– Don’t be afraid, he whispered in her ear. – I’m going to let you go. I’ll explain what happened.
He put her down on the bed, sat beside her, took his hand away from her mouth. A few sounds came out, but not a scream, nothing that made it necessary to go any further with what had taken possession of him. Nothing had been decided yet. He could still go either way. It was a good place to be, with all his options open. It was like sitting in the secret room in Erleveien. He’d scratched her name on the wall, over and over again, because sooner or later it would make her come back. If he turned to the beam behind him, then it was the Fire Man’s voice that would win. If he managed not to, it would be Elsa’s.
Sitting there on the side of a bed in a room in this student village, he couldn’t scratch Elsa’s name into a wall, but it was the thought of her that protected the frail woman who lay trembling on the bed saying things in a language that must be Polish.
– Are you praying?
His voice was calm, and if he could continue to talk in that way, then nothing more was likely to happen.
She nodded.
– Why couldn’t you have stayed in here? he asked.
She bit her lip. – You weren’t here. But your shoes were here. And I had to go to the toilet. And you weren’t there. I went looking for you in the kitchen.
She was speaking freely now, and he placed a hand over her mouth again, not hard, just enough to interrupt the flow of speech.
– You think I’m a thief, he said to her.
– What is a seef?
He laughed briefly. – Someone who steals.
She curled up as far away as she could in the bed. – Are you someone who steals?
He wondered whether this might be a way out. Leave, and let her think that was the explanation. Nothing had been stolen from Synne Clausen’s room, only a pair of panties. No one would take the trouble to go looking for him. And he could keep out of the way until it had all died down.
– I don’t steal, he said.
– What were you doing?
– You mustn’t ask me that.
Suddenly she sat up. – Have you done something to her?
Before he could reply, she repeated it, this time in a loud voice, and he had to lay himself over her and squash her down into the mattress.
– No more questions, he snapped. – Don’t you understand, if I tell you what I did there, then not even Elsa can help you.
He pressed his hand so hard over her mouth that her eyes began to quiver again. She flexed her body like a snake and he had to push down with all his weight to keep her still.
– Her brother, he said suddenly, and he knew he shouldn’t have said it, but the Fire Man behind him was laughing loudly, because things were going his way now. – She wants to discover what happened to her brother. But you understand nothing about it. You’re someone who gets in the way, who’s in places where she shouldn’t be. You can’t do anything about it, because you’re a loser.
He grabbed a sock, forced it into her mouth.
– It’s up to me now. He lay down beside her. – You want to know why, is that what you’re saying? You should never have asked about it.
She made a noise in her throat and he placed a finger across her lips.
– Her brother’s name was Karsten. I tried to help him. He found something in a car, something he should never have seen. He wasn’t stupid. He saw the way things added up. He tricked me out of the car and then he made a break for it. Drove straight at me.
He could still see those lights coming towards him. He leaps up on to the bonnet, convinced that Karsten will stop, but the kid is desperate and accelerates.
– I’m holding on for dear life to the windscreen wiper, yelling at him, but he keeps on going and drives straight into a fence. I get thrown off, I’m winded.
He lies there and sees the car stop outside the gate, drags himself to his knees. He hears the engine revving again, full throttle, into gear, and then tail lights disappearing down towards the forest track.
Maja whimpering in his ear. Impossible to know how much she had grasped of what he was saying. But she had heard enough, she had heard too much, and the road Elsa was trying to show him was closed long ago.
– Takes me hours to get to Lillestrøm. My phone’s still in the car. I have to walk all the way to the petrol station. Try to thumb a ride, but no one stops, though that won’t surprise you.
Everything that happened that night came back to him. Once he started to talk about it, it became impossible to hold it back; the story just surged on and on by itself.
– At the petrol station, I manage to ring for a taxi. The girl behind the counter is staring at my neck, there are marks there, from the car window. The kid tried to kill me. Little bastard.
He sits in the rear of the taxi and thinks about what he’s going to do to Karsten when he gets hold of him.
– My car’s by the side of the road when I get to Erleveien. The front windscreen is broken. No idea how that happened, but I know I pulled one of the wipers off when he tried to run me down.
The keys are still in it. He sticks his hand behind the felt. Nothing there. He searches the whole car, the bag with the ignition mechanisms isn’t there. Karsten must have taken them with him.
– I run to his house and ring the doorbell. Not too clever maybe, but I was so furious I didn’t have time to think about what was smart. And as it turned out, there was no one home.
All of this he told Maja while lying on her bed, and it was calming to lie there like that; he felt he could have spent the rest of the night there, holding her and talking quietly into her ear.
– So now you know why I was in Synne Clausen’s room, he said without raising his voice. – She’s going to write about what happened to her brother. Karsten met some people that night, and it’s not possible that he wouldn’t have talked about the ignition mechanisms. But for some reason or other the people he met didn’t take it any further, at least they haven’t so far. Maybe someone out there still has that plastic bag. Covered with my fingerprints. Other things too. A tiny flake of skin would be enough. That’s why I need to get into her computer, see what she’s poking her nose into.
He couldn’t stop now, had to carry on with his story. About the secret room in the house in Erleveien, and the fires, about the night watch and the girl at Furutunet whose name he couldn’t recall. About Monica with a c who died not by fire but by water. Afterwards he raised his head and looked down into Maja’s face. It had frozen; she was lying there with her eyes open, a few tremors around her mouth the only sign that she was alive.
– And what makes me so sad now, he whispered, – is that you know all this too.
He grabbed the belt from the bathrobe that was hanging in the cupboard, held her hands behind her back and tied them together. She was staring at him again now, and he turned off the lamp. He took the insulin pen from the drawer in the dresser. Maybe she could hear what he was doing, because he had to roll on to her again to keep her still. With one hand he drove the syringe into her shoulder, and now he heard her screaming, though only a few muted cries penetrated through the sock.
– There there, he comforted her. – All I’m doing is giving you your medicine. There’s nothing dangerous in that.
He pressed on the pen, waited, pressed again, kept on pressing until it was empty.
The time was a quarter to three. She hadn’t moved for half an hour. He placed a finger on her throat, couldn’t feel a pulse. He got dressed, wrapped the pen in a paper handkerchief and put it in his pocket. He was finished with her, but he couldn’t leave her lying there, because like an idiot he’d come inside her while they were at it. Now he had to get rid of the body.
He draped her over his shoulder. As he was about to leave the room, he heard sounds from the corridor. Footsteps, a door opening. He laid her down again. Looked out the window. No blocks on that side; he could just about make out the roofs of a few detached houses. Again the sound of
a door. Then silence. He waited three minutes, then opened the window wide. No lights in the rooms on this side of the block. He lifted the little body, held it down along the outside wall and let go. The sound when she landed two floors down was a hollow thud shot through with the noise of something shattering.
He closed the door behind him. Stepped down the corridor with his shoes in his hand. Not until he reached the staircase did he stop to put them on. It was blowing hard outside and rain had started to fall. He stationed himself at the corner, peered out along the rear wall of the block. Could see the bundle where she had landed. Still dark in all the windows. He made his way over. She lay like a rag doll in a position he had never seen before, her legs doing the splits, her head broken over on her back. He bent down quickly, dragged her along the block towards the shadows of the end wall.
He hurried over to the car, reversed along the driveway, lifted up the bundle, the arms and legs dangling as if about to fall off, and threw her into the boot. All in all it couldn’t have taken more than five minutes. As he glided slowly up the drive again and across the car park, he was filled with a relief that seemed about to explode inside him. He turned on the radio, found a station playing music, something classical, an orchestra with a choir, sang along at the top of his voice to a melody he had never heard before, knowing as he did so what it was he would do with her.
Along Thereses gate he found the car he was looking for, a little delivery van that was obviously at least ten years old. He turned into a side street three blocks down, a cul-de-sac. Found a place to park at the end, in front of a skip. He had what he needed in the glove compartment, screwdrivers and steel wire. As calmly as he could, he walked back up Thereses gate, used the screwdriver to bend the door of the van, poked the steel wire inside and pulled up the lock button, removed the plate from under the steering wheel and hot-wired the engine.
After driving down and parking the van next to his own car, he tried to pick the lock on the boot. It jammed. He looked round. Lights in some of the windows in the block, no sign of anyone. It was three thirty. He opened the boot of his own car, lifted up the body and dropped it in the passenger seat of the delivery van, released the recliner catch on the seat and stretched her out. It looked as if she was lying there asleep. He grabbed the two bottles of lighter fluid, tossed them into the floor in front and drove off.
He passed Ullevål stadium. The floppy body slid backwards and forwards on the seat next to him, the head dangling on to the chest. He pulled in and fastened her safety belt before driving on. Turned on the CD player. The owner of the van was a country music fan. He had always hated country music, but now it seemed like just the thing.
The rain fell more heavily up in Maridalen. He hadn’t passed more than three cars since crossing the ring road. Up past the end of the lake he found a forest track, pulled in, drove on a hundred metres into the woods, stopped the van. At that moment he saw a flickering light in the distance ahead. It danced up and down between the trees, was still a moment, danced on. He tried to reconnect, fumbling with the wires, but the engine was dead. A dark rage invaded him. Who the hell goes out walking in the woods in the middle of the night? The light was no more than fifty metres away now. He could open the door and make a run for it, leaving her body there stuffed with his fucking genetics. They’d catch up with him sooner or later, circle him, get him in a corner.
He turned towards the body in the passenger seat, lifted the head up by the hair and moved over on top of it, pressing his cheek against her coldness. The skin had a different smell already, reminiscent of raw meat. Just then a torch beam was directed into the car. It glided over his back and his neck; he saw the shadow of his own head against the glass that divided the front and rear compartments. People wandering in the woods at night had the cheek to stop and peer in through the car windows; maybe they’d even open the door to ask what was going on. He turned up the collar of his jacket and pulled his trousers halfway down, twisting her long hair around his hands as he pressed his lips against hers. The taste reminded him of a solvent he had sniffed once; maybe it was Gunnhild’s nail varnish remover. He turned the dangling head from side to side, his tongue disappearing between her teeth and into a mouth that was full of froth. The taste of rotting chemicals made him even angrier, and when the circle of light stopped directly outside the side window, he tensed the lower part of his body against what lay beneath him on the seat, ready to throw open the door and beat the owner of the torch across the head with his own flashlight. As he took hold of the door handle, the light glided on; he saw it dancing away down the track behind the van.
For a long time afterwards he sat there looking out into the darkness between the trees. The rain had eased off, a few drops snaking their way down the front windscreen. Slowly a tiredness descended on him. The same one he had felt all winter. A heaviness that had made him lie in bed, watching as the daylight came sneaking in beneath the curtains, and still be lying there when the light faded away again.
He wasn’t going back to all that, shook himself free of it. With the sleeve of his jacket he wiped away the sticky goo that still coated his mouth and chin, opened the door, picked up the two bottles from the floor, started dousing the bundle in the passenger seat. Kept going until all he could smell was lighter fluid.
11
Jasmeen takes hold of my hands. ‘I was cowardly. Today I would have gone to the police about it.’
Synne scrolled down. The meeting with Jasmeen Chadar had become seven pages of text. She had spent some time describing what the three women in the car were wearing, how they moved their hands as they spoke, the smell of perfume and cigarettes, details that had to be there if people were to believe what she was saying. If she herself were to believe it. She couldn’t face reading through it, printed it out, took the pages out into the corridor, had to show someone what she had written.
She hadn’t heard Maja’s flute all day. Still she knocked. No answer. She saw the door wasn’t locked, knocked again and then opened it. No one there. She had a look in the kitchen, then returned to Maja’s room. She could be careless herself, and as recently as last night had forgotten to lock the door before going to bed. When she got up in the morning and found it ajar, she had felt a passing unease. But Maja was very particular about locking. And the sofa bed hadn’t been made, the duvet lay in a bundle on the floor, all the drawers in the nightstand had been pulled out. That wasn’t like her either. The flute was in its case on the desk, and the bag Maja always took to university with her was over by the wall. It had to be the first time she’d ever skipped classes in all the time they’d known each other. It might have something to do with her date the previous evening, and the thought made Synne pick up the duvet and straighten it out on the bed as she tried to persuade herself that these breaches of Maja’s usual orderliness and routine were positive signs.
Back in her own room, she took out her phone. Erika was on her way to a meeting.
– I’ve met someone Karsten was seeing just before he disappeared.
– You’re not going to carry on doing this interview stuff, are you? Erika interrupted, panting as though she was running up a staircase.
– She said Karsten was murdered. And that she knew who did it.
– Synne, what are you getting into here?
– Don’t know.
– I’m worried about you.
– You should’ve thought about that before.
– Honestly, I mean it. You need a psychologist while you’re working on material like this.
– I can use yours after you’ve finished with him. Seven years since you started going there, isn’t it?
– Get with it. We’re not talking about me. You said you had help back then, after your brother.
– I did not say I got help, Synne exclaimed, leaning against the sink, looking into her own eyes in the mirror. – I said I was seeing a psychiatrist for a while. He was hopeless and understood nothing. She took a deep breath. – But there was a contact
of a sort. Now and then. In spite of everything.
– And you think you can hope for a bit more than that, Erika observed. – Maybe you could ring him again. Or was it a she?
Synne saw herself shaking her head in the mirror.
– The guy stopped practising as a psychiatrist. Know what he does now?
– Should I know?
– He writes crime novels.
Erika snorted, a mixture of laughter and contemptuous sneer.
– You must be joking. Show me the money. Instead of making himself useful.
Suddenly it sounded as if she had changed her attitude towards psychiatry. Synne ended the call and tried Dan-Levi instead.
– I’ve written something you’ve got to see, she told him when he picked up.
– Love to, he said, sounding surprised. – Are you going to mail it to me?
– I’m going to see my dad later. Can I call in?
In the background, barking and children’s voices.
– Of course, I’m not working this afternoon.
What that meant she didn’t try to find out. Suddenly the room seemed unbearably small. She pulled on her boots and grabbed her coat.
As she reached the foot of the staircase, the outer door opened. The man who let himself in looked at her with an arrogant expression and then turned to the noticeboard without offering any sort of greeting at all. She thought she’d seen him somewhere before, but he looked distinctly too old to be a student. She turned and glared at him. Am I invisible? she was on the point of saying, because people who ignored other people spread emptiness. The guy had peroxided hair and was short, and his outsize muscles made him look deformed. Stop letting other people get under your skin, she scolded herself. You only spoil things for yourself.
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