She tasted it, controlled the urge to turn up her nose.
– You surely didn’t get a woman to leave a family gathering at Christmas and drive over twenty miles for coffee like this.
– I wanted to talk to you too, he said and put his hand over hers, and for a moment it seemed to her that he really meant it. It made her happy as much as it bothered her. She didn’t want to have to spoil the good atmosphere between them with a lot of rules and regulations. But he was thirty-four and old enough to take it on the chin, despite that air of boyishness.
Fortunately he went on: – A chat over a cup of coffee is fine, but when I saw you standing there in the hall, I just got carried away.
– Do you often get whims like that? she asked, and tried to put on a concerned face.
– It’s been a while since last time.
– Yes, I noticed.
– Ditto.
He opened a bottle of beer. – I wondered what it would be like to talk to you without having a dead body next to us.
She took a few swigs and handed the bottle back. – Are you talking about Viken? she wondered, not wanting to get into any joking about the young woman they’d had lying between them on the autopsy table two days previously.
He laughed, but left it at that.
– Lot of action up at your place right now, she said after a while.
Roar glanced out of the window. – Never known anything like it since the Orderud murders.
Then you should have been there last autumn, said Jennifer, – when all that business with the bear murders was going on. Funny that Viken didn’t go in the general clear-out after that.
Abruptly Roar looked uncomfortable.
– There’s a shortage of people with his experience, he objected. – He’s probably the best investigator I’ve worked with.
Jennifer had heard this from others too, despite what had happened the year before.
– Some people thought they might go for him as the new section head, Roar said.
– That would have been impossible, she asserted.
– Maybe so. But the appointment they did make… Roar blew air between his compressed lips. – I’ve got nothing against Sigge Helgarsson. I know him from before, we worked together in Romerike. He got a boss’s job there too and it went okay. But head of Violent Crimes in Oslo is something different. The guy’s not much older than me. He isn’t Norwegian. And he and Viken aren’t exactly the best of friends, and that’s putting it mildly.
– Well they can hardly confer with Viken every time they make an appointment, said Jennifer. When Roar didn’t respond, she realised he didn’t want to talk about the detective chief inspector any more. – How far have you got with this latest case? she asked, moving the conversation on to another track.
– We’re fumbling away out there in the mist, Roar yawned. – Gradually the visibility will improve, I expect. We need another tactician or two. At the moment there’s still only the four of us. And you can imagine the amount of material there is to go through.
– Then it’s about priorities, she said, thinking about something quite specific.
Roar emptied the bottle of beer and fetched another from the fridge. – Of course we have to start with the ones who are closest. The man she lived with has been interviewed three times.
– Have you got anything on him?
– He seems to have a fairly good alibi.
– No better than fairly good?
– In cases of murder there is not a single alibi that cannot be torn to shreds, declared Roar. – That’s the rule we have to go by. Even if someone can prove they were at an audience with the king at the time, that doesn’t necessarily let them off the hook in a case like this.
– And definitely not if it’s the king who’s been murdered, Jennifer observed.
Roar gave a quick smile. – In the great majority of cases of this kind, what lies behind is usually something involving lovers, people who live together or are married, close family.
– Statistics aren’t much help in individual cases, Jennifer objected.
– Of course not. But topping the list of suspects is always going to be the husband or partner. The way the investigation proceeds determines whether or not they drop down the list, or even out of it entirely.
– Can’t say I’m surprised to hear that Viken thinks that way, she said acidly.
– It doesn’t mean we’re fixated, Roar assured her. – Everyone close to her is being interviewed as a potential perpetrator, that goes without saying. The stepfather, her mother, and the father, who apparently lives in Canada. Then after that we look at her colleagues at work and her patients…
Suddenly he fell silent.
– You’re not sure how much you can tell me, Jennifer volunteered.
He thought about it. – Well, you are part of the investigation, in a way.
– In a way? How far do you think you’ll get if we don’t do our job down at the path lab?
He conceded that she had a point.
– It appears that Mailin Bjerke had a meeting arranged at her office with Berger a few hours before they were due in the Taboo studio that Thursday, he told her. – Apparently he turned up, but she wasn’t there. We know from her phone that she sent him a text at about five thirty. She called him but got no answer just after seven, and then sent him another message.
– Wasn’t that around the time when she went missing?
Roar went over it in his mind. – Actually the last sighting of her was the day before, after she left home. She called in at the post office on Carl Berners Place.
– And you are sure about that?
– The man who was working there was quite certain about it. He remembered in detail what she did when she was there. She used a computer, printed out a few things from the internet, put a small deposit in her account and left. Directly afterwards she came back in again, bought a padded envelope and sent a package. According to the person serving, she suddenly seemed frightened. He’s absolutely certain of all this, but where the package was addressed to he has no idea.
– She was afraid because of this package?
– We don’t know anything about that. It’s quite common for witnesses to dramatise things, especially once they know a murder is involved.
Jennifer said, out of the blue: – I mentioned a case to you. The girl who was killed five years ago in Bergen.
– We talked about it at our morning briefing yesterday, Roar said with a nod.
– And?
– And what?
Jennifer furrowed her brows. – What are you going to do about it?
Roar seemed surprised by her harsh tone of voice. Maybe it dawned on him that this was what she had been heading the conversation towards.
– Obviously we’ll take a look at that case. But we can’t do everything at once.
Jennifer became agitated. – The girl in Bergen was found naked in a remote part of the woods. She had been tied up, but there were no signs of sexual assault. It was in November, and she froze to death. She had been repeatedly stabbed through the eyes with a pointed object. Think about the circumstances in our case and tell me why our top priority isn’t to look for a connection here.
Roar raised both hands. – Don’t hit me, he said in a weedy voice.
Jennifer felt her irritation drain away. – That’s exactly what you need, she said severely. – A right good spanking. On your barest arse.
– Okay, said Roar as he got to his feet, – but it will have to be in the bedroom. I don’t want the neighbours involved in this.
6
Monday 29 December
EMPTY STREETS. IT’S night. He hasn’t eaten. Not since early this morning. It’s getting colder. He should’ve put a jacket on. Didn’t find it in the rush. He sprints down Wergelandsveien. Runs himself warm. A clock strikes down in the city. He counts three strokes. Empty streets. He’s started running again. Every night for the last couple of weeks. He heads round the corner, down Pilestredet, towards the mouth of the Ibsen Tunnel. Tunnels set their own deadlines; he has to get out of them again before a car passes him from behind. Try Festning Tunnel too, that’s longer. And Ekeberg Tunnel. Formerly he ran on fast tracks. Lots of people watching. He had an acceleration down the final straight no one else could match. Could stay well at the back and wait. Coming out of the final bend, he changed gear and left them standing. They didn’t know where he’d come from. Another planet, he called out to them. Not Mars or Venus, but a planet in another galaxy.