Death By Water (28 page)

– Statistics aren’t much help in individual cases, Jennifer objected.

– Of course not. But topping the list of suspects is always going to be the husband or partner. The way the investigation proceeds determines whether or not they drop down the list, or even out of it entirely.

– Can’t say I’m surprised to hear that Viken thinks that way, she said acidly.

– It doesn’t mean we’re fixated, Roar assured her. – Everyone close to her is being interviewed as a potential perpetrator, that goes without saying. The stepfather, her mother, and the father, who apparently lives in Canada. Then after that we look at her colleagues at work and her patients …

Suddenly he fell silent.

– You’re not sure how much you can tell me, Jennifer volunteered.

He thought about it. – Well, you are part of the investigation, in a way.

– In a way? How far do you think you’ll get if we don’t do our job down at the path lab?

He conceded that she had a point.

– It appears that Mailin Bjerke had a meeting arranged at her office with Berger a few hours before they were due in the
Taboo
studio that Thursday, he told her. – Apparently he turned up, but she wasn’t there. We know from her phone that she sent him a text at about five thirty. She called him but got no answer just after seven, and then sent him another message.

– Wasn’t that around the time when she went missing?

Roar went over it in his mind. – Actually the last sighting of her was the day before, after she left home. She called in at the post office on Carl Berners Place.

– And you are sure about that?

– The man who was working there was quite certain about it. He remembered in detail what she did when she was there. She used a computer, printed out a few things from the internet, put a small deposit in her account and left. Directly afterwards she came back in again, bought a padded envelope and sent a package. According to the person serving, she suddenly seemed frightened. He’s absolutely certain of all this, but where the package was addressed to he has no idea.

– She was afraid because of this package?

– We don’t know anything about that. It’s quite common for witnesses to dramatise things, especially once they know a murder is involved.

Jennifer said, out of the blue: – I mentioned a case to you. The girl who was killed five years ago in Bergen.

– We talked about it at our morning briefing yesterday, Roar said with a nod.

– And?

– And what?

Jennifer furrowed her brows. – What are you going to do about it?

Roar seemed surprised by her harsh tone of voice. Maybe it dawned on him that this was what she had been heading the conversation towards.

– Obviously we’ll take a look at that case. But we can’t do everything at once.

Jennifer became agitated. – The girl in Bergen was found naked in a remote part of the woods. She had been tied up, but there were no signs of sexual assault. It was in November, and she froze to death. She had been repeatedly stabbed through the eyes with a pointed object. Think about the circumstances in our case and tell me why our top priority isn’t to look for a connection here.

Roar raised both hands. – Don’t hit me, he said in a weedy voice.

Jennifer felt her irritation drain away. – That’s exactly what you need, she said severely. – A right good spanking. On your barest arse.

– Okay, said Roar as he got to his feet, – but it will have to be in the bedroom. I don’t want the neighbours involved in this.

E
MPTY STREETS.
I
T’S
night. He hasn’t eaten. Not since early this morning. It’s getting colder. He should’ve put a jacket on. Didn’t find it in the rush. He sprints down Wergelandsveien. Runs himself warm. A clock strikes down in the city. He counts three strokes. Empty streets. He’s started running again. Every night for the last couple of weeks. He heads round the corner, down Pilestredet, towards the mouth of the Ibsen Tunnel. Tunnels set their own deadlines; he has to get out of them again before a car passes him from behind. Try Festning Tunnel too, that’s longer. And Ekeberg Tunnel. Formerly he ran on fast tracks. Lots of people watching. He had an acceleration down the final straight no one else could match. Could stay well at the back and wait. Coming out of the final bend, he changed gear and left them standing. They didn’t know where he’d come from. Another planet, he called out to them. Not Mars or Venus, but a planet in another galaxy.

He’d always run. Felt calmer when he was running than when he was standing or sitting down. Still not too late to start putting his name down for races. Comeback man. He’d come back before. They didn’t believe in him any more. He’d had so many chances, they said. First of all that stuff they called care. The world of athletics was big hearted about anyone who came off the rails. Don’t push kids out into the cold when what they need is warmth. But then he got caught a couple more times. Coke and pepper. They were even prepared to overlook that. He was done with it, he said, but didn’t mean it. He signed a new contract. Got another chance on condition he went for treatment. No wonder they cared about him. No one had his acceleration, not even Vebjørn Rodal when he was at his peak. I could’ve taken him, he grinned as he ran. I would’ve beaten Rodal in Atlanta, he shouted. If it had been twelve years later. Or sixteen. Rodal was too slow. Too much dead Trøndelag meat there. As for him, he was born with that acceleration. Had it in his blood, in his fibres, in the atoms of his blood.

As he was approaching the exit to the tunnel, a car approached, a taxi. He gave it what he had left, the taxi sounded its horn, he gave it the finger and went up a gear, left it for dead and skipped up on to the narrow pavement. He ran straight across the roundabout and carried on up Schweigaards Street. A long, flat open stretch there. The road was slippery, but he had perfect balance and could adjust in a fraction of a second. His breath was warm and tasted of iron. He owed too much. Thirty grand, according to Karam. It couldn’t be that much. But no point in arguing with Karam. The guy said he hadn’t been selling enough. Taking too much off the top himself. This is business. Thirty grand before Wednesday or you won’t be able to run any more, not even crawl. Karam knows him well enough to know what the worst thing is. It’s not to be floating out somewhere in the fjord with the mackerel stripping the flesh off you until there’s only bone left. Worst of all is to be chained to a wheelchair for the rest of your life. Never run again. Not even crawl. Karam had sketched it out for him. It’s not the fucking mackerel that eat at you as you’re sitting there, but what’s crawling around inside you.

Mailin Bjerke was the first who had never demanded anything. That was why he couldn’t face going to see her. Just a couple of times and then he dropped out. Because of that look in her eye and the way she sat there listening to him and demanding nothing. It made him desperate. Had nothing to say. Could have stood up and taken that computer of hers and chucked it at the wall. Or lifted her up out of her chair and put her down on the desk and watched her eyes turn black. Scared of me at last, finally seeing a part of what you don’t know the first thing about. How could you control anything of what goes chasing around inside of me. But she didn’t give up. Wanted him to come back. Comeback man.

At times he believed in her. That she really might be able to help him. That it would help to talk. He should keep coming, she insisted, and she did all she could to make new appointments for him. If he didn’t turn up anyway, all he had to do was send a text. They could make another appointment, at a time that suited him better. For her, any time was all right, even at short notice. He made appointments and missed them, never sent a message, but she didn’t give up. She was naïve. Believed that all her talk could stop what it was that ravaged him inside. The same thing that made him run, that made him do drugs. She claimed to understand the connections between things. To understand why all he ever thought about was the next snort or the next pill. That those were the thoughts that enabled him to keep going. And the running. She suggested medication. No monkey dope and stuff that turns people into fat, slobbering idiots, but something new that would reduce the craving. But even if she had understood, it wouldn’t help him much now. Mailin is dead, he shouted as he accelerated past the last block before Galgeberg.

Mailin was dead, and someone else he’d never seen before had turned up at her office, tall and thin with a strange look in her eyes. Another patient, definitely, he could always tell; someone strung out like him. But then she started following him, showed up at the station in Oslo, and then again up at Sinsen, wanting to ask him questions. Went for him and tried to choke him.

He would have to find out who she was. Knew the right person to ask. The only person he could trust now.

J
ENNIFER HAD BEEN
working with Professor Olav Korn for over ten years now. And yet still she hadn’t managed to locate him in her system of Hippocratic categorisations. Korn radiated a calm that was infectious. She might have been inclined to call him a phlegmatic, but he was a highly efficient worker who dispensed with tasks quickly, from pathologists’ reports to budget proposals. He had done research on sudden and unexplained infant deaths, on the effects of alcohol and drug abuse during pregnancy, as well as in a number of other fields. He published articles in the most important Norwegian and international scientific journals, and was an active voice in public debates on matters like biotechnology and ethics. And even though he spoke at seminars and conferences all over the world, to the staff at the Pathological Institute he remained their very present and involved leader. Had it not been for Korn, Jennifer would not have remained at the institute as long as she had; indeed, she might never even have become an expert on forensic medicine. She was glad that his retirement was still some years in the future, in spite of the fact that on several occasions he had hinted that she would be a very suitable candidate to succeed him as head of the department.

Korn was on the phone when she entered his office, but he gestured for her to sit down. She observed him surreptitiously as he brought the conversation to a close. He was sixty-two, and in terms of his individual features probably looked it, but there was something about his eyes, his repertoire of facial gestures and the way he moved that suggested a younger man. He had a rich head of iron-grey hair, was clean shaven, his eyebrows weren’t bushy and there were no balls of hair emerging from his nostrils and ears, as had begun to be the case with Ivar. All in all Korn took good care of his appearance without seeming the least bit vain about it. Jennifer had always been attracted to men older than herself.

He replaced the receiver and turned towards her.

– It’s about the woman who was found down in Hurum, she said.

– I hear Viken has been given the case, he nodded, perhaps hinting at a couple of earlier occasions on which she had come to him for advice on how best to handle cooperation with the detective chief inspector.

– That’s fine by me, said Jennifer. – I don’t have any trouble with him now. But of course he doesn’t like me getting involved in the investigation.

Korn raised his eyebrows. – And do you?

She sighed. – He appeared in the middle of the autopsy, and I tried to pass along a piece of information that might be very important.

She told him her thoughts on the similarity with the case in Bergen.

– Those people down in Grønland should be very thankful it was you who volunteered for work over Christmas, Korn observed. – Not everyone would have spent Christmas morning in our basement unless they had to. And as for what you’ve just told me, they ought to be pulling out all the stops to find out whether or not there might be a connection.

She took the compliment with a smile. He was one of the few people who could praise her and not have her looking for some ulterior motive.

– I’ve asked myself if there’s anything more I can do. I’ve talked it over on the telephone with a colleague at the Gades Institute, and he thinks it’s interesting too. But of course he can’t send over any of their material.

– Of course not.

She said what she had come to say to him: – What if I were to go there? Take the pictures from here. Do a comparison of the forensic evidence. Get something more to show to Viken and his people.

Korn didn’t look in the least surprised. He mulled the suggestion over for a few moments before replying.

– I’ve always appreciated the fact that you show so much initiative, Jennifer. And that you are not the least bit afraid of trespassing on someone else’s territory.

She could feel herself blushing. With only Korn present, it didn’t matter that much.

– I remember the case in Bergen very well, he said, his gaze moving to follow something or other through the window, probably to spare her even more embarrassment. – You say the eyes were mutilated? In the same way?

He had spent fifteen years more than her working as a forensic expert, yet it seemed as though all that proximity with death actually made him more and more solicitous of the well-being of the living.

He leaned over the desk. – I don’t think it’s a good idea to go to Bergen. But I’ll call the department of Violent Crimes and have a word with the head down there. This has to be about priorities.

Jennifer had a mental picture of Viken being carpeted by Sigge Helgarsson, the section head who just a short while ago had been his junior and whom Viken, by all accounts, had regularly used as a whipping boy. She felt a malicious pleasure bubbling up in her and was unable to resist indulging it.

– What was her name again, the girl in Bergen? Korn asked, the telephone already in his hand.

– Richter, she answered. Ylva Richter.

R
OAR
H
ORVATH RANG
on one of the bells down in the yard, the one with
T. Gabrielsen
written next to it. She didn’t answer immediately, and he had time to start feeling annoyed. He was on time, but people in her line of business were not renowned for their concern for other people’s ideas of punctuality.