– That’s not something you should be asking me about.
Roar gave an exaggerated sigh. – I’ll think about it, he said. – Can’t promise anything.
– If not, then I guess I’ll have to do it myself, said Dan-Levi, and realised that he had just had an idea. – I’m going to have a chat with him.
– With who?
– Shahzad Chadar. I’ll interview him.
Roar groaned. – Are you going to ask him if he killed Karsten Clausen?
– Something like that. If he confesses, I’ll bring him in for you. Case ready solved.
– Remember to take your handcuffs, Roar advised him. – How are things at home?
– Business as usual.
– Sara?
– Doing well.
– Say hello.
After he had disconnected, Dan-Levi sat for a while and wondered about that. Just recently Roar had started asking him to pass on his greetings to Sara whenever they spoke.
The Lovers upside down, he thought suddenly. And shook his head sadly at his own foolishness.
After he had fried the mince and put six litres of water on to boil, he made his way up to his office and woke the computer, returning to what he had been working on when Synne turned up. There was a draught from a gap under the ceiling, and he took the blanket that hung over the back of the chair and wrapped himself in it. It would take carpenters and electricians to upgrade that little loft space into a proper office. Where the money to pay for all that might come from he hadn’t got around to thinking about.
What does the Lord want us to do? he typed, and then looked at his watch. He’d been sitting there for ten minutes already; the pan of water in the kitchen must have started boiling by now. He looked down at the question he had written. It had been with him for as long as he could remember. Pastor Jakobsen’s answer had been simple. You’ll find that out if you listen to His voice. And if you don’t hear it – yes, quite literally hear His voice inside you – then you must have got lost and you need to find your way back. Dan-Levi had heard this voice on a number of occasions, but sitting there now with his fingers frozen on the keyboard and his allotted span ticking by, it was silent. Last night, before going to bed, he had put his hands together and felt the same silence. All he could hear inside himself were his own thoughts, and it frightened him. He had lain there listening to Sara’s breathing, staring up into the darkness, and for the first time in ages he was unable to sleep.
The Lovers upside down he typed now, deleted it immediately and closed the document as the door slid open behind him. He knew who it was.
– Hi, Rakel, he said as he heard the sound of his daughter’s bare feet against the rough floor planks. – Mind you don’t get splinters, the floor hasn’t been sealed yet, you know. He put his arm around her.
– What are you writing? she wanted to know.
– Just some thoughts.
– Are they about me?
He lifted her up on to his lap.
– Yes, he answered into her hair, – they’re about you too.
– I had a horrible dream last night, she said.
– Oh no.
Since her grandfather’s death, she had never talked about her dreams, as far as Dan-Levi could remember.
– You want to tell me about it?
– Don’t know.
– Telling people your dreams isn’t dangerous. I’ll be able to take it.
She cuddled up to him. – It was about you.
– Oh?
– You’d been away travelling and then you came home. I saw you from the window.
– Well that’s not so bad.
– I ran out of the house. And then I saw that something terrible had happened. They had destroyed you.
– Destroyed?
– On your face and everywhere. That was what was worst. That I didn’t recognise you.
13
He followed Synne Clausen to Erleveien. As though she were a guide. He hadn’t been there for eight years; it was the first time since the night Karsten disappeared. She went to her father’s house. He carried on past and stopped at the copse. Drizzle in the air, not cold, not warm, still not yet those evenings when there was too much light.
For the past twenty-four hours he had not slept a wink. The sight of that delivery van burning met him every time he closed his eyes. Standing there amongst the spruce trees and watching the flames catch, waiting for the explosion, knowing there was a body in the front seat, that he was the one who had put it there. He was less than a hundred metres away when it went up. The voice of the Fire Man rose to a roar; he roared along with him. He stood there, roaring until he heard the sound of the sirens. Then he slipped away into the woods and was gone.
Synne Clausen re-emerged after an hour. And now there she was, walking down Erleveien less than a hundred metres in front of him. That morning, after he got back home, he had hacked into her machine and gone through every document she’d worked on over the last few weeks.
She stopped outside the journalist’s house and rang the bell. No surprise that she should visit him. The guy had interviewed her and she mentioned him several times in what she was writing. That excited him even more; that thread connected to all the others and led him back to this house.
It was now six thirty and still not noticeably dusk. He passed the gateway, stopped, stood on the road outside. It wasn’t the journalist’s house. If a hundred families had lived there and tried to turn it into their home, it would change nothing. It was still the house where he had grown up. He let his gaze wander from window to window. Stood there as long as he could. Then over to the gate, read the names on the letter box. Six names there now. Two girls and a boy had arrived since the last time eight years ago. He wandered down an icy pathway between the fences. Tall white conifers that Gunnhild had planted for privacy lined the path. He stood there and waited. Two minutes later, Synne Clausen hurried past on the road a few yards away. He chuckled to himself. He took risks, but they were calculated risks. Not many hours ago she had encountered him on her way out of her block in the student village. She had looked directly at him and seemed curious. And still he had followed her to Lillestrøm. She hadn’t recognised him, knew nothing about him, but he had access to what she was doing whenever he felt like it.
He peered out along Erleveien again as she reached the end of the road and disappeared in the direction of the bus shelter. He let her go, crossed diagonally towards the footpath and came out behind the petrol station. From there he ran into the middle of town. Called in at Studio Q and went through a double programme, and was still filled with that bright itching when he arrived back home. He broke off a couple of capsules, injected himself in the upper arm, got into the shower and turned the hot as high as he could stand. Then back to ice cold. For a minute he stood motionless, maybe longer.
But afterwards he had to go back to Erleveien. He walked up and down the footpath next to the house. He still had the key he had taken that time at home in a drawer. Not unlikely that it would still fit. He imagined letting himself in, going from room to room, recognising the smells, from the damp cellar to the little loft space that Tord had planned to do something with. Ending up in the bedroom that used to be his. And the dark, mouldy odour of the secret cupboard at the back of the wardrobe. He imagined himself crawling into it. The only place where he could get any peace.
Under cover of the conifers he jumped over the fence and entered the lower part of the garden, stepped across to the corner of the house, glanced at the time, ten past nine. He continued up on to the veranda. The curtains were closed but he spotted a gap and peered in. The TV was on in the living room, the journalist sitting facing it. A bundle on the floor beside him looked like as though it might be a blanket, but then he heard a child’s voice shout something and the bundle stretched and turned into a dog. The journalist stood up, still keeping an eye on the screen as he headed towards the door. The dog followed him. The child was in the room above, the room tha
t had once been his. The window was slightly open. Shortly afterwards he heard the journalist’s voice up there. Kai could imagine him entering the child’s room, going over to the bed or wherever the child was, sitting down beside it. Maybe it was the girl he had fetched water for that time. Now the journalist was telling her something or other, comforting her. She had gone to bed and was afraid lying there alone, and Kai imagined that it was him who was sitting there on her bedside.
Before the journalist returned to the living room, Kai moved away from the window, down from the veranda. They had built a little shed by the garden fence. The door wasn’t locked. There were a couple of bikes inside and a lawnmower.
He closed the door, walked back out through the garden. The grass was hard beneath his feet, with a few patches of snow still left underneath the cherry tree. Last time he had been here he had come to a decision about what was going to happen to this house. If that business with Karsten hadn’t come up, the house wouldn’t be standing there now. The decision he had taken that time had closed itself up, leaf by leaf. Now it was beginning to unfurl again.
Back home he sat down at the computer. Again looked through the files he had downloaded from Synne Clausen’s machine. It was her life he sat there peering into. Assignments from the university, archived emails, pictures. But it was in this book she was writing about her brother that he could study how her mind worked.
When I write, he comes closer, Karsten, my brother who vanished, whom I had always thought would come back. I’m homing in on nothing. I’m writing to understand that Karsten is the emptiness. But this emptiness is a gate, one I have never dared to pass through.
Not even Kai had understood that Karsten was gone for good. Not until a long time afterwards. He waited and he waited, but no one called that night. Nor the day after. Nor the rest of that Easter. He stayed away from people, prepared to be arrested at any moment. Only after the memorial service later that summer did he finally relax. And not until the sister started messing around did the thought of what Karsten knew come back to him. Now she was going round talking to people who had known Karsten back then, and writing long accounts of what they had said to her. But so far not a word about ignition devices, and not a word about the fires.
She was clever. But he could see inside her head, into her brain. And she couldn’t see him. He had hacked into her machine using an onion router. Not even the world’s greatest computer expert would have been able to trace the hacking back to him, if anyone ever found out about it. He stood up and fetched the panties he had stolen from her room. Sniffed at them as he carried on reading. A new document was being opened. She was on her computer at this very moment. He could follow her thoughts the moment she had them. He fetched a mug of strong coffee. Back at the computer he saw that she was writing about Khalid Chadar. Instantly he was on his feet, shouting in pain as he knocked over the mug and the coffee spilled across his thighs.
Not until he had cleaned up and made himself another mug did he return to what she had written. Khalid Chadar lay in bed, seriously ill. Khalid Chadar spoke about God, whom he was soon to meet. Again Kai had to stand up and take a walk round the room. Pulled the curtains shut. By the time he sat down again, she had finished writing. He looked around inside her machine, came across a document she had created that afternoon. Jasmeen Chadar was the title she had given it. Jasmeen Chadar had been in the same class as Karsten. Adrian had worked as their supply teacher for a couple of weeks that spring. Kai hadn’t liked Adrian getting involved in stuff like that, getting so close to people who were a part of his own life, but Adrian did as he pleased. He wanted to see what would happen if he brought a white Norwegian and a Pakistani girl of marriageable age together. It didn’t end all that well for either of them.
Now Synne wrote that she had met Jasmeen Chadar at a car park on Bygdøy. Kai leaned in towards the screen in surprise.
Shahzad killed Karsten, he read. Whether he did it himself or got one of his apes to do it, I don’t know. But he was behind it.
14
It was already rush hour by the time he reached Karihaugen, the traffic going slower and slower until it came to a complete halt at the Ulven junction. Dan-Levi had left early and used the time to run over the questions he had prepared. The editor had gone for his idea for a portrait interview with Shahzad Chadar. It was something he thought they should have done long ago. Even though Chadar had moved to Oslo years ago and was now a member of the city council, he would always be a Romerike lad, and Romerikes Blad his local newspaper, now and forever, whether he liked it or not.
Dan-Levi had planned to start with his years growing up as a Norwegian Pakistani in Lørenskog, or second-generation Pakistani he probably ought to say. He had drawn up an outline of Shahzad Chadar’s life story. He would not be the first to point out how much it reflected Norway’s changing history over the last few decades. He intended to ask him about the turbulent years of his youth, what it was like to be part of a gangland world, about growing up, condemning violence, becoming active in youth work, helping young lads on to the right track, studying law and coming top of his class in the final exams, starting in politics and finding himself on the way to the heart of the corridors of power. One political commentary Dan-Levi had come across in a newspaper mentioned Chadar as a likely candidate for the post of Minister of Justice after the next general election. Chadar’s party boasted that it had room for everyone who wanted to achieve something, and that it forgave the injustices and mistakes of the past. In the commentator’s view it would be a smart move to invite a man like Chadar to join the government; it would make it difficult to criticise the party as anti-immigrant in a petty sense.
Shahzad Chadar was a busy man. The agreement was that Dan-Levi would meet him at his home, then accompany him to his office and conclude the interview there. By the time he parked outside the house in Nordstrand, it was quarter past eight. He strolled up through the large garden towards the vivid blue villa.
Shahzad Chadar opened the door himself. He was wearing a light suit and held out a hand with two large rings on the fingers. There was a warm sincerity about his smile and Dan-Levi reminded himself that his doubts about the Muslim faith and way of thinking must not be allowed to intrude on the job he had come to do. Again he thanked the busy politician-lawyer for giving up his time at such short notice.
He was led along what appeared to be a newly decorated corridor, through an arched doorway and into a large, bright room.
– This is my wife Iram, and my son Usman.
Dan-Levi didn’t know whether he was supposed to offer his hand to a Muslim woman, but she was there before him. A slim figure in a turquoise costume with jeans underneath, a loose scarf covering only a little of the raven-dark hair. As always when he met an unusually beautiful woman, Dan-Levi felt a touch of melancholy.
The boy she was holding in her arms already had his father’s eyes. Shahzad Chadar stroked his cheek and then made a sign to the mother. As she left with the boy, he gestured for Dan-Levi to take a seat on the sofa, the ring on his index finger a crescent moon of gold with a green gem. He himself sat in the high-backed armchair and crossed one leg over the other. He was clearly ready. A large red rug hung on the wall behind him, intricately patterned with gold thread.
– Beautiful rug, Dan-Levi remarked, without being quite sure what he really thought of it.
Shahzad turned towards it. – It’s a text from a sura in the Koran called ‘The Light’. I presume you read Arabic?
Dan-Levi had to admit that he hadn’t got that far yet. Shahzad pointed to the top line. – God is the light of the heavens and the earth.
Iram came gliding in and served some kind of tea that smelled of camphor. Then she excused herself, saying she had to go somewhere, and disappeared out into the corridor. Dan-Levi had already found out that she worked as a doctor at the National Hospital.
– Now I am at your disposal for the next … Shahzad Chadar looked at his watch, – forty-three minutes.
As planned, Dan-Levi began with some questions about growing up in Lørenskog, the district in Norway with the highest proportion of people of Pakistani origin. Shahzad had never made any secret of where he came from, he said, and it had given him several advantages in his political life. He talked about gangs and fights, status and threats, in essence the struggle to survive as a young man. When Dan-Levi asked him about criminality, he said with a broad smile:
– I presume you mean things like shoplifting in the big shopping malls, fighting, driving without a licence, that type of thing? The answer is yes. I did all of those things. I have my parents to thank for the fact that I never got involved in anything more serious. My father had a great thought when he came to this country in the seventies. His family would be Norwegian, it would put down roots here, be accepted, make a positive contribution to growth and development.
– Has your father always lived in Lørenskog? Dan-Levi interrupted, looking to make the local angle even more pronounced.
– More or less. Quite by chance he met a family in Nittedal that owned a large farm. In his first year he lived there in a bedsit in exchange for helping out with the work. He knew everything about horses.
Dan-Levi grabbed at an idea that came flashing by.
– Which farm?
– It was called Stornes, I think.
Dan-Levi dropped his pen on the floor. – Then he must know the family who … Is he still in touch with them?
Shahzad Chadar shook his head firmly. His face darkened slightly.
– Certain things happened there that meant he had to break the contact. But surely this is not something you intend to write about?
– Not if you don’t want me to.
– Then we have a deal.
Shahzad drank from his teacup and put it down on the table with careful movements.
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