AN OSLO CRIME FILES NOVEL
Ildmannen © Cappelen Damm AS, 2011, 2012
English translation © 2015 Robert Ferguson
I Wanna Be Loved By You by Herbert Stothart, Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby © 1928 WB Music Corp.
Almost Cut My Hair by David Crosby © 1970 Stay Straight Music
Smells Like Teen Spirit by David Grohl, Kurt Donald Cobain © 1991 Primary Wave Tunes, MJ Twelve Music, BMG Rights Management (UK) Ltd Primary Wave, The End of Music
The right of Torkil Damhaug to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Published by agreement with Cappelen Damm AS, Akersgata 47/49, Oslo, Norway
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2015
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library
eISBN: 978 1 4722 0686 2
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
About Torkil Damhaug
About the Book
Praise
Dedication
Part I: April 2003
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Part II: April 2011
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Keep Reading for Certain Signs That You Are Dead
About Torkil Damhaug
Torkil Damhaug studied literature and anthropology in Bergen, and then medicine in Oslo, specialising in psychiatry. Having worked as a psychiatrist for many years, he now writes full time. In 2011 Torkil’s third Oslo Crime Files novel, FIRERAISER, won the Riverton Prize for Norwegian crime fiction – an accolade also awarded to Jo Nesbø and Anne Holt – and his books have been published in fifteen languages. He lives with his wife and children near Oslo.
There are four deeply dark thrillers to discover in Torkil Damhaug’s Oslo Crime Files series: MEDUSA, DEATH BY WATER, FIRERAISER and CERTAIN SIGNS THAT YOU ARE DEAD.
About the Book
A man obsessed with the cleansing power of fire is destroying everything that reminds him of his youth. He calls himself the Fire Man.
That same Easter, a teenager is threatened by his girlfriend’s tradition-bound family. Karsten’s attempts to protect himself put him and his sister Synne at even greater risk. Then he disappears all together.
Eight years later, Synne is determined to find out what happened that night. But her investigation will ignite smouldering and dangerous memories.
And the Fire Man is still there, waiting, and watching her search for the truth at every step …
Praise for International Bestseller
‘Delivered with maximum psychological intensity’ Barry Forshaw, Independent
‘Nothing is as it seems in this sleek and cunning thriller’ Evening Standard
‘Exciting, original and disturbing’ VG
‘Damhaug has now taken his place in the top ranks of Norwegian crime fiction writers’ Aftenposten
‘One of the best-written and nerve-wracking works of crime fiction in a long time’ Dagens Næringsliv
To Anders, Joachim, Rebecca and Isabelle
I sit here with a black-and-white photograph in front of me. It’s been lying on my desk for several weeks, but only now do I pick it up and take a closer look. Two young boys and a water buffalo. The boys are wearing tunics and wide trousers, sandals on their feet. There’s another figure present too, behind them, a man in his forties or fifties with a beard that reaches down to his chest. His tunic is white, with what looks like an inscription embroidered on the collar. A turban in a darker colour on his head. He is looking not into the camera but at the two young boys. The look is severe, and something that might be grief is also present in his gaze. One of the boys has the same expression, while the other, taller and thinner, is hugging the buffalo round the neck and grinning.
On the day the picture was taken, the family had moved to a new house. The people who had lived there before them were Sikhs and had gone east some years previously, driven from the plains around the rivers Jhelum, Chenab and Ravi in one of the largest migrations in human history, an exodus occasioned by the decision of a small group of men to establish a new state. The abandoned Sikh house was larger and lighter than the one the family had occupied before, and was more in keeping with their dignity. The father was leader of the council of village elders, a man who was listened to. He was often the village’s representative on ceremonial occasions in other parts of the region, and he had been blessed with four sons. Zahir, the boy on the left of the picture, was the strongest and had few problems in asserting his rights if a matter were to be settled with a fist fight. The boy on the right, the one with the broad smile, is Khalid. He was one year younger than his brother, but superior to him when it came to riding; he was brighter too, and he was the one who was going to complete his education.
The family owned almost twenty-five acres of land, three water buffaloes, two horses and of course had the four boys, who, when they grew old enough, in due course would be able to help out on the land. Most importantly, they were the owners of one of the wells in the village, making them self-sufficient for water and able to charge others for drawing what they needed. The father was among the first to acquire a radio, and many years later, in the winter dark of a land whose name he had never even heard at that age, this would remain one of Khalid’s strongest memories: the village landowners gathered in their room around the radio, puffing on opium pipes, listening to a test match commentary, or the
president’s speech, or to music.
His mother was not in the photograph, which perhaps explained why the image of her that Khalid would always carry inside him was so clear. The reddish hair, only partly covered by the shawl, the face with smiling eyes. Maybe she did try to treat all four sons the same, but she could never hide the fact that he was special to her. She called him her prince and said that her life’s most important task was to ensure that he would be happy. When he was eighteen, Khalid married a cousin from Kanak Pind, a nearby village. The following spring they were about to become parents, but kismet, or fate, would have it otherwise. The child clung on, and not even the doctor that was called after two days could do much more than coax and squeeze. When they finally got it out, it was too late. And along with him into death the little boy took the one who was supposed to have given birth to him.
The land more than provided for the basic needs of Khalid’s family, but the father was a man whose thoughts went beyond the sunset. The surplus could be invested in domestic animals, he could rent more land and increase the yield, though buying land was more or less an impossibility. And when, after his time was up, the sons came to divide the property between them, times would be leaner for each of them, with many more mouths to feed. The solution had to be that one or two of the sons should leave home and find work in another country.
There were several reasons why the choice fell on Khalid. His wife was dead, he was the most intelligent, and had completed his ten years of schooling. He was independent, and no one doubted that he would be able to look after himself anywhere in the world. The argument against was that his mother could not bear the thought of his leaving. But perhaps this was precisely what influenced the father in his decision.
Khalid Chadar arrived in Oslo one December day in 1974. He had heard of the cold, the snow, the darkness. Before leaving home he had read whatever he could about this country that lay about as far north as it was possible to go; he thought he was prepared. But as he walked through the dark streets, colder than he had ever been before, beneath the heavy spikes of ice hanging from the roofs of the houses, he felt for the first time a despair so profound that it would not let go of him. The cold and the darkness he could endure. Worse was that he did not understand the people who lived there; not the language, of course, much more the way the people there treated him, friendly in a distant and shy way. If he tried to reciprocate this strange way of being friendly, they retreated and disappeared.
He found work at a brewery in the city. Lived in a bedsit with four others from the Punjab. All were of inferior birth to him. The Chadar name could be traced as far back as King Padu of Mahabaratha.
Another man from his own country whom he met at the brewery was a kammi, low caste, and was reminded of it in every situation that arose. This kammi lived on a farm somewhere north of Oslo. One day in the depths of winter he invited Khalid there. It was lighter now. Still cold, but it was the darkness around midday that had been worst; weeks might go by without Khalid seeing the sun. And what he would later remember best from that day at Stornes farm was the light; suddenly intense and penetrating, reflected by the snow on the fields, coming both from above and below, and so sharp he had to walk with eyes half closed.
The people on the farm were different from those he met in the city. They did not speak to him in that distant, friendly way, which, as he had gradually come to understand, expressed a hidden contempt. He was invited into the living room for coffee and cakes; they asked him about the country he came from, his family, children. When they heard that he was already a widower, he saw that the wife and one of the daughters especially had a sad look in their eyes.
It emerged now that they had had a special reason for inviting him. They had been told he was good with horses, and they needed help in the stables, where they had twenty mares and two stallions. Khalid thought he had misheard when the wife said she would show him round. It was inconceivable that he would be alone with a strange woman in the stables. But the husband had some business in a nearby town, so he handed the task over to his wife without hesitation. And she wasn’t ugly, not ugly at all, Khalid had gathered that much, even though he had been forcing himself to look anywhere but directly at her.
It didn’t take long to demonstrate that he had a way with the animals. He understood quickly which of them he could approach, and which to keep his distance from. Even in the half-dark in which they were tethered, he noted quickly which one was the leader and he gave this stallion a lot of attention.
The following week he moved out to Stornes farm. He was given a room of his own in the smallest of the outhouses. There was a separate kitchen there which he was to share with the kammi from the Punjab, and he was allowed to use the bathroom in the main house where the family lived. His work with the horses still left time for his job at the brewery, so that he now had two incomes, both of them many times greater than what the best-paid people in his village could earn. Every month he sent two thirds of his earnings home, and his father wrote grateful letters of thanks back, making it clear that when the time came for Khalid to get married again, he could choose from among his most distinguished relatives in Gujarat.
There were two daughters on the Stornes farm. The elder was named Gunnhild. She was twenty-two and had what they called a boyfriend, a man a couple of years older than her who boasted about being an army officer. One of the most shocking experiences Khalid Chadar had after arriving in this country was to see this young woman, wearing a short leather jacket and tight-fitting trousers, her hair hanging loose, getting into this boyfriend’s car. Early one evening as he was emerging from the stalls, he saw her, leaning back in the front seat, with the boyfriend lying half across her. One of his hands was up inside her jumper.
Khalid spoke to the kammi about this. The kammi had lived in Norway for several years and said he’d seen much worse things than that in the parks around Oslo in the summer: young women lying in rows on the grass wearing tiny briefs, their breasts bare. Khalid didn’t believe him. The kammi grinned and said all he had to do was wait and see, once the snow was gone.
The fact that Gunnhild had a boyfriend who undressed her in places where anyone passing by might see them did not mean that she was going to marry him. Maybe, maybe not, she answered vaguely when Khalid asked. Then she laughed: – Tord’s a bit slow. Maybe you’ll get there before him.
Was she making fun of him?
There was something in her voice, and her look, that made him feel as though she meant it. And in moments of weakness, he let himself play with the thought of returning to his Punjabi village with a wife from this country. She would insist on walking two paces ahead of him along the street, fair haired and grinning, with no shawl on her head. Sometimes at night he had to turn on the light, fetch the photo standing on the chest of drawers, the one of himself and Zahir with the water buffalo, and stare at the figure in the background, trying to get his father’s gaze to meet his. Only then did he feel calm again.
But it wasn’t only Gunnhild. Her mother, a friendly woman with a ready smile who must have been over fifty, asked him straight out one day if he was hoping to find a new wife in Norway. He had learned to laugh along with them, the mother and daughter, as they sat at the kitchen table and drank wine, even though he never understood what was funny about the way they spoke. It was disrespectful, and there were times when he left their kitchen suppressing a strange white rage within himself.
The younger daughter was sixteen. Her name was Elsa and she was the complete opposite of her sister. Dark haired and with serious deep blue eyes. She didn’t say much, didn’t laugh much, but when she spoke, he liked to hear her. She thought a lot, in which he saw something of himself, because somewhere inside that prince they always treated him as back home in Punjab, the one who always succeeded, the one so favoured by God, he had always felt the presence of something that could suddenly cause him to fall silent and wander off through the mustard fields alone, into the trees, to the grave of the holy one,
and kneel down there and pray.
Sometimes he found himself sitting in the kitchen with Elsa. She spoke good English, better than her big sister, and had decided that she was going to teach him Norwegian. In a different way from Gunnhild she was curious about where he came from, what it looked like there, how the people lived, how they thought. She listened attentively when he spoke, as if it was important for her to know all this. When she asked him about his God, he told her that Allah was not his God but everybody’s God, including hers. The kammi he shared the outhouse with had warned him against talking about things like this, and Khalid had never felt any particular need to demonstrate his faith to others. He prayed, but not five times a day. He didn’t follow the Koran to the letter, and several times that winter he had drunk beer they had taken home with them from the brewery. He had a relaxed attitude to fasting, and the pilgrimage to Mecca was not at the top of his list of priorities. But when this girl with the large dark blue eyes asked him about God, he was able to respond with the most self-evident truths. Without Allah there were no people, no animals, no world. And she nodded slowly, as though she were willing to share that thought with him.
In this upside-down country, where nothing was haram, unlawful, and nothing was holy either – people believed in God one day and the next day not – a woman of sixteen could be told to go to the stables with any man at all. It was even more shocking than if the wife herself should accompany him. One afternoon it was the sister’s boyfriend who went there with Elsa. Maybe this Tord, as he was called, was going to fetch something or other, because he was carrying a crate, and he would have nothing to do with the horses; he seemed to be afraid of them. From the window of his room Khalid saw them crossing the farmyard. Five minutes later they still hadn’t come out again. He waited another minute, two more minutes. Then he pulled on his jacket and marched over there. They weren’t in the stables. He heard Tord’s voice mumble something or other from the hayloft, then Elsa’s voice, then a short scream. Khalid was in no doubt that it was a cry for help. He grabbed a spade and pushed the door wide open. In the semi-darkness he saw Elsa lying in the hay with Tord on top of her. He took aim and drove the edge of the spade down hard into his back. Tord howled with pain and whirled round. He clambered to his feet, walked towards Khalid; they were about the same height. Khalid raised the spade, ready to strike again.
Fireraiser Page 1