Medusa (37 page)

He hurled himself against the locked door. It didn’t move.

– Miriam, he shouted into the gap. Pressed his ear to it and listened. No sound from within.

He took his mobile phone out again, again tried the sergeant’s number. He heard a phone ringing in the kitchen. Grabbing hold of the log he had placed on the table, he crept out, overwhelmed with a feeling he was on the point of being able to put into words. Then something happened behind him, a wave breaking, splintering the darkness and hurling him into a storm of light.

N
INA
J
EBSEN OPENED
the office door. It was only 7.15. She had had a restless night and woken early. After an hour of tossing and turning she had decided to get up and make better use of the time.

She spat out the day’s first Nicorette. The waste bin hadn’t been emptied and yesterday’s sticky deposits still clung to the plastic liner inside. She punched in her password and logged on. Here we go again, she thought in frustration. With the charge against Glenne dropped, they would now have to go through all the witness statements and documentation again. It reminded her of the snakes and ladders they used to play as children. Just before you reached home, you could trip and slide all the way back down to square one. She tried not to think of how many thousands of pages of documents relating to the case they had amassed thus far. Memories of the visit to the café yesterday afternoon kept coming back to her. This was what had kept her awake in the night.
See you later, Arve
, she’d said as they stood in front of the garage at the station, sounding more like an invitation than a salutation. He’d stepped closer to her and brushed the backs of his fingers against her cheek. Twice, while looking into her eyes. At that moment she had thought,
Now it’s going to happen
. Then he said,
See you
and headed for the garage door, leaving her standing there with her insides on fire. But at the last minute he’d turned round and suggested they go out together again
one of these days.
Maybe have a drink or two.

Nina picked up a pen and wrote on a memo pad:
Arve
. Sat there looking at the name. She had always had neat handwriting. It suited his name. She opened a pack of chewing tobacco and navigated to the file on Miriam Gaizauskaite. She recalled something they had talked about yesterday. The victims’ ages. Paulsen fifty-six, Davidsen forty-six, Elvestrand thirty-six. Miriam had turned twenty-six three months earlier. Her stomach rumbled. She’d had no breakfast. In the desk drawer she found an apple and took a bite through the leathery skin. It was mealy inside, but she didn’t care … There was something else too. The first victim had been found in the Oslo marka, the second in Frogner Park, the third outside Miriam’s door. It was as if something was getting closer. She carefully read through Arve’s report again, noting with a smile that he had corrected the mistake she had alerted him to.
Lived seven years in Norway
, it now read. That first year she’d been at the folk high school near Sandane, in Nordfjord.

She closed the report and looked over the notes she had made herself since starting on the case. There was a vague feeling of having missed something. A piece of information, something she’d heard but not properly understood. She navigated to the report on the visit to the Reinkollen collective, not necessarily expecting to find it there. She heard footsteps out in the corridor and recognised them, spat out the tobacco and pushed the unsightly waste bin out of sight below the table. Arve always came early to work. If you twisted her arm, she would probably have admitted there were other reasons for her getting here before everyone else today, because she was most definitely not a morning person.

His office was a little further down the corridor, meaning he had to pass her door. It was ajar, but to make certain he knew she was there, she kicked at the waste bin and then swore. The steps stopped outside. There was a knock. She swivelled round in her chair.

– Hi, Nina. Having trouble?

– Not really, I just … tripped.

She didn’t say what it was she might have tripped over, sitting there at her desk like that.

– Yesterday was fun, he smiled.

The way he said it made her cheeks glow. He must have noticed. – Really enjoyed it, he added.

– Me too, she managed to say.

She pulled herself together, indicated his hand.

– Cut yourself, Arve?

He turned it over, saw what she was pointing to, on the outside of his wrist.

– Damn, I thought I’d wiped it all off. Had to clean a fuel injector in the car. He winked at her. – Not to worry, I’ll survive.

He looked paler than usual, drawn around the eyes.

– Sleep well? she asked solicitously.

– I wouldn’t say that. Feel as though my phone’s been ringing all night.

– Anything important?

He rubbed his bristly chin. The beard was much darker than the hair, she noticed.

– Among other things, several calls from a certain Axel Glenne.

Nina was curious.

– What did he want?

– Hard to say. He was babbling on about this medical student, something about letters someone had sent her. I think he’s playing a game with us. I had to convince him we were on our way with everything we had. I’ll tell you the rest at the morning briefing.

Don’t go yet, she thought, and it seemed to help, because he took a step closer.

– What are you up to, by the way? I never thought of you as an early bird.

He glanced at her screen.

– Åsnes county? I never heard any more about your trip up there.

She crossed one leg over the other. Again she was wearing the tight-fitting blouse. She noticed how his gaze passed over her breasts.

– Amazing number of trees, she sighed. – You’ve probably got no idea what a nightmare it is for a girl from Bergen to get lost in a place like that. You from the depths of the deep dark forest up there.

He smiled at her turn of phrase. Maybe he was thinking about sitting on her desk, close enough for her to touch his thigh through the trousers.

– Two expeditions in two weeks, she said brightly as she cleared away some papers. – Viken got lost and drove us up some dark little cul-de-sac. We came to a barrier and couldn’t turn round. Imagine it: alone with Viken in a deserted forest. Pretty scary, I can tell you. Felt like Little Red Riding Hood on her way to Grandmama. And the first trip was even worse. I ended up at some place called Reinvollen …

– Reinkollen.

– Yeah, that was it. Residential home for extraterrestrials suffering from mysterious illnesses.

He didn’t respond and it make her feel nervous. She began describing the trip in detail, talking about the old ladies who worked there, and that wizened creature in the wheelchair, an Egyptian mummy of indeterminate age. She told the story well, she noticed, and Arve smiled a couple of times in the course of her narrative.

– At one point I nearly jumped out of my skin. An enormous mongoloid giant suddenly appeared in the doorway. He stood in the middle of the floor and beat himself on the chest and bellowed:
Oswald catch bear, Oswald catch bear.
She imitated his performance. – But the old ladies didn’t seem bothered in the slightest. They sat down on the sofa with him and petted him and he quietened down after that.

Arve Norbakk nodded.

– They’re very good with him.

She pushed her chair back.

– Do you know …? Have you been there?

He looked at her for a long time. The expression in his eyes changed; they seemed to harden, and then open again. He leaned against the desk and smiled.

– Oswald is my brother, he said.

N
INA STRUGGLED TO
stay focused. She scrolled down through the report from the visit to Reinkollen, and then, again, the interview with Miriam Gaizauskaite. Arve had gone to his office, and no one else had arrived in the meantime. As she tried to read through the documents, she kept hearing herself making fun of Oswald. She bit her lip. She hadn’t felt so stupid for a long time. She’d apologised several times. Arve tried to laugh it off. Assured her that he didn’t take it personally. Enjoyed a good story. Things a lot worse than that got said and done. That it was ignorance, not malice. Are you sure you’re not mad at me? she’d asked repeatedly. Before he left, he stroked her hair. To reassure her, perhaps. Or for some other reason.

Before she could make up her mind about that, the phone rang. It was reception.

– I’ve got someone on the line who wants to talk to you. Says he’s a Catholic priest at a church here in Oslo.

Miriam, thought Nina. Without further ado she asked for him to be put through. The man introduced himself as Father Raymond Ugelstad, a Dominican friar.

– This is about Miriam, she said at once.

– Yes, said the priest. – She mentioned your name when she was here the other day. I believe you’ve spoken to her.

The voice was light and nasal. She imagined a stout elderly man, a monk in a brown habit.

– I’m ringing because I’m worried. Quite frankly, I think something might have happened to her …

Two minutes later, Nina knocked on Arve Norbakk’s door. It was a relief to get the chance to talk to him about what the priest had said. It would ease the embarrassment of their last conversation, might even remove it completely.

– I’ve just had a phone call. About Miriam.

She explained.

– We’d better check it out immediately, Arve responded. – I just tried to call her but she didn’t answer.

The door to Miriam Gaizauskaite’s flat was ajar. There was a bunch of flowers hanging on the door handle. Nina opened the little card that was tied to it with gold thread.
When this is over …
she read. She showed it to Arve, who had to lean against her to read the handwriting.

– I don’t like this, she murmured as she pushed the door open with the toe of her shoe. – Miriam?

Arve was standing right behind her.

– We ought to call for backup before we go in, Nina.

– We don’t have time for that. She had no objection to showing him that she could be decisive. – Backup in case of what? You think there’s a giant bear in there?

He laughed. – I can see you’re not the nervous type.

Nina peered into the living room. It looked pretty much as it had done the last time she was there. A few Pepsi bottles on the table, a pile of books. The alcove was empty, the bed made but the duvet rumpled.

– Miriam? she said again as she headed towards the kitchen.

Not there either. Washing-up was piled on the worktop. A plate on the table. Beside it an opened envelope and some photographs. She picked one of them up. It was Miriam. It had been cut in half, she noted as she turned it over.
And the fourth will be …
she read on the back.

Viken drummed on the tabletop. He was freshly shaved and his aftershave smelled different from the one he usually used. The neatly ironed white shirt was buttoned up well past the declivity in his neck. Nina knew that Finckenhagen and Jarle Frøen were being carpeted by the Chief Constable now that the charges against Glenne had been dropped. They were the ones who had to take the rap. More than anything the chief disliked it when people tried to shove the responsibility down through the ranks. And as soon as he was done with Finckenhagen, she had called Viken in and given him a carpeting of her own, which was a lot softer to stand on and didn’t seem to have made any particular impression on him. Viken was if anything even more obstinate, and what Nina and Arve had just told him about the finds at Miriam’s flat seemed to leave him more convinced than ever that he had been right. He put Nina in mind of a dog that never lets go once it has sunk its teeth into something.

– This is no time for being wise after the event, he said in a voice that seemed to leave the matter open to doubt. – I assure you that Finckenhagen knows exactly what I think. I asked for a man to be left on guard outside Miriam’s flat. I asked that a minimum of resources be left available to keep an eye on Glenne after we let him go. My words fell on deaf ears.

He glared, but Nina saw a glint of satisfaction in the grey eyes.

– You were supposed to be keeping an eye on her, he said, addressing himself to Arve Norbakk.

The sergeant was leaning in the doorway.

– I called her last night. Everything seemed to be in order. I asked her to keep my number handy and to get in touch instantly if something happened.

Viken raised a hand.

– You did what you could, Arve. I’m glad somebody knows what we’re trying to do here.

Norbakk’s response to being praised was inscrutable.

– And another thing, he said. – I had Glenne on the phone to me twice last night.

Viken raised his eyebrows.

– What did he want?

– He called the station the first time at about eleven, asked to speak to me personally. When I rang back, he told me what shits we were. I made the mistake of calling without blocking my number, and a few hours later he was there again, muttering away about Miriam. Still having a go at us. He didn’t sound completely sober. Or maybe he was on something else. He called another couple of times, but I passed up the chance to hear any more of his crap.

– Perfectly understandable, was Viken’s response. – Nina, I’m putting you in charge of the search for Miriam. Are all our reports on her up to date?

Arve Norbakk cast a glance in her direction.

– Just a couple of things I have to add, he said quickly. – I’ll do it straight away. Give me a couple of minutes and I’ll get a printout from her mobile phone. And Glenne’s.

– Good. Jebsen, you find out when that bunch of flowers was sent, and by whom. I have my suspicions. Where’s Sigge?

– He called in, said Nina. – He’s at home, one of his kids is sick. Unless it was both of them. He’s going to try to get in later.