Scarred (19 page)

Trine watches Henning disappear up the mound. She waits. Listens out until everything is quiet again. Then she waits even longer until she is absolutely sure that he has gone.

Henning.

She knew that he had returned to work, of course. She has even read some of his articles, the most recent one only last week, about Tore Pulli and how he was killed. She always gets a lump in her throat when she reads his stories and sees the small byline picture of him with the scars. But this time she can’t just click a button to make it go away.

Now that she has seen him again, in person, she is unable to block out the images that pop up in her head even though she is awake and should be able to suppress them. It’s the middle of the night and she is woken up by noises coming from nearby. A low sound repeating like a rhythm. Something squeaks. Mild scraping from a chair. Followed by more squeaking.

Trine gets out of bed and goes to the door; she sees a soft light spill out from Henning’s room. The noises grow louder and she hears breathing that quickens. She tiptoes closer to Henning’s room. And the sight that meets her when she peeks inside—

Trine closes her eyes.

She could never look at her father or Henning afterwards. She had hoped that it might get easier in time, but it was just as difficult today as it always was.

Trine tries to shake off the images and the memories. Now she regrets that she didn’t ask Henning to keep his mouth shut about having found her and get him to promise not to reveal the location where she has been hiding for the last thirty-six hours. But something tells her that Henning won’t say anything. He understands.

Trine sits down; she takes a sip from her water bottle and feels the soreness in her legs and the blisters on her heel. Even the soles of her feet hurt. She’s in need of a shower. She would have gone for a swim in the sea, except that the water temperature is probably only thirteen or fourteen degrees in September. What she ought to have done was jump in the sea and drown herself. But she couldn’t step off the cliff when the thought occurred to her on the coastal path. She just couldn’t make herself do it.

Perhaps she didn’t want it enough. Or perhaps she was still clinging to the hope that a brilliant solution would present itself during her long walk.

Trine takes out her mobile and reads the last text message she got from Katarina Hatlem almost an hour ago, a message Trine has yet to reply to.

Again Trine weighs up her options. She can either confront the allegations, reveal where she was and what she was doing that night and then wait for the public outcry that will exile her from politics for good. Or she can roll over, play dead and resign quietly out of fear of losing the best and finest person in her life.

You’ll lose him anyway
, she thinks,
if you don’t tell him
. Both options are equally impossible.

Once again she rages at herself because she wasn’t brave enough to end her problems at the bottom of the sea or at the foot of a cliff while she still had the chance.
You’re a coward
, she reproaches herself.

But running away is also the act of a coward, fleeing your problems as she is doing now. It’s not her style, it never was. Yes, it has been necessary to bury certain things from the past, but that was different. Piling earth on top of something that stinks to make the smell go away. And so far the press hasn’t managed to uncover what is rotting underneath.

But what guarantee does she have that her accusers would tell the truth once they get what they want?

None.

Trine shakes her head. No matter what she does, it’ll be wrong.

The incident room on the fifth floor of Oslo Police Station is busy as always with uniformed and plainclothes officers whose attention is directed at the end of the boardroom table where Arild Gjerstad raises a coffee cup to his mouth. The table is covered with files, coffee cups and half-full water bottles. On the smart board on the wall the name JOHANNE KLINGENBERG appears in capital letters. Preliminary forensic evidence is listed in bullet points under her name.

Gjerstad puts down his cup and walks up to the smart board.

‘The killer is likely to be known to the victim,’ he says. ‘Do we have a list of everyone she knew?’

Gjerstad looks across the assembly. Fredrik Stang, who has dark hair in a crew cut and a face whose expression is always grave and tense, speaks up.

‘If the calendar on her laptop was up-to-date, she had lunch with someone called Emilie earlier today at twelve noon. The victim had a public profile on Facebook and according to her friends list she has only one friend called Emilie. Emilie Blomvik.’

‘We need to talk to her,’ Gjerstad says. ‘Today.’

‘I can do that,’ Bjarne volunteers.

‘Good,’ Gjerstad replies.

Stang runs his hand down his tanned, muscular arm before he continues.

‘The victim was a mature student at Oslo University’s College of Applied Sciences; she was quite active on the online dating scene with profiles on both match.com and sukker.no as well as various other sites. We’ll check out anyone she has been or is in contact with to see if some of the relationships were more serious than others. But I’m not sure that’s the lead we should be prioritising since the victim was found fully clothed. There were no signs of sexual assault.’

‘Even so,’ Gjerstad says, ‘check it out.’

Stang nods.

‘Talking about friends, she had over 1,800 Facebook friends. In the last two days alone she made more status updates than I have in a whole year.’

‘That might explain how the killer knew that she wouldn’t be at home two weeks ago,’ Bjarne says. ‘And when he would be able to break into her flat.’

‘In that case the killer has to be one of her Facebook friends,’ Sandland concludes. ‘That narrows down the list of suspects.’

Stang nods and puts down his notepad. Silence descends on the table. Bjarne picks up the pen in front of him and clicks it on and off in a quick rhythm.

‘I have a theory I’d like to try out on you,’ he says when he has given it some thought. ‘Last Sunday eighty-three-year-old Erna Pedersen was murdered. She was strangled before being mutilated with her own knitting needles. Her killer smashed a photo on her wall and took another picture with him. A picture that hadn’t been there for very long. None of the people we’ve interviewed at the care home can explain how it came to be on the wall in the first place. In which case it’s possible that the killer put it there himself. This would mean that he had been to the care home before and that he knew the victim.’

Bjarne pauses briefly to make sure that everyone can follow him.

‘And today Johanne Klingenberg was found dead in her flat. She, too, was strangled and again someone had smashed a picture on her wall – the same picture, incidentally, that was smashed two weeks ago when someone broke into her flat. I think it’s likely that she was strangled by the same person who broke into her flat.’

‘Are you saying that the killings are connected?’ Gjerstad asks.

Bjarne pauses briefly.

‘I think there’s evidence to suggest it, yes. Not only were both victims strangled, but it seems as if the killer in both cases has a particular obsession with photographs. They mean something to him and they trigger a rage in him. And this particular obsession is something I’ve seen much too much of in murder inquiries in recent years.’

‘It’s just a random coincidence,’ Pia Nøkleby objects. ‘The pictures, I mean. Anything could happen in the heat of a struggle.’

Bjarne is about to continue putting forward his theory, but Ella Sandland looks up from her documents and beats him to it.

‘There’s actually another coincidence,’ she says. ‘Both victims are originally from Jessheim.’

Silence descends on the water bottles and the coffee cups. Bjarne lets his gaze wander from investigator to investigator and sees that his theory has stirred their interest.

‘That doesn’t necessarily mean anything,’ Nøkleby insists. ‘I’m sure many people from Jessheim move to Oslo. We’re only talking about a distance of – what is it – fifty kilometres?’

‘Forty,’ Bjarne says. ‘But three coincidences mean we have to examine if the two cases are connected.’

Bjarne sees Hagen and Sandland nod in agreement.

‘And there’s one more point that I think is worth noting,’ he continues. ‘In both murders the killer appears to have planned his approach in advance.’

‘What makes you say that?’ Emil Hagen says.

‘Why break into someone’s home when they’re not there – if you don’t intend to steal anything or harm them?’

Bjarne looks around. There is no reply.

‘Because you’re doing research,’ he says. ‘You’re doing the groundwork. The killer must have been to Erna Pedersen’s room at least once before he killed her – if we surmise that he put up the missing picture. When it comes to Johanne Klingenberg, then, I think that the killer checked out her flat, looked at what opportunities there were for him and what difficulties might arise, and came back when he had finalised his plan.’

‘He could have been stalking her?’ Sandland suggests.

Bjarne fixes his gaze on her.

‘Why would he then have smashed a picture of a toddler on her wall? Twice?’

‘Because he thought the child was hers?’

Bjarne shakes his head.

‘If he had been stalking her, he would have known that she had no children. And then we would probably also have found evidence of a sexual assault at the crime scene.’

‘Not necessarily,’ Sandland says.

‘No, but it’s likely.’

Sandland lowers her gaze.

‘However, there are a couple of things that militate against my theory,’ Bjarne continues.

‘Such as?’ Nøkleby asks.

‘While the murder of Johanne Klingenberg appears to have been premeditated, I’m not sure that the murder of Erna Pedersen was. It’s seriously risky to kill someone in a care home where any number of people might see you. But he did it when the whole floor, with one or two exceptions, was busy with this visit from the Volunteer Service – a visit Erna Pedersen would normally have enjoyed and taken part in, but which she wasn’t well enough to attend last Sunday. That means he took advantage of the situation that arose there and then. And I’m not sure that his plan was to kill her. The murder seems rushed and messy, if you know what I mean. And remember: Erna Pedersen had one foot in the grave already. She would have died soon anyway.’

‘So why did he kill her?’ Gjerstad says.

Bjarne expels the air from his lungs hard.

‘I don’t know. But the killer appears to have been angry with her. Killing her wasn’t enough. He also had to whack knitting needles into her eyes. But Erna Pedersen had dementia and dementia sufferers have poor short-term memory. Things from the past, however, are crystal clear.’

Bjarne looks across to Sandland who nods.

‘Is it possible that the killer tried to make her remember something from the past? The missing school photo could suggest that. And since he ended up killing her, it’s tempting to think that she hurt him a long time ago.’

‘So we’re talking about an ex-pupil of hers?’ Fredrik Stang says. ‘Since the missing picture was a school photo, I mean?’

‘It could be anyone, really. A pupil, a colleague, an angry family member or an enraged neighbour who cared about the person or persons Pedersen had harmed.

Bjarne’s mouth is dry from talking so he sips some water. He studies the faces in the room for signs that his arguments have swayed anyone. He has no sense of whether he has been successful.

‘But there are aspects of the killer’s MO that match in both cases,’ he continues. ‘And if we treat the murder of Erna Pedersen as a clumsy first attempt, then the killing of Johanne Klingenberg suggests that this time the killer had much more control over his actions. It might mean that murdering Erna Pedersen was what got him started.’

‘So you’re saying we could be dealing with a serial killer?’ Nøkleby asks. She sounds sceptical.

Bjarne looks at her for a few seconds before he replies. His voice sounds a little more feeble than he intended: ‘Possibly.’

He scans the room for support and receives a nod from Gjerstad. Nøkleby follows shortly.

Bjarne is pleased with his reasoning, but two questions immediately present themselves. Why did the killer damage the picture of Erna Pedersen’s son and the little boy whose picture Johanne Klingenberg had on her wall? And if they really are dealing with a serial killer who has now finished warming up – might their friends and relatives be his next victims?

Once he killed a bird with his bare hands. The feeling of life ebbing away between his fingers made his heart beat faster, but it never came close to a thrill. Neither did suffocating the neighbour’s cat, which had strayed into their house and refused to leave.

He was home alone that day, sick under the duvet and watching videos on the sofa; there was no way he would tolerate the presence of a cat, which would stink up the whole house with its pee. So he tossed the duvet over it and trapped it. And even though he had a temperature, he experienced the intoxicating sensation of being master of life and death.

But in neither of those instances had he seen the actual death, observed the precise moment when the spark is extinguished and time stops. He thought he might see it with the fish he caught down on Vippetangen where all the East Europeans go to fish, when he held the slippery creatures, alive and wriggling, before slowly twisting their necks. He saw the blood and felt their frantic death throes between his fingers, but there was never any change in the eyes of the fish. He never
saw
them die.

He didn’t have time to see it in the eyes of that old bat, either. She was dead before the veil lifted and he could see clearly again.

But now he has seen it. And now he understands.

This is what it’s all about. This is what he has been looking for.

And he can’t stop thinking about the light that faded from her eyes when she looked at him, pleading. It was as if the light travelled into him and started radiating from his own eyes and illuminated the path that lay in front of him. The path he had been wandering recently suddenly felt clearer and wider. He felt a sense of purpose. Something inside him slotted into place.

For that reason he is going home.

For the last time.

When he was a boy, he liked travelling by train. He also liked watching them. Before taking their bicycles across the level crossing they always had to look right and left and then right again. Or perhaps it was the other way around. The coolest and scariest thing he knew was standing on the platform on Nordby Station, as close to the tracks as possible, waiting for the trains to whizz by. And when they did, it was so loud, so powerful and with so much air passing right in front of him that he almost lost his balance.

He looks out at the small village of his childhood, which is no longer small. Everything has changed. The houses, the people, cars; he feels at home, but at the same time not. Everything is bigger, everything is different.
He
is different.

Some passengers get off, others get on. The doors close and the train moves on. He doesn’t feel like leaving the train at the next station; he would prefer to stay where he is and watch the world go by, watch autumn settle over the rooftops and colour the sky. But he can’t do that, either.

The train slows down again and he gets off at Nordby Station. Nor is this place anything like he remembers it. Gone is the old station building where they wrote rude graffiti, misspelt because they hadn’t quite mastered double consonants yet. The new building is bigger and made from glass. Even the platform has been replaced. Wooden boards have turned into concrete.

He walks past Østafor Care Home where she would probably have lived now, the old crone, in her retirement, had she stayed here. She could have sat on the veranda and watched the trains go past. Perhaps they would have made her forget about fractions.

A few minutes later he stands outside the door to his childhood home. It has been a while since he last visited. Before he goes inside, he takes a look at the garden and remembers the shovel, the snow that whirled around them that day, the cave that collapsed on top of Werner and squeezed the life out of him. It happened so quickly, but even now, so many years later, it still makes the hairs on his neck stand up.

He opens the front door and enters; he sees how she jerks upright in the green leather Stressless armchair where she sits embroidering, a hobby of hers, but it doesn’t take long before her confusion turns to delight. And, for a brief moment, he thinks that this is exactly how it ought to be. That’s how people should react. This is what it feels like to be part of a normal family.

He wonders what kind of father he would have made; if his child would also have stood close to the tracks to watch the trains whizz by. If his son might have conquered his stutter and made something of himself. There must be qualities you pass on, surely, or traits, in the same way you pass on hair and eye colour. Perhaps Sebastian would have broken free, been his own man, his father’s direct opposite, the person he tried so hard to become when he was little? First he wanted to be a pilot; no, a butcher actually, he longed to look into the stomachs of dead animals. But then he wanted to be a hunter and later a professional football player. And then he stopped wanting to be anything at all.

She comes to greet him, her arms wide open and she pulls him close. And he stands there, he doesn’t put his arms around her, he just recognises the smell of her, the familiar smell of something sweet mixed with the aroma from the kitchen. Lamb and cabbage, black pepper and potatoes; the smell of stew usually makes his mouth water, but today it just makes him feel nauseous.

‘How nice that you were able to come after all,’ she practically shouts and holds him out away from her.

And everything is all right until his father enters the room, his father who had always favoured Werner. He says nothing; he just stops in front of the mirror where the telephone used to be in the days before they got a cordless one. The floorboards always used to squeak so badly right there.

‘I thought you said he wasn’t coming?’ he says, addressing his wife.

‘I know, but – he changed his mind. Isn’t it wonderful?’

‘Couldn’t he have let us know?’

She tries to say something, but no words come out before he marches past them. No welcome hug. No outstretched hand.

Not this time, either.

‘I hope you’re hungry,’ she says as she goes into the kitchen, eager for him to follow. ‘See,’ she adds, pointing to the saucepan. He nods and looks at her.

Everything is as it always was and everything is different.

Soon they sit down to dinner, but he struggles to swallow the food. He thinks about how much has been said in this room and how little.

‘Could you pass the salt, please?’

He looks at his father. Gives him the salt shaker, but as he does, he knocks over his own half-empty water glass. The water splashes across the table cloth and drips down on the floor. His father’s knife and fork hit the plate on the other side of the table. His father sighs heavily.

‘Are you just going to sit there?’

He makes no reply. His mother, who is sitting next to him, tears off several sheets of kitchen towel and presses them against the table cloth.

More sighing. More snorting.

‘Are you just going to sit there like a brat? Aren’t you going to apologise?’

Slowly he turns his head and looks at him. He makes no reply.

‘Eh? Aren’t you going to say sorry?’

No
, he thinks to himself.
Not any more
.

The next moment his father pushes his chair back. The chair legs scrape against the floor as his hastily scrunched-up napkin lands on the table.

A veil settles over his eyes. And, as he feels a strong hand clamp down on his own, he stops seeing clearly. He just does.

And he does.

And he does.