Missing girl (19) found dead outside Bergen was the headline.
15
Thursday 1 January 2009
IT WAS NOWHERE near crowded at Klimt that evening, but a couple of regulars were nursing beers at the bar, and at one table New Year was still being celebrated. Roar Horvath swapped a few pleasantries with the lads behind the bar; one of them he hadn’t seen since they played in the back four together for LSK juniors, but he’d gathered that Roar was working on the murder of the woman who was supposed to be on Taboo. Roar could only respond with his most ironic No comment, and in return got a pat on the shoulder and a Cheers anyway. Almost before he knew what was going on, the first beer had come and gone. Going out in Lillestrøm was a homecoming after all.
Dan-Levi appeared in the doorway that led down to the toilets. At first Roar thought he’d had his dark hair cut, but then realised his old friend had tied it in a ponytail that hung down his back. Not exactly the latest style for men, but then Dan-Levi would never abandon his long tresses; he called them his freak flag, after one of his favourite songs.
They sat in a corner where they could talk undisturbed. As usual Dan-Levi wanted to hear about Roar’s bachelor life. Roar admitted he had something going and hoped that would be enough to satisfy his friend’s curiosity. No such luck, as it turned out. Dan-Levi looked as though he’d hooked an enormous trout on the end of his fishing rod and started to reel it in.
– Not a policewoman, is it? Then the outlook isn’t good.
It was hardly a scientifically based conclusion, but it was smart and aimed at eliciting further hard facts.
– Both yes and no, Roar conceded. – In a sense.
He didn’t want to break with the joking way they’d always had with each other, and the openness it allowed them. This openness had been good for them both. Around the time of the divorce, Dan-Levi had always been there for him, inviting him out for an evening in town, or to go fishing up in the Østmarka forest. As well as something they both referred to as their annual hunting trip, though it was a few years now since the last time. Dan-Levi wasn’t completely hopeless with a fishing rod, but he would never make any kind of hunter. The best he’d managed that autumn when Roar got divorced was a couple of hares that turned out to be, on closer inspection, pet rabbits that some idiot of a farmer up in Nes had allowed to run about freely. It was a story Roar never tired of reminding his friend about. After a while he contented himself with just holding two slightly bent fingers up in the air to make his point. The gesture seemed to have no effect at all on Dan-Levi’s masculine pride. He’d even written a little sidebar about the episode for Romerikes Blad, in which he exaggerated his own clumsiness and claimed to have nearly hit one of the farmer’s cows into the bargain – but a big one, with horns almost the size of a moose.
– In a sense what? he went on now with a journalist’s persistence. – She surely can’t both be a policewoman and not be a policewoman?
Roar gave him a couple of clues, almost let slip the story about the Christmas party to which some of the forensic people, for reasons that had nothing to do with him, had been invited. He stressed that there was absolutely no question of a relationship. That this lady was too old for him, as well as too smart and too married.
Dan-Levi smacked his lips in satisfaction. – Mother fixation, he suggested, but by now Roar had had enough and headed off to buy another round of beers.
– Now what about Berger? he wanted to know when he returned. – Have you for once put your investigative talents to any useful purpose?
Dan-Levi swigged at his beer, the froth settling on his moustache and his little goatee. – In a sense, as you like to put it. He waited until he saw his friend’s weary smile before continuing. – I spoke to a former elder of the Pentecostal church, a friend of my dad’s. He knows the Frelsøi family well and has followed Berger’s career.
He took another drink of beer, was in no rush.
– And?
– You want to hear what he said, or what he didn’t say?
– Let’s have it.
– Okay. Berger’s father was a pastor in the Pentecostal church.
– As was your father.
Dan-Levi made a face. – We’re talking about two very different kinds of father here. One who followed the New Testament on how to bring up children, and one who followed the Old. Whom you love also punish, und so weiter. Frelsøi senior was apparently the type who would have dragged his son up the nearest mountain without a moment’s hesitation and cut his throat if he thought God demanded such a sacrifice. The elder wouldn’t go into detail, but I gathered from him that the Bergersen Frelsøi family had been the subject of considerable concern in the community, and don’t forget this is the Pentecostal movement nineteen-fifty-something we’re talking about here.
– Violence? Abuse?
Dan-Levi considered the question. – My source won’t name any names, not even of those who are dead. Most of all them. If you approach the community as an investigator, you’re going to get the door slammed in your face. But that’s what it was like in those days. Everything should be sorted out internally, and nothing got done. It ended in the worst possible way, without anybody at all getting involved. It’s incredible what some people can do after a literal reading of the Bible. And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. Und so weiter.
Roar put his glass down on the table with a bang. – What you just said then, about eyes, is that what it says in the Bible?
– Yes indeed. Matthew chapter 5, verses 29 and 30.
Dan-Levi came from a family in which biblical texts weren’t followed to the letter. Roar had always liked being at his house; his parents were warm hearted and generous, and Dan-Levi’s father was much less strict than his own, who had arrived from Hungary an eighteen-year-old refugee with nothing more than two bare hands and a will of steel. But Dan-Levi had been obliged to learn the Bible by heart, and Roar suspected that he was putting the next generation through the same school.
His mobile phone rang. He saw who it was and took the call on the pavement outside.
– Take it easy, I’m not going to invite myself over to your place this evening.
Roar had to laugh, surprised at how happy it made him to hear that voice with its crisp Australian accent. When he’d found himself sitting next to her at the Christmas party, he had at first assumed Jennifer Plåterud was American, but when he hinted as much, she was greatly offended and assured him that she was a good deal less American than he was.
– Pity, I’d’ve enjoyed a visit, Roar responded now. – That’s to say, I’ve got Emily and I’m staying the night at my mother’s. Probably not a brilliant idea to meet there.
Jennifer’s laughter was a touch strained, he thought. Maybe being introduced to his family in this way was a bit much, even in jest.
– I’m calling from the office, she said.
– Cripes, do you always work this late?
– Often. There’s always plenty to do.
Her capacity for work was dizzying. She was superior to him there as well, not that she made an issue of it.
– I just got a call from Liss Bjerke.
– What? You mean she called you?
– It sounds as if she doesn’t want to have anything more to do with you, or anyone else from the station. I wasn’t able to find out why. She could well be in a state of shock, I imagine.
Roar chose not to say anything about what had happened at the interview the day before.