– You’ve been trying to get in touch with me, said Shahzad Chadar.
If he didn’t know what she looked like, then she had a chance. If she just carried on stroking Janus without saying a word. The jabbing pain that had been absent since she woke up now returned and began to throb between her ear and her forehead.
– So I need to find out what it is you want of me.
She dropped the hoof scraper, didn’t hear it fall against the soft surface.
– You could have called, she managed to say.
He was standing less than a metre away from her. Janus began stamping with one hoof. She whispered something in his ear, sounds that only he understood.
– I could have called, but now I’m here.
For a moment she thought of climbing on to Janus’s back, because once she was up there no one could harm her, not even Shahzad Chadar. She looked at him. He was a head taller than she was. Dark jacket. Smell of aftershave. The smell was out of place here. That was the thought she held on to, that he was bringing a disturbing smell into this world.
– What’s your horse’s name?
She wanted to ask him to get lost, just take his smell with him and get out of there, but she was afraid to, afraid that something might happen to her.
– Janus, she said, and saying the name of the horse helped. – That one there is Sancto Spirito.
– Nice names, he said, and grabbed Sancto Spiritus’s halter. – I’ve done a lot of riding too.
The horse allowed itself to be stroked, dipped its muzzle and rubbed against his hand. She could see he wasn’t lying; he was used to being around horses. Janus noticed it too and the trembling eased off.
– You’re interested in stories, Shahzad Chadar said. – Now I’m going to tell you one. About my family.
She breathed out. But she still wanted to tell him to leave, as soon as she could manage it.
He began to speak in a low voice. She couldn’t grasp everything he said, but she didn’t dare to stop him. Janus grew restless again. She was still standing with her face towards the horse’s tail, but she could feel Shahzad Chadar looking at her. As if he wanted something in return for what he was telling her.
Abruptly she made up her mind. – I’ve met Jasmeen.
Of course he knew that.
– Then obviously you must know what she told me.
As soon as she had said this, she dared to turn round to face him.
Shahzad Chadar looked down into her eyes. – Jasmeen hates me. He never took his eyes off her. – She ruined her own life. I did what I could to help. Was she grateful?
He raised his voice, the superficial calm cracked. Synne could hear something else beneath it, a massive anger. Janus stepped away, treading on the hoof scraper on the soft ground. Synne held on to him.
– My brother was killed, she said quietly, talking as much to Janus as to Shahzad Chadar. – I knew it all the time. Someone killed him. It was you.
She shouldn’t have said that, not here in the riding hall, alone with him. But she had started; now there was no turning back. – I’ve told the police about you, she lied. – If anything happens to me …
He lowered his hands. – Nothing’s going to happen to you. Not here.
– Are you threatening me?
– I’m trying to make you understand what you’re doing.
He looked to be thinking something over before continuing. – Jasmeen does everything she can to harm me. I have lost a sister.
– I have lost a brother.
For an instant she saw something in his eyes. A sort of regret, perhaps.
– Karsten was just a kid, he said, his voice once again smooth and even. – A child who was given a toy. Just like you, he had no idea what he was dealing with. I tried to talk to him. He wouldn’t listen. Afterwards I realised that other people had put him up to it, told him what to do.
– Put him up to what?
He shook his head. – His friends were a bad bunch. They persuaded him to trick my sister. I tried to protect her. She was naïve, thought Karsten was serious.
– Wasn’t he?
– They got him to set fire to my father’s shop.
– Oh come on, she protested. – Karsten had nothing to do with that.
Shahzad shrugged his shoulders. – You’re gullible. It’s fine by me. But it could be dangerous for you.
She froze. It had started low down in her spine; now the cold had reached every part of her.
– Someone came to the place where I live, she said. – A man who knows you. He told me you met Karsten that evening, that you took him away in a car.
Shahzad stared at her for a long time. It looked as if he was struggling to control himself, and she thought she could see the anger that floated round inside him, a flow of magma forcing its way upwards.
– I have enemies, he said finally. – A lot of people who don’t want me to succeed. Some of them are Norwegian, with racist reasons. Others are Pakistanis who think I owe them something. The world I used to live in is probably not all that much like yours. You think I could have survived there if I just wagged my tail at everyone I met?
She didn’t know how she felt about that. – You made him get into your car. I saw you.
He came a step closer, stared down into her face.
– You were not there, he said in a low voice. He touched her on the shoulder. – This is what everyone who wants to stop me has been waiting for. You understand that. The chance to push me back down into the dirt again. You could be the useful idiot they’re looking for. Is that what you want?
She couldn’t give an answer to that. Again she pressed close against the warm body of the horse. I’m lying in a room. It must be a cellar because there are no windows there. I’m cold, and I realise I’m naked. Then the door is thrown open. Karsten stands there, calling to me, but I can’t hear the words, because everything is like a film with the sound turned off.
– Then tell me what happened that night, she mumbled. – Without lying about anything.
19
Dan-Levi picked up the remote. He had been sitting there zapping after the news, enjoying the anaesthetic release of watching a bit of a reality show, then changing to a nature programme, until in the end he had to force himself to turn it off.
He took paper and felt-tip pens and sat at the kitchen table, created a new solar association diagram, with the facts spread out at the end of the rays.
Khalid Chadar worked at Stornes farm. Stornes burned down. Karsten knows something about this. Karsten had a relationship with Jasmeen Chadar. Shahzad Chadar threatened him. Jasmeen (and others) claim that Shahzad killed Karsten. Another ray led to Elsa Wilkins. A son in Iraq. His name is Adrian and he knew Karsten, was with him a lot the spring Karsten disappeared.
He took another shot at it, this time with Stornes farm in the centre. Suddenly something occurred to him, and he made a note at the tip of one ray: Sara’s father bought our house from someone who was related to the Stornes family. He sat there pondering this. Wasn’t sure if it was correct, even less sure why it had now become part of his solar association diagram.
He rang Sara. She answered within two seconds.
– Has something happened? she burst out.
Dan-Levi couldn’t bring himself to say that he had just called to hear her voice, that he was looking forward to her coming home, the sort of things they said in the early years. Not that it was all no longer true, because he could suddenly experience that same sensation of missing her, even if she was only out shopping. Right now she was in the changing room of the gym at Kjellervolla School.
– Everything’s fine, he reassured her. – Just something I wanted to ask you.
She breathed a heavy sigh of relief. – Don’t scare me like that, Dan.
– All I’m doing is ringing you.
– I’ll be home in twenty minutes. It must be something really important if it can’t wait. Are the little ones in bed?
They were. Ruben
was sleeping over at a school friend’s, and Dan-Levi had had a long conversation with Rakel just before the news.
– Didn’t you once tell me that your father bought this house from someone who was related to the people at Stornes?
She gave a demonstrative groan. – And that couldn’t wait?
– Is that right?
– I think so. Solveig’s the one who knows about things like that. Why do you ask?
He couldn’t lie, but didn’t want to reveal what it was he was working on.
– I’ll tell you later, he promised, and hoped she would forget all about it.
Of course he could have rung Solveig immediately instead of bothering Sara. But he didn’t like to call his sister-in-law unless he really had to. He knew that the dramatic changes in her personality were a result of her illness, and that should have engaged his feelings of sympathy. But even when she was well, there was something about her that made him feel uncertain. He ought to have tried to find out why this was. Working on yourself is a job for life, he reminded himself as he called her number.
She sounded surprised, probably because it was the second time he had rung in the course of the last few days. With no attempt to explain, he put to her the same question he had asked Sara.
– Gunnhild Hammer, Solveig replied. – She was the oldest daughter at Stornes.
– Hammer, Dan-Levi echoed thoughtfully. – Do you know her?
– No, but I remember her from the time Mum and Dad bought the house.
– Tell me about her.
– Tell you what?
– Did she have a family? What work did she do? How long had they lived there?
– Have you started up as a private eye?
– Yes, he said with a slightly forced laugh.
– Well, she was married to a man by the name of Hammer. An army officer, if I’m not mistaken. They had a son, about your age. He was adopted, I believe. It’s not the kind of thing you ask people about.
– Where do they live now?
Solveig gave a low grunt, a habit of hers when she was thinking.
– Gunnhild Hammer had an illness, something that made the muscles waste away. That was the reason they sold up. She became increasingly disabled, couldn’t manage the staircase.
– Is she still alive?
– How would I know? Actually, Dad met them, it must have been a year or two after they bought the house, and by that time she was in a wheelchair. She wasn’t much older than me. It makes you think.
Dan-Levi didn’t allow a pause into which thoughts on the subject of Sara’s fate might enter.
– What about the son?
An impatient sound from the other end, and he began getting ready to close the conversation.
– Apparently he was in some kind of institution, she said. – They couldn’t manage him any more.
Afterwards he sat studying his solar diagram, and then added: Gunnhild Hammer, muscular disease. Husband military, son in an institution.
He removed his glasses and cleaned them as he climbed the stairs. Something or other flitted away from his thoughts. He couldn’t keep hold of it. It had something to do with what he had just written on the diagram.
The little ones were asleep, but Rakel’s light was still on. The cupboard door was open; he poked his head in.
– Time to return to our own world.
She crept out, torch in hand. – The man who lived in there has written things on the wall, she said.
– Man? You sure it wasn’t a girl?
She nodded definitely. – He’s written a girl’s name in there. Carved it into the beam.
– Maybe it was her own name.
Rakel climbed into bed. – I’ve seen him.
– You don’t say, said Dan-Levi, and sat on her bedside. – Where was that?
She looked up at him. – Here, I think. Not completely sure.
Dan-Levi was about to turn her light off. – And what did he look like?
– He had completely fair hair. Nearly like the angels in the pictures. She closed her eyes. – But he’s had very bad thoughts, you can tell from what he’s written.
Dan-Levi dropped the subject, didn’t think it was a good idea to talk about bad thoughts just before going to sleep.
After he’d sung evening prayers to her and tucked the duvet in around her, she said: – I had a weird dream last night.
He stopped in the doorway, sat down beside her again.
– Lots of what I dream I forget straight away. But I can’t forget this one.
– It’s not a secret, is it?
She shook her head. – But it was awful. I dreamed about you.
He was curious. – Again? Tell me.
She hesitated. – You took Pepsi out, you were going for a walk with her. And then you disappeared.
They had agreed never to ask her about her dreams but just let her describe them if she wanted to. Sara said that people thought her big sister could see the future in her dreams when she was a child. The thought that Rakel might have inherited something of the same unstable interior world that had spoiled so much of Solveig’s life was intolerable, and whenever it came up, Dan-Levi rejected it.
– I dreamed that you killed Pepsi.
He started. – What are you saying?
She stared at the wall, as though she was the one who had done something wrong. – I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said it.
He took hold of both her arms. – Tell me exactly what happened in your dream.
– Don’t remember.
– Try.
He realised he was too tense and let go of her. She hid her face in the duvet.
– I heard Pepsi whining and ran down into the kitchen and you had stabbed her with a knife.
He made a half-hearted attempt to give her a reassuring pat on the head, but she pulled away.
Elsa Wilkins squinted in the sharp light from the lamp above the door.
– Is that you? she exclaimed, clearly placing Dan-Levi immediately.
– I was in the neighbourhood, he explained. – Remembered there was something I wanted to ask you.
The visit was on impulse and he had not worked out any excuse for bursting in on her like this.
She held the door open for him. He stepped inside the small hallway. – I’m sure you must be busy.
– That doesn’t matter, she assured him. – The interview was really good. But that’s probably not why you’re here?
Even though she was offering him the chance to do so, he didn’t want to lie.
– No, that isn’t why. He kicked off his shoes. – Last time I was here, you talked about your son.
She went ahead of him into the living room. – Did I?
– You mentioned him in passing. That he ran a firm that was working out in Iraq. What I didn’t realise then was that he was a friend of someone I also know. A boy who disappeared.
Only when she was seated in a chair opposite him did she say: – You’re referring to Karsten Clausen.
Dan-Levi nodded. – Karsten lived near me. We were members of the same chess club.
– A terrible story.
He thought that was a pretty good summation of it.
– It was so awful for his family, she went on. – And the worst thing must be never knowing what actually happened. She shook her head.
– Karsten saw a lot of your son that spring, said Dan-Levi.
She pulled her hair back behind her ear on one side. – Adrian liked him a lot. Looked after him, as I’m sure you noticed. Karsten was a sensitive boy. Adrian’s very big hearted. Tea or coffee?
He declined, assured her he wouldn’t take more than five minutes of her time.
– So you’re here because of Karsten.
A relief not to have to deal in evasions. – I’m trying to find out what happened to him, he confirmed.
She looked at him as if she had realised this much earlier. – Do you think there’s anything else Adrian can help you with? He contacted the p
olice as soon as he knew Karsten had gone missing. Told them everything he knew. He went to see the parents too, spent a long time talking to them. They appreciated it.
She leaned back in her chair. She was wearing a dark dress and was nicely made up. Even when she wasn’t expecting guests she looked good.
– I’m sure you know Karsten was in trouble, she said. – He’d started a relationship with a Pakistani girl. Her family threatened him.
– Might that be the reason he disappeared? Dan-Levi asked without saying anything about what Synne had told him.
Elsa seemed to think about it. – Maybe not directly, even though Adrian didn’t rule it out. Mostly he believed it all got too much for Karsten, all these threats. They followed him around. He was assaulted.
– I didn’t know that.
– As far as I remember, it was the week before he disappeared. He came here afterwards, desperate and afraid. They cut his stomach with a knife. Adrian went with him to the police, I think.
– Are you sure it was reported?
– Well it must have been. Adrian said he’d sorted it out. She sighed. – It’s never easy to know when to let old ghosts die and when to open up and let the light in.
Dan-Levi wasn’t sure how to respond to that.
– I’ll call Adrian, she said decisively. – Ask him to get in touch with you. He’ll do all he can to help clear up what happened back then.
– Is he in Iraq?
– Right at the moment he’s in London.
– So he’s back here now and then?
Elsa looked out of the window, and Dan-Levi realised he was being intrusive.
– I miss him, she said finally. – But he couldn’t stay here. It was too provincial for him. He has to live somewhere where there’s a place for people of above-average talents.
Dan-Levi glanced at his watch. It had been well over five minutes.
– I discovered by the way that my parents-in-law bought their house from someone who must have been related to you. It’s in Erleveien.
Elsa Wilkins sat upright in her chair.
– My wife and I have taken over the house. Was it your sister who lived there?
– That’s right, she said, and smoothed out the tablecloth.
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