ROAR HORVATH CLIMBED the three icy steps gingerly and rang on the doorbell. They hadn’t arranged anything in advance. There was a chance the trip would be wasted, but Detective Chief Inspector Viken insisted that it was worth a try. In cases that were particularly special, he made a point of popping up unexpectedly and surprising the person they wanted to interview. Sometimes they learnt something that would not otherwise have emerged in the interview.
There was the sound of footsteps from within and the door glided open, not suddenly, not slowly. The man standing there was above average height, dark, with longish hair and carefully trimmed sideburns. The face had a wintry pallor; the features were regular. The good-looking young-guy type, thought Roar Horvath. He introduced himself and showed his ID. The young man glanced at it and his immediate response appeared to be one of relief rather than suspicion.
– I’m Viljam Vogt-Nielsen. I’m sure you already know that.
– We made a presumption, said Roar Horvath, and introduced Viken.
The two investigators followed him along a hallway and down a flight of stairs into a room with large windows facing out on to a patch of garden in which an Argentinian barbecue and a tool shed could be seen. A few bushes were partially covered in snow. The room wasn’t large, but the ceiling was unusually high. There was an open fireplace in one corner. On the wall behind the sofa hung an enormous painting that looked very dull to Roar Horvath, though he had never thought of himself as a connoisseur of modern art.
– Nice place, he observed.
– The people who own it are architects, Viljam Vogt-Nielsen informed him. – We’re renting it for a year.
Roar Horvath sat down in the sofa. – You’ve already made a statement to the crime response unit, he said. – But then it was about a missing person. We’re investigating a murder now.
Viljam Vogt-Nielsen did not respond. He slipped into the chair nearest the stairs and gazed out of the window. It gave Roar Horvath a chance to get a closer look at him. He had interrogated a number of people who had later been found guilty of murder. He’d seen bad liars and good actors. Many people were capable of manufacturing a carefully crafted first impression, but if they were playing a part, then sooner or later something would always emerge that didn’t quite fit. He glanced over at Viken, who was sitting in the easy chair at the end of the table. They had arranged beforehand that Roar Horvath would lead the interview and Viken would observe. From the start, Viken had made it clear that he was perfectly happy to be working with Roar. It seemed as though, for some reason or other, he had decided he wanted to guide this newcomer to the department through his first period with them. And over the last year, Roar had learnt things about investigating cases of serious violence that he would never have learnt had he stayed in his old job at Romerike police station.
– As you will appreciate, we have to go through the sequence of events all over again, he said. – Not just with you, but with everyone involved.
He added this in the hope of getting Viljam Vogt-Nielsen to relax: someone who felt he was the object of suspicion would be careful about what he said, whereas someone who felt he was being looked after was more liable to slip up.
– Of course, Viljam Vogt-Nielsen answered. – We can go over it as many times as you feel is necessary.
There was no sign of tension in his voice, no discontinuity between what he said and the way he said it. Despair? Grief? Any trace of shock? Again Roar Horvath let his gaze wander over the pale face. If this young man was acting, he certainly wasn’t overdoing it.
– Let’s take it from the point at which you saw Mailin Bjerke for the last time.
An idea seemed to strike Viljam Vogt-Nielsen. – Coffee? he asked.
Roar Horvath said no thanks, Viken remained silent, and the young man sank back into his chair. – I saw her on the day before she disappeared, that’s to say, Wednesday the tenth. It was nearly five o’clock… quarter to five, he corrected himself. – She was standing outside on the steps, rucksack on her back. We hugged each other. Then I closed the door. That was the last… A tiny break in the voice, a few seconds’ silence and then he carried on. – She was going to the cabin. Often used to go out there to work. It’s such a lovely place. Quiet and peaceful. No stress, can’t even get a signal on your mobile.
– What were you talking about just before she left? Roar Horvath wanted to know.
Viljam Vogt-Nielsen thought about it; it was evident the crime response unit hadn’t asked him this.
– What was going to happen the next day. The programme she was due to appear on, Taboo. I’m sure you’ve heard of it.
The detective sergeant nodded briefly, not wishing to interrupt.
– We’d talked about it a lot over the preceding few days. Mailin is not exactly a fan of Berger’s. I asked whether she was worried that her appearing on it might give him some kind of academic respectability, but she had a very particular reason for wanting to go on the show.
Roar had noticed a similar assertion in the statement made to the crime response unit.
– Can you be any more precise about what that reason might have been?
– She had been told something about Berger. I think it was a former patient who approached her. Mailin was quite excited about it. It sounded as if Berger had once at some point sexually assaulted a child.
– Can you give us a name?
Viljam Vogt-Nielsen shook his head. – She is very strict about observing confidentiality, and that even applied to me, obviously.
– But you think she intended to reveal this on his live TV show?
– Mailin wasn’t specific about exactly what she intended to do. But she was determined to strip away that absurd clown’s mask of his. Berger was in for a shock.
– Clown’s mask, was that the phrase she used?
– That absurd clown’s mask. She’d already met Berger a couple of times, before the information about his past emerged. She said she was going to get in touch with him before the broadcast and give him a chance to cancel it.
Roar Horvath wasn’t taking any notes. He trusted his memory, which he thought was very precise.
– And that was the last thing you talked about?
Viljam rubbed a finger back and forth over his forehead, as though struggling to remember something.
– She said she had to call in at the post office. Put some cash into her account.
– Cash?
– Some of her patients paid her by the hour. She put it aside and deposited it once a week.
The nearest post office was the one up by Carl Berners Place. Roar glanced at his watch. They should make it before closing time.
– What did you do after she left on that Wednesday?
– Sat here and read for a lot of the afternoon. Went down to the gym just before eight thirty. I play indoor bandy with a few mates. I was back home by about eleven. Just caught the evening news broadcast.
– And the next day?
– Lecture in the morning. Sat in the library afterwards. I called in here at about three, before I left for work.
– Work?
– Justice Bus, he explained. – I try to help out there as much as I can.
Roar made a mental note. Well-spoken young man with a social conscience.
– Had Mailin been here when you called in on Thursday?
– Don’t think so. She would have left her rucksack, or her computer. But I got a couple of text messages from her.
He showed him his mobile. Only now did Roar take out his notebook and write down the exact times.
– We’d arranged to meet at her parents’. I was going to watch Taboo there, and Mailin was going to come back there later.
– In other words, you were at work the whole evening on Thursday the eleventh?
– From three thirty to eight thirty. Then Tage picked me up, her stepfather. He works at the university.