And he was always on at her. Go out. Ask somebody round. Ring a friend and go and see a film.
‘Kristiane will be fine without you for a couple of hours,’ he would say, more often than Johanne would like to admit.
Adam would be delighted.
They had almost reached Maridalsveien. The clouds were scudding across the sky, and the soughing of the bare treetops almost drowned out the hum of the traffic on Ringveien to the north.
Three minutes and they’d be home.
She was almost tempted to wake up Kristiane.
Just to show her off.
And When You Get There
‘First of all I have to show you this,’ said Kjetil Berggren, placing four items in front of her on a white cloth. ‘Take all the time you need.’
His voice was quiet and almost overflowing with empathy, as if they were already at Marianne’s funeral. In which case they would both have been inappropriately dressed. It was Saturday 10 January and Kjetil Berggren’s scruffy anorak was hanging on a hook by the door. As he walked around the table to sit down again, he had to pull up one of his knee socks.
‘I’d been expecting a skin suit and skates,’ Synnøve said.
The detective didn’t reply.
‘I’m feeling better now,’ she said tonelessly. ‘It’s fine.’
For the first time in exactly two week she had slept. Really slept. As soon as Berggren and the priest had dared to leave her in peace the previous evening, she had fed the dogs and fallen into bed. Fourteen hours later, she woke up. She had lain there for a few seconds not really knowing where she was or what she was feeling. When the realization that Marianne was dead suddenly hit her, she had started crying again. But this was different, in spite of everything. There was no longer anything to worry about. Marianne was dead, and the search was over. At some point in the future it would be possible to live with her grief. She realized this now, after fourteen days in hell. What had been a painful inertia had gradually turned into movement. Towards something. And when she arrived there, everything would be better.
This morning she had really noticed how tense she had been over the past two weeks. Her back was aching and it was difficult to move her head from side to side. Her jaws almost felt locked when she tried to eat a little porridge as a late breakfast. In the end she gave up and ran herself a scalding hot bath. She had lain there until the water grew cold and the skin on the tips of her fingers started to crinkle.
Synnøve Hessel had wandered around the empty house. She had brought Kaja inside for company and consolation, for the first time ever. Marianne had made it a condition of keeping huskies that they had to stay outside. Kaja had hesitated on the doorstep, before eventually allowing herself to be enticed inside and up on to the sofa. They had grieved there together, Synnøve and the dog, until Kjetil Berggren came to pick her up at three o’clock, as agreed.
She was sitting in the same room as before. An officer from Oslo had been there when she arrived, but she didn’t want to talk to anyone but Kjetil. Not yet.
‘I realize this has all been very difficult for you, Synnøve, and I-’
‘Kjetil,’ she broke in. ‘I mean it. If you had any idea how I’ve been feeling since Marianne disappeared, you’d realize it’s much easier to…’
She stopped and closed her eyes.
‘If we could just get this over and done with.’
‘Have you had those cuts on your face looked at?’ he asked.
‘They’re just superficial.’
Kjetil Berggren looked as if he were about to protest. Instead, he nodded at the objects between them on the desk.
‘Can I touch them?’ she asked.
‘I’m afraid not.’
The white gold wedding ring was slightly bigger than her own. The inlaid diamond was dull, and might have gone unnoticed had she not known it was there. It was Marianne who had wanted diamonds. Synnøve had preferred a perfectly ordinary ring made of ordinary gold, without embellishments – a traditional wedding ring. She wanted to be married to Marianne in the same way everybody else is married, so the ring should be plain and gold.
‘We didn’t have time to get married,’ she said.
‘I thought you were-’
‘We were registered partners – as if we were running a business together or something. But with the new law and everything, we were planning to get married properly in the summer.’
The tears made the cuts on her face smart.
‘Anyway, the ring looks like hers.’
She held up her right hand limply to show its twin. Then she took a deep breath and went on much too quickly: ‘The necklace too. The keys are definitely hers. I’ve never seen that USB stick before, but we must have about thirty lying around the house. Can you take them away now? Can you take them away?!’ She hid her face in her hands. ‘I assume,’ she said, her voice muffled, ‘that I have to identify these things because you don’t want me to see Marianne.’
Kjetil Berggren didn’t reply. Quickly, without touching the four objects, he slipped each one into a plastic bag and carefully folded the cloth around them.
‘Of course, we’ll have a DNA analysis done as well,’ he said. ‘But unfortunately there seems to be little doubt that the deceased is Marianne.’
‘They said she’d paid,’ said Synnøve, placing her hands on her knee at last. ‘At the hotel, they said Marianne had paid for the room!’
‘Yes, the bill had been paid. But not by her.’
‘By whom, then? If someone else paid it must be the murderer, and in that case it should be easy to… Haven’t they got CCTV? Guest lists? It must be the simplest thing in the world to…’
She fell silent when she saw the expression on Kjetil’s face.
‘The Continental has video surveillance in certain parts of the building,’ he said slowly. ‘In reception, among other places. Unfortunately, the tapes are erased after seven days. Next week they’re switching to digital recordings, and then everything will be saved for much longer. Up to now they’ve been using old-fashioned equipment. Videotapes. It’s not possible to keep them for ever.’
‘Videotapes,’ she whispered in disbelief. ‘In a luxury hotel?’
He nodded and went on: ‘The bill was paid on the evening of the nineteenth. We can tell that from the till. The receptionist insists it was a man who paid for the room. In cash. He can’t really give us anything in the way of a more detailed description. There were a hell of a lot of people there that evening, bang in the middle of the Christmas party season. The Theatre Café was packed, and you can go straight from there into the foyer, where there’s another bar. You pass reception on the way.’
‘Does that mean…?’
Synnøve didn’t know herself what that was supposed to mean.
‘There was also a wedding reception that evening,’ Kjetil went on. ‘Lots of activity and noise. And apparently there was some kind of dramatic incident involving a child who went outside and almost got run over by a bus. No, hang on, a tram. Anyway, there was a huge commotion, and for the life of him the receptionist can’t remember much about the actual payment.’
‘But who… who in the world would do all this? I just can’t understand… To murder her, hide her, pay the bill… It’s so absurd that… Who on earth would think of doing such a thing?!’
‘That’s what we’re trying to work out,’ Kjetil said calmly. ‘The key question is why Marianne was murdered. If you have any information whatsoever that might help us to-’
‘Of course I haven’t,’ she snapped. ‘Of course I haven’t a clue why anyone would want to kill Marianne! Apart from her bloody parents!’
He didn’t bother to comment on that.
Synnøve tugged at her sweater. She picked up the glass of water and put it down again without having a drink. Fiddled with her wedding ring. Ran her fingers through her hair.