In the front room, Elijah Berger lay in the wing chair. His head was bent backwards and his mouth was half open. His breathing was heavy and uneven.
Odd put a hand on his forehead. – How are you?
Berger opened one eye. – Would you tidy up, he groaned with a nod in the direction of the desk.
Odd went over and pulled out the top drawer. In it lay a tourniquet and a syringe with a milky residue mixed with a thin trail of blood in the bottom.
– Kindly warn me the next time we have a visit from the police.
– I did, Odd said.
Berger waved him away. He lay there a while longer, staring at the ceiling. Then he sat up straight. – Migraine gone now? he asked in a friendly way.
Odd stood beside him again, stroked his hair. – Thank you for caring, Elijah.
A short grunt emerged from Berger’s throat. – Need the place to myself for a while tonight, he said. – Can you go out somewhere?
Odd withdrew his hand and slumped down by the table. He could get angry now. Tell it like it was. That he was the one who owned the flat. That Elijah lived there because he, Odd, allowed him to do so. That Elijah could find himself somewhere else to entertain his fuck-friends. He could have used that very phrase. He could have shouted out that he hated him. But stuff like that had no effect on Elijah. Even less than before, after what had happened. It was no good telling it like it was, because Elijah wasn’t living there because he had to. He was living there because Odd wanted him to live there, in his apartment and nowhere else. Because he wanted him there beside him. Because he wanted him to be just exactly as he was.
– How can I help you if you reject me?
Berger looked at him for a long time. His gaze opened and for a moment was devoid of mockery. Then he laid his hand on Odd’s, in the way Odd had been longing for.
– The sign of deepest friendship, Odd, is that you help your friend to bury a body in the ground.
– No, Odd protested. He stood up and sat on the armrest next to him. It wasn’t the first time over the past few weeks that Elijah had said exactly the same thing, and this time he had his answer prepared. – The sign of friendship is that you help him dig up bodies.
Berger sank back into the chair without saying anything else and resumed his staring at the ceiling.
Help him, thought Odd. That was what he ought to do, help him through this. Not think about afterwards. There is no afterwards.
13
Wednesday 31 December
IN THE LIFT on the way down from the seventh floor of the Oslo police headquarters, Roar Horvath thought about the interview he was about to conduct. As usual, he had set himself certain goals regarding what it was he wanted clarified. It was, naturally, crucial that his agenda was flexible and didn’t get in the way of something else important that might crop up along the way. He had spent the morning going through a pile of transcriptions of the interviews once more. He had looked at the report written by another member of the investigative team about the murdered woman’s background, and in a separate addendum made a number of comments of his own. Now he ran through in his head the most important questions he wanted to ask Mailin Bjerke’s sister.
As he emerged from the lift, he caught sight of her. She was standing a few metres away from the reception desk, in the middle of the floor. When he held out his hand and introduced himself, he abruptly felt completely unprepared. He had to make an effort to keep eye contact with her. Realised afterwards that he hadn’t heard her answer. He had interviewed a lot of young women, some ugly, some beautiful, most of them somewhere in between. He should be professional enough to remain unaffected by such concerns. He took a hold of himself as he turned and walked ahead of her. Alert, Roar, he warned himself. Level five alert.
– My condolences, he managed to say as they stood in the narrow lift. She was almost as tall as him. The hair somewhere between red and brown. And eyes that looked green in the sharp electric light.
She lowered her eyes without answering.
– This must be a terrible time for the closest relatives.
Roar considered himself above average when it came to speaking to people in difficult situations. Right now he felt like an elephant.
He closed the office door behind her and caught a whiff of perfume. Alert, Roar, he reminded himself irritably. Level eight. Ten was maximum on the scale of how much it was reasonable to expect him to control himself.
She was dressed in ordinary clothing, he noted once he had taken his seat behind the desk. An all-weather jacket that looked much too big. Green woollen pullover underneath it. Black trousers, not especially tight fitting, high-heeled boots. It looked as though she was wearing almost no make-up. Her hands were narrow, the fingers long and thin, the nails well manicured. He repeated the description to himself in silence; it improved his grip of the situation.
– We’ve been trying to get hold of you for several days, he began. – No one knew exactly where you were.
– Who is no one? she asked. The voice was calm and quite deep.
– Your parents. They haven’t seen you since Christmas Eve.
He had been surprised that she had not been with her family in the shock and distress of the first few days.
– When did you last see your sister? he asked.
– In the summer, Liss Bjerke answered, looking straight at him. He was used to her look by now.
– Was your relationship perhaps not particularly close?
Liss Bjerke smoothed her suede gloves along her thigh. – What makes you think that?
– Well, I… Relationships between sisters probably aren’t all the same closeness.
– Have you got any brothers or sisters? she asked.
The interview had been going on for just a couple of minutes and already things were headed in a completely different direction to the one he had planned; but instead of brushing her question aside, he answered her:
– One sister and one brother.
– And you’re the oldest?
– Good guess, he smiled.
– Mailin is the person in the world who means most to me, she said suddenly. – I didn’t see much of her after I moved to Amsterdam, but the relationship between us was as close as always.
– I understand, Roar commented, though he didn’t have any particularly good reason to say something like that. – It must have been terribly…
– To the best of my knowledge you’re neither a priest nor a psychologist, Liss Bjerke interrupted him sharply. – I’m here to answer questions that might help you find out what’s happened.
Alert now, Roar, he thought yet again, and turned towards his computer. He opened the list of questions he’d made and took them from the top down. Things went more smoothly now. He got a clear picture of the contact between the sisters over the last few months. They’d spoken on the telephone at least once a week. In addition to a steady stream of text messages. Liss Bjerke showed him some of them, and that deep, calm tone had returned to her voice. Roar knew, however, that he would have to watch his step.
The last message from her sister was sent on the afternoon of Thursday 11 December. On my way from the cabin. Always think of you when I’m out there. Keep Midsummer’s Day free next year. Call you tomorrow.