Death By Water (35 page)

– It’s coincidence, she assured him. – Every time I’ve met you. But I have to find out what happened that day.

He released her. – What day are you talking about?

– That Thursday, the eleventh of December. Mailin went to her office to keep that appointment with you. She parked her car right outside. Then she disappeared. No one saw any sign of her.

He pulled away a step. – That can’t be right.

– What … can’t be right?

He glanced around. – She gave classes at the School of Sports Sciences. I got a lift with her into town a couple of times. I remember her car well.

He turned towards her again. – Other people besides me must have seen it that day.

He stared down into her face. It was still possible for anything to happen in that park. Liss saw Mailin’s chalk-white face in front of her, the half-closed eyes filled with dried blood.

– Doesn’t anyone understand anything? he muttered.

– Understand what? she was about to say. But abruptly he turned and walked away. She recovered, headed over towards the footpath to follow him.

– If you saw something … she called out. – You must say what it was.

He speeded up, began to run and disappeared into the darkness.

She turned off the light in the room, settled down into the sofa again. Could still taste the vanilla in her mouth. The traces of acid in her gullet and down her throat. Cold in her stomach, cold inside, shrivelled.

Sound of a door. Then Viljam’s voice: – Are you home, Liss?

Home? She slept a few nights there, for want of anywhere else she could stand to be. It was his suggestion. He’d given her Mailin’s spare key. Had it made Mailin happy when he came home and she heard that voice? Maybe there was something she wanted to tell him that would make him put his arms around her.

– Sitting here in the dark?

She sat up, picked up her lighter and lit the candle on the table.

– Mailin liked sitting like that too, he said as he sank down into a chair. – Candlelight in the room.

– I like it here.

– It’s a nice house, he nodded. – Peaceful. Mailin and I … He stood up suddenly. – I meant what I said yesterday. If you want to stay here a few more days. You know she would have liked it.

A funny thing to say, but it was true, she realised. A lot of what he said was true. He grieved in the same way she did. That was why she could stand being there.

He disappeared up the steps, out to the kitchen. – Thanks for doing the washing-up.

– Of course, she said. – My turn, wasn’t it?

She imagined him smiling at what she said; it almost made her smile too. For a moment it felt good to be sitting there. Viljam kept his distance. Not completely absent, but let her alone. Had enough stuff of his own to deal with. He and Mailin had been lovers for more than two years. He missed her, but not in the way she missed her. Mailin would become a memory for him, light with a great darkness around it. Then he’d get over it and find someone else. Liss would never get over it.

She went out to him in the kitchen. He was standing by the window, looking out on to the lit street.

– An old friend of yours was here earlier today, he said.

She looked quizzically at him.

– At least he said he was a friend. Looked pretty spaced out.

She had a thought. – Dark curly hair, scar on his forehead? Wearing a reefer jacket?

– Correct. First he asked for you, where you were and when you were coming back, then suddenly he wanted to know if Mailin lived here.

– He’s no friend of mine.

She told him about Mailin’s patient, how she’d come across him several times, how he’d followed her into the park.

– And only now are the police beginning to take an interest in this guy?

She didn’t answer, was thinking of something else. – Mailin had a Post-it note hanging in her office. It had
death by water
written on it. Do you know where that comes from?

–
Death by water
? He seemed to be thinking about the question. Then he shook his head. – Sounds like a typical Mailin thing, whatever it is. It’s the kind of stuff she was interested in.

L
ISS HAD ARRANGED
a meeting with Jennifer Plåterud at the Pathology Institute at ten, but it was closer to 11.30 by the time she announced her arrival at the front desk. She’d taken three sleeping pills the evening before and woken to a hangover forty minutes earlier.

– Sorry, I overslept, she apologised when Jennifer Plåterud came to greet her.

She was smaller than Liss remembered from that morning she’d gone with Tage to do the identification. Couldn’t be much above one metre fifty, because even with the high-heeled sandals she was wearing, she was still half a head shorter than Liss. She was heavily made up but obviously knew what she was doing. The blue eyes were made more prominent and the mouth seemed bigger than it was. Beneath her open doctor’s coat she was wearing a cornflower-blue suit, and a string of what looked like real pearls around her neck.

– That’s okay, she said. – I haven’t been sitting in my office twiddling my thumbs.

Liss had forgotten that she spoke with an accent. It sounded American, as did her first name. Preferable to being Norwegian, anyway.

Her office was fairly large, with a window facing on to the square outside. On the desk was a photo of a man her own age. He stood there in oilskins holding an enormous fish up to the camera. Another photo showed two teenage boys on some steps, one sitting, the other standing.

– Yes, this is where I live, said Jennifer Plåterud. – You know what, I found an article about you on the net. It was originally in
Dagbladet
’s magazine. I didn’t know you were about to start a career as a model.

She switched on the coffee machine in the corner. – Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t been checking up on you, a colleague mentioned it to me.

The reassurance was superfluous. There was something about this doctor’s manner that didn’t arouse Liss’s suspicions.

– That article was just hype, she said dismissively. – I’ve done a few jobs, nothing big. Doubt it’ll ever amount to anything more. Amsterdam isn’t exactly the centre of the world when it comes to stuff like that.

– But there’s no need to stay there, Jennifer exclaimed. – A young woman like you could be a big hit in Paris or Milan or New York. What the good photographers are looking for isn’t just yet more glamour, but the unusual. I mean … She blushed beneath the make-up.

– Want to be my agent? Liss asked, and made the doctor laugh. Her laughter was surprisingly deep and ringing.

It was clear from the way she spoke that she was really interested in the fashion business, and from the collections and photographers she mentioned it was obvious she knew what she was talking about.

She interrupted herself: – But you didn’t come here to swap tips about clothes and make-up, Liss. I’ll call you Liss, and you can call me Jennifer.

The friendliness in the suggestion seemed genuinely spontaneous, and Liss felt there was no need for her to be on the alert. She was offered biscuits from a tin; she hadn’t eaten since the day before and broke off a piece. It had a sweet coconut taste and a rather stodgy consistency.

– Home-made, Jennifer said as she ate one herself. – Can’t buy these in Norway so I have to make them myself. Or actually, it’s my husband that does.

– You’re American?

– Absolutely not, she protested. – I’m from Canberra.

Liss thought about it; maybe it was somewhere in Canada. – So then you’re from …

– That’s right, Jennifer interrupted helpfully. – The capital city of Australia.

Liss took the proffered cup of coffee. – So how did you end up here? She noticed with a slight reluctance how she had been led into this rather too informal conversational tone.

– You know what, Liss, that’s a question I ask myself too. Every single day when I get up and look out across the fields where we live. Jennifer, what the bloody hell are you doing here?

She dunked a wedge of biscuit into her coffee.

– Of course, in a few years’ time the children’ll be big enough to manage on their own. She glanced over at the photo of the two boys. – I’ve got plans to grow old under warmer skies than these.

– And your husband, is that what he wants too?

– Can’t imagine that for a moment, Jennifer replied, surprisingly definite. – He’s inherited a farm out in Sorum. That’s where we live. Not that he’s going to run it as a working farm, but he’s put roots down there. Can’t budge him an inch. But now tell me what it is you’ve found out.

Liss rummaged through her handbag. – I’m sure it’s not really anything important …

She described the trip out to the cabin, unfolded the sheet of paper she had found inside the cushion cover, put it on the table. Jennifer picked it up. Her face changed, her pupils expanded, Liss noticed, and again she flushed from the neck upwards. When she’d finished reading, she stood up and crossed to her desk, opened a drawer, closed it again without taking anything from it.

– So it
is
important, Liss commented.

Jennifer blinked a few times, regained her composure.

– Not necessarily, she said. – But this was printed out on Wednesday the tenth of December. In other words, Mailin must have taken it out to the cabin with her. That in itself is significant.

She sat down again. – What was that about prints in the snow on New Year’s Eve? Could they have been there before you arrived?

Liss dismissed the possibility. She’d seen no sign of tracks when she arrived. Moreover, it had snowed that evening.

– There’s something else, too, she added.

Jennifer leaned forward. Her gaze didn’t move for an instant as Liss described her encounter with the patient in Mailin’s office, and what he’d said in the park the previous evening.

– I urge you in the strongest possible terms to talk to the police about this, Liss.

– You can pass it on to them.

– I am not a detective.

Liss pinched her lower lip. – I won’t be going back there again. Won’t be talking to either that idiot with the foreign name or that smarmy boss of his. I’ve never trusted the police. Never had any reason to.

Jennifer didn’t protest. Didn’t try to convince her she was wrong. Didn’t try to get her to say things she didn’t want to say.

– I don’t think that guy sneaking about in her office could have done that to Mailin … killed her. But he knows something. I think he saw her just before she went missing. I’m going to find out who he is.

Jennifer sat up straight in her chair. – That is not your job, she said firmly.

– The police have had weeks now. What have they found out?

– That’s exactly why you’ve got to help them, Liss. What’s more, you might be putting yourself in danger if you get involved like that.

Liss got to her feet. – I’m not afraid, she said. – I’m never afraid any more.

T
HE SKY WAS
like blue glass as Roar Horvath got off the plane at Flesland. The grass between the runways was glazed with rime, and the mountaintops on the horizon carried a sprinkling of white. He’d been in Bergen once before, a couple of spring days a few years earlier. On that occasion too there was the same bright, cloudless sky and sharp light. It was almost enough to start him doubting the city’s reputation for rain.

In the arrivals hall he looked around for the sergeant who was supposed to be meeting him. Her name was Nina Jebsen and he had met her briefly the year before. She’d left the Violent Crimes section in Oslo just a couple of weeks after he started there himself. He seemed to remember her as dark and a bit chubby, and didn’t spot her at first. The woman who came towards him, hand outstretched, was slim and blondeish, with highlights in her shoulder-length hair.

– Nice to see you again, she said, probably noticing his uncertainty. – No luggage?

Finally it dawned on Roar that the woman standing in front of him was Nina Jebsen.

– Well I don’t need two suits when I’m not even going to be spending the night here.

– That depends on how vain you are. She glanced at his jeans jacket.

– This is a real hush-hush business, she continued once they were inside the car. Her Bergen accent seemed broader than Roar remembered. – My boss won’t let me mention your visit to anyone else in the department. Is the National Security Service involved in this too?

He grinned at her little joke, liked the tone she was setting. – Pity for us you didn’t want to stay in Oslo, he said, and heard how it sounded a bit more personal than he had intended.

She shrugged her shoulders. – Once a Bergener, always a Bergener.

He knew there was more to it than that. She had worked closely with Viken on the so-called bear murders case, and chosen to move on afterwards. According to the rumours Roar had heard, it was because she couldn’t go on working with the detective chief inspector, who, for his part, had apparently been very keen to hang on to her. Roar dismissed these thoughts; he hadn’t come to Bergen to poke around in old departmental rubbish.

– Were you working here when the Ylva Richter case broke? he asked.

She shook her head. – I’d just arrived in Oslo. And they were good at stopping any leaks. Even now, a lot of what was found is still not widely known about.

– Good work, Roar responded. – Especially bearing in mind the intense media interest.

– Maybe it’ll have its rewards now. If it turns out there are connections to the case you’re working on.

He said nothing. Viken seemed unconvinced that there was a connection. He was still furious with Jennifer for the way she’d gone behind his back. Roar had to concede that he was uneasy at the thought of his special connection with the pathology department being discovered, but it was worth it; he felt alive. He’d met a few women after his divorce. In the early days, a lot of pent-up excitement got released in town. A brief reminder of the life he had lived ten or fifteen years earlier. But his hunting instincts had become dulled. He’d read somewhere that men produced fewer hormones after they became fathers. Nature’s way of ensuring they didn’t disappear until the offspring had been provided with food and shelter. He smelled the perfume of the sergeant sitting beside him in the car, glanced over at her, quickly taking in the breasts, and the thighs beneath the smooth jeggings. If his instincts had become dulled, they were in the process of waking up again. That’s a healthy sign, Roar, he told himself. Keep those interests healthy.