Death By Water

by Damhaug, Torkil

  Jennifer emptied her beer glass. – My two boys have got middle names too. I actually wanted to name the elder after my father, but for once my husband put his foot down. No child should have to start at Sørum primary school with a handle like Trym Donald.

  – The wise person gives way, Roar grinned as he set the plates on the kitchen table. She still hadn’t been into his living room, and that was fine by her.

  – What does Viken think? she wanted to know once he’d lit candles and seated himself opposite her.

  – About you trying to take over the investigation?

  She snorted.

  – We should have picked up on the connection with the Ylva Richter case straight away, he conceded.

  She drank more beer and tried to hide how much the admission pleased her, how pleasantly numb she felt, how good it was to sit here and have him serving an evening meal to her.

  – Actually, I have a question for the pathologist.

  – Don’t worry about intruding on her free time, she encouraged him. – That’s the way it is in this business. Always on the job.

  – Could the damage done to Mailin Bjerke’s eyes have been inflicted with a corkscrew?

  He looked at her without the trace of a smile on his face, but still it took her a couple of seconds to realise he was being serious. And in that same moment she realised it was a clever idea.

  – We’ve considered different types of screws and implements, she said, thinking aloud. – With a screw it would be hard to generate enough force … A corkscrew is a distinct possibility. What gave you that idea?

  – Something that occurred to me when I was looking through the documents relating to the Ylva Richter case. One of a number of links … We’ve got to do absolutely everything we can to keep this whole association secret for the time being. Not just on account of the investigation, you can imagine the sort of hell that would break loose for her family if the connection leaked out.

  Jennifer had no difficulty with that.

  – I managed to persuade Liss that the printout she found has nothing to do with what happened to Mailin, she said. – I don’t think she’ll make the connection. And Ylva Richter’s name wasn’t actually mentioned in that particular article.

  – Let’s hope you’re right, said Roar. He wrinkled his brow. – We’ve sent pictures of some of those involved in the case over to Bergen, he revealed. – One of the officers we’re liaising with there has shown them to the parents.

  – But no joy, I gather from your expression. Do you have anything at all that might point the finger at the man she was living with?

  – Nothing so far. He’s never lived in Bergen, but of course he might have gone there on the odd occasion.

  – And still Viljam Vogt-Nielsen is number one on Viken’s list?

  Roar carried on chewing as he answered. – Viken is concerned that we don’t overlook the psychology behind the murder of Mailin Bjerke. This business of the eyes being lacerated is a message we have to try to interpret. And the sheer rage behind those blows to the head. It points to someone in a close personal relationship to his victim.

  He swallowed his food down with half a glass of beer. – And why was her mobile phone sent in the post?

  – Maybe someone out there wants to play some kind of game with you, Jennifer hazarded.

  Roar made a face that showed he was sceptical about her idea. – It can’t be ruled out, but we’re more inclined to think it shows a perverted sense of concern for his victim. He’s killed her, but he doesn’t want her to lie and rot there.

  The furrows in his brow deepened and suddenly looked like three seagulls in flight, one with a large wingspan, flanked by two smaller ones.

  – Whatever, we must keep concentrating on those closest to her. Her partner, of course, but also the stepfather. We’re trying to get in touch with the biological father, too. Apparently he hasn’t seen his family in over twenty years. He lives in Canada, but no one knows his whereabouts at the moment.

  Jennifer had no difficulty in recognising Viken’s thought processes in what Roar was saying. She’d heard the detective chief inspector talking often enough about signals and signatures and hidden messages in the way a crime had been committed. Her own view of psychological profiling was that it was an American fad. About as scientific as trying to follow a scent.

  – The sense of smell is a pretty useful tool, she observed. – Especially for dogs. When Roar looked at her quizzically she added: – It isn’t necessarily successful each time Mr Viken gets going on the human psyche.

  Roar piled more scrambled egg on to his bread. He didn’t answer.

  – And talking about psychology, she went on, – what about Mailin Bjerke’s patients? She presumably had a very close relationship to them as well. And you’ve hinted that one of them may have threatened her.

  Roar looked thoughtful. She guessed he was wondering whether he’d already told her too much. She had to smile at the thought of what Viken would have said if he knew that she was sitting in the kitchen of one of his trusted associates with nothing on but a man’s shirt. She remembered her panties were lying somewhere in the bedroom, or out in the hallway.

  – One of the other members of the team is trying to find out about Mailin Bjerke’s patients over the past few years, said Roar as he pushed his plate away. – Not easy, because only a few of them are registered with the social services. As regards those who were involved in her research, we may be able to get help from her supervisor, Tormod Dahlstrøm.

  – Was Dahlstrøm her supervisor? Jennifer was impressed. Even she had followed his television series on the psychological element involved in cultural conflicts.

  She chewed the remains of the cold meat, still ravenously hungry, she noticed. – What about this Jim Harris? Liss is convinced he saw something. Maybe he was the one who threatened Mailin that time so that she was afraid to carry on the treatment. He seems a distinctly dubious character.

  – We’re trying to get in touch with the guy, Roar told her. – Turns out it’s not that easy. We might have to put something out via the media.

  – It’s got to be worth that at least. Mailin had an appointment with him at around the time she disappeared.

  Roar shook his head. – We still can’t say for certain that she was anywhere near her office that day.

  – Even though the car was parked outside? You know roughly when she left the cabin, and you’ve got the time on the parking ticket.

  – She might have been in several other places. We don’t have either witness observations or an electronic trail.

  Jennifer thought it over.

  – What about the toll roads? she suggested. – Every vehicle that enters the city gets registered somewhere or other.

  Roar grunted. – We’ve checked, of course. Mailin Bjerke paid by phone. The car was photographed on its way through the toll, but the company deletes the pictures after a couple of days.

  Jennifer couldn’t resist it. – So in other words, you were a little bit slow on the uptake. She added, jokingly: – For once.

  The attempt to tease him seemed to have no effect, though the three seagulls on his forehead were almost gone now.

  – There are limits to what you can manage to cover in the first few days in a missing persons case, was all he would say. – And the car had been found a long time before.

  He gave her what was left of the scrambled egg.

  – Do I look that hungry? she wanted to know.

  – The evening is still young, it’s not even eleven yet. He laid his hand over hers. – And I want you to be able to keep going all the way into the early hours of the morning.

  With a sigh that was considerably less than a vociferous protest, she gave him to understand that she might be persuaded to spend the night in a bachelor apartment in Manglerud.

  22

  Tuesday 6 January

  WHEN THE KNOCK came on the office door, Jennifer jumped to her feet and opened it. The woman standing out in
the corridor was considerably taller than her. She might be in her fifties, the hair dark but the eyebrows not dyed, revealing that she had probably been a blonde.

  – Ragnhild Bjerke, the other woman responded once Jennifer had introduced herself. – A pleasure.

  The voice sounded stiff and flat, and the phrase hardly reflected what was going through the woman’s mind as she stood there. Jennifer held the door open for her, but she stayed where she was.

  – If you don’t mind, I would rather see her at once.

  Jennifer could well understand that Mailin Bjerke’s mother didn’t want to postpone what she had made up her mind to go through with. On the way down the corridor she said:

  – It isn’t unusual for relatives to be unsure whether or not they want to see the body.

  She glanced over at her visitor. Ragnhild Bjerke’s face was as stiff as her voice and showed no expression.

  – I wasn’t able to think about it before, she said. – Haven’t been able to think at all, actually. Tage, my husband, suggested that he and Liss go that morning, Christmas morning. I didn’t understand the significance of it. But now I must see her.

  – Most people feel glad afterwards, Jennifer agreed.

  The mortuary assistant was waiting by the chapel. His name was Leif, and Jennifer had asked him to handle the preparation of the body. He’d worked at the institute for twenty-five years and knew all the tricks of the trade when it came to making a body look as good as possible. After admitting them and folding back the sheet that covered the bier, he withdrew soundlessly. Hesitantly Ragnhild Bjerke approached. For almost ten minutes she stood looking down at her dead daughter, who lay there with hands folded across her chest and her ruined eyes shut. Then Jennifer broke the silence, moving a couple of steps closer. The click of the high heels on the floor startled Ragnhild Bjerke, as though bringing her out of a trance. She turned and wandered back out of the door again.

  They sat at the small round table in Jennifer’s office. Not a word had been said on the way back from the chapel. The visitor’s face was as expressionless as when she had arrived.

  – The ring, she murmured at last.

  Jennifer recalled that Liss had noticed the same thing, the gold ring Mailin always wore. – It wasn’t there when we found her, she confirmed.

  – Someone’s taken the ring, Ragnhild Bjerke said quietly, as though she were talking to herself.

  Jennifer thought it curious that this was what Mailin’s mother had noticed especially. – It must have been very special, she said.

  It took a few moments for her visitor to respond.

  – She never took it off. Mailin was named after my mother. When she was eighteen, she inherited her wedding ring.

  – Then there must have been an inscription on it.

  Ragnhild Bjerke nodded almost imperceptibly. – Your Aage, and the date of the wedding. No one could have done a thing like this just for a ring.

  Jennifer didn’t reply.

  – I thought something would happen, Ragnhild Bjerke went on. The voice was still a monotone, hollow. – I thought I would realise that she’s gone. Her gaze was stiff too, but beneath lurked something that might have been panic. – I don’t understand. I feel nothing.

  Jennifer could have told her a lot about that. Told her of the conversations she had had with the bereaved down through the years. Now and then she had thought of herself as the ferryman who carried the dead person’s relatives over the river, and then rowed them back again. She could have told her how common it was to be overwhelmed by feelings it was impossible to control. That it was normal, too, for a person to cocoon themselves and feel nothing but emptiness. But standing there she couldn’t bring herself to say any of this. Something she hadn’t felt the faintest breath of for a long time now surged through her, the strong desire for a daughter. A recognition of the fact that she would never have one was like the palest echo of the grief that hovered around the dead woman’s mother.

  – Liss trusts you, said Ragnhild Bjerke.

  Jennifer felt that inevitable flush tinge her cheeks. – She’s a fine girl.

  Ragnhild Bjerke looked out across the car park. – She’s withdrawn so far from me. In a way, I lost her first. Many years ago.

  – Surely it’s not too late to change things.

  Without moving her gaze, Ragnhild Bjerke shook her head. – I’ve tried everything. She’s never really felt any connection to me. Always been a daddy’s girl.

  – But she hasn’t seen her father for years?

  – Not since she was six. Ragnhild Bjerke swallowed a couple of times. – She blames me for his leaving. She thinks I was the one who drove him away.

  – Isn’t this something you could talk to her about now, now that she’s grown up?

  Jennifer could guess how like the mother the eldest daughter had been. Liss, on the other hand, she could find no trace of in Ragnhild Bjerke’s face or body.

  – Maybe it was wrong of me not to tell her the truth. Mailin was told, after all, but Liss … She’s always been so fragile. I was probably afraid it would break her.

  Jennifer struggled to divorce her own curiosity from her visitor’s need to tell the story. – Did something happen between you and your husband? she asked cautiously.

  – Happen? Something was happening all the time. He was a painter. All that mattered to him was success … That’s a little unfair. He cared about the girls, in his way. Liss especially. As long as they didn’t get in the way of his work. He had a studio in town, but often used a room down in the basement when he was at home. That was okay, because in those days there was a lot of travelling involved in my job.

  Jennifer knew that Ragnhild Bjerke worked for one of the big publishing houses.

  – I was away a lot promoting books, especially in the autumn. Often spent nights away.

  – Why did he leave you?

  Jennifer heard that her question was too private and was about to apologise when Ragnhild Bjerke said:

  – He had a very high opinion of his own talent. Was convinced he was a great artist and that nothing must stand in his way. It meant he could allow himself to live any way he liked.

  Jennifer didn’t find the answer particularly illuminating but didn’t pursue it.

  – For years after he left, he wandered around without settling down anywhere. Suddenly we heard he had a big exhibition in Amsterdam. There were things about him on TV and in the newspapers. Everybody was talking about how this was the big breakthrough. Then it all went quiet again, and nothing came of it. It never did with him. Now he’s in Montreal. He met a young woman who lives there. But he’s been away travelling for several months. They can’t get in touch with him. He still doesn’t know that Mailin is …

  Jennifer tried to imagine what it would be like to move so far away from one’s children.

  – Canada is quite a long way away, she said, encouraging her visitor to say more.

  Ragnhild Bjerke continued to stare at a point far beyond the window. – That’s not the reason he hasn’t seen the girls for so many years. He didn’t even get in touch when he was living in Copenhagen. He chose to live without them. But I think also there was a kind of compulsion involved.

  She took out a handkerchief, held it to her nose as though about to sneeze, but took it away again without anything happening.

  – He was a tormented man. Not when we first met, not when the children were very small. It started after a few years. Of course I knew his mother had a serious mental illness, and I got worried about him. Tried to get him to see a doctor, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He began staying up all night. Wandering restlessly about the house. Or standing talking to himself by the window.

  – Hallucinations?

  – I don’t think so. It was as though he was sleeping with his eyes open. Afterwards he couldn’t remember me talking to him.

  She took a little tube of lip salve from her handbag and ran it across her dry lips.

  – And he had the most
dreadful nightmares. Once I found him in Mailin’s bedroom, standing by her bed and screaming. Finally I managed to get through to him. He was shaking, completely beside himself. ‘I didn’t kill them,’ he was shouting. I got him out of there before he woke her up. ‘You haven’t killed anyone, Lasse,’ I kept telling him. ‘I dreamed it,’ he sobbed, ‘and I can’t wake up.’ ‘What did you dream?’ ‘The girls,’ he murmured, ‘I dreamed I cut them up and ate their little bodies.’

  She closed her eyes. Jennifer couldn’t think of anything to say. The conversation had taken a direction she had no idea how to deal with. Roar had mentioned several times that the police were trying to get in touch with this father. What she was hearing now, in all confidence, was something that would interest the investigators. She ought to have interrupted and asked for permission to pass this information on.

  – I called his doctor the next day, Ragnhild Bjerke continued before Jennifer could make up her mind. – But Lasse refused to go and see him. A couple of weeks later he moved out. He didn’t say goodbye. Not to me. Not to Mailin. But Liss had some idea that he had been there and spoken to her.

  She closed her handbag, sat with it on her lap.

  – Can you understand why I never told this to Liss? She worshipped her father. Can you understand why it was better for her to blame me for his disappearance and to make me an object of hatred?

  Jennifer didn’t know how to respond to that.

  – You said you were away a lot, she said instead. – Are you afraid he might have …

  Ragnhild Bjerke opened her eyes wide. – He can’t have done … I mean, it was just a nightmare. She shook her head for a long time, slowly. – I would have known. Mailin never hinted at anything of the kind … She tells me everything … always did …

  Jennifer suddenly felt helpless and regretted having let things go so far. – Can I offer you something to drink? Coffee?

  – A glass of water, perhaps.

  With the glass on the table in front of her, Ragnhild Bjerke said: – I know why Liss came here. It’s good to talk to you.