by Thomas Enger
“Cornflakes.”
“Cornflakes it is.”
Emilie is heading to the kitchen via the living room when an object on the wall next to the stuffed reindeer head makes her stop. It’s a picture. A picture she hasn’t seen before. Two footprints in the sand, one halfway across the other, on pink photocopier paper. When did Mattis put that up? she wonders. And since when does he care about interior design? What on earth is the meaning of the two footprints in the sand? Could it be a subtle kind of marriage proposal?
There is something familiar about the image. She knows she has seen it before.
A long, long time ago.
A cold prickling begins in her neck and spreads to the rest of her body. She is about to fetch her mobile to call Mattis when her eyes are drawn to the front door.
She can hear footsteps outside.
* * *
Bjarne hurries out of Olympen and into the street, where the wind takes hold of his jacket and flaps it open.
It wasn’t Gjerløw’s blood. The blood didn’t have to belong to Klingenberg’s killer, of course, but it was an obvious thought. According to the police report, Klingenberg hadn’t noticed any blood near the cat basket until the day her flat was broken into. She was adamant. And though the intruder might not be the same man who killed her, it’s likely. It’s much more than likely.
Markus Gjerløw didn’t kill Johanne Klingenberg.
And the squeaky-clean laptop continues to trouble Bjarne. When they examined it they discovered that the computer’s serial number was registered to Markus Gjerløw and that he had bought it in Spaceworld twenty-six months ago. So far so good. Then they examined the second laptop, a computer of a more recent design that showed every sign of being in daily use. Why treat the two computers so differently? And why did Markus Gjerløw kill himself?
If indeed that was what he did.
Questioning his suicide seems absurd. There is nothing to suggest anything other than that Markus Gjerløw chose to take his own life. But Bjarne thinks about the killer’s MO and the earlier visits he made to Erna Pedersen’s room and Johanne Klingenberg’s flat. He could have planned the murder of Markus Gjerløw as well. He could have planted the evidence that would point the police to Gjerløw so that the suspicions would be directed at a dead man. So that he himself would go free.
So that he could kill again?
Bjarne decides to ring Emilie Blomvik right away. While he waits for a reply, Henning catches up with him.
“What’s going on?” he asks.
But Bjarne doesn’t reply. His head fills with fresh thoughts while he crosses the road, still pressing the phone to his ear and navigating the traffic. He hangs up when Emilie Blomvik doesn’t answer.
Come on, he says to himself. You know what you have to do. Analyze the information quickly, accurately, and effectively. Make the right call. If you hope ever to become head of investigation, you have to deliver in situations like this one.
If his theory is correct, the killer has to be someone close to Gjerløw. Someone who would know that Gjerløw would be at Grünerhjemmet that day.
He stops in his tracks.
Of course.
Chapter 70
Henning follows Bjarne across the street, but his police friend is deep in thought while at the same time trying to get hold of someone on the phone. At that moment, Henning’s own mobile rings; it’s a number he doesn’t recognize.
He takes the call.
“Hello. Am I speaking to Henning Juul?”
It is an old person’s voice. Henning stuffs a finger in his ear to shut out the noise from the street.
“You are.”
“I’m sitting here with your business card,” says the woman at the other end.
“Oh, right,” Henning says, now remembering Erna Pedersen’s old neighbor in Brinken. Borgny Ramstad, that was her name, wasn’t it?
“I’ve been visiting my daughter in Bergen for a couple of days and I’ve only just got back. I caught the night train. And the first thing I saw when I came home was your card stuck in my front door. I hope you’re not going to try to sell me something?”
“No, not at all,” Henning assures her. “I wanted to talk to you because you knew Erna Pedersen.”
“Indeed I did. We were neighbors for twenty-four years.”
Henning looks across to Bjarne and sees him take out his notebook and check something.
“Mrs. Ramstad, I want to ask you about something that happened quite a few years ago. It’s to do with Erna Pedersen.”
Henning tells her that Erna Pedersen has been murdered.
“Oh, how dreadful,” Borgny Ramstad says. “I haven’t been following the news recently. My grandchild has colic, you see.”
“I understand,” Henning says. “What I’m particularly interested in is the vandalism done to Erna Pedersen’s house while she was still working as a teacher. Did she ever talk to you about it?”
“She certainly did. Erna was in such a state about it.”
“I know she had her suspicions about who was behind it. Did she ever tell you?”
There is silence for a moment. Henning watches Bjarne press the phone to his ear again.
“I don’t really—”
“As far as I understand there were several culprits. But do you know if Erna was scared of any of them?”
There is another silence.
“Well, in that case, it must have been the boy who—”
Silence again.
“Oh, I can’t remember his name.”
“Please try—”
“Oh, now I remember!” she exclaims. “It was the brother of the boy who died in that snow cave accident, wasn’t it?”
* * *
Bjarne remembers what Markus Gjerløw said to him on the telephone.
“I only know Remi.”
Bjarne pulls out the list of names that Emil Hagen gave him. Sees that there is a Remi highlighted in bold: Remi Gulliksen.
Bjarne takes out his mobile and calls Fredrik Stang.
“Hi, it’s me,” Bjarne says. “Can you check if a boy called Remi Gulliksen went to school with Markus Gjerløw?”
“Okay, hold on.”
It has to be Remi Gulliksen, Bjarne thinks while he listens to Stang flicking through documents down the other end of the phone. Of the people who were at Grünerhjemmet on the day that Erna Pedersen was killed, Gulliksen was the only person Markus Gjerløw knew. As a friend of Gjerløw’s, Gulliksen would have been able to gain access to Gjerløw’s flat, force him to swallow the morphine capsules, and then write a cryptic apology on Facebook that would make everyone think that Gjerløw was apologizing for the lives he had taken.
“No, I can’t find a Remi Gulliksen,” Fredrik Stang says. “But there is another Remi in his class. A Remi Winsnes.”
Bjarne tastes the name a little. It rings no bells.
“Okay, can you look up both Winsnes and Gulliksen for me? Try including Jessheim in your search as well and see if you get any hits.”
He hears clicking and keyboard sounds in the background. The seconds pass.
“I’ve found a Nils Jørgen Winsnes and a Susanne Marie Gulliksen. They live in Jessheim at the same address.”
“They must be Remi’s parents.”
“Looks like it. He must have changed his surname as an adult.”
It has to be him, Bjarne thinks.
“And it says here that they lost a child,” Stang says. “In a snow cave accident in Jessheim in the eighties.”
Bjarne makes no reply; all he can think about is that he couldn’t get hold of Emilie Blomvik a few minutes ago. He is still very unhappy that Romerike police decided to call off the protection Bjarne had requested for Blomvik and her family once Markus Gjerløw was found dead.
“Call Romerike police and ask
them to go to the home of Emilie Blomvik,” Bjarne says to Stang. “And tell them to hurry up.”
“What’s going on?”
“Just get them to check that everything is okay with her and her family.”
“Okay.”
They end their calls. Henning comes up behind him. “I think I might know the name of the man you’re looking for,” he says.
Bjarne spins around. “Do you now?”
“It wouldn’t happen to be Remi, would it?”
Chapter 71
Remi can still remember it. Her birthday.
Eighteen years. The portal to adulthood. Old enough to drive and finally able to get into most bars without fake ID. Not that Emilie ever needed to. She got in everywhere, even though the doormen knew that she wasn’t old enough.
He gave her a very special present on that momentous day. A picture of two footprints, partly covering each other, on a beach. To let her know what he thought about the two of them and their future. He also gave her eighteen long-stemmed red roses, though the man in the florist told him that even numbers and flowers didn’t go all that well together.
Memories.
Memories are crap.
He wishes he had never opened the local newspaper that day when the past suddenly became the present. The years had left their marks in her cheeks, time had done something to her chin and her eyes, but he could see that she was the same girl. Just as lovely. She still had that special light in her eyes, which beamed into him and turned everything it found upside down. And it was as if the smile she sent the readers of Eidsvoll Ullensaker Blad was aimed at him. He wanted the ground to open and swallow him up.
They used to talk about what they would call their children if they ever had children together. Emilie had said Sebastian if it was a boy, and Johanne if it was a girl. Remi didn’t really mind, he just wanted Emilie to be happy. And suddenly, there she was, in the newspaper with a child on her lap. A little boy called Sebastian. He could no longer remember what the article had been about, only that the picture had been taken at the boy’s nursery.
And, like magic, they came back.
The memories.
Not only had they come back, he could physically feel them in his body, he started reliving the past, he felt the butterflies in his stomach when he walked past the places where it had happened, the place where—according to Emilie—absolutely nothing had happened. But he knew that it was all a lie.
They did it in the grove between the junction and the school playground, where houses have since been built. Markus and Emilie hadn’t even been able to wait until they got home, but they were seen—at least so the rumor went. And this at a time when she was supposed to be his girlfriend, when life was meant to be good, but it became a living nightmare.
Some people are just like that; they covet what others have. If Markus saw someone with a cool jumper or jacket at school, he had to have the same—or preferably something better and more expensive. He had to have the latest thing. For some reason he had always been popular with the girls. And, to top it all, he was Erna Pedersen’s teacher’s pet.
So, when Remi started going out with Emilie, Markus obviously couldn’t help himself. He had to have her too, couldn’t bear that someone else had something so wonderful. And as for Emilie, she was out of control and just wanted to party all the time.
Emilie had pleaded innocence, of course, and blamed it all on common gossip in Jessheim. She managed to sow just enough doubt in Remi for them to get back together. And that was when it happened with the worst possible timing: she missed her period. And he remembered what it had been like, when he hoped it could have marked a fresh start for them, that everything would be different. We’ll erase the past and start over. We’ll be a family, build a life together. And we’ll call our child Sebastian.
Remi tightens his fists when he remembers the conversation they had a few days after she had told him about the pregnancy. Though she never said so outright, he realized that Johanne had been whispering in her ear and told her no, you can’t do this, Emilie. Don’t throw your life away. It’s too soon to have kids.
So what are you going to do? You’re not going to marry him, are you?
Johanne had never liked him much even though he had saved her life when she choked on that kebab outside the takeaway. He could see it in her eyes.
He finally got his proof a couple of days ago in the form of the message Johanne had sent to Emilie on Facebook.
Just as well you ended up with Mattis. It could have been much much worse
* * *
A red ride-on tractor is parked on the gravel outside the garage. All Remi can think about is what it would have been like to live in this house, in its warmth. With her and Sebastian. It should have been like this. She said it would be.
The front door opens and a man comes out. A man who shouldn’t be there. He walks down the steps and smiles to himself, he looks so bloody smug, just like Erna Pedersen’s son in the picture the old hag had hanging on her wall.
Then something clouds Remi’s vision. He can’t see that he has started to move, he just feels it, he hears the gravel crunch under his feet. He doesn’t say anything, either; he can just about make out that the garage door glides open and something shiny and expensive appears behind it. He doesn’t feel his hands, his arms or his head, doesn’t feel them make contact, doesn’t hear the punch or the crack. And he doesn’t know what he has done before he realizes that his knuckles are red.
Chapter 72
How the hell did you know that?” Bjarne asks as he starts to run.
“Forget it,” Henning says, trying to keep up. “What’s going on?”
The distant between them grows with each step.
“Where are you going?”
Bjarne turns his head, but increases his speed. Henning tries to follow, but his body protests.
“Are you going to Jessheim?” Henning calls out after him, but Bjarne just keeps on running. “Can I get a lift? I think I’ve earned it, don’t you?”
Henning stops outside the entrance to the police station’s underground garage and watches Bjarne disappear inside. A few seconds later a car starts up in the darkness below. Tires squeal. A fan belt complains. Then a gray Volvo station wagon comes toward Henning at a furious pace and brakes abruptly right by his feet. The window is already down.
Henning looks inside and meets Bjarne’s wide-open eyes.
“Go on then, get in!”
* * *
Emilie looks up from Mattis’s bloodied face and stares at the man who appears right behind him. With a hard push he shoves Mattis into the hallway, follows him, and locks the door behind them.
“Remi?” she exclaims.
Remi keeps pushing Mattis toward the living room and stares at her with glazed eyes.
“You,” he says, pointing at her. “Come here.”
Emilie stands rooted to the spot.
“But—”
“Come here,” Remi demands again, louder this time.
From the kitchen they hear the sound of quiet weeping. It grows and becomes increasingly desperate. Emilie sees the look Remi sends her little boy. A look that is seething with rage.
Emilie blocks the door.
“Please,” she says. “Don’t—”
But Remi interrupts her by raising his index finger, grabbing hold of her, and forcing her into the living room. Mattis tries to stop him, but he has never been much of a fighter, nor is he particularly strong and Remi wards off the attack with a punch that hits him in the mouth. Mattis crashes onto the floor.
Sebastian cries even louder.
“Please,” Mattis stutters through split lips. “Take whatever you want. Only please don’t hurt us.”
Remi says nothing.
“Just leave us alone. Please,” Mattis implores him.
Emilie
has no idea what is going on. And then there is Remi, who—
Remi’s army jacket. It’s khaki. Remi was the man with the camera outside Sebastian’s nursery the other morning. Her gaze shifts to the wall, to the framed picture. The two footprints in the sand.
Emilie clasps her mouth with both hands while her eyes well up. Remi grabs Mattis and pushes him toward the dining table. In his hands he holds a thick green rope that Emilie recognizes from the garage. He orders Mattis to sit down.
Mattis does as he is told and sits on the floor next to a table leg. The sweat pours from his forehead and mingles with blood that stains his bright white shirt. A sob escapes from Emilie’s lips as she sees the madness in Remi’s eyes, a wide-eyed expression that is new to her, as if he has become someone else. She watches him tie single, double, and triple knots, crisscrossing the rope and tightening it so hard that Mattis groans. Sebastian is still crying in the kitchen.
“Get that kid to shut up,” Remi snarls and wags an angry finger at her. “Make him shut up, or I will.”
Emilie sniffles, turns around, and goes out into the kitchen. She kneels down to Sebastian, wipes his face, hushes him, says it’ll be all right, it’ll be all right, you just have to be very, very quiet, listen to me, everything is going to be all right if you can just be very, very quiet. But it’s no use. Mattis, too, tries to call out words of reassurance to Sebastian from the living room, but to no avail. Sebastian keeps crying, his wailing rises and falls. Emilie looks around for a pacifier. Finds none.
“Where is his room?” Remi says in a harsh voice as he comes up behind her. He grabs hold of her arm and holds her tight. Emilie tries to wriggle free, but his grip is so hard and so vicious that resistance only causes her more pain.
“Where is his room?” Remi says again, now louder.
“In there,” Emilie sobs and nods her head in the direction of the hallway.
Remi releases his hold on her.
“Put him in there, I don’t want to listen to that bloody—”