Medusa (29 page)

– Accident black spot, said Norbakk. – This stretch here is supposed to be highly dangerous.

Viken didn’t hear what he said. He continued on his own train of thought.

– My idea goes something like this: imagine this twin has not merely disappeared, but never even existed in the first place.

– That ought to be easy enough to find out, Norbakk countered.

– Probably. A run through births, marriages and deaths ought to do it, even if he changed his name.

– What about asking the mother? Isn’t she still alive?

– I gather she’s senile, yodelling away in some posh rest home somewhere in the west end of town.

Norbakk appeared to be thinking about this.

– The three killings we’re working with are unlike anything else I’ve ever come across in this country before, said Viken. – We’ve been offered a profiler if we want one. But it won’t do any harm if we think along psychological lines without having so-called experts breathing down our necks. You remember the profile I made of the perpetrator after the first two murders? A highly educated man in a well-paid job, a family man with a split personality, someone who grew up with a cold and unemotional mother who tyrannised him. When you’ve got a serial killer, be sure to take a very good look at the relationship he had with his mother. That’s where you’ll find the skeleton in the cupboard.

– Are you trying to say that this doctor, Glenne, has an imaginary twin brother who carries out sick stuff like this for him?

– I’m not saying anything, Arve, but there’s no law against thinking out loud. Often very necessary, in fact. When Norbakk didn’t respond, he added: – System is alpha and omega in our kind of work, I’ve been telling you that ever since you left school. But at the same time it’s important not to overlook your gut feeling. In the end, most cases are solved by the gut, Arve, whether we like it or not.

He laid a hand on his own, rumbling and growling like a leaden sky on a late summer’s day. Maybe it was protesting about the part it had been given to play.

F
OR THE SECOND
day in succession, Axel woke up on Rita’s sofa. He looked at his wristwatch. Thought it had stopped, but the clock on the wall showed the same time, and afternoon sunlight streamed in through the living-room window.

He hadn’t told Rita he would be coming back, but when he peered into the kitchen he saw that the table was laid for him. There was a note next to the plate:
You’ll find what you need in the fridge and in the cupboard on the right.

He swigged down two glasses of cold orange juice, made himself a muesli mix and started the coffee machine going as he waited for the muesli to swell. Glanced through
Aftenposten
.
Police have important leads in bear-murder cases.
On page 4 was an identikit drawing of a person they wanted to talk to, a man seen near the scene of the crime that morning. – Is that what I look like? he murmured. Wide face and curly hair flopping over his forehead.

He took his coffee into the living room, sat back down on the sofa, turned on his mobile. No message from Miriam. Three from Bie. He listened to the first of them
… And the police have been here looking for you. Asking where you were when your patient went missing. They looked through the photo album and asked all sorts of things about Brede, wondered if he existed at all. It was horrible. Please come home, Axel. Now.

He sent a text in reply:
Be home this evening
. Couldn’t face the thought of what it would be like. An unfaithful husband. A father wanted by the police.
You’re a good boy, Axel. You’ll always do the right thing.
He’d reached some kind of limit. If he went any further, he’d end up losing everything he had. Was that why he was still sitting there? Did he want to give everything up? Want Bie to be so crushed that she wouldn’t have him back? Want her to do what he wasn’t capable of doing himself, breaking up?
You must be a very happy man.

He waited another half-hour before ringing Miriam. Was about to disconnect when she finally answered.

– I miss you, he said.

She said nothing.

– Miriam?

– Why did you disappear yesterday?

There was a note in her voice he hadn’t heard before.

– Couldn’t you have stayed and talked to the police?

She was right. He had been cowardly.

– They found out someone had been here, Axel. I had to tell them it was you.

He looked out of the window. In the next-door garden there was a climbing frame with a swing and an orange plastic slide.

– You’ve got every right to be angry with me.

– I’m not angry, Axel, I’m afraid.

– I understand that.

– No, you don’t understand.

Between the rooftops he could make out the trees in the Nordre cemetery, and a chimney sticking up from Ullevål hospital. The sky was pale grey, with a hint of yellow.

Without knowing why, he said: – Is it me you’re afraid of?

He heard her draw breath.

– You must go to the police.

If he didn’t turn himself in, they’d soon be publishing his name and his photograph. But he sat there listening to her voice, and he couldn’t bring himself to regret any of it.

– I want to see you one more time, he said. – Then I’ll go to the police.

– It’s my fault.

– What is your fault, Miriam?

– If it hadn’t been for me, none of this would have happened.

She’s the one regretting it, he thought. I can’t bear to hear her saying that.

– I must see you.

– I’ll call you this evening, she muttered.

– Are you at home now?

She hesitated before saying: – I’m at a friend’s house. Slept here last night. I have to pull myself together and go back home soon.

– I’ll come over.

– No, Axel. I daren’t.

She ended the call. He rang her again, but she didn’t answer.

Rita arrived at 5.45. He was still sitting on the sofa, looking out at the evening sky. It had turned a dark yellow.

– Are you still sitting here, Axel? she exclaimed. – You’re becoming a fixture
.

He smiled feebly.

– Don’t worry, Rita, I’m not moving in.

She carried in some bags of shopping.

– I didn’t mean it like that. Have you spoken to the police yet?

He didn’t answer.

– Axel, for God’s sake. They’re all over the place looking for you. I had to tell a little white lie at the office. Actually, it was more dark grey.

She was getting in trouble too because of him.

– You’ve got no call to be in hiding. What’s the matter with you?

She sat down in a chair.

– Is it that student? Miriam?

He leaned his head back.

– I don’t expect you to understand it, Rita. I don’t understand it myself. I turn my back on Bie and the kids, spend the night with a student seventeen years younger than me. I stumble over a dead woman and run off. Last night I was wandering about up in the Nordmarka and terrified the life out of some old tramp.

Rita leaned towards him, put a hand on his arm.

– Sounds like the worst kind of mid-life crisis to me. Maybe you’d better pick up the pieces before it’s too late.

He had to smile. Just for a moment he felt he was standing on something firm that wouldn’t give way beneath him. A place where it was possible to take a decision. Doubt is what makes you crack up, he thought. You’ve never been the brooding type. You’ve always acted. Always moved on.

– You’re right, Rita. Time to get things straightened up. I’ll go to the police. But there’s one thing I have to do first.

He could see that she very much wanted to know what that might be, but he didn’t give her the chance to ask.

N
INA
J
EBSEN POPPED
a piece of Nicorette into her mouth and again tried to get into the register of residents site. When she got the same message again, that the server was down, she reached for the phone to call Viken, and remembered in the same instant that he was in a meeting. She considered postponing the search, but then had a better idea. The chief inspector had popped in to see her after returning from Nesodden. She had rarely seen him looking more pleased. He congratulated her once again for establishing that Axel Glenne had been at the student’s flat in Rodeløkka. Nina had no objection to being praised by Viken, and she was encouraged to continue her search for Axel Glenne’s twin, even though she was unable to access the register of residents. Even when Viken was at his most provoking, she found herself inspired to try her hardest. It was by no means everyone’s reaction. Sigge Helgarsson, for example, responded to Viken’s style in the opposite way, becoming reluctant, passive, inclined to do no more than the bare minimum.

She called the Rikshospital. Was informed that the departmental head was the only one able to give permission to divulge information from the maternity ward, even when the information was over forty years old. The head had gone home for the day, but would be back tomorrow. Nina looked at the pile of documents on her desk, thought things over. Viken had said Glenne was born in Oslo, but not where in Oslo. She could try the other hospitals, but reasoned that the same rules of access would apply there. She decided that Axel Glenne’s twin brother could wait another day.
If he exists
, as Viken had commented, with that rascally smile of his.

For a man like Axel Glenne, a successful doctor and father of three, to have invented a twin brother and persuaded even those closest to him that he was out there somewhere seemed a little far-fetched, to put it mildly. Even more so that it all had something to do with the murders of three women. It was no secret that Viken had a weakness for convoluted psychology. He had persuaded her to read books by John Douglas and other writers on the subject of the psychological profiling of killers, and he was apparently still in regular contact with a profiling expert he had got to know during his much-vaunted period with the CID in Manchester. Not long ago he had given a lunch-hour lecture on split personalities. But he had no respect at all for the opinions of Norwegian psychologists and psychiatrists on such matters, know-alls and phoneys that they were, every last one of them.

Nina had already managed to assemble a fair amount of information on Glenne and his family. The wife, Vibeke Frisch Glenne, known as Bie, had studied theatre and art history. In the eighties and nineties she had been editor of the Norwegian edition of
Anais
, later working as a freelancer for a number of other women’s magazines. She wrote about literature, travel, sex, fashion, and of course about health. Nina had found images of her on the net, from which it was obvious that she was an attractive woman. The Glennes’ joint income was of a size she could only dream about, and they had enough in the bank to keep them in style for the rest of their lives. Axel Glenne had been in practice for sixteen years and there had never been any complaints against him. He had three tickets for speeding and a conviction for driving while under the influence of alcohol that was over twenty years old. Not a lot that could be used against him.

She read through the memorandum Arve had written about Miriam Gaizauskaite. As usual, he had done a thorough job and had come up with a lot of stuff. Miriam hailed from a small country town in the south of Lithuania. Catholic family. Oldest of four children. Mother a doctor. Father a naval officer in the former Soviet Union who died in a submarine accident in the Barents Sea when Miriam was eight years old. Miriam came to Norway six years ago to take up a place at the faculty of medicine in the University of Oslo. From there on the information was a little sparse, and Nina reflected that for once, she could have done a better job than Arve. She also noted a few errors.

It was gone 6.30. Her stomach was rumbling. All she’d had to eat since lunchtime was a piece of crispbread. Convenient to have so much to do that she had no time to think about food, but it was going to be a long evening, and she ought to eat something to keep her concentration levels up. She could probably allow herself a little more now, seeing as she’d missed dinner. Arve Norbakk was also going to be working late, and she had nothing against a visit to a local café in his company.

He glanced up when she popped her head in.

– Busy?

He thought about it. Didn’t exactly seem open to invitations.

– I’m trying to find out whether old Mrs Glenne gave birth to one or two children all those years ago, she told him.

– Probably no point in asking the woman herself, he observed with a show of interest.

– I called the home where she’s living. According to the carer I spoke to, she denies ever having had any children at all.

– Like that, is it, he grinned absently, but Nina was not going to give up that easily.

– Actually, I’ve just been looking through that memorandum you wrote about the medical student.

As she had expected, this interested him more.

– I was just sitting here thinking about her, he said. – Do you think it’s enough with only one man on guard up there?

Nina had been wondering the same thing.

– She was given the offer of a personal alarm but said no. So there’s nothing more we can do.

He looked as if he was considering the matter.

– I guess you’re right at that. And something’s going to happen pretty soon now.

– An arrest? asked Nina. – Glenne?

Arve Norbakk leaned back in his chair.

– Bet your bottom dollar.

– But do we have enough? It all seems a bit thin.

He looked up into her eyes, and she wanted to sit down on the desk, right next to his hand.

– Viken’s made up his mind, he said. – Show me the police prosecutor in Oslo who could say no. Certainly not Jarle Frøen.

She understood what he meant.

– What I was going to say about your memo, she said, resuming her thread, – is that it contains one big mistake plus one
major
oversight.