there, Mailin?
Mailin gets out of bed, crosses to the open window. The night is pale grey.
I hear it. He’s rowing in the night. He’s getting nearer.
Liss hides her head under the pillow. Mailin gets into her bed, puts her arms around her.
If he comes, he can take me. I’ll never let him lay a finger on you, Liss.
Fare, end, she. In the car, she continued to think about the words. Feren, she suddenly said out loud. The lake they often skied across. Instead of she, could Mailin have been saying ski? All the ski trips they had taken across the lakes. Feren was one of the biggest, halfway to Flateby. And back through the woods after dark. This whole swathe of forest was theirs. Has Mailin given me a message about a skiing trip we once made? Then it might have something to do with a specific winter holiday. Or an Easter holiday. Up until Mailin finished at secondary school and went to university, they’d spent most of their holidays out there, just the two of them. Mailin had boyfriends, but never took any of them there. Not until she met Pål Øvreby. The first who was allowed to visit the cabin. She’d been a student for six months. Liss didn’t like Pål. Straight away he acted as though he owned the place. Bossed them around: who was to fetch the water, who fetch the wood. Before, these things had just taken care of themselves. Liss liked to keep things moving, get up first and make sure there was water in the buckets and wood in the fireplace. Now there were objections, arguments. And Pål Øvreby tried to persuade them that he owned Mailin, too.
That winter holiday was Liss’s last year at middle school. There were only the three of them there. She went out to the shed one morning. Sat on the toilet. Hadn’t bothered to hook the door closed. Heard footsteps outside. It wasn’t Mailin. She dried herself and stood up to pull on her trousers. The door opened wide. Pål didn’t say sorry; just stood there, staring at her. She couldn’t get the tight trousers up. He didn’t retreat, he stepped inside. Stood right up close to her. Put his hand between her legs. You’re so fucking gorgeous. She was freezing cold and couldn’t move. She felt his finger inside her. Liss, he murmured, bending down to kiss her. His mouth smelled of tobacco and mouldy cheese, or was the smell coming from the toilet? That was what freed her feet; she whirled round and threw herself against the door.
Why had she never told her sister? If she found out what Pål was like, Mailin would be hurt. That it might hurt her even more if she carried on seeing him was something Liss couldn’t even bear to think about. Not long afterwards Mailin finished with him anyway, so there was no longer any need to tell her.
Someone’s been here. The thought struck her as she climbed over the hilltop and slid down towards the panel fence. Stood there a few moments thinking about it. The curtain, she decided. She had drawn the living-room curtain on this side wall too, always did that before leaving the cabin. Now it was open. She stalked around the corner, to the veranda, unhooked the key from under the gutter, let herself in. No sign of a break-in. Everything looked untouched. Apart from that curtain. Could she be wrong about that? Or had Tage been here? Viljam? Her mother? That was out of the question – her mother hadn’t left the house since Christmas Eve.
Liss inspected all the rooms, didn’t find anything out of the ordinary. Took another circuit of the cabin and out to the toilet. Poked her head into that smell of stale dung. Mostly the family’s dung, collected and broken down over the decades. The reek of something like chlorine when she raised the toilet seat. Dead flies in the window. Maybe some of them not quite dead. Lying there all through the winter waiting for it to be warm enough outside for them to return to life. If Mailin wasn’t dead either … if she were deep-frozen and could be thawed out. Slowly moving her lips, opening her eyes. They were destroyed. She would never be able to see with them. Who is
out there who doesn’t want Mailin to see any more?
She got up, tossed the lid back over the opening, suddenly furious, the same fury that had frozen her to the floor that time ten years ago. Now she swung the door open and howled up into the trees and at the hill behind the cabin.
It was almost dark when she took the water buckets and made her way down to the rock. The ice was probably safer now than when she was there before Christmas; the open channel as always followed the line of the current from the stream and on outwards, Morr Water’s black winter eye staring up at her. She bent forward, switched on the torch and shone it on to the gap. The light broke through the clear cold water and disappeared in the depths.
Sand and oar. She cleared her way to the boathouse door. The boat lay there, belly upwards. It needed tarring. She smelled it. Water and rot. Hanging up under the roof, fishing rods and the obsolete remains of the old wooden skis people once used, long before she was born. Both oars were up there. She lifted them down, turned them over, shone the torch beam along the length of them, studied every centimetre of the wood, every cut, every crack. Nothing different from the way she remembered it. Feren and ski.
She lay on the sofa. The smell of fir and winter dust. Silence. No sound but the sound of her thoughts. Mailin’s voice: Shall I wax your skis for you, Liss? Easter weekend, a couple of months after the winter holidays when Pål came out. Mother’s comment: She always waxes her own skis. But on this morning Liss was lying on the sofa. A few minutes earlier she’d been bent double behind the toilet shed, because no one must see her vomiting, no one must know she felt nauseous the whole time. Mailin was the only one she told. Not that Mother would have condemned her; she never condemned people. But she would have wanted to know how it had happened, why Liss hadn’t taken precautions, and who was responsible. Her skis were waxed and ready. Mailin stood waiting for her. She didn’t get up to the cabin much any more. Went up into the Nordmarka forest with student friends, or studied for her exams. Maybe it would be the last holiday they had there together, Liss had thought. She felt nauseous. Afraid. She feared this thing inside her body; it would grow, emerge, turn her into something else. And Mailin couldn’t be told either who she’d been with. She couldn’t understand why Liss wouldn’t say, but in the end gave up trying to find out.
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