– I hear you’re going to write about him. It’s a good idea. Karsten deserves to be remembered.
That wasn’t what her writing was about, but she didn’t try to explain.
– I’ve come to realise that there is only one person in the world who is meant for you and no one else, Jasmeen continued in a quiet voice. – If you’re lucky, you meet this one special person. Maybe that happens to only a very few people.
– Are you referring to Karsten? Synne asked, taken aback.
Rashida was sitting in the front. She exchanged a look with the woman in the driver’s seat.
– Karsten felt the same way, said Jasmeen. – There’s never been any doubt in my mind about that. We would have been a couple. Had we lived in another time, another place. He said he would become a Muslim for my sake.
Synne tried to take this in. In her thoughts she was already looking for the words she would later use to describe this meeting. For a moment she felt an enormous relief, as though the thing she had sat and struggled with over her keyboard had suddenly opened up in front of her eyes.
– You were at our house, she said. – Karsten took a picture of you in our living room.
The two women in front sat silent, obviously listening to every word that was being said. The one in the driver’s seat had neither turned around nor said hello. In the dim interior she was wearing sunglasses, with a shawl loosely covering her hair.
– Do you know who Shahzad is? Jasmeen asked.
– Your brother? I never met him.
– He’s afraid that I’ll talk to you.
– Why is that?
Jasmeen shook her head. – He knows it’ll bring it all up again. Her voice was suddenly filled with bitterness.
– You had to drop out of Karsten’s class.
– I had to drop out of class, out of school, out of my whole life. They sent me to Pakistan.
She took out a pack of cigarettes. Synne accepted one when it was offered, even though she didn’t feel like a smoke.
– I had brought shame on the family. According to Shahzad, I should count myself lucky to be still alive at all.
She lit Synne’s cigarette with a gold lighter, then her own, handed the lighter across to the woman in the front seat, who also lit up.
– I don’t count myself lucky.
The woman at the steering wheel said something in Urdu. Jasmeen ignored her.
– I was given away in an arranged marriage. But the price for me had dropped. My husband was from a lower caste. Thirty years older than I was. He despised me, and as recompense for marrying a woman without honour, he could do what he liked with me. My family let him. If he had killed me, they would not have lifted a finger. But he didn’t do that. I was his ticket to Norway.
Again the woman in the driving seat said something. Jasmeen made a gesture of dismissal.
– I want you to know that I will never forget your brother. He is the best thing that ever happened in my life. The thought of the short time we had together is what keeps me going now.
Synne drew carefully on the cigarette, let the sharp cloud of smoke swell in her mouth.
– Can you understand that? The love I feel for Karsten is the only thing I have that is worth holding on to. The rest is hatred.
Another comment from the front, this time from Rashida. Synne fancied it must be a warning. Jasmeen’s response was angry. It was raining more heavily now. The woman in the driver’s seat gave the ignition a half-turn and set the windscreen wipers going for a few moments. The grey above the fjord in front of them appeared through the clouds of smoke inside the car and then was gone again.
– When I heard that you were going to write a book about Karsten, I wanted to get in touch with you. And you had the same idea.
Synne lowered the window halfway and blew smoke out into the rain. – I want to know what happened to him that time, she said, sounding more definite than she felt. – I want to know because it has some connection with me, with the way my life has turned out. It’s the not knowing that nags away at me on and on. If he really didn’t want to live any more, I want to try to understand why.
Jasmeen laid a hand on her arm. – Karsten didn’t kill himself, she said.
Synne gave a start, turned towards her, but Jasmeen didn’t look her in the eyes.
– Why should he? she continued. – He was a good person. The best. He was more intelligent than anyone else I’ve ever met. He went his own way. He was strong.
She fell silent. Synne couldn’t sit there calmly and wait. – You talk as though you know what happened.
Jasmeen opened the door, threw her cigarette out, closed it again.
– They killed him.
Now both women in the front seats turned towards them. – This is not something you should be talking about, said Rashida in Norwegian.
Jasmeen stared at her. – I’ve kept my mouth shut long enough. All my life I’ve kept my mouth shut. Haven’t we promised each other that there should be an end to it?
– Jasmeen, I’m begging you.
Jasmeen shook her head. – I’m not afraid, she said. – I have nothing to lose.
Synne registered a feeling of numbness down one side of her face, as if it was about to go to sleep. It was many years since she’d felt such a thing.
– Killed him? she managed to say.
Jasmeen pushed a stray lock of hair into her hijab. – Whether my brother did it himself or got one of his monkeys to do it, I can’t say. But he was behind it.
Synne was vaguely aware that she had started pulling at the skin on the side of her neck, as though there were an itch deep below.
– How do you know …?
– Shahzad was angry with me. So furious that he gave himself away. He wanted to kill me too, he said. I asked what he meant. And then he said that Karsten had been strangled and cut into pieces and thrown into the fjord.
Synne’s grip on her own throat tightened. She sat there for some time, squeezing hard, scarcely breathing. And then suddenly a clear thought:
– Why haven’t you told the police?
Now Jasmeen turned to her. She took hold of Synne’s hands.
– I was afraid. Cowardly and afraid. But not any more.
In the front seat, Rashida groaned.
– Today I would have gone to the police, Jasmeen whispered. – Now I will.
Synne could not stop staring into her face. The left side of it seemed to be shrunken in some way. The skin was thin and like a film of plastic across a confusion of scars that looked like tiny worms. The eye that was gazing at her seemed to be somewhere below the socket and was lacking eyelashes.
She realised she was sitting there with her mouth open, and shut it. Jasmeen lifted a hand and stroked her cheek with a gloved finger. She said something in her own language, low and indistinct, but Synne understood one word. Karsten.
10
Kai parked at the end of the square. They sat in the car for a while, looking out on the wet April night. It was almost one o’clock. After they had eaten, he had taken a long drive with this woman, to make time pass. She wasn’t the talkative type, and that pleased him. He had asked about her background, how she had ended up in Norway. She told him she grew up in a little town in the west of Poland, in an area that had been German before the war, but clearly she didn’t want to talk much about this, and that suited him too; it meant he didn’t have to say much about his own background either. A few hints sufficed. That he was a soldier, what it was like in a war zone, all the things you had to learn to look out for, little things that could lead to your getting shot or blown to pieces. She was fascinated, no doubt about it.
He had spent the whole evening homing in on his goal. Asked about her life in Oslo, her music studies, where she practised, what it was like living in a student village, who she had got to know there, what it was about the girl who lived in the same corridor, the one she said she liked best of all the people she had met since coming to Norway.
&nb
sp; They had been sitting there in the car for ten minutes. Time for him to make his move.
– Do you believe in anything, Kai?
He suppressed a smirk. Didn’t know if it was because the question was so funny, or the way she said his name. She split up the two vowels and separated them, Ka-i, as if she was making room for something in the middle. The first time he had approached her he had wondered whether to give himself another name, but contented himself with a change of surname.
– I believe in people, he said and looked across at her. – What’s good in people, Maja. Regardless of gods and that sort of thing.
It sounded reasonable. He could see she liked hearing it, and realised that the time had come to lean over and give her a kiss. She had a pretty little face, large brown eyes beneath the black fringe. Her lips were thin but her teeth white and even. He couldn’t stand bad teeth.
At first it seemed as though she was going to pull away, because she gave him a frightened look. But then she let it happen, parted her lips below his. Like a fish, he thought. And that was okay. He didn’t mind fish. Didn’t mind most things. Out of the corner of his eye he followed a couple who crossed the square and disappeared in the direction of one of the blocks.
Afterwards she sat leaning back in the seat, her eyes closed.
– I don’t usually do that, she apologised. – Not the first time.
– I believe you, he assured her, and stroked her hair. She still hadn’t opened her eyes; was probably hoping he would kiss her again.
– I’ll come up with you, he said, and opened his door without waiting for an answer.
She came running up to him. – I don’t know if that’s a good idea.
– Don’t have to stay long. He put an arm around her. – Just curious to see what your place is like.
She stood at the front door, feeling down inside her handbag.
– Lost my keys on Wednesday, she said. – It wasn’t easy to get new ones.
– You’re not the type to mislay things.
– I never do. I don’t understand it.
The corridor was brightly lit. Four doors on each side. Shoes and boots outside several of them. Not a sound coming from any of the flats. It was quarter past one. He couldn’t help wondering how a fire would spread here. Composite walls, the kind that didn’t catch fire easily; there would be more gas than flames. Two smoke alarms on the ceiling and an alarm on the wall. According to what he had read on the net, they were connected directly to the fire station. A pair of wire-cutters would soon break that connection. Not unlikely that there were smoke alarms in the individual rooms, but almost certainly not with a direct connection. The kitchen was at the end of the corridor. A small oven, a fridge, a toaster, a microwave. If a fire were to break out here, the kitchen was the obvious place. A saucepan forgotten on a hot stove, a faulty fuse in the toaster, the electric kettle allowed to boil dry.
A toilet flushed. She put a finger over his lips. They stood without moving by the kitchen table. Obviously it was important to her to keep his visit secret, and that suited him perfectly. There was the sound of a door, footsteps in the corridor, and then silence again.
Her room was more or less as he had imagined. Tidy, with a poster of some trees on one wall. A music stand beside the desk. She switched off the ceiling light, switched on the bedside lamp. The room was about ten to twelve metres square.
– Nice place, he observed.
– You don’t mean that, she protested in a low voice.
He put an arm around her.
– I’m tired, she excused herself, pulling away.
– I’ll leave soon, he said quickly.
She looked at him, seemed suddenly sad.
– Can we just lie on the bed a bit? Not do anything much?
He nodded without reflecting on what anything much might mean.
She lay for a long time, holding him. He put his arms around her, stroked her back; that was what she seemed to want. Through the blouse he could feel two broad scars that angled down towards one of her hips. She twisted uncomfortably when he touched them. He didn’t ask about them, just carried on stroking her, put a bit of feeling into it.
– Can we lie naked together? she said suddenly, and in his astonishment he laughed.
– Why not, he answered.
– Do you think I’m forward?
– Not at all.
She got up, took a little bag from a drawer in the dresser.
– I need the bathroom for a minute.
He nodded.
– Don’t go anywhere, she added with mock severity.
– Promise I won’t.
As soon as she closed the door, he checked her dresser. Sheet music and make-up in one drawer, panties, stockings and bras in another. At the back, four packets of ampoules. Insulin, he established. A syringe that looked like a pen next to them. He put everything back, opened the door and peered along the corridor. Synne Clausen lived two doors down on the other side. He had taken Maja’s room key to a guy who had once worked on home security for the army. They had shared an office and the guy had taught Kai everything he knew about picking locks. He charged twelve hundred to make a bump key. The chances of it working were over seventy per cent, the guy reckoned; the rest was a matter of technique. If Kai wanted to feel even more certain, he could provide him with three, and that doubled the price.
He heard her flushing the toilet, closed the door, stood by the window as she came back into the room. Sorted out your blood sugar level? he could have asked her. Instead he put his arms around her, pulled her towards him.
– We won’t do anything you don’t want to, he said, and stroked her back again, avoiding the part with the scars.
– I want to, she said, and began unbuttoning the thin blouse.
After he was finished, she lay there whimpering and holding on tight to him. It took over half an hour before she fell asleep. As he prised himself loose, she grunted and turned but didn’t wake up. He left his shoes there.
Outside Synne Clausen’s door, he pulled out the bunch of keys and the file. All the bump keys fitted. He chose the second, put it in, hit it with the handle of the file and turned. Nothing happened. He had practised on a few locks at home, but it was five years since he’d been able to do this stuff blindfold. He tried another three times, the banging sounding like little explosions down the empty corridor. He realised a change of plan was called for, that he’d need another day or two. But as he slipped the keys into his pocket, it occurred to him that he would then have to see Maja again. He took them back out, tried the first one a second time, knocked on the head of the key. This time he could feel it in the fingertips holding the key. It turned, almost without resistance. The door didn’t make a sound when he opened it and glided through into the darkness.
At first he couldn’t hear her. But he could smell warm skin, and behind it the scent of something that must be from the inside of her body, redolent of sour milk. And right then she drew a breath, quick and strong, held it for a long time before releasing it in small jolts.
His eyes adapted to the dark. He saw the outline of the bed to his right, hair against the white bedclothes. She lay with her face to the wall. Her clothes were hanging on a chair beside the bed. He placed his hand on them, feeling his way forward, the rough touch of denim, cotton socks, a top. He put his hand down inside the tights, felt along the seams. Down one leg something scrunched up like a little ball. He pulled it up, opened it out; it turned into a thin, silky G-string between his fingers.
Abruptly he bent over her, his face almost touching the white neck. That sweet smell was coming from her skin; it too made him think of milk, not curdled, but lukewarm after being out all day. Suddenly a flash of another room with another bed he had bent across. It was eight years ago. That room no longer existed. Nor the girl either. He couldn’t recall her name, or where she came from. If he’d wanted to he could have remembered, but the memory was clean and transparent; if he let it go, it would dissolve in
the blackness of the night.
He turned towards the desk. Her laptop was there. Even in the dark he could make out that it was an iBook. He cursed softly, even though he was prepared for the fact that it might be a Mac. He didn’t like Macs, and if he had to get into the hard disk, it would be a helluva difficult job. Then he noticed that the machine was in hibernation mode and he almost felt like waking the sleeping figure up and thanking her for all the bother she had saved him. He pulled out his memory stick and positioned himself so that the light from the screen wouldn’t disturb her. It took him thirty seconds to install a key logger that would give him access to every touch of the keyboard and every image on her screen.
As he was finishing, Synne Clausen turned over on her back, muttered something or other. It sounded as if she was trying to comfort someone. For an instant her eyes were wide open and staring right at him. He didn’t move, stood frozen in the darkness, but ready to act, get out of there, or put both hands across her face and start squeezing. But the eyes slid shut again, and a loud snore came from her nose.
On the way out, he stopped. Still that jolting breath of hers. He stepped back over to the bed, picked up the G-string he had dropped and stuffed it into his pocket. He heard steps out in the corridor, bare feet, stood there listening. Let thirty seconds pass before he slipped out.
Maja was standing in the kitchen doorway. She stared at him, open mouthed.
Don’t scream, he thought, please don’t scream. If you keep quiet now, everything will work out. His prayer was answered. She didn’t make a sound, but suddenly she tore herself away and raced down the corridor back into her room. He was there the instant she started to close the door; wrenched it open and strode in. Still not a sound from her, but her eyes were quivering and she raised both hands towards his face. He turned her around, closed the door, held her firmly, one hand over her mouth, the other around the tiny body. She was wearing a bulky pullover, underneath which he could feel she was naked. The sight of Synne Clausen still dominated his mind. That body sleeping in the bed, the clothes on the chair, the panties he had stolen, everything came together in his mind now, mingling with the smell of this naked, terrified figure he was pressing up against his body, exciting him in a way he had not experienced when he lay with her.
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