by Jo Nesbo
10
Sorgenfrigata
Voices came and went around him.
'I'm Inspector Waaler. Can anyone give me a quick recap?'
'We got here three quarters of an hour ago. The electrician here found her.'
'When?'
'At five. He immediately rang the police. His name is . . . let me see . . . Rene Jensen. I've got his National Insurance number here and his address too.'
'Good. Ring in and check his record.'
'OK.'
'Rene Jensen?'
'That's me.'
'Can you come over here? My name's Waaler. How did you get in?'
'As I said to the other officer, with this spare key. She popped it down to my shop on Tuesday because she wasn't going to be at home when I came.'
'Because she was working?'
'No idea. Don't think she had a job. Well, not the normal kind. She said she was putting on an exhibition of some stuff.'
'She was an artist then. Anyone here heard of her?' Silence.
'What were you doing in the bedroom, Jensen?' 'Looking for the bathroom.' Another voice: 'The bathroom's behind that door.' 'OK. Anything suspicious strike you when you came into the flat, Jensen?'
'Er . . . how do you mean suspicious??
'Was the door locked? Any windows left open? A particular smell or sound? Anything.'
'The door was locked. Didn't see windows open, but I wasn't looking. The only smell was that solvent . . .'
'Turpentine?'
Another voice: 'There are some painting materials in one of the bigger rooms.'
'Thanks. Anything else you noticed, Jensen?' 'What was the last one again?'
'Sound.'
'Sound, yeah! No, not a lot of sound, quiet as the grave it was. That is . . . ha ha . . . I didn't mean . . .'
'That's fine, Jensen. Had you met the deceased before?'
'Never seen her before she came to the shop. Seemed pretty perky then.'
'What did she want you to do?'
'Fix the thermostat for the underfloor heating in the bathroom.'
'Could you do us a favour and check if there's really a problem with the cables? See if she had any heater cables even.'
'What for? Oh, I see, she might have set the whole thing up and we were kind of supposed to find her?'
'Something like that.'
'Yeah, well, the thermostat was fried.'
'Fried?'
'Not functional.' 'How do you know?'
Pause.
'You must have been told not to touch anything, Jensen, weren't you?'
'Ye-es, but you took such a bloody long time to come, and I got a bit twitchy, so I had to find something to do.'
'So, now, the deceased has a fully functional thermostat?' 'Er . . . ha ha . . . yes.'
Harry tried to move off the bed, but his feet wouldn't obey. The doctor had closed Anna's eyes and now she seemed to be sleeping. Tom Waaler had sent the electrician home and told him to make himself available for the next few days. He had also dismissed the uniformed patrolmen who had responded to the call. Harry would never have believed he would feel this way, but in fact he was pleased that Waaler had been there. Without his experienced colleague's presence, not one single intelligent question would have been asked, and even fewer intelligent decisions taken.
Waaler asked the doctor if he could give them some provisional conclusions.
'The bullet has obviously passed through the skull, destroyed the brain and thus arrested all vital bodily functions. On the assumption that the room temperature has been constant, body temperature suggests that she has been dead for at least sixteen hours. No signs of violence. No injection marks or external indications of medicinal use. However . . .' The doctor paused for effect. 'The scars on the wrists suggest that she has tried this before. A purely speculative but educated guess is that she was manic depressive, or simply depressive, and suicidal. I wouldn't mind betting we will find a psychologist's case file on her.'
Harry tried to say something, but his tongue wouldn't obey, either.
'I'll know more when I've undertaken a closer examination.' 'Thank you, Doctor. Anything to tell us, Weber?'
'The weapon is a Beretta M92F, a highly unusual gun. We can only find one set of fingerprints on the gunstock, and they are obviously hers. The bullet was lodged in one of the bed boards and the ammo matches the weapon, so the ballistics report will show it was fired by this pistol. You'll get a full report tomorrow.'
'Good, Weber. One more thing. The door was locked when the electrician arrived. I noticed the door was fitted with a standard lock and not a latch, so no one can have been here and then left the flat, unless they took the deceased's key and locked the door after them, of course. In other words, if we find her key, we can wrap this one
up.'
Weber nodded and lifted a yellow pencil, dangling from which was a ring and a key. 'It was on the chest of drawers in the hall. It's the kind of system key that opens the main door to the block and all the rooms for common use. I checked and it fits the lock on the flat door.'
'Excellent. All we're missing then is basically a signed suicide letter. Any objections to calling this one an open and shut case?'
Waaler looked at Weber, the doctor and Harry. 'OK. Family can be given the sad news and come to identify her.'
He went into the hall while Harry stood by the bed. Soon after, Waaler stuck his head in again.
'Isn't it great when all the cards just fall into place, Hole?'
Harry's brain sent a message to the head to nod, but he had no idea if it obeyed.
11
The Illusion
I'm watching the first video. When I take it frame by frame I can see the spurt of flame. Particles of powder which as yet have not been converted into pure energy, like a glowing swarm of asteroids following the large comet into the atmosphere to burn up while the comet continues serenely on its course. And there is nothing anyone can do because this is the course that was predestined millions of years ago, before mankind, before emotions, before hatred and mercy were born. The bullet enters the head, truncates mental activity and revokes dreams. In the core of the cranium the last thought, a neural impulse from the pain centre, is shattered. It is a last contradictory SOS to itself before everything is silenced. I click onto the second video title. I stare out of the window while the computer grinds away scouring the Internet night. There are stars in the sky and I think that each of them is proof of the ineluctability of fate. They make no sense; they are elevated above the human need for logic and context. And that is why, I think, they are so beautiful.
Then the second video is ready. I click on play. Play a play. It is like a travelling theatre which stages the same performance, but in a different place. The same dialogues and actions, the same costumes, the
same scenery. Only the extras have changed. And the final scene. There was no tragedy this evening.
I am pleased with myself. I have found the nucleus of the character I play - the cold professional adversary who knows exactly what he wants and kills if he has to. No one tries to drag out the time; no one dares after Bogstadveien. And that is why I am God for the two minutes, the one hundred and twenty seconds I have allowed myself. The illusion works. The thick clothes under the boiler suit, the double insoles, the coloured contact lenses and the rehearsed movements.
I log off and the room goes dark. All that reaches me from outside is the distant rumble of the town. I met the Prince today. An odd person. He gives me the ambivalent feeling of being a Pluvianus aegyptius, the little bird which lives by cleaning the crocodile's mouth. He told me everything was under control, that the Robberies Unit had not found any clues. He got his share and I got the Jew-gun he had promised me.
Perhaps I ought to be happy, but nothing can ever make me whole again.
Afterwards I rang Police HQ from a public telephone box, but they didn't want to divulge anything unless I said I was family. They told me it was suicide; that Anna had shot
herself. The case was closed. I only just managed to put the receiver down before I started laughing.
Part II
12
Freitod
'Albert Camus said that freitod, suicide, was the one truly serious problem philosophy had,' said Aune, sticking his nose up towards the grey sky above Bogstadveien. 'Because the decision about whether life was worth living or not was the answer to philosophy's fundamental question. Everything else - whether or not the world had three dimensions or the mind nine or twelve categories - comes later.' 'Mm,' Harry said.
'Many of my colleagues have undertaken research into why people commit suicide. Do you know what they found the most common cause was?'
'That was the sort of thing I was hoping you could answer.' Harry had to slalom between people on the narrow pavement to keep up with the tubby psychologist.
'That they didn't want to live any longer,' Aune said.
'Sounds like someone deserves a Nobel Prize.' Harry had rung Aune the evening before and arranged to pick him up at his office in Sporveisgata at nine. They passed the branch of Nordea Bank and Harry noticed that the green skip was still outside the 7-Eleven on the other side of the street.
'We often forget that the decision to commit suicide tends to be taken by rationally thinking, sane people who no longer consider that life has anything to offer,' Aune said. 'Old people who have lost their life's companion or whose health is failing, for example.'
'This woman was young and energetic. What rational grounds could she have had?'
'First of all, you have to define the meaning of rational. When someone who is depressed opts to escape from pain by taking their own life, you have to assume the distressed party has weighed up both sides. On the other hand, it is difficult to see suicide as rational in the typical scenario where the sufferer is on their way out of the trough, and only then finds the energy to perform the active deed which suicide is.'
'Can suicide be a completely spontaneous act?'
'Of course it can. It is more usual, however, for there to be attempts first, especially among women. In the USA there are calculated to be ten pseudo-suicide attempts among women for every one suicide.'
'Pseudo?'
'Taking five sleeping tablets is a cry for help, serious enough it's true, but I don't include it as a suicide attempt when a half-full bottle of pills is still on the bedside table.'
'This one shot herself.'
'A masculine suicide then.'
'Masculine?'
'One of the reasons men are more successful is that they choose more aggressive, lethal methods than women. Guns and tall buildings, instead of cutting their wrists or taking an overdose. It is very unusual for a woman to shoot herself.'
'Suspiciously unusual?'
Aune regarded Harry closely. 'Have you any reason to believe this wasn't suicide?'
Harry shook his head. 'I just want to be quite sure. We have to turn right here. Her flat is a little way up the street.'
'Sorgenfrigata?' Aune chuckled and squinted up at the ominous clouds moving across the sky. 'Naturally.' 'Naturally?'
'Sorgenfri was the name of the palace belonging to Christophe, the Haitian king who committed suicide when he was taken prisoner by the French, or as they called it Sans Souci. So, carefree. Carefree Street. Sorgenfrigata. He pointed the cannons at the heavens to avenge himself on God, you know.'
'Well . .
'And I suppose you know what the writer, Ola Bauer, said about this street? I moved to Sorgenfrigata, but that didn't help much, either' Aune was laughing so much his double chin was wobbling.
Halvorsen stood outside the door waiting. 'I met Bjarne Moller as I was leaving the station,' he said. 'He was under the impression this case was done and dusted.'
'We just need to tie up a few loose ends,' Harry said, unlocking the door with the key the electrician had given him.
The police tape in front of the door had been removed and the body taken away; otherwise nothing had been touched since the evening before. They went into the bedroom. The white sheet on the large bed shone in the half-light.
'What are we looking for then?' Halvorsen asked as Harry drew the curtains.
'A spare key for the flat,' Harry answered.
'Why's that?'
'We presumed she had a spare key, the one she gave to the electrician. I've been doing a bit of checking. System keys can't be cut at any locksmith; they have to be ordered from the manufacturer via an authorised locksmith. Since the key fits the main door and the cellar door, the housing committee with responsibility for the block of flats wants control of them. Therefore flat residents have to apply for written permission from the committee when they order new keys, don't they. According to an agreement with the committee, it is the authorised locksmith's duty to keep a list of the keys issued to every single flat. I rang Lasesmeden, the locksmith in Vibes gate, last night. Anna Bethsen was issued two spare keys, thus making three in all. We found one in the flat and the electrician had one. But where is the third? Until it has been found, we cannot rule out the possibility that someone was here when she died and locked the door on their way out.'
Halvorsen nodded slowly: 'The third key, mm.'
'The third key. Can you start over here, Halvorsen, and I'll show Aune something in the meantime?'
'OK.'
'Right, and one more thing. Don't be surprised if you find my mobile phone. I think I left it here yesterday afternoon.'
'I thought you said you lost it the day before.'
'I found it again. And lost it again. You know . . .'
Halvorsen shook his head. Harry led Aune into the corridor towards the reception rooms. 'I asked you because you're the only person I know who paints.'
'Unfortunately, that is a slight exaggeration.' Aune was still out of breath from the stairs.
'Yes, but you know a little about art, so I hope you can make something of this.'
Harry opened the sliding doors to the furthest room, switched on the light and pointed. Instead of looking at the three paintings, Aune sucked in his breath and walked over to the three-headed standard lamp. He took his glasses from the inside pocket of his tweed jacket, bent down and read the heavy plinth.
'I say!' he exclaimed with enthusiasm. 'A genuine Grimmer lamp.'
'Grimmer?'
'Bertol Grimmer. World-famous German designer. Among other things, he designed the victory monument which Hitler had erected in Paris in 1941. He could have been one of the greatest artists of our time, but at the zenith of his career it came out that he was three-quarters Romany. He was sent to a concentration camp and his name was erased from several buildings and works of art he had worked on.
Grimmer survived, but both his hands had been shattered in the quarry where the gypsies worked. He continued to work after the War although he never attained the same magnificent heights because of his injuries. This must be from the post-War years, though, I would wager.' Aune took off the lampshade.
Harry coughed: 'I was actually thinking more about these portraits.'
'Amateur,' Aune snorted. 'You would do better to concentrate on this elegant statue of a woman. The goddess Nemesis, Bertol Grimmer's favourite motif after the War. The goddess of revenge. Incidentally, revenge is a frequent motive in suicides, you know. They feel it is someone's fault their lives have been unsuccessful, and they want to inflict this guilt on others by committing suicide. Bertol Grimmer also took his own life, after his wife's, because she had a lover. Revenge, revenge, revenge. Did you know that humans are the only living creatures to practise revenge? The interesting thing about revenge—'
'Aune?'
'Oh yes, these pictures, you wanted me to interpret them, didn't you? Hm, they look not too dissimilar to the Rorschach blot.'
'The pictures you give to patients to prompt associations?'