Death By Water (47 page)

The coffin was raised and carried down the central aisle. At the front was Viljam, with Mailin’s stepfather on the other side. Behind them three young men, almost certainly relatives, held the other handles. They had still not heard from the biological father, despite making extensive efforts to get in touch with him.

Roar recognised the last of the pallbearers as Mailin’s supervisor, because Tormod Dahlstrøm was one of those media psychiatrists who had an opinion on everything from marital breakdowns to the catastrophe in Darfur. Behind the coffin Liss and her mother walked side by side, Liss almost a head taller. She was looking at the floor in front of her. Then others gradually joined the procession. Elderly people, children, adults. Roar recognised a couple of faces from Lillestrøm and, well back in the escort, a very promising top-flight footballer. It struck him that Mailin Bjerke was the type who brought all kinds of people together, and though he had never met her, he could feel the grief in the church streaming through him.

Outside, the sun was making tiny fractures in the cloud cover. The coffin was placed in the back of the hearse. Several hundred people were gathered in silence around it. Closest was the stepfather, standing with his arms around Mailin’s mother, Liss a metre away from them with Viljam. In a tree nearby, a bird that Roar identified as a great tit began to sing. It was pretending spring had already come.

As the hearse started to move away, the mother pulled herself free and ran after it. Roar heard her shout something that must have been her daughter’s name. She caught up with the hearse and it stopped. She tried to open the rear door. The stepfather and a couple of others arrived and took her by the arm, but she held on tight to the handle. Her shouted cry had turned into a long-drawn-out wordless scream. It reminded Roar of Emily, waking up alone in the dark.

They stood there with their arms round Ragnhild Bjerke for a long time before she released her hold on the car, and it continued on its slow journey out through the gates and down the old main road.

I’
M STILL SITTING
in the room you just left. The dust has settled back-down on the living-room floor, but outside the wind is rising. All the things I would have told you if you hadn’t run out of here. But you had no reason to stay. Maybe you were afraid of me too, of what I might do to you. You owe me nothing. But I must finish writing this, not because I need to confess, but because this story needs to be told.

After I stopped Jo that evening he was about to walk out into the waves, I took him away from the beach with me. His parents were drunk all the time and completely irresponsible. He had no one to care for him. I took him back to my apartment. He was freezing and I made him take a shower.
Aren’t you going to shower too?
he asked. He was twelve years old, Liss, and I know he bore no responsibility for what happened.

Afterwards I got him to tell his story. There had been an incident with this girl, the one called Ylva, and something to do with a cat. He was mad about this Ylva, and furious because she’d gone off with another boy. I spoke to him about it for a long time. I promised to help him. Sooner or later, Ylva would be his, I had to swear it. When he left my apartment later that night, I felt certain that he wouldn’t make another attempt to drown himself. And that became a turning point for me. That he should survive. Not just that particular holiday trip, but afterwards too. So I had to see him again, I knew it that morning when I saw him boarding the bus for the return flight to Oslo …

Naturally that wasn’t the only reason. I wandered through this waste land, still felt parched. It was thirst that drove me to see him again. It was forbidden. But it saved me. A few drops of water are all I need, I said to myself, and Jo needed it as much. He was happy when we were together. But he never forgot what I had said to him about the girl he met in Crete. He was always reminding me of my promise, that I would show him how to get her, teach him what he needed to know. Ylva was the princess and Jo the prince who would steal her heart away. Even though he was about fourteen years old by now, the game went on. In the same way as the pact was a game. It’s the kind of thing you can say to a child: rather die than tell someone else the secrets we share. We sealed this secret and holy pact with blood from small cuts made on the palms of our hands. And his childish enthusiasm made me feel once again a touch of forgotten joy; it was these drops that reminded me there is water out there somewhere in that waste land through which I wandered.

Did I fail to understand how damaged he was? Not even when he told me how he could turn into someone else, a person who stood in a dark cellar hitting out wildly with a sledgehammer. Did I not understand that these games with which we amused ourselves were, for him, something very much more than games? That they became the stories around which his life revolved, that they kept everything in motion? Did I not even understand years later, when I saw the reports of a young woman found dead outside Bergen? Did I not react when I saw her name?

V
ILJAM GOT BACK
at about two. Liss sat in the living room looking out the window, the notebook in her lap. She heard him tidying up in the fridge, squashing empty plastic bags in under the sink. Then his footsteps across the floor and down the stairs.

– I’m making a stew. Are you eating here today?

She shrugged. – The footballer has asked me out.

– Isn’t it about time you started using his name? Viljam asked with a little smile, it caused her to look for the sort of feeling Mailin must have felt when she saw him smile like that. Something intense, joy or sadness.

He put a piece of paper on the table beside her. – Maybe he’ll just give up if you carry on pretending you don’t give a shit about him.

She picked up the paper, a notification that a parcel had arrived for her from Amsterdam. Don’t go and collect it, she heard herself think. Since the funeral, she had almost managed to keep what had happened that night in Bloemstraat out of her thoughts. But it didn’t take more than a package in the post for it all to come back to her. She had thrown away the letter from Zako’s father, though she could still remember word for word some of the things written in it.
You’ve got to tidy things up, Liss.
That’s what Mailin would have said.
Tidy up and move on.
Had Mailin been there, she could have told her where to move on to.

– Is it the post office up on Carl Berners Place? she asked.

– Correct. I can pick it up for you if you like. Have to get some exercise before I go off to work.

He stood leaning against the banisters, maybe expecting her to say something more.

– Viljam, I’ve been sleeping here almost every night since Christmas. It wasn’t the plan.

He straightened up, looked at her. – It helps having you here. Would have been even more awful without you.

She almost gave in to an urge to get up and hug him. Get as close to Mailin as she could.

He popped back in again half an hour later and handed her an A4-size package. She left it lying on the kitchen worktop, drifted out on to the steps and lit a cigarette. Consumed it slowly as she watched the darkness settle over the rooftops. Wondered whether to throw the package away unopened. I’ll never go back there again, she thought. Must send Rikke a message, tell her to stop forwarding mail. Ask her to give my clothes away to the Salvation Army. The DVDs and the armchair she can keep.

The package contained two letters from the school, a late payment reminder and a couple of other bills. And a reply from a modelling agency. Wim had promised to try to get something organised with them. For once he might not have been bluffing. She tore the letter to pieces without reading it and dug down to a package at the bottom of the pile. On the outside of it her name had been written with a blue magic marker. She recognised Mailin’s small, sloping handwriting. The padded envelope was postmarked 10 December, the day before she went missing. Liss struggled to open it, her hand was shaking and she couldn’t get her fingers under the flap, had to fetch a knife from the drawer.

There was a CD case inside. A small note was attached to it:
I said on the phone that everything was all right, but it isn’t. Look after this CD carefully for me. Will explain later. Trust you, Liss. Big hug. Mailin.

By the time she got up from the kitchen table, it was dark. She hurried up the stairs and into Viljam and Mailin’s room. She switched on the computer on the table by the window, stood there pinching her lower lip hard as she waited for it to boot up.

There were two documents on the CD: Liss opened the first, entitled
Patient Example 8: Jo and Jacket
. It ran to several pages and was in the form of an interview.

Therapist: Last time you were talking about a holiday trip to Crete. You were twelve years old. Something happened there, something that made an impression on you.

Patient: It was that girl. Her and her family were in the apartment next door. She liked me. Wanted us to get together. She wanted me to do all sorts of things.

T: What things?

(Long pause)

P: For example that about the cat. Wanted me to torture a cat. It only had one eye, and I felt sorry for it, but Ylva wanted us to catch it and torture it.

T: She made you do things you didn’t really want to do?

P: (nods) And when I said stop, we mustn’t do this, she got the others to gang up on me.

T: What about the grown-ups, didn’t they notice what was going on?

P: They were only interested in themselves. Apart from one.

T: The one you mentioned last time, the one you called Jacket?

P: He was the one who wanted me to call him Jacket. That’s what they called him when he was my age. His father ran a clothes shop. Gents’ outfitters was what he called it. He didn’t want me to call him anything else. Later on, of course, I found out what his real name was. Maybe I already knew it that first time. I mean, I’d seen his picture in the papers.

T: He was well known?

(Pause)

P: Jacket read something to me. A poem in English. Which he translated. About a Phoenician lying drowned at the bottom of the sea. Handsome young man, strong and muscular. Now all that was left was a few bones. ‘Death by Water’ it was called. Later on we read it together.

T: You had many conversations with him?

P: He kept showing up. Seemed to be there when I needed him. Don’t you believe me? Think I’m making this up?

T: I believe you.

P: I was very low. Had made up my mind to disappear. Walked out on to the beach in the dark. Took off my clothes and was on my way out to the water. Was going to swim far out until I couldn’t swim any more … Then he appeared out of the shadows. Been sitting in a chair, looking out. It was as if he’d been waiting for me. ‘Hey, Joe,’ he said, like in that Jimi Hendrix record, that was what he used to say when he saw me. Without me having told anyone, he knew what I was going to do. He made me think about other things. Took me up to his room. We sat there talking most of the night.

(Pause)

T: Did anything else happen?

P: Such as?

T: Last time you hinted that something had happened between you and this man, something …

P (angry): It’s not like you think. Jacket saved me. I wouldn’t be sitting in this chair now if it hadn’t been for him. You’re trying to get me to say that he abused me.

T: I want you to say what happened in your own words, not mine.

(Pause)

P: It was cold. He let me shower in his room. Afterwards he towelled me dry. Put me in the bed … Lay beside me. Kept me warm.

T: You felt that he was looking after you.

P: More than that. When I got back to Norway …

(Pause)

T: You met him again in Norway.

P: He showed up one day, that same autumn. Outside school. We went for a long drive. Stopped and walked along the beach. He liked me. Everything I said and did was okay.

T: And after that?

P: I met him again. Went to his house, spent a whole weekend there. Several times, as it happens.

T: And your parents, did they know about this?

P: This was between Jacket and me. We made a pact. It was holy. What we did together was nobody’s business but ours. He helped me in all sorts of ways.

T: What did he help you with?

(Pause)

P: For example he showed me what to do with Ylva next time I met her.

T: Ylva? The girl you met in Crete?

P: I don’t want to talk about that any more.

Liss read the rest of what was presumably the transcript from a therapy session. It was so detailed it might have been recorded on tape and then transcribed. She opened the second document. It was called
En route
and consisted of commentaries on a whole series of conversations. She scrolled down through it. Beneath a heading
Patient Example 8
Mailin had added: