The first thing that struck Adam Stubo as he followed Sigmund Berli and Bernt Helle in through the glass doors of the yellow nursing home just outside Oslo, on the morning of February 20, was the institutional smell. He could not fathom why people in need of nursing care should be forced to live with the reek of overcooked fish and strong detergents. The public sector might well be struggling, but fresh air was free, after all. When he came into the room where Yvonne Knutsen lay immobile in bed for the third year running, he could hardly resist the urge to open the window.
“Yvonne,” Bernt Helle said. “It’s me. I’ve got the police with me today. Are you asleep?”
“No.”
She turned her face toward her son-in-law. Her smile was reserved. Bernt Helle laid his hand on her lower arm and gave her a quick peck on the cheek. Then he pulled the only chair in the room over to the bed and sat down. Adam and Sigmund stayed standing just inside the door.
“I know that you don’t like talking to anyone,” Bernt Helle said and wrapped his great hand around Yvonne Knutsen’s emaciated hand, with blood vessels that traced blue just under the skin. “Apart from me and Fiorella, that is. But this is very important. You see . . .” He ran his hand over his hair and gave an audible sigh.
“What is it?” Yvonne asked.
“You see, something has happened . . .” Again he faltered. He fiddled with a tape measure that was poking out of one of the pockets in his khaki pants.
Adam approached the bed.
“Adam Stubo,” he said, raising his hand in greeting. “I’ve been here before. Just after—”
“Yes, I remember that,” Yvonne Knutsen said. “Unfortunately I’m not senile yet. As far as I can remember, you promised not to bother me again.”
“Yes, that’s true,” Adam nodded. “But I’m afraid the situation has changed.”
“Not for me,” Yvonne replied.
“There’s been another murder,” Adam told her.
“I see,” said the paralyzed woman.
“And once again, the victim is a celebrity.”
“Who?”
“Vegard Krogh,” Adam said.
“Never heard of the man.”
“Well, there’s famous and there’s famous. It’s all relative. The point is that we—”
“The point is that I’m lying here waiting to die,” Yvonne Knutsen said in a very calm voice, without a trace of hysteria or self-pity. “The sooner the better. And while I’m waiting, I don’t want to be disturbed. Or talk to anyone. A modest request, if you ask me, given my condition.”
Adam glanced swiftly up and down the quilt. There was not even the slightest movement to indicate that the person lying there was alive; not even her chest rose visibly beneath the covers. Only her face showed the traces of what had once been a beautiful woman, high forehead and big almond eyes. Her mouth was reduced to a slit between sunken cheeks. But there was still enough information in the pale death mask for Adam to catch a glimpse of Yvonne Knutsen as she must once have been, straight-backed, confident, and attractive.
“I understand,” he said. “Really I do. The problem is that I unfortunately can’t comply with your wish. The situation is now so serious that we have to follow what leads we have.”
“As I said, I don’t know anyone named Vegard Krag and can—”
“Krogh,” Sigmund corrected from where he was standing in the middle of the floor. “Vegard Krogh.”
“Krogh,” she repeated weakly without even looking in Sigmund’s direction. “I don’t know anyone by that name. So, I don’t see how I can help you.”
“I’ve got some questions about Fiona’s children,” Adam said quietly.
“Fiorella?” asked the woman in the bed, surprised, looking from Adam to Bernt and back. “What about her?”
“Not Fiorella,” Adam explained. “Her first child. I’d like to know a bit more about the baby Fiona had when she was a teenager.”
Yvonne Knutsen suddenly changed. Her nose reddened. Color spread quickly, like butterfly wings, over her gray skin. Her breathing was faster and deeper, and she made a vain attempt to sit up in bed. Her mouth grew. She licked her lips, and they became redder and plumper. Her eyes, which only a moment ago had looked like they’d died already, now sparked with great distress.
Bernt carefully laid his hand on her chest.
“Take it easy,” he said.
“Bernt,” she gasped.
“It’s alright.”
“But—”
“Relax.”
Adam Stubo moved even closer. He leaned against the high bed frame and bent down over the sick woman.
“I realize that this must be very distressing . . .”
Bernt Helle pushed him away. For the first time during the long, fruitless investigation into Fiona’s murder, his behavior was aggressive. He didn’t relent until Adam was standing a few feet from the bed. Then he stroked Yvonne’s hair.
“Actually, hearing this has been a relief for me,” he said in a quiet voice, as if the police were no longer there. “Fiona was so . . . always searching, you know. I often wondered why. I don’t understand why it would’ve been so hard to tell me, though, after all these years, so many . . .”
There was an edge of repressed anger in his voice, which he heard himself and swallowed. Adam noticed that the grip on his mother-in-law’s hand was firmer when he continued, “I accept that there’s a lot of this I don’t understand. We have to talk. Properly, I mean. But right now you have to answer Stubo’s questions. It’s important, Yvonne. Please.”
She was crying silently. Her tears were as big as raindrops. They gathered in the corners of her eyes for a moment before overflowing and running down her temples into her hair.
“I didn’t want . . . We thought . . . It was . . .”
“Shhh,” Bernt comforted. “Take it easy.”
“Her life would have been ruined,” Yvonne whispered. “She wasn’t even sixteen. The baby’s father . . .”
Speech failed her. A fine stream of transparent fluid escaped from her left nostril, and she wiped the back of her hand over her face.
“He was a good-for-nothing,” she said loudly. “And Fiona was just about to start high school. The boy ran away, and it was too late to . . . I should have noticed, of course, but who would . . . Teenagers have a right to a private life too. And a bit of baby fat . . . I—”
“Yvonne,” Bernt Helle said firmly, trying to look her in the eyes. “Listen to me. Just listen to me for a minute!”
She had turned away from her son-in-law. She was trying to pull her hand from his firm grip.
“Listen to me,” he repeated, as if he was talking to a rebellious daughter. “The two of us can take all the time we need to talk about this later. But what is important right now is that the police get some answers.”
No one said anything. Yvonne had given up the fight with her reluctant muscles. She lay there helpless once again, bereft of energy. Even her hair looked lifeless, spread out gray and thin across the pillow.
“His name is Mats Bohus,” she said suddenly, the same old voice, dismissive and indifferent at the same time.
“Sorry?”
“Mats Bohus. He was born on October 13, 1978. I don’t know anymore.”
“How can you . . .” Bernt Helle started but couldn’t finish the question.
Once again, Adam approached the bed.
“And this Mats got in touch with Fiona recently,” he stated, as if he didn’t need confirmation from Yvonne.
She mumbled in agreement all the same, without looking at Adam.
“Before or after New Year?” he asked.
“Before Christmas,” Yvonne whispered. “He was . . . he is . . .”
Her nose would not stop running. Bernt Helle fished out a handkerchief from a drawer in the bedside table and gave it to her. She had just enough energy to lift her left hand and put the hanky to her nose.
“I sent her away,” she said. “I sent Fiona to my sister in Dokka. Far enough away. Secluded enough to prevent any questions.”
Adam shuddered when the woman laughed. She sounded like a wounded crow; her laugher was hoarse, grating, and joyless.
“Then she gave birth prematurely,” Yvonne continued. “I wasn’t there. No one was there. They just about died, both of them. Then . . .”
She gulped as she breathed in and then coughed so much that Bernt sat her up in bed. When the coughing eventually subsided, he carefully wiped around her mouth and lowered her back down.
“There was something wrong with the boy,” she said, her voice hard, “but it was no longer our problem.”
“Something wrong with the boy,” Adam repeated. “What exactly?”
“He was too big. Slow, heavy, and unbelievably . . . ugly.”
For a split second, Adam envisaged Ragnihld just after she had been taken from her mother’s womb, red, slimy, and helplessly un-beautiful. He put his hand to his mouth and coughed. His eyes narrowed. Yvonne Knutsen didn’t appear to notice his disapproval.
“What happened then?” Bernt Helle asked, almost inaudibly.
“We forgot,” Yvonne replied. “We had to forget.”
“Forget . . .”
Adam took a silent step away from the bed.
“The boy was given away,” said the woman. “Adopted. Obviously I don’t know by whom. It was best that way. For him and for Fiona. She had her whole life in front of her. If only we managed to forget.”
“And did you manage? Did you manage to forget, Yvonne?”
Bernt Helle had let go of her hand now and was sitting on the edge of the chair, as if he was about to make a break for it. His left leg was twitching, and the heel of his boot was tapping on the linoleum.
“I forgot,” Yvonne said. “Fiona forgot. It was best. Don’t you understand that, Bernt?”
Her fingers clawed the sheets, where his hand no longer was. His gaze was fixed on the crooked, faded lithograph. He leaned back in the chair and cocked his head. His eyes did not leave the picture. He stared, blinked, and squinted at the abstract composition of discolored cubes and cylinders.
“Please try to understand,” Yvonne pleaded. “Fiona was too young. It was the best thing to do, to send her away, put the child up for adoption once it was born, and then forget the whole thing. Carry on as if nothing had happened. It was absolutely necessary, Bernt. I had to think about Fiona. And her alone. She was my responsibility. I was her mother. The boy would have a better life with mature parents, with people who could—”
“We’re not exactly talking about the thirties,” Bernt exclaimed and pulled away from the bed even more. “It was the late seventies! The age of feminism, Yvonne! Gro Harlem Brundtland and eco-activism, abortion and positive discrimination for women in the workplace, for Christ’s sake, it was . . .”
He got up suddenly. He stood over her with his balled hands raised in a manner that was at once threatening and desperate. Then he lifted his face to the ceiling and ran his open hands over his head.
“For years and years we struggled to have children! We went abroad, to all kinds of clinics, we tried and tried and—”
“I think,” Adam interrupted tersely, “that we should stick to your own wise words, Helle. These are obviously issues you need to talk about, but that can wait until later.”
The big man looked at him in surprise, as if he had just registered that the policemen were there.
“Yes,” he said in a feeble voice. “But then I think I’ll . . .”
He moved slowly over to the other side of the bed. The air in the room was stale. Adam could feel the sweat dripping from his armpits, cold trickles down to the waist of his pants. He wiped his finger under his nose.
“What are you going to do?” he asked cautiously.
Bernt Helle didn’t answer. Instead he straightened the picture. Gently pushed it to one side, then a fraction to the other.
“I understand that you need answers,” he said, still facing the wall. “And I really want to help. But right now there’s actually not a lot I can do. I shouldn’t be here. So I’ll go.”
Sigmund blocked the door.
“I’m not under arrest,” Bernt Helle said. He was at least a head taller than the compact policeman. “Out of the way.”
“Let him go,” Adam instructed. “Of course he’s got the right to do exactly as he pleases. Thank you for your help, Mr. Helle.”
The widower didn’t answer. The door closed slowly behind him, and they could hear his steps, hard rubber on polished linoleum, fading down the corridor. Adam took Bernt Helle’s place on the chair.
“So now it’s just us.”
The sick woman seemed to be even sicker now. Her flush had died down. Her face was not as gray as when they arrived, but it now had a frightening bluish white tint. Her eyelids slid shut. Her lower lip was trembling, the only indication that Yvonne Knutsen was still alive.
“I understand that this is difficult,” Adam tried. “And I won’t bother you for much longer. I just want to know what happened—”
“Go away.”
“Yes, I just want—”
“Go away.” Her voice broke.
“What did he want?” Adam asked. “Mats Bohus. What happened when he turned up?”
“Go away.”
“Does he live in—”
“Please, leave me alone.”
Her hand fumbled for the alarm button that was taped to the side of the bed. He got up.
“I do apologize for all this,” he said. “Good-bye.”
“But,” Sigmund Berli protested when Adam grabbed him by the arm and led him out into the corridor. “We have to—”
“The man’s name is Mats Bohus, and we know his date of birth,” Adam said and looked over his shoulder.
Yvonne Knutsen was gasping for breath and pushing the alarm button again and again.
“How difficult can it be to find him when we already know that much?” Adam whispered and remained standing in the doorway.
When a coated man in his thirties appeared in response to the frantic alarm, Adam took Sigmund’s arm again and started to walk away.
“It can’t be that difficult,” he said again, as if he was trying to convince himself.
He glanced at his watch.
“Quarter past twelve already. We don’t have much time.”
The air outside was cold and sharp, with a scent of spruce and burnt wood coming from a nearby house. Adam stood still for several minutes before sitting down with heavy movements in the passenger seat.
“You drive,” he said to Sigmund, who took his place behind the wheel in surprise and put the key in the ignition. “We don’t have much time.”
He didn’t find it hard being on his own anymore. In fact, he did whatever he could to stop people from coming. They were lining up. His parents, especially his mother, called several times a day. He hadn’t seen hide nor hair of his brother since the fight, but friends, colleagues, and acquaintances all seemed to think that Trond Arnesen had none of the skills required for living alone. Yesterday, two old friends from school had turned up on his doorstep with homemade lasagna. They were put out when he wouldn’t let them in.
He had read that normally it was the opposite.
He had read in the glossy women’s magazines that he hadn’t gotten rid of yet that normally the nearest and dearest were left in peace and quiet following a tragic death in the family. He had read how the death of a child often left behind an emptiness that the parents’ friends and acquaintances avoided in silent embarrassment.
It wasn’t like that for him. People were elbowing their way in. His boss at work had said that he should take it easy. Take the time he needed to grieve, was the expression he’d used on the morning he laid his arm around Trond’s shoulders and offered to drive him home. As Trond accepted, it was difficult not to invite him in. The man was in his fifties, balding with a comb-over and a snub nose in the middle of his round face. His boss had sent stealthy glances in every direction, as if storing impressions that he could expand on when he got back to work. Finally he was satisfied and left.
Another celebrity had been murdered.
Trond put the newspaper down and went into the kitchen. He had everything he needed for the weekend in the fridge. His mother had insisted on shopping for him. He opened a beer. It wasn’t even one o’clock yet, but he had locked the doors, taken the battery out of his home phone, and turned off his cell phone. He wanted to be alone, right until Monday. The very thought gave him a boost. For the first time since Victoria had been killed, he felt something that resembled peace.
The unaccounted-for one and a half hours were nearly forgotten. He drank half the can in one gulp before sitting down in an armchair with the day’s newspapers.
Even Aftenposten was making a big deal about it. The greater part of the front page and two whole inside pages were dedicated to the murderer who, according to the paper’s grim comments, was a killing machine the likes of which Norway had never seen. Six columns were taken up drawing a speculative profile. They imagined that it was a man, obviously, with heavy features and unruly hair. The news desk had superimposed pictures of Fiona Helle, Victoria Heinerback, and Vegard Krogh across his chest. There was no more talk of a woman-hater who had been rejected by his mother. Rather, they veered toward the idea of an unsuccessful wannabe. The underlying implication of a major opinionated interview with three well-known psychologists and a retired policeman from Bergen was that the murderer was probably to be found among the ranks of people voted out of the Big Brother house, unsuccessful Pop Idol contestants, or Eurovision Song Contest finalists who hadn’t won. The brutal killer had probably experienced his fifteen minutes of fame and couldn’t cope with the withdrawal symptoms when the spotlight was suddenly turned off. That’s what the experts believed.
Vegard Krogh was described as a rising talent, an uncompromising artist.
He was found with a pen stuck in his eye.
Trond laughed so much that the beer sprayed out of his mouth.
Vegard Krogh was the world’s biggest creep.
The guy had hated Victoria and everything she stood for. Lots of people did, but Vegard Krogh had not been satisfied with mere discontent. After one of Victoria’s harangues about culture’s inability to adjust to market forces, Vegard had approached them at Kunstnernes Hus. It was late on a Friday night, and everyone was there. In a loud voice, he’d picked an argument with her. Then, when Victoria turned her back on him with her little finger bent like a pathetic penis for all the others around the table to see, he had poured his beer on her head. Quite a scuffle followed. Trond wanted to report him to the police.
“That’ll just make him feel more important than he is,” Victoria said at the time. “He wants attention, and I can’t be bothered to give it to him.”
Since then, they had neither seen nor heard from Vegard Krogh, except for the odd barbed comment in articles that the Observer sent to Victoria. She didn’t care, but Trond got rattled every time he came across one of Krogh’s rotten pieces. When the guy was given a short guest appearance on Absolute Entertainment, Trond stopped watching that channel.
A prick of the highest order, he thought.
Vegard Krogh wanted to be a celebrity at any cost and had now finally succeeded.
Trond drank the rest of the beer and went to get another can.
He was going to be alone all weekend and decided to get drunk. Maybe he would take a bath. Watch a movie. Take a couple of the pills in Victoria’s medicine cabinet and sleep for twelve hours.
Those one and a half hours were nearly forgotten.
“A pen,” Sigmund Berli said lamely.
“Mont Blanc,” replied the pathologist. “Type, Bohème. Appropriate, according to what I’ve read in the papers. I didn’t want to remove it till you’d had a look.”
“How is it . . .”
Adam broke off and bent down over the body. He studied the exposed face. The mouth was half open. The nose was covered in scratches. The unscathed eye stared at a point on the ceiling. Poking out of the other eye was a stubby pen. When Adam walked around the metal table, he could see that the writing instrument had been thrust into the corner of the eye. It went deep, he assumed, as only about two inches of the black pen could be seen, perfectly positioned at a right angle to the cheekbone. A small jewel in the clip shone ruby red in the harsh light.
“Has the eyeball itself been perforated?” Adam asked and leaned even closer.
The deceased’s right pupil looked alarmingly alive as it squinted toward the alien body in the corner of the eye. It looked like Vegard Krogh had realized that his favorite pen was on its way into his brain.
“Well,” the pathologist said. “The eyeball has in all likelihood been destroyed, naturally. But he . . . the killer didn’t stab the pen into the eye itself.”
“But he may have tried to,” Adam suggested.
“Yes. The pen may have slipped on the eyeball and then penetrated here”—he used a laser pointer and made the red dot dance around the corner of the eye—“where it is of course easier to get in.”
“Interesting,” Adam mumbled.
Sigmund Berli said nothing. Unnoticed, he had retreated a couple of steps from the metal table.
“So he was actually dead before this was done?” Adam asked.
“Yes,” the pathologist replied. “Possibly. What killed him was the blow to the neck. As I said, I haven’t done a detailed investigation yet, because I understood that you wanted to see him first. However, it seems to be reasonably clear that he was hit here.”
The red dot vibrated just above Vegard Krogh’s left temple. His hair was matted and dark.
“Knocked out, more than likely. Then this blow to the neck”—the pathologist scratched his cheek and then hunkered down so that his face was at the same level as the head of the victim—“killed him. It’s a bit difficult to show you without turning him over and I don’t want to do that before I’ve taken out the pen and—”
“That’s fine,” Adam said. “I’ll wait for the final report. So it was a blow to the neck. Having been knocked out first by a blow to the left temple. With what?”
“Something heavy. Probably something metal. My initial guess would be a solid bar. When we have a closer look, we’ll no doubt find particles in the wounds, which will give us more precise information.”
“Then we can assume that the murderer is right-handed,” Adam said. “Not that that’s much help.”
“Right-handed?”
“Left temple,” Adam explained, distracted. “Hit with the right hand.”
“Only if they were facing each other,” Sigmund said. He had gone over to the door and was sucking on a piece of candy. “If the murderer came from behind, he might—”
“They were facing each other,” Adam interrupted. “At least, that’s what the team who examined the scene have concluded. From the footprints. Thanks for your help.”
He held his hand out to the pathologist, who took it and then sat down at a desk in the corner.
“What’s the matter with you?” Adam teased Sigmund once the door to the postmortem room had closed behind them. “You usually cope with worse things than that!”
“God damn it. A pen in your eye, come on!”
“Don’t know what’s worse,” Adam said and groped for his notebook in his coat pocket. “Pen in the eye, tongue in a nice bag, or the Koran stuffed up your fanny.”
“Pen in the eye,” muttered Sigmund. “A damned fancy pen shoved into your brain is the worst thing I’ve seen.”
A passer-by stopped for a moment outside the impressive building down toward the central station. He was in a hurry. If he didn’t make the bus, he would have to wait a whole hour until the next one. But he still stopped. He heard clapping coming from inside. The applause was so loud that he imagined he could feel vibrations in the ground, as if the enthusiasm contained by the solid brick walls was so great that it set the whole of Oslo in motion. The man looked up. He had passed this place, on his way to and from work, five days a week for five years. He had passed the building, which had been abandoned for some time as the neighbors called for it to be pulled down, nearly two and a half thousand times.
He had watched new life being breathed into the building over the past four seasons. Last winter, it had been wrapped in scaffolding and plastic, which shivered and flapped in the gusts of wind from the fjord. During the spring, the building had been reduced to a façade with nothing behind it, like a Hollywood stage set. And before the summer was over, the empty space once again became a four-story building, with grand stairways and hardwood floors, beautiful doors and carefully restored leaded windows on the first floor. Throughout the fall, Polish and Danish curse words could be heard from the scaffolding and the openings that still gaped in the walls, twenty-four/seven. The papers wrote about budget overruns, delays, and open conflicts about money.
The new party headquarters was finally unwrapped just before Christmas. Right on time. The building was officially opened with a new Christmas play for children, performed in the beautiful, elegant auditorium.
The man looked at the façade.
Passing this building gave him inexplicable pleasure. The colors were an exact replica of what had been chosen at the end of the eighteen hundreds, when the building was built as a residence and office for the town’s richest entrepreneur. When his grandchild died in 1998, ancient and childless, the property was gifted to the party. As they barely had the means to pay the taxes, it had stood empty until yet another new liberal capitalist, appreciative of the party’s high-profile tax policy, gave them an astonishing donation that allowed them to create the grandest party headquarters in the whole of Scandinavia.
The clapping seemed to be unstoppable.
The man smiled. He pulled his coat tighter and ran for the bus.
If, however, he had instead gone up the stone steps to the huge, heavy oak door, he would have discovered that it was open. And if he had gone into the hall, he would no doubt have admired the floor. Pieces of hand-turned solid wood spiraled out from a case in the middle of the floor, where the party’s motto was engraved in pure gold, behind glass: Mankind • market • moral.
The man who was now getting onto the bus three blocks further west was a loyal social democrat, so he would probably have been antagonized by the banal message. But the beauty of the entrance hall, with its hand-painted dome and crystal and silver chandeliers, might possibly have drawn him up the stairs. The thick carpets would have felt like summer pastures under his feet. Perhaps he would have let the endless clapping lure him into the auditorium. Behind the double doors at the end of the wide corridor, on the opposite side of the room, he would have seen Rudolf Fjord behind a lectern, with his hands raised above his head in victory.
The man who was sitting on the bus, dreading admitting to his partner that he had forgotten to buy wine, might possibly have been astonished by the overwhelming display of jubilation at the emergency meeting of the national congress such a short time after their young leader had been murdered.
A new party chairman had just been elected.
If the passer-by, who was leaning his forehead against the bus window, trying to decide which of his friends might have three bottles of red wine he could borrow, had instead slipped into the back rows of the auditorium, he would have seen something that only Rudolf Fjord had noticed until now.
In amongst all the whooping, clapping, and whistling delegates, there was one person who neither smiled nor laughed. Her hands moved slowly toward each other, in a demonstrative silent protest.
The woman was Kari Mundal. The man on the bus would have seen her turn her back to the stage and leave the auditorium, quietly and calmly, before Rudolf Fjord had had a chance to thank the delegates for their overwhelming confidence in him.
A sharp observer would have seen all of this.
But the passer-by had a bus to catch. And now he was fast asleep, his head on a stranger’s shoulder.
It was one o’clock on Saturday morning. Kristiane was back. She was always over-excited when she’d been away from her mother and hadn’t fallen asleep until around midnight. Adam had gone to bed about the same time. He didn’t even try to convince Johanne to come with him. They had barely managed to talk in all the commotion. Isak had stayed until very late.
Johanne knew that she shouldn’t let herself be irritated by Isak. And yet she felt that she would never succeed. It was his naturalness that annoyed her most, the nonchalant assumption that it was always fine for him just to sit down, that they had nothing better to do than serve up food and make small talk every time he took Kristiane home. Even now, only a month after Ragnhild was born, he ran boisterously around the house playing Superman with Kristiane on his back, with not a thought for Ragnhild, who was sleeping.
“Just be glad,” Adam had said before he went to bed, with some exasperation in his voice. “Kristiane has a good dad. He may be a bit . . . He takes liberties, but he does love that girl. Give him some credit.”
Maybe it was actually Adam’s fault that she had no patience with Isak. He was the one who should protest. It was Adam, her husband, who should put his foot down, take the intruder to task, her skinny ex-husband who always cheerfully slapped his successor on his twice-as-broad back and offered him a lukewarm beer from the six-pack he usually brought every other Friday, along with a bag of Kristiane’s dirty clothes. Always dirty clothes. He never remembered her toiletries.
“I’ve got some cold beer,” Adam always smiled.
Johanne refused to see it as a sign of weakness.
Compliancy.
She got up from the sofa abruptly.
“What’s wrong now?” Adam asked.
She stopped and shrugged her shoulders.
“Nothing. Go back to bed.”
He was dressed. The sloppy fleece and gray sweatpants irritated her. She had given him a dark blue Nike set for Christmas to wear around the house. It still lay unused in the dresser.
“Go to bed,” she snapped and went into the kitchen.
“This has to stop,” he said. “You can’t be angry with me every other Friday. It’s not going to work.”
“I’m not angry with you,” Johanne retorted and let the faucet run. “If I’m pissed off with anyone, it’s Isak. But we’ll just let it lie.”
“No, we can’t—”
“Let it lie, Adam.”
And they let it lie. He wandered into the living room. He heard her filling a glass with water. She took great gulps. The thump of the glass on the counter was harder than necessary. Then it was quiet.
“What about doing some work?”
His smile was timid. He grabbed her hand as she passed to go and sit on the other sofa. She let him hold it for a moment before pulling her arm into her body.
“A pen in the eye,” she said slowly as she relaxed into the cushions. It was as if she had to concentrate on showing any interest at all. “Certainly very symbolic.”
“You can say that,” Adam nodded, still not sure where he had her. “And for the first time we can safely say that the victim had enemies. Victoria Heinerback had people who objected to her, and she had fallen out with some politicians. There were people who were jealous of Fiona Helle and who talked behind her back. Vegard Krogh, on the other hand, had fallen out with everyone. Because of his behavior and what he wrote. But mainly the latter, perhaps.”
“People like that are awful,” Johanne burst out. “All cocky and hard when they’re sitting at home behind their computer, but pathetic and cowardly when standing face-to-face with the person they’re ripping to shreds. Unless they’ve drunk themselves stupid, that is.”
“Quite an outburst,” Adam mumbled under his breath. “Is there any more wine left?”
She nodded and pulled the blanket more tightly around her.
“I think hotheads like that are okay,” he said and put his generously filled glass down on the coffee table. “Do you want some?”
She shook her head.
“Honestly,” she said with unusual passion. “People like that ruin any kind of public debate. It’s impossible in this country to . . .”
Her voice shocked her, and she was quieter when she continued, “There’s no point in discussing anything anymore. Certainly not in the papers. People are more interested in making extreme statements and elegantly crucifying their opponent to make themselves look good, rather than discussing an issue properly. Elucidating the matter. Being nonjudgmental. Gaining insight. Sharing knowledge.”
Adam picked up the glass and leaned back. He looked at her. Her hair was tousled, and she had bags under her eyes. She was pale, like everyone else at this time of year, but he thought there was also something transparent about her skin, a vulnerability that she was trying to hide behind the unfamiliar anger.
“Come over here,” he said softly. “Don’t take it all so seriously. People can be outspoken if they like. They generally don’t mean to hurt people. Exaggerating things, arguing, a bit of passion, it’s just entertaining. You shouldn’t take it too seriously.”
Johanne pulled in her legs and ran her fingers through her hair. Her lower lip trembled.
“Come here,” Adam said. “Come here, honey.”
“I just get so angry,” she said quietly. “I’d rather sit here by myself.”
“Okay. That’s fine.”
“Mats Bohus,” she started.
“That’s his name.”
“Have you found him?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Adam ran his hands through his fair hair, which was getting too long. He knew it looked stupid, thinning on top with a bit of a mullet at the neck and by the ears. He normally kept it shorter, which made it look thick and youthful.
“His home address is in Oslo,” he explained. “In Bislett. Louisesgate. But he’s not there. The neighbors have described him as being slightly odd. The woman across the corridor said he was away a lot. Never any trouble with the boy, but he’s often away for long periods. Doesn’t talk to anyone, apart from saying hello on the stairs. And we get the impression that he looks a bit strange. Can you cut my hair tomorrow?”
“I can cut it now, if you like.”
He laughed and drank some more wine.
“Now?”
“Yes, this is when we have time.”
Jack wagged his tail joyfully when Adam shrugged his shoulders and got up to get the clippers.
“No walk,” he said sternly. “Lie down.”
The dog padded over to a corner, turned around a few times and then lay down on the parquet with a thump.
“Not too short,” Adam warned and tied a towel around his neck. “Not a buzz cut, that is. I want some hair.”
“Okay, okay. Sit down.”
He felt like a sheep as the clippers cut their way through the hair on his neck. The vibrations resounded in his skull.
“It tickles my ears,” he smiled and brushed the hair off his chest.
“Sit still.”
“The killer really has had so much luck,” he said thoughtfully. “If it really is one and the same man who is making his way through a list of Norwegian celebrities, he’s either planned it meticulously or been very lucky.”
“Not necessarily,” Johanne said and moved the clippers steadily over Adam’s left temple.
“Yes,” he said, stubbornly. “Yet again, he has managed to get to and from the scene of the crime without being seen. As things stand now—and we’ve got thirty men from Asker and Bærum doing a major door-to-door canvas. There’s plenty of evidence at the scene, and a lot of it is good enough to get a fairly detailed picture of what happened in the minutes before the murder. The murderer was waiting in the woods, let Vegard Krogh walk past on the path, then followed him, got him to turn around, and then knocked him down. But there’s nothing—”
The clippers cut into his skin.
“Ow! Be careful! And I said I didn’t want a buzz cut!”
“You’ll look great. What were you going to say?”
“We’re still pretty blank. No organic evidence. Difficult to conclude anything from the weight and size of the foot, except that the killer isn’t the lightest of people. He’s been lucky.”
She turned off the clippers. She stood behind him for a moment, thoughtful, without really focusing on anything.
“You don’t necessarily need to have luck. If you’re smart and careful, that might be enough. All the victims are public figures, more or less, and it is surprising . . .”
There was silence. The children were fast asleep. The neighbors had gone to bed. There wasn’t a sound from the garden or the street. No cats. No cars or drunk youths on the way to another party. The house was silent; the new extension had finally settled and no longer creaked at night. Even the King of America was sleeping soundly and silently.
“I was at Lina’s today,” she said eventually. “Our computer is hopeless, and Lina’s got broadband. It only took me a few minutes to find out that these victims, these”—she put down the clippers and squatted down in front of him—“these public figures really are public,” she said and put her elbows on his knees. “Truly. Victoria Heinerback’s homepages have remained unchanged since her murder, it’s—”
“Her family has no doubt had other things to think about.”
“I don’t mean to criticize,” she interposed. “The point is that her brother-in-law’s bachelor party—”
“Brother-in-law to be.”
“Don’t interrupt. There was a bit about the bachelor party with a link to Trond’s homepages, where the reader had access to a detailed itinerary! Anyone who wanted to could have found out that Victoria was likely to be at home alone that evening. Most people knew that she went to bed early, as she made such a fuss about it in all her interviews.”
“I’m not quite sure what you’re getting at. My hair must look pretty strange.”
“It’ll be fine.”
She stood behind him again and turned on the clippers.
“Fiona Helle was also pretty generous with her private life. She had told the whole world that she was alone every Tuesday. Vegard Krogh kept a blog, one of those incredibly self-centered things that the author thinks are interesting for the rest of the world. Yesterday he told his readers that he had to have supper with his mother because he owed her money. The revolting man really was a great—”
“What are you doing?” Adam turned around with a subdued cry. “I said not a buzz cut!”
“Oops,” Johanne said. “A bit short, maybe. Hang on a minute.”
She quickly made a few strokes with the machine from his neck up and over to his forehead.
“There,” she said with some doubt. “Now it’s even, at least. Can’t we just say it’s a summer cut?”
“In February? Let me see.”
She reluctantly passed him the mirror. His expression changed from disbelief to desperation.
“I look like a loaf of bread,” he wailed. “My head looks like a big loaf of white bread! I said not to cut it all off!”
“I didn’t cut it all off,” she said. “You look great. And now we have to concentrate.”
“I look like Kojak!”
“Do you think they lie a lot?” she asked, trying to sweep all the hair into a dustpan.
“Who?” he muttered.
“Celebrities.”
“Lie?”
“Yes. When they’re interviewed.”
“Well . . .”
“I’ve heard some people admit it. Or boast about it, depending on how you look at it. I fully understand if that’s the case. They create a pretend life that we can all be part of and then keep the real one to themselves.”
“You just said that they write everything about their lives on the Internet.”
“Bits of it. The safe things. It makes the lie more effective, I presume. Don’t know. Maybe I’m talking trash.”
She emptied the hair into a plastic bag, tied it up, and put it in the garbage can. Adam stayed sitting on the stool with the towel around his neck. The mirror was lying on the floor, facedown. There was a thin trickle of blood on his neck from a cut just behind his ear. Johanne moistened one of Ragnhild’s bibs and pressed it to the wound.
“Sorry,” she whispered. “I should have concentrated more.”
“What do you mean when you say you don’t necessarily need to be lucky?” Adam asked. “That this killer hasn’t just been lucky as hell?”
“A murder in itself doesn’t need much planning,” she said. “Unless you’re someone who will immediately be suspected, that is. If I want to kill someone who everyone knows I have a grudge against, I would have to think about it. Make sure I have an alibi, for example. That’s the biggest challenge.”
“A enormous one,” Adam nodded in agreement. “That’s why so few succeed.”
“Exactly. But bank robbery . . . then we’re talking about planning! Money is far better protected than people. A successful armed robbery depends on prior knowledge and meticulously planned logistics. Expertise. Modern weapons and other cutting-edge equipment. But humans, we’re so”—she put her hand on his head. The cropped hair felt terrific against her palm—“so vulnerable. A thin layer of skin. And inside we’re vulnerable too. A blow to the head, a knife in the right place. A push down the stairs. In fact, it’s strange that it doesn’t happen more often.”
“For a woman who I know has a good heart and who’s just had a baby, you’re painting a pretty grim picture,” he said and got up. “Do you really think that?”
“Yes. I said it just the other day. When Sigmund was here. The worst thing would be a murder without a motive. If we can’t catch him red-handed or he doesn’t slip up, he gets away with it.”
“I completely disagree with you,” Adam said, spitting out some hair while trying to scratch his back. “A murder also needs to be planned. Prior knowledge.”
She looked over at the bottle of wine. About a third full. She got a glass and poured herself some.
“Of course,” she agreed. “You’re right. It takes some skill. But that’s all. You don’t need much equipment, for example. None of the three victims has been killed with a gun, which you would have to get hold of and also leaves interesting traces. The most important thing is that you can pull out. Right up until the last second. If something goes wrong, something unexpected happens or disturbs you, you can calmly walk away without killing the person. Especially as you don’t need anyone else with you to commit murder. That’s a huge advantage. What one person knows, no one knows; what two people know, everyone knows.”
“Your mother,” Adam laughed and plopped down on the sofa.
“Mmm. Not everything she says is stupid.”
She followed suit and this time she sat next to him.
“It frightens me to think about the possibility that this person knows what they’re doing. A . . . professional.”
“Do they actually exist?” Adam asked. “Professional killers? I mean here, in Norway, in this part of the world?”
She tilted her head and sent him a look as if he had asked whether it was ever winter in Norway.
“Okay,” he muttered. “They exist. But would they not have a motive? A cause to fight for? Or some distorted reason, be it money or God’s will?”
For a moment, their eyes met. Then she leaned against him. He held her tight.
“What do you think about Mats Bohus?” she asked in a quiet voice.
“We have to find him.”
“But do you think he has anything to do with the murders?”
Adam sighed loudly. Johanne made herself more comfortable, pulled her legs up onto the sofa, and took a sip of her wine. He ran his fingers up her under arm.
“It’s easy to imagine that he might have been involved in Fiona Helle’s murder,” he said. “At least he has a motive. Possibly. We don’t really know enough about what happened when he contacted her. But what the hell would the guy have against Victoria Heinerback and Vegard Krogh?”
“Nemo,” said the nine year old in the doorway. “Me and Sulamit want to watch Nemo.”
“Kristiane,” Johanne smiled. “Come here. It’s night time, dear. We don’t watch movies in the middle of the night.”
“Yes we do,” Kristiane said and climbed up onto the sofa, forcing herself in between them. “Leonard says that Sulamit isn’t a cat.”
She hugged the fire engine to her body and kissed the ladder, which was broken.
“It’s up to you whether Sulamit is a cat or not,” Adam told her.
“Only me,” Kristiane nodded.
“But I do think that Leonard will think Sulamit is a fire engine. Is that okay with you?”
“No, cat.”
“Cat for you, fire engine for Leonard.”
“And cat for you,” Kristiane said and held the sad, wheelless toy up to Adam’s face. He kissed the hood.
“Now you have to go back to bed,” Johanne said.
“With you,” Kristiane replied.
“In your own bed,” Adam said. “Come along now.”
He lifted up the child, and the fire engine and disappeared. Johanne stayed on the sofa. Her joints ached with fatigue. She felt weaker than she had for ages. It was as if all the energy had drained out of her; the greedy baby’s mouth sucked out what little she had left after the birth, every four hours, all day and all night; the little bundle made her anxious and weak. Of course she should spend more time with Kristiane. But there wasn’t more time to be had.
Not even the nights were her own anymore.
Mats Bohus could feasibly have killed his biological mother.
But could he have killed the other two?
She should really get some sleep.
She drank some more wine. She held it in her mouth, let it run over her tongue, tasted it, then swallowed.
If Mats Bohus wanted to camouflage his mother’s murder, he had made a big mistake. He killed Fiona Helle first. The actual murder in a series of camouflage killings should never come first.
Elementary, she thought to herself. A beginner’s mistake. No skill.
The murderer was professional. Had insight.
Maybe not.
She had to sleep.
There was another case. Something similar. Somewhere in her brain’s hard disk was a story that she couldn’t locate.
All was quiet. She was missing something without knowing quite what.
Johanne fell asleep and was not disturbed by dreams.
Sigmund Berli emptied his fourth cup of bitter coffee in three hours. Not only was it bitter, it was also cold. He wrinkled his nose. A bag of gummy bears lay on the desk beside his screen. He popped three into his mouth and chewed slowly. The missus wasn’t happy that he was putting on weight. She should try sitting here at four in the morning, in front of a damned computer that didn’t want to tell him anything. The woman should try staying awake for twenty-four hours and then try to find some meaning in the columns, names, numbers, and flickering letters on a bright square screen that made his eyes water.
It was sometimes hard to find a wanted person. Even in a small country like Norway, there were plenty of places to hide. The Schengen Agreement meant that they now worked with police forces all over Europe, which helped when they were looking for someone. But then the Agreement also made it easier to cross borders, and thus the number of hiding places had mushroomed. A wanted person could escape. But an ordinary Norwegian, a Mats Bohus, a pure-blooded Norwegian with no criminal record, with a permanent address and personal identity number—they should be able to trace him in a couple of hours.
They’d been looking for nearly twenty-four hours.
Gone. The man had simply vanished.
When they finally managed to confirm that he had been last seen at his apartment in Louisesgate on January 20, the whole NCIS went into action. Adam was probably the only person who was allowed to go home. New baby and all that.
A stab of envy. A wisp of desire; Sigmund saw Johanne’s face reflected on the screen. He filled his mouth with three red gummy bears. The sugar hurt his teeth. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He grabbed his cup, even though he knew it was empty.
Foreigners, all these damned foreigners, they just came and went, in and out of Norway, as they pleased, as if they just came here to take a dump. They played with the police. If only people knew. Some people were starting to realize. Luckily. Foreigners.
But Mats Bohus?
Fiona Helle had been murdered on January 20. And since then, no one had seen him. Where the hell was he?
“Hallelujah, Sigmund!”
Lars Kirkeland was standing in the doorway with his shirt tails out and eyes red. He had a stupid grin on his face and thumped the door frame with his fist.
“We found the guy!”
Sigmund burst out laughing and clapped his hands a couple of times before stuffing the rest of the gummy bears in his mouth.
“Mmmm,” he said and chewed furiously. “We have to call Adam.”
She should have chosen another hotel. The SAS Hotel, for example, with its Arne Jacobsen design and discreet, cosmopolitan staff. Almost everything you needed was there under one roof, so she wouldn’t have needed to go out. Copenhagen was a Norwegian town, far too Norwegian, haunted by beer- drinking men in stupid hats and women with shopping bags and cheap sunglasses. Like shoals of fish, they streamed backwards and forwards over Rådhusplassen, driven by instinct, between Tivoli and Strøget, always Tivoli and Strøget, as if Copenhagen consisted entirely of a big park with a bar at one end and a dirty shopping street at the other.
She stayed in her room. Even now in February, with an ice-cold wind blowing in from Øresund, Copenhagen was full of Norwegians. They shopped and drank and flocked together in the brown cafés, ate frikadeller, and couldn’t wait for their next visit, in spring, when they could enjoy their beer outside, and Tivoli would be open for the season once again.
She wanted to go home.
Home. To her astonishment, she realized that Villefranche was home. She had never liked the Riviera. Never. But that was before.
Everything was new now.
She had been reborn, she thought to herself, and smiled at the cliché. Her fingers stroked her stomach. It was more toned now, certainly flatter. She was lying naked on the bed, on top of the duvet. The heavy velvet curtains were open and only the thin, semitransparent curtain hung between her and anyone who might be outside. If anyone wanted to look in, if someone on the second or third floor on the other side of the street was looking in, if someone really wanted to see her, she was visible. There was a draft from the window. She stretched. She could feel the goosebumps under her fingertips when she ran her hands up her arms. Braille, the woman thought. Her new life was written in Braille on her skin.
She knew that she was taking chances now. No one knew that better than she did, and she could have chosen a safer path.
The first one was perfect. Flawless.
But safety soon became too safe. She had realized that as soon as she was back in the villa at the Baie des Anges.
The constraints of boredom, the numbness of a life without risk were something she had never thought about before and therefore had never been able to do anything about. Not until now, when she had finally woken up, broken out of an existence that was protected and padded by routines and passive obligations, where she never did more than she was paid for. Never more, never less. The days slowly accumulated. Became weeks and years. She got older. And better and better at her work. She was forty-five years old and about to die of boredom.
Danger gave her a new lease on life. Terror kept her awake now. Fear made her pulse leap. The days waltzed by, enticing her to give chase, happy but scared, like a child running after an elephant that has escaped from the circus.
“And you’re dying so slowly that you think you’re alive,” the woman thought to herself and tried to remember a poem. “It’s about me. It was me he was writing about, the poet.”
The Chief claimed that Vik was the best. He was wrong.
“I am the BASE jumper, testing equipment that no one else dares to try. And she is the one standing on the ground, not knowing whether it will hold or break. I dive down where no one has been before, while she sits up in the boat and calculates how long it will take for my lungs to explode. She is a theoretician, as I once was. Now I take action. I am the practitioner, and finally I exist.”
She slid her fingers down between her legs. She looked over at the windows on the other side of the road. There was a light on, and a shadow was moving around in one of the rooms. Then it disappeared. She was cold. She turned her body toward the window. With open legs. The person who was casting a shadow didn’t come back.
She could lead Johanne Vik in a merry dance forever.
But there was no fun in that.
No tension.
Ragnhild burped. A pale white liquid ran down her chin into the deep folds on her neck. Johanne wiped it off carefully and laid the baby over her shoulder.
“Are you asleep?” she whispered.
“Mmm.”
Adam turned over heavily and pulled the pillow down over his head.
“I just thought of something,” she said quietly.
“In the morning,” he groaned and turned over again.
“Even though all the victims had strong links with Oslo,” she continued showing no consideration, “they were all murdered outside Oslo. Have you thought about that?”
“Tomorrow. Please!”
“Vegard Krogh lived in Oslo. He just happened to be out in Asker that night. Fiona and Victoria both worked in Oslo. And they worked long hours. They spent most of their time in the capital. But they were killed outside of town. Strange, isn’t it?”
“No.”
He hauled himself up onto one elbow.
“You’ve got to stop,” he said, earnestly.
“Has it ever struck you that there might be a reason for that?” she asked, unaffected. “Have you ever asked yourself what happens when a murder takes place outside town?”
“No, I’ve never asked myself that.”
“The Criminal Investigation Service,” she stated and put Ragnhild down gently in her crib. She was asleep.
“The NCIS?” he repeated in a daze.
“You never help the Oslo police with murders.
“Yes, we do.”
“But not with tactical investigations.”
“Well, I—”
“Listen to me, then!”
He lay back down on the bed and stared at the ceiling.
“I’m listening.”
“Maybe the killer wants to take on more? A stronger opponent?”
“Jesus, Johanne! Your speculation knows no bounds! And we still don’t know that there’s only one murderer. And another thing, we are so close to a possible suspect. And, and . . . Oslo police are good enough. I would’ve thought that the most infamous villains would find them challenging enough.”
“After that Wilhelmsen woman stepped down, there’s been rumors that everything’s going to pieces and—”
“Don’t listen to rumors.”
“You just don’t want to even consider it.”
“Not at ten past four in the morning, no,” he said and hid his face in his hands.
“You’re the best,” she murmured.
“No.”
“Yes. They write about you. In the papers. Even though you never give interviews after that fiasco—”
“Don’t remind me about it,” he said in a strangled voice.
“You are portrayed as a great tactician. The big, wise, strange outsider who didn’t want to move up the ladder, but who—”
“Oh, come on.”
“We need to get an alarm installed.”
“Please stop being so frightened, honey.”
His arm was lying heavy on her stomach. She was still half sitting up in bed. She wrapped her fingers around his. The telephone rang.
“Fuck!”
Adam fumbled around on the bedside table in the dark.
“Hello,” he barked.
“It’s me, Sigmund. We’ve found him. Are you coming?”
Adam sat up straight. His feet hit the ice-cold floor. He rubbed his eyes and felt Johanne’s warm hand on his lower back.
“I’m coming,” he said and hung up.
He turned around and stroked his unfamiliar, naked head.
“Mats Bohus,” he said quietly. “They’ve found him.”