‘Yes,’ Aune said. He had just started a therapy session when Beate’s text shone up at him from his open desk drawer.
See pic. Urgent. I’ll ring.
And he had felt an almost perverse sense of pleasure when he had looked straight into Paul Stavnes’s astonished face, said there was a call he absolutely had to take and saw the subtext had been received: it’s much more important than your bloody whingeing.
‘You told me once that you psychologists can analyse the scribbles of sociopaths and deduce something about their subconscious.’
‘Well, what I said was probably that Granada University has developed a method for studying psychopathological personality disorders through art. But then individuals are told what they have to draw. And this looks more like writing than drawing,’ Ståle said.
‘Does it?’
‘At least I can see i’s and o’s. That’s much more interesting than a drawing.’
‘In what way?’
‘Early in the morning on a tram, still half asleep, your writing is governed by your subconscious. And the thing about the subconscious is that it likes codes and rebuses. Sometimes they’re incomprehensible, at others they’re astonishingly simple, downright banal even. I had a patient once who walked around terrified of being raped. She had a recurrent dream about being woken up by the gun barrel of a tank coming through her bedroom window and stopping at the foot of her bed. And hanging from the end of the barrel was a note, on which was written P plus N plus 15. It may seem odd that she herself was unable to crack the childishly simple code, but the brain often camouflages its real thoughts. For reasons of comfort, guilt, terror. .’
‘What do the i’s and o’s mean?’
‘It might mean trams bore him. Don’t overestimate my abilities, Beate. I entered the field of psychology when it was seen as a good option for those too stupid to be doctors or engineers. Let me ruminate and get back to you. I have a patient with me now.’
‘OK.’
Aune rang off and looked down at the street again. There was a tattoo parlour on the other side, a hundred metres down Bogstadveien. The number 11 tram went down Bogstadveien, and Valentin had had a tattoo. A tattoo that would identify him. Unless he’d had it removed. Or modified at a tattoo parlour. An image could be changed radically by adding a couple of simple lines. Like tacking a semicircle onto a vertical line to make a D. Or placing a diagonal line across an O to make an Ø. Aune breathed on the window.
Behind him he heard the sound of an irritated cough.
He drew a vertical line and a circle in the condensation the way he had seen it on the picture message.
‘I refuse to pay the full fee if you-’
‘Do you know what, Paul?’ Aune said, adding a semicircle and a diagonal line. He read it. DØ, meaning die. Rubbed it out. ‘You can have this session free.’
22
Rico Herrem knew he was going to die. He had always known. What was new was that he knew he was going to die within the next thirty-six hours.
‘Anthrax,’ the Thai doctor repeated. With a proper ‘r’ and an American accent. The slit-eye must have studied medicine there. And qualified for a job at this private clinic which probably had only ex-pats and tourists as patients.
‘I’m so sorry.’
Rico breathed into the oxygen mask; even that was difficult. Thirty-six hours. He had said thirty-six hours. Had asked if Rico had wanted them to contact any next of kin. They might be able to make it to Thailand if they caught a plane right away. Or a priest. Was he Catholic?
The doctor must have seen from Rico’s bewildered expression that further explanation was necessary.
‘Anthrax is a disease caused by bacteria. It’s in your lungs. You probably inhaled it a few days ago.’
Rico still didn’t understand.
‘If you’d digested it or got it on your skin, we might have been able to save you. But in the lungs. .’
Bacteria? Was he going to die of bacteria? That he’d breathed in? Where could that have been?
The thought was repeated like an echo by the doctor.
‘Any idea where? The police will want to know to prevent other people from being exposed to the bacteria.’
Rico Herrem closed his eyes.
‘Mr Herrem, please try to think back. You might be able to save other people. .’
Other people. But not himself. Thirty-six hours.
‘Mr Herrem?’
Rico wanted to nod to show he’d heard, but he couldn’t. A door opened. Several pairs of shoes click-clacked in. A woman’s breathless voice, low.
‘Kari Farstad, Norwegian Embassy. We came as soon as we could. Is he. .?’
‘His blood’s stopped circulating. He’s going into shock now.’
Where? In the food he’d eaten when the taxi stopped at the lousy roadside restaurant between Bangkok and Pattaya? From the stinking hole in the ground they called a toilet? Or at the hotel? Wasn’t that how bacteria were often spread, through the air conditioning? But the doctor had said the initial symptoms were the same as with a cold, and he’d had those on the flight. But if these bacteria had been in the air on the plane, the other passengers would have been ill too. He heard the woman’s voice, lower and in Norwegian this time:
‘Anthrax. My God, I thought that only existed as a biological weapon.’
‘Not at all.’ Man’s voice. ‘I googled it on the way here. Bacillus anthracis. Can lie dormant for years. It’s a tough little bugger. Spreads by forming spores. Same spores as in the powder posted to the Americans, do you remember? Ten or so years ago.’
‘Do you think someone sent him a letter containing anthrax?’
‘He may have caught it anywhere, but the most common scenario is close contact with livestock. We’ll probably never find out.’
But Rico knew. Knew with a sudden clarity. He put a hand to his oxygen mask.
‘Did you track down his next of kin?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘And?’
‘They said he could rot.’
‘Right. Paedophile?’
‘No. But the list was long enough. Hey, he’s moving.’
Rico had managed to remove the mask and was trying to speak. But all that came out was a hoarse whisper. He tried again. Saw that the woman had blonde curls and was staring down at him with a mixture of concern and disgust.
‘Doctor, is it. .?’
‘No, it isn’t contagious between humans.’
Not contagious, so it was just him.
Her face came closer. And even dying — or perhaps precisely because he was — Rico Herrem greedily inhaled her perfume. Inhaled it the way he had inhaled that day in Fiskebutikken. From the woollen glove, smelling of wet wool and tasting of chalk. Powder. The man with a scarf in front of his nose and mouth. Not to hide his face. Tiny spores flying through the air. Might have been able to save you. But in the lungs. .’
He strained to speak, and with great difficulty pronounced the words. Three words. It flashed through his mind that they were his last. Then — like the curtain falling after a pathetic, tormented performance lasting forty-two years — a great darkness descended over Rico Herrem.
The intense, brutal rain hammered on the car roof, as if it were trying to get in, and Kari Farstad gave an involuntary shudder. Her skin was perpetually covered with a layer of sweat, but they said it would be better when the rainy season was over, sometime in November. She longed to be home in the embassy flat, she hated these trips to Pattaya, and this was not the first. She hadn’t chosen this career path to work with human detritus. The opposite, in fact. She had envisaged cocktail parties with interesting, intelligent people, lofty conversation about politics and culture; she had expected personal development and greater understanding of the big issues. Instead of this confusion surrounding the small issues. Like how to get a Norwegian sexual predator a good lawyer, possibly have him deported and sent to a Norwegian prison with the standards of a three-star hotel.