20
Sunday 4 January
IT WAS CLOSE to one a.m. when she heard Viljam. He was moving about in the kitchen, then flushing the toilet and running the tap in the bathroom. This was how Mailin had lain at night. Hearing her boyfriend come home. Waiting for the footsteps on the staircase, for him to open the door, crawl in under the duvet, body close up to her. Didn’t need to have her, or speak. Just lie there and sleep like that. Feel his arms around her in her sleep…
They’re sitting in the boat. Mailin’s rowing. She’s wearing a large grey coat. Her hair is grey too and hangs down her back in long strings. The wind lifts them. Not the wind, because the wisps of hair move by themselves. Long white worms that cover her whole head and eat it. They’ve suctioned themselves to her head, and Liss can’t seem to raise her hand to pull them away. But Mailin doesn’t seem bothered in the least; she rows for land, in towards the tiny beach. They’re going to pick something up there. But they don’t get any closer to the man standing and waiting, because one oar is missing, and the boat goes round in circles. Don’t look behind you, Mailin, I mustn’t see your face. But Mailin doesn’t hear and turns towards her.
Liss woke to a scream. She felt it inside herself, didn’t know if it had come from her. Feren, she. She twisted round, picked up her phone. It was twenty to two. She opened her address list, found the name, pressed call.
– Dahlstrøm.
She could hear from his voice that he had been pulled up out of deep sleep. Imagined the bedroom he was lying in. Wife beside him in bed, awake too, half irritated, half anxious. Liss knew that Tormod Dahlstrøm had got married for a second time a few years earlier. His second wife was a writer and almost twenty years younger than him.
– Sorry for waking you, stupid of me.
– Is that you, Liss? He didn’t sound surprised. Probably used to being called at night. Patients who were in trouble. Someone who needed to hear his voice just to make it through until the next morning.
– Sorry, she repeated.
– For what?
– It’s the middle of the night.
He breathed in and out a few times. – Did you wake me up to say sorry for waking me up?
Even now he was able to joke with her.
– I had a dream, she said. – About Mailin.
He made a sound that might have been a half-quelled yawn.
– When I was at your place, on Christmas Eve… we talked about her research, into abuse. That psychologist she was so interested in. He was Hungarian, wasn’t he?
– That’s right. Ferenczi. He was a psychiatrist.
– Is that the way you say his name? she went on. – Feren-she?
– Roughly, yes.
– What are his other names?
– First name, you mean? Sándor. His name is Sándor Ferenczi.
Liss had got out of bed and was now standing naked on the cold floor. She walked over to the window, pulled open the curtain and looked out into the brown night sky above Rodeløkka. Sand-oar Feren-she, she murmured to herself, without even noticing that she had ended the call.
The time was approaching 2.30 as she punched in the code on the gate in Welhavens Street. She remembered that Jennifer Plåterud had said she could call her any time at all, even at night. Liss thought about it, but decided not to. She let herself in, didn’t turn on the light in the stairwell. The smell of damp grew stronger with each floor she climbed, she noticed. In the room used as a waiting room the curtains were closed. It was pitch dark and she didn’t know where the light switch was. She fumbled her way along to Mailin’s office door, opened it. No longer Mailin’s office. Someone else would be using it, as soon as her things were cleared out.
She closed the door behind her, turned on the light. Someone had been there, the police maybe, several of the folders lay on the desk. She started looking through the bookshelves, found the Sándor Ferenczi book she had seen the first time she was there, Selected Writings was the title. She pulled it out and began to leaf through it. Here and there Mailin had made underlinings in the text, along with small notes and comments in the margins. The corner of one page was turned over. Liss opened it to Chapter 33: ‘Confusion of tongues between Adults and the Child. The language of Tenderness and of Passion.’ There was something written in red at the foot of the page. Liss recognised Mailin’s hand: ‘Death by water – Jacket’s language.’
At that same instant, the lights went out. She heard a sound out in the waiting room. A door opening. She jumped up. For a few seconds the neon light strip in the ceiling pulsed with a grey glimmer, then twice in quick succession, before going out completely. You’re not afraid, Liss Bjerke, a voice shouted inside her. You’re never afraid any more. She groped her way across the floor, put her ear to the door. Heard nothing. Or perhaps a faint scraping sound. She laid a hand on the doorknob. It moved. It took two seconds for her to realise that someone was entering from the other side. She jumped back, pressed herself against the wall. The door slid open. She could make out a figure in the darkness. A torch was switched on, the beam swept around the room and stopped on her face.
– Liss Bjerke… The name sounded from the darkness in front of her and at the same time inside her. As though it had left her and was now speaking to her from the doorway behind the torch beam. But the voice wasn’t hers, it was light and slightly hoarse, and still had that American accent that was once so exciting but now seemed fake and showy.
– What are you doing here, she said.
She heard his low laughter.
– You’ve always been such a cheeky little minx, Liss. Breaking into people’s property in the middle of the night and then asking them what they are doing there.
Pål Øvreby came a step closer. – Okay, I’ll explain. Sometimes when I have an evening out and it gets late, instead of taking a taxi home I come here and get a few hours’ sleep at the office. As you discovered a long time ago, I rent here. Five thousand two hundred and fifty every fucking month. So now I’ve answered your question, please tell me what you are doing here.
She couldn’t see his face properly, but could smell him. Tobacco and beer, and clothes that hadn’t been properly dried after washing. The smell forced its way into her and took the lid off containers with things she had hidden away. They were full of little animals. Now they began to crawl around inside her, from her head and all the way down her body.
– This is Mailin’s office. No one can stop me from coming here. She tried to sound angry. If her voice sounded angry, she might manage to feel anger.
– You came to me before, Liss, you didn’t suppose I’d forgotten? It wouldn’t surprise me if you knew that I was sleeping in the office at the moment. My home life is shot to pieces.
He was standing right up close to her.
– And it’s partly because of you, Liss Bjerke, he whispered. – It has a lot more to do with you than you realise.
He put his hand under her chin, lifted it, as if she was a child refusing to look him in the eye. – We had a good time together, Liss. You don’t expect me to have forgotten that, do you?
He let his finger glide around her ear, the back of her neck, pulled her towards him.
She grabbed the torch from his hand, shone it into his face.