Death By Water (31 page)

He opened several doors in the corridor, found the kitchen and what looked like a library. The fourth door opened on to an enormous room. A man sat at a desk with his back to the door, bending motionless over a computer keyboard. He didn’t react, not even when Roar tried to attract his attention by a noisy clearing of the throat. Not until he closed the door heavily behind him did the man turn round, as though suddenly waking up. His eyes slid up towards his visitor. The long hair was obviously dyed and looked anything but natural against the wrinkled pale yellow skin of the face. Roar noticed that the man’s pupils were the size of pinpoints, though the light in the room was not particularly bright.

– The police? Was that today? Berger exclaimed on seeing his ID.

His surprise seemed genuine, despite the fact that it was less than two hours since they had spoken on the phone. Roar had asked him to come down to his office for an interview, and Berger had replied that he had no intention of setting foot inside Oslo police station.

– What did you say your name was? Horvath, yes, that was it. You rang. Hungarian?

Roar remembered what Dan-Levi had said about how Berger took control as soon as he saw an opening. He contented himself with a non-committal nod and said:

– As you know, there are certain questions we’d like to have answers to.

– But of course, said Berger in a slurred, nasal voice. – Of course, of course. He indicated a straight-backed chair by the wall. – So sorry I can’t offer you anything, Horvath, but you see my butler has the afternoon off today.

Roar smiled briefly at this silly joke.

– What was all this about again? Berger snuffled. – Help me out here. Was it something to do with my last show?

On the phone Roar had explained exactly what the interview was about, but he would not let himself be irritated by the game the television clown was trying to play. Though the snuffling and the pupils might suggest that his memory really was switched off. What the hell is this guy on? he thought. Definitely not any kind of upper. He’d looked at a couple of episodes of
Taboo
, including one that had a piece about heroin. Surely the guy hadn’t taken a hit just before he was due to talk to the police?

– Mailin Bjerke, he said evenly.

– Of course, groaned Berger. – Tragic business. Tragic. Tragic. He made a face. – What is my situation here? Am I a suspect, Horvath? Is that why you’ve come, to get a confession?

– Do you have anything to confess?

Berger moved his head backwards, as though to laugh. All that came out was a thin, whinnying sound. Roar thought about taking him in.

– If I were to confess everything on my conscience, Horvath, I’m telling you, you’d have a real party. He gestured with his hand, his elbow slipped off the rest and his body slumped to one side.

– You are being interviewed as a witness, Roar explained. – You had an appointment with Mailin Bjerke on Thursday the eleventh of December, in the evening. She sent you a message. The last one she sent.

Berger leaned forward, rubbed his doughy cheeks briskly with both hands.

– Message, did I get a message? He put a hand into the pocket of his worn jacket, pulled out a mobile phone. – Message on Thursday the eleventh of December? He searched for a while. – Correct, Horvath. What you guys know.
Delayed a few minutes. Entry code is 1982. Door to waiting room on first floor is open. Important we talk. M. Bjerke.

– Did you wait in the waiting room?

– What else do you do in a waiting room? Berger sniggered. – Yes, Mister Constable. I was there. But it didn’t please the lady to turn up. I had to be at the studio. Told everyone Miss Bjerke was going to be part of the programme. But she didn’t turn up there either.

– Perhaps you understand why, Roar observed. – How long did you wait? Five minutes? Ten?

Berger sat staring up at the high stuccoed ceiling.

– I don’t walk around with a stopwatch. But I was up at Nydalen before eight thirty.

– Was there anyone else in that waiting room?

– Not a soul. The lights were off when I got there. Didn’t hear anyone, see anyone, smell anyone. Berger straightened up and his voice was a little clearer now. – Had a cigarette, found a urinal down the corridor, used it, carefully, left it as clean as I found it, and absented myself.

– And you met no one?

– You know that better than me, Mr Horvath. I’m assuming you are in complete control of the situation.

– We are, Roar assured him. – No one, as far as we know, saw you coming or going in Welhavens Street. No one but you has any idea where you were before ten past nine. When you arrive, out of breath and almost thirty minutes later than usual, and rush into the make-up department to be readied for the broadcast.

Berger closed his eyes and rested his head in one hand.

– There, you see, he said, sounding as if he was on the verge of sleep. – You know all this, so why are you asking me?

– We want to know how it is you could take two hours to get from Mailin Bjerke’s office in Welhavens Street up to Nydalen on an evening when traffic was normal.

Berger slid even lower down in his chair. – I leave that to you to find out, Horvath. Shouldn’t be too hard for an averagely well-equipped constable. I’m talking strictly about intelligence here, you understand.

He waved his hand. – Sorry I can’t see you to the door. And that my butler is off.

Roar stood up and took a step towards him. – I haven’t finished with you, Berger. Next time, be in good enough shape to talk properly. If you aren’t, I’ll see to it that you spend a day or two in our cells before the interview. Preferably with another junkie for company.

He knew it wasn’t particularly smart to say something like that. It felt good.

W
HEN
O
DD
L
ØKKEMO
heard the policeman leaving the apartment, he sat up in bed. His migraine was ebbing away. He knew how to deal with it, knew exactly what he could do and what had to be avoided. On the first day of the attack he was more or less a dead man. First a tingling over one half of his body, double vision, colours dancing against the white wall. Then the sudden lameness. One corner of his mouth drooping, loss of feeling in half the face, unable to move his arm, and his foot dangling and trailing if he tried to lift his leg. And then the pain breaking over him in waves one metre high. Two days in a dark room with the curtains closed. Vomiting in a bucket, crawling along the floor to get to the toilet.

During the days Odd had been lying in the dark feeling like a victim of torture, Elijah had had a visitor. Not a friend of them both, otherwise the person would have popped in to the bedroom to see how things were. Almost certainly an admirer. The music he heard coming from Elijah’s study suggested as much. A young man, he imagined, knowing that women no longer roused anything but memories in his partner.

A few hours previously, when Odd could finally face getting up, he’d found Elijah naked on the kitchen table. He noticed at once: Elijah had had sex. Always that same dreamy look on his face, like a lovesick kid. Fucking hell, he’d thought, but managed not to say anything. The slightest sign of a quarrel and his migraine would flare up again … It had actually started a couple of weeks earlier, when Odd was in Lillehammer. On the day he came back, Elijah had that look on his face, that vacant smile, that smell of young lust. He acted secretive, kept dropping hints. He knew how much it hurt; Odd had realised a long time ago that that was the reason he did it. Elijah loved to make him jealous. Not because he needed to show who had the power, but because he never tired of feeling that someone was jealous because of him. In general he liked to arouse feelings in people that they had no control over themselves. It made them more interesting, in his view.
Even a relentless bore like you, Odd, becomes exciting when that delightfully immature anger surfaces.
Or he might say something along the lines of:
I absolutely love you, Odd, when you get in a rage and try to control it, when you show the dangerous and unknown sides of yourself. Apart from that, you are predictable to the point of absurdity.
And yet still Elijah stuck with him. Or perhaps that was precisely why. Even he needed something predictable in his life. He’d be helpless without you, thought Odd. Now more than ever, after what happened … For a while Elijah had tried to keep it to himself, but Odd had found out in the end. Come across a letter he should never have seen. He might be predictable, but he had this talent for finding things out about Elijah; he knew more about him than anyone else ever had. He consoled himself with this thought, cultivated it and nurtured it every day.

In the front room, Elijah Berger lay in the wing chair. His head was bent backwards and his mouth was half open. His breathing was heavy and uneven.

Odd put a hand on his forehead. – How are you?

Berger opened one eye. – Would you tidy up, he groaned with a nod in the direction of the desk.

Odd went over and pulled out the top drawer. In it lay a tourniquet and a syringe with a milky residue mixed with a thin trail of blood in the bottom.

– Kindly warn me the next time we have a visit from the police.

– I did, Odd said.

Berger waved him away. He lay there a while longer, staring at the ceiling. Then he sat up straight. – Migraine gone now? he asked in a friendly way.

Odd stood beside him again, stroked his hair. – Thank you for caring, Elijah.

A short grunt emerged from Berger’s throat. – Need the place to myself for a while tonight, he said. – Can you go out somewhere?

Odd withdrew his hand and slumped down by the table. He could get angry now. Tell it like it was. That he was the one who owned the flat. That Elijah lived there because he, Odd, allowed him to do so. That Elijah could find himself somewhere else to entertain his fuck-friends. He could have used that very phrase. He could have shouted out that he hated him. But stuff like that had no effect on Elijah. Even less than before, after what had happened. It was no good telling it like it was, because Elijah wasn’t living there because he had to. He was living there because Odd wanted him to live there, in his apartment and nowhere else. Because he wanted him there beside him. Because he wanted him to be just exactly as he was.

– How can I help you if you reject me?

Berger looked at him for a long time. His gaze opened and for a moment was devoid of mockery. Then he laid his hand on Odd’s, in the way Odd had been longing for.

– The sign of deepest friendship, Odd, is that you help your friend to bury a body in the ground.

– No, Odd protested. He stood up and sat on the armrest next to him. It wasn’t the first time over the past few weeks that Elijah had said exactly the same thing, and this time he had his answer prepared. – The sign of friendship is that you help him dig
up
bodies.

Berger sank back into the chair without saying anything else and resumed his staring at the ceiling.

Help him, thought Odd. That was what he ought to do, help him through this. Not think about afterwards. There is no afterwards.

I
N THE LIFT
on the way down from the seventh floor of the Oslo police headquarters, Roar Horvath thought about the interview he was about to conduct. As usual, he had set himself certain goals regarding what it was he wanted clarified. It was, naturally, crucial that his agenda was flexible and didn’t get in the way of something else important that might crop up along the way. He had spent the morning going through a pile of transcriptions of the interviews once more. He had looked at the report written by another member of the investigative team about the murdered woman’s background, and in a separate addendum made a number of comments of his own. Now he ran through in his head the most important questions he wanted to ask Mailin Bjerke’s sister.

As he emerged from the lift, he caught sight of her. She was standing a few metres away from the reception desk, in the middle of the floor. When he held out his hand and introduced himself, he abruptly felt completely unprepared. He had to make an effort to keep eye contact with her. Realised afterwards that he hadn’t heard her answer. He had interviewed a lot of young women, some ugly, some beautiful, most of them somewhere in between. He should be professional enough to remain unaffected by such concerns. He took a hold of himself as he turned and walked ahead of her.
Alert, Roar
, he warned himself.
Level five alert.

– My condolences, he managed to say as they stood in the narrow lift. She was almost as tall as him. The hair somewhere between red and brown. And eyes that looked green in the sharp electric light.

She lowered her eyes without answering.

– This must be a terrible time for the closest relatives.

Roar considered himself above average when it came to speaking to people in difficult situations. Right now he felt like an elephant.

He closed the office door behind her and caught a whiff of perfume.
Alert
,
Roar
, he reminded himself irritably.
Level eight.
Ten was maximum on the scale of how much it was reasonable to expect him to control himself.

She was dressed in ordinary clothing, he noted once he had taken his seat behind the desk. An all-weather jacket that looked much too big. Green woollen pullover underneath it. Black trousers, not especially tight fitting, high-heeled boots. It looked as though she was wearing almost no make-up. Her hands were narrow, the fingers long and thin, the nails well manicured. He repeated the description to himself in silence; it improved his grip of the situation.

– We’ve been trying to get hold of you for several days, he began. – No one knew exactly where you were.

– Who is
no one
? she asked. The voice was calm and quite deep.

– Your parents. They haven’t seen you since Christmas Eve.