On the other door, Mailin’s name was printed on a brass plate. Liss looked through the spare bunch of keys Viljam had given her, selected the largest one and let herself in. The office wasn’t big, but the ceiling was high, as was probably the case with all the rooms in an old city-centre building like this. Here too the paint had begun to flake off, but the run-down effect was partly relieved by a woven rug on one of the walls, two children reaching out towards the sun. And the thick reddish carpet was soft to walk on. Liss recognised the desk, something inherited from their grandmother. It was in heavy, dark wood and was much too big and distinguished for the office. Behind the desk were three shelves housing books and folders.
She sat in the swivel chair and leaned across the desk. A glimpse of the street down below, the tram wires, the traffic lights. She remained sitting for a long time. Mailin’s voice was somewhere inside that empty office. If she closed her eyes and tried hard, she could hear it.
What’s to become of you, Liss?
Mailin had decided to help those who needed help the most. She took care of people who had known the worst they could know. Abuse. Violence. Incest. People with real reasons for their suffering, thought Liss. Not like me, who had chances but wasted them. She let her gaze wander over the folders on the shelves, Mailin had noted on the spines what the contents were. On the backs of the books she saw a few familiar names. Freud, Jung, Reich. Others who she’d never heard of: Igra, Bion, Ferenczi, Kohout. Now and then Liss had felt the same kind of curiosity as her sister. To understand how the world adds up. How language shapes us. How we collect memories and dispose of them. But she had never had Mailin’s patience. Could never sit for hours with a book. Had to interrupt herself, every time. Fill her thoughts with something other than letters. Sounds and pictures, something that moved.
There was a cork noticeboard next to the shelves. Two newspaper cuttings pinned to the top of it, one of them an interview with Berger. Liss switched on the desktop lamp, read something Mailin had underlined: Nothing bores me more than watching the way a shoal of cunts move. There was also a postcard hanging there. It was from Amsterdam, Bloemenmarket. Liss recognised it. She’d sent it a long time ago, at least a year, and Mailin still kept it up on her noticeboard. Below the card she discovered a Post-it note with something scribbled on it. Liss angled the lamp so that she could make the writing out. One of the few things she was better at than her sister was writing neatly. Ask him about death by water, she read in Mailin’s untidy scrawl.
She turned back towards the desk. It had been tidied. A few documents in a file. She opened the top drawer, found a stapler, some pens and a packet of paperclips. The drawer below it was locked. She managed to open it with the smallest key in the bunch. Inside was a small bound book with a wine-red cover in some kind of soft, plush material. She ran her fingers across it. Mailin S. Bjerke was written inside. Apart from that the pages were empty. What were you going to fill them with, Mailin? Write about your patients? Or your own thoughts? Liss shoved the book into her shoulder bag.
Further back in the drawer, she found a diary. The daily planners were covered in initials and appointment times, obviously patients her sister was treating. Six or seven every day, sometimes eight. They all came to her with their stories. Everything she had to listen to, take care of, cure them of. Dense with initials; on the hour, every hour someone crossing her threshold to unburden themselves, and Mailin was supposed to sit there and take it all in, swallow it until she felt she was going dizzy… Liss flipped through the diary, toward the end of the year. Thursday 11 December was blank, but below the listing of hours she had written: 17.00 JH. And at the bottom of the page BERGER – Channel Six, Nydalen, 8 o’clock, and something about a jacket.
She had to pee, went out into the corridor. At the end of it she found a tiny loo with a washbasin. After she’d locked herself in and sat down, she heard a door go, and then footsteps. They disappeared, obviously into the waiting room. In an instant, this thought: Pål Øvreby comes striding down the corridor, tears open the door and finds her sitting on the toilet… She finished, hurried back to the office. The door was ajar. A man was leaning over Mailin’s desk, turned round on hearing her.
– I’m looking for someone, he said, and glanced round in confusion. – Mailin still works here, right?
Liss stayed in the doorway. – She isn’t here.
The guy couldn’t have been much older than her. He was thin and bony, wearing a dark blue reefer jacket with the collar turned up and a motif on the breast pocket, an anchor.
– I can see that, he said. – That she’s not here. Who are you?
Liss didn’t think that was any of his business. She closed the door behind her.
– Do you have an appointment? she countered.
The man peered out the window. The black curly hair was gelled up and hung in a thick wave down one side of his forehead.
– Not actually today. I’ve been here before, some time ago. I dropped out. Been trying to get in touch with Mailin to make an appointment, but she doesn’t answer. Thought I might as well just call in. Will she be along later today?
Liss studied him. The eyes were dark and restless. He was rubbing his hands together and obviously trying to keep them still. Abstinent, she thought.
– I don’t know when she’ll be back, she answered. If she’ll be back, she should have said. Mailin won’t be coming any more. – I’ll make a note that you were here. What’s your name?
The man’s gaze flickered around her, over to the rug on the wall, out the window again. He had so much gel in his hair, it put her in mind of the feathers on a seabird mired in oil.
– Doesn’t matter, he mumbled. – I’ll try again later.
He squeezed past her on his way out.
– I’m looking for Mailin too, said Liss.
He stopped. Stood there, rocked a moment on the threshold. – Are you here waiting for her?
She closed her eyes. That’s what I’m doing.
– Gotta go, the young man mumbled.
Liss slumped down into the office chair again. Noticed in the same instant that the appointment book, which she had left lying on the desk, was now back in the drawer. She picked it up, flipped back through. The page for Thursday 11 December had been torn out. She jumped up and ran out into the corridor. Heard the street door closing down below.
6
LARGE FLAKES OF wet snow were falling in her hair. She was already drenched and on the point of giving up when Viljam opened the door. The heavy eyes and the creases on the pale cheeks showed what he had been doing since she left some hours earlier.
– You’re home, she said as she held up the office keys. – Sorry if I woke you. Just wanted to hand these back.
He blinked in the afternoon light. – Doesn’t matter. Come in. More coffee?
She pulled off the soaking wet boots.
– Don’t you have lectures or something to go to?
He shrugged. In the kitchen he added: – Can’t take anything in anyway. Not getting much sleep these nights.
Liss put the keys on the table. Decided to tell him about the patient who had appeared and then disappeared again.
– He tore a page out of the diary? Viljam exclaimed.
– The one with the appointments for the day Mailin went missing.
– Have you told the police?
She had called them. Still no one there who had anything to do with the case. She had left another message.