Death By Water (37 page)

She wandered into an open Bunnpris. Glanced at her phone. Message from Rikke. And one from the footballer, the one who was called, of all things, Jomar. She still had his jacket.

Rikke wrote:
Z’s father asked about you at the funeral – gave him your address in Norway – forgot to tell you last time – hope that’s okay.

It’s not okay, she fumed, maybe even said it out loud. It’s not okay for Zako’s father to have my address. What does he want it for? She chased the thought away. Imagined squeezing it out of herself; watched it fly away on a raven’s wings into the cold Oslo night. The way she got rid of thoughts when she was a teenager. Didn’t work quite as well now.

Jomar’s message:
Call me. Must talk to you.

Standing there at the freezer counter in Bunnpris, it felt good to know that he still wanted to meet her. Suddenly she called his number. He didn’t sound surprised to hear her voice; seemed almost to take it for granted. It irritated her so much she nearly ended the call, but then controlled herself. Didn’t want to seem childish or unpredictable. All the things she really was.

– What have you got to tell me that’s so important? Did you win a football match? She was satisfied with her tone of voice. Just the right amount of sarcasm in it.

– Football? Don’t try to talk shop with me. You’ll find out what it is when we meet.

– Are we going to meet?

– Yes.

– Who said so?

– You did.

– Let’s stick to the truth.

Afterwards she scolded herself for being so agreeable. She paid for the three things she had come in for and then went back out into the street.

Liss sat at the coffee table, directly opposite him.

– Sorry, she said, forgetting to maintain the sarcastic tone. She didn’t really know what she was sorry about either. Maybe that she was twenty minutes late. Or that she’d run off with his jacket and not replied to any of his messages.

Jomar Vindheim gave her a teasing smile. – Quite okay. Doesn’t matter what you’re apologising for, Liss, it’s quite okay by me whatever.

– Your jacket, she said, putting the plastic bag down beside his chair. – I didn’t mean to nick it.

– I’ve reported you for theft, he said in a serious voice. – But I only had a very vague description, so it didn’t help much. Now I’ve got the chance to get a clearer look at you.

She wasn’t on his wavelength. He seemed to notice.

– Seriously, Liss, I’m the one who should be apologising. All this business with your sister …

– All this
business
? She’d found her way back to sarcasm again, but let it go. He was probably just trying to be considerate.

– I understand why you haven’t answered any of my messages.

– Do you, she said.

– You’ve got other things to think about besides an old jacket, Liss.

It sounded as if he enjoyed repeatedly saying her name. Did he imagine that using it like that would bring them closer together?

– I actually did wear it, she told him. – Almost every day.

He grinned. – You could have stuck a pole inside that jacket and used it as a tent.

She looked at him. The slanting eyes were a surprisingly light blue colour. He wasn’t handsome; there was something crude and disproportionate about his features, as though he was still passing through puberty and things hadn’t found their rightful shape. A row of pimples arced across his forehead. Clearly all this was something not only teenage girls found attractive, but for example Therese too. Not to mention Catrine, but then she was always on the lookout for sex.

– Maybe you’d like to keep it?

She turned up her nose. – If I had a place to live, I could have hung it up on the wall, with your autograph on it.

This time he laughed and didn’t bother with a comeback. He had an irritatingly white and regular set of teeth, and seemed sure of himself. He was a top-flight footballer and bound to be earning in excess of a million a year for playing around with a ball. And he certainly had other women besides Therese hanging around him. But from the moment he walked across to their table at the Café Mono, Liss was the one he had been concentrating on. And after she passed out at his place that night and then ran off with his jacket, he’d sent her four or five messages.

Just then she remembered something else from the evening they met.

– You know him, she exclaimed.

He looked at her in surprise.

– You know that guy who grabbed me by the throat. I saw you talking to him just before. When he was standing in the doorway dealing dope.

He took a swig of Coke.

– Why didn’t you say so before? she persisted.

The slanting eyes narrowed even more. – Did you ask me?

She hadn’t. He could have no way of knowing why she was looking for the guy.

– I don’t give a shit if he’s your dealer, or whatever else you do. I just want to know who he is.

– Dealer? You think I’m into stuff like that? I know him from the sports academy.

– Oh yeah, right.

– It’s true, Jomar assured her. – He was a student there a few years ago. Started at the same time as me.

– What’s his name?

– Jim Harris. He had a real talent as a middle-distance runner. Great at the four hundred, even better at the eight hundred. Could have been a top athlete if only his head wasn’t so screwed.

– Screwed what way?

– He can never finish anything. Makes a mess of everything. Ends up on the slide. To begin with he had people round him to help get him back on his feet, but they’ve all given up now.

– He was a patient of Mailin’s.

– Was he?

She described the encounter in Mailin’s office.

Jomar said: – If Jimbo found the office door open, then he probably went in there to see if there was any loose cash lying about in the drawers. He owes money to every dealer in town. That’s why he’s started dealing himself. I tried to help him for a while. Lent him money. Let him sleep it off at my place.

– I’m convinced he was after something else, said Liss.

– What makes you think that?

She told him what had happened the evening he came across her in the park.

– Ah, shit. Jomar’s face took on a strange expression.

– Did you know about that?

He shook his head. – Of course not. But Jimbo rang me a few days ago. He said he’d seen you at that party in Sinsen and wanted to know if I knew you. I was stupid enough to tell him you were the sister of that … I don’t think he had any intention of harming you. He’s not like that.

– Didn’t you realise it was him who grabbed me by the throat down in the stairwell?

Again Jomar swore. – I asked you to tell me what had happened.

She ignored him. – When he was holding me there in the park, something suddenly occurred to him. He ran off. Jim Harris, was that his name? Those were the initials in Mailin’s appointments book. He must have seen Mailin that afternoon. Perhaps someone was with her. You understand what this means? This guy saw what happened … Where can I get hold of him?

– You don’t want to be wandering about in the kinds of places where he hangs out, Jomar warned her.

She sat there looking down at the table. – I want you to help, she said suddenly.

In the days following the discovery of Mailin’s body, she could face almost nothing. Thought as little as possible. Now she was seized by a need to do something, anything. In a rush she began telling him everything she had found out. Showed him the times from Mailin’s call list. Told him about the videos.

– Mailin was filmed the morning after she went missing. Liss flipped through her notebook. – Those video clips were dated Friday the twelfth at 05.35.

It helped her to be speaking about all these details, as though for a brief moment they were no longer about Mailin but someone else altogether.

He listened without interrupting. She didn’t know him. But he was outside it all, had never met Mailin, and for that reason it was possible to share it with him. Even what had happened at the cabin, the footprints in the snow, the printout she’d found in the sofa cushion.

Afterwards she looked across at him. Reluctantly she began to understand why Therese had been so angry with her. She liked his looks, but even more she liked how relaxed and almost modest he seemed. She hadn’t intended to stay, just to hand the jacket back and offer some kind of apology. Now she’d been sitting there for almost an hour.

She stood up. – I must have a ciggy.

– I’ll come out with you, he said.

She blew smoke out in the direction of the light above the doorway and studied the way the lead-blue formations gathered and then at once dissolved.

– When can I see you again? Jomar wanted to know.

She felt his look like prickling on her skin. Didn’t mind at all that he never seemed to tire of looking at her. Just couldn’t face all the explanations she would have to give. Why she couldn’t meet him. Why she wasn’t interested. Why she was who she was. Why she could never again face the thought of being with someone. Felt a sudden longing to be at the cabin. Sitting by the window looking down towards Morr Water in the dusk. The darkness gathering around her, thicker and thicker. The silence.

I
T WAS CLOSE
to one a.m. when she heard Viljam. He was moving about in the kitchen, then flushing the toilet and running the tap in the bathroom. This was how Mailin had lain at night. Hearing her boyfriend come home. Waiting for the footsteps on the staircase, for him to open the door, crawl in under the duvet, body close up to her. Didn’t need to have her, or speak. Just lie there and sleep like that. Feel his arms around her in her sleep …

They’re sitting in the boat. Mailin’s rowing. She’s wearing a large grey coat. Her hair is grey too and hangs down her back in long strings. The wind lifts them. Not the wind, because the wisps of hair move by themselves. Long white worms that cover her whole head and eat it. They’ve suctioned themselves to her head, and Liss can’t seem to raise her hand to pull them away. But Mailin doesn’t seem bothered in the least; she rows for land, in towards the tiny beach. They’re going to pick something up there. But they don’t get any closer to the man standing and waiting, because one oar is missing, and the boat goes round in circles.
Don’t look behind you, Mailin, I mustn’t see your face.
But Mailin doesn’t hear and turns towards her.

Liss woke to a scream. She felt it inside herself, didn’t know if it had come from her.
Feren, she.
She twisted round, picked up her phone. It was twenty to two. She opened her address list, found the name, pressed call.

– Dahlstrøm.

She could hear from his voice that he had been pulled up out of deep sleep. Imagined the bedroom he was lying in. Wife beside him in bed, awake too, half irritated, half anxious. Liss knew that Tormod Dahlstrøm had got married for a second time a few years earlier. His second wife was a writer and almost twenty years younger than him.

– Sorry for waking you, stupid of me.

– Is that you, Liss? He didn’t sound surprised. Probably used to being called at night. Patients who were in trouble. Someone who needed to hear his voice just to make it through until the next morning.

– Sorry, she repeated.

– For what?

– It’s the middle of the night.

He breathed in and out a few times. – Did you wake me up to say sorry for waking me up?

Even now he was able to joke with her.

– I had a dream, she said. – About Mailin.

He made a sound that might have been a half-quelled yawn.

– When I was at your place, on Christmas Eve … we talked about her research, into abuse. That psychologist she was so interested in. He was Hungarian, wasn’t he?

– That’s right. Ferenczi. He was a psychiatrist.

– Is that the way you say his name? she went on. –
Feren-she?

– Roughly, yes.

– What are his other names?

– First name, you mean? Sándor. His name is Sándor Ferenczi.

Liss had got out of bed and was now standing naked on the cold floor. She walked over to the window, pulled open the curtain and looked out into the brown night sky above Rodeløkka.
Sand-oar Feren-she,
she murmured to herself, without even noticing that she had ended the call.

The time was approaching 2.30 as she punched in the code on the gate in Welhavens Street. She remembered that Jennifer Plåterud had said she could call her any time at all, even at night. Liss thought about it, but decided not to. She let herself in, didn’t turn on the light in the stairwell. The smell of damp grew stronger with each floor she climbed, she noticed. In the room used as a waiting room the curtains were closed. It was pitch dark and she didn’t know where the light switch was. She fumbled her way along to Mailin’s office door, opened it. No longer Mailin’s office. Someone else would be using it, as soon as her things were cleared out.

She closed the door behind her, turned on the light. Someone had been there, the police maybe, several of the folders lay on the desk. She started looking through the bookshelves, found the Sándor Ferenczi book she had seen the first time she was there,
Selected Writings
was the title. She pulled it out and began to leaf through it. Here and there Mailin had made underlinings in the text, along with small notes and comments in the margins. The corner of one page was turned over. Liss opened it to Chapter 33: ‘Confusion of tongues between Adults and the Child. The language of Tenderness and of Passion.’ There was something written in red at the foot of the page. Liss recognised Mailin’s hand: ‘Death by water – Jacket’s language.’

At that same instant, the lights went out. She heard a sound out in the waiting room. A door opening. She jumped up. For a few seconds the neon light strip in the ceiling pulsed with a grey glimmer, then twice in quick succession, before going out completely.
You’re not afraid, Liss Bjerke
, a voice shouted inside her
. You’re never afraid any more.
She groped her way across the floor, put her ear to the door. Heard nothing. Or perhaps a faint scraping sound. She laid a hand on the doorknob. It moved. It took two seconds for her to realise that someone was entering from the other side. She jumped back, pressed herself against the wall. The door slid open. She could make out a figure in the darkness. A torch was switched on, the beam swept around the room and stopped on her face.