She gave up the attempt to work and turned towards him. – If you only knew how tired people are of your attempt to control the whole world with your pathetic arrogance, I think the shame just might kill you.
He sat bolt upright. Ended up chuckling. – Well I’ll be, my precious. That time of the month, is it? Or even later? I don’t keep up with it any more.
His response made her anger slip away. She felt sorry for him.
– Pål, I know things aren’t easy for you at the moment.
It didn’t sound good, she could hear that herself, even before he flared up.
– Then maybe you should make an appointment for me, he growled. – Most of your patients drop out anyway, so there ought to be room for me.
She shook her head wearily. – I don’t think it’s any good.
He calmed down. – Not even with the sort of treatment you offer? he said, trying to make a joke.
– I mean us, she said.
She hadn’t intended to bring it up now. Not in the middle of all this business with Mailin.
– What about us?
He forced her to say it. – I want you to move out.
He pulled out the toothpick, looked at it, began pushing it in and out between the teeth of his upper jaw.
– At last something other than gibberish, he said. – I’ve been thinking about it for so bloody long I’d almost forgotten.
– We can talk about it once we’ve got some distance to this business with Mailin.
– I want to talk about it now, he hissed. – This very moment. You don’t just toss out something like that and then leave.
– All right, then, she said, a little more feebly.
– For starters, where will Oda live?
– Oda? I don’t even want to discuss that.
Again that chuckle.
– Because you think it’s all a done deal, he said without raising his voice. – If it comes to a court case, there’s a thing or two I’ll have to tell them, you do know that?
Looking at him, she could see that he thought he was already beginning to get the upper hand. – No, I don’t know that. Certainly not.
He leaned well back in his chair. – Twice I’ve driven Oda to Casualty. Once with a broken arm. Once with burns on her chest. Do you think they’re complete morons down there? Don’t you think someone might have started putting two and two together?
She sat there, her mouth half open, waiting for him to start laughing. Yet another of his nasty, macabre jokes. And when that didn’t happen, she had to hit back.
– You’ll never get me to say that you were out with Lara when Mailin disappeared, understand? It was me who took Lara for a walk that evening. You didn’t come home until after eleven. If you’re not careful, you’ll find yourself hauled up to the police station and charged with giving false information, and while you’re there, you can submit your application for custody of Oda at the same time.
That hurt. He pulled out the toothpick, broke it into small pieces and showered them on to the tabletop.
– You don’t think I have anything to do with what happened to Mailin.
– You have no idea what I think, Pål. First you tell me exactly what you were doing that evening, and then I’ll tell you what I do and don’t think.
He pulled out his wry smile. She knew he felt he was charming when he smiled like that, sheepish and self-confident at the same time. Once upon a time she’d felt the same way about it; now it just looked like an empty pout. He practised a therapy that was supposed to help people who had wrapped their own bodies in armour, while he himself was progressively disappearing behind a shell. She had struggled to get inside it. Now the thought of what was in there disgusted her.
– You don’t want to know, he said. – You don’t want to know where I was.
She played her final card, the one she had been saving for last.
– Mailin found out what you were doing here in the evenings.
– Oh yeah, he said stiffly.
– She asked me if I knew about it.
– Really? And what did you say?
– I told her I knew all about what went on inside your office. That was the day before she went missing. That was the last thing I heard her say, that she was going to call in at your office to talk to you about it.
Torunn presumed that Tormod Dahlstrøm still had her number on his call list. So he would see that it was her who was ringing. He could answer, or at least call back. If he didn’t, it would confirm that she meant nothing to him.
Then his voice was there. – Tormod, he said, and she couldn’t go on sitting in the chair, she had to get up and pace the room. The thought of having him as her supervisor again now that Mailin was no longer there would have been too grotesque, and she didn’t think it.
– Hi, Tormod, she said weakly. – It’s Torunn.
She let the two names float together for a moment.
– I saw it was you, he said, and seemed relieved. – I’ve been meaning to call you.
She realised that he meant it. But also why he had been thinking of her.
– It’s just too awful, she said. – It’s unreal, I can’t get myself to believe it.
It was true. And yet it sounded hollow. She had many reasons for calling. This was the only one she could talk about. – I’ve been wondering about something Mailin said to me. I need to hear what you think.
She paused, and he didn’t interrupt. She had never had a better supervisor, and was only too aware of how stupid she had been to give him up. She’d let anger rule her, pretended to herself that she could hurt him like that. And maybe, in spite of it all, he had been hurt.
– A couple of years ago, Mailin had a patient she didn’t want to continue with. She terminated the treatment abruptly. She wasn’t the type to give up when the going got rough. But back then she seemed really afraid.
– Did she go into any detail about what happened? Dahlstrøm asked.
– She had just taken him on. It was in the early days of her PhD, and she was considering making him a part of it. I’m pretty sure he threatened her.
– Any idea who this patient might have been?
– I never met him. And Mailin never mentioned a name. I’ve no idea if he was recommended by a doctor. Social services might know, I’m sure I can find out roughly when he was here. Maybe she talked to you about it.
She knew that it would take a lot for him to reveal anything of what was said in his sessions as Mailin’s supervisor.
– I think I know what you’re referring to, he said. – It was something that happened several years ago, and Mailin didn’t think she needed supervision to talk about it. That might mean she didn’t think the episode was quite as serious as the impression you got of it. Quite a number of the people she was treating are unstable and quick tempered.
– The police were here today. They want access to her filing cabinet. I don’t think they’ll find anything there. It’s almost empty. Things connected with her thesis, but no names. I don’t know where she kept that kind of thing.
Dahlstrøm was silent for a few moments. Then he said: – I have a list of the patients who were involved in her study. I’ll get in touch and urge each one of them to contact the police.
Torunn felt that she could hardly trust her voice any more. – I should have said something about this before, she managed to say.
– You did what you could, Torunn. It’s easy to reproach yourself. We just have to help each other the best we can.
His comforting words were too much for her. She let him hear that she was crying before closing the conversation, without mentioning any of the things that she most needed to talk to him about.
10
ROAR HORVATH SPENT an hour preparing himself. He scrolled through hundreds of documents on the internet, printed out a few articles, including one from an obscure website calling itself baalzebub.com. Elijah Frelsøi – Berger’s real name – grew up in Oslo. A pupil at Kampen school, and then on to Hersleb. After secondary school he studied theology. His family were members of the Pentecostal church. Frelsøi broke with them at the age of eighteen and took his mother’s name, Bergersen. Active in the circles around the anarchist publication Street Paper. At the same time a member of several punk rock bands, and started one of his own, Hell’s Razors, later Baalzebub, who kept going until the end of the eighties. After that, he worked as a solo artist under the name Berger. Had several hits in the nineties. Lyrics dealing with desire and faith, low key and often acoustic. At the same time wrote several shows, appeared in them himself, and over time developed a format in which he sang his own songs interspersed with a pure stand-up comedy routine. Typically this involved sharp attacks on the powerful in Norwegian society and, in due course, the powerless as well. Early in the 2000s, Berger was given his own show on NRK, but it was taken off air after just three broadcasts, officially because of poor viewing figures. He did a season as a stand-up-rock satirist on TV2. Contract not renewed despite the fact that it was the show people talked about. Early this autumn, he suddenly reappeared again, brought in from the cold by the newly established Channel Six. In the course of a few months, well before Mailin Bjerke went missing, Berger’s TV show Taboo made the front pages of the tabloids more than ten times: Berger defends drug use in athletes… Berger attacks ‘feminist fannies’… Berger eats marzipan pig in shape of Muhammad… Berger a heroin user… Berger a paedophile?