The appointment on 11 December, the afternoon she went missing: JH.
The image of Zako lying on the sofa paled as she sat there writing. Didn’t disappear, but detached itself from her other thoughts.
Thinking about you helps, Mailin.
What was it you were going to tell Berger before the TV broadcast?
Viljam knows. Get him to tell you.
Had no idea where she got that from. She ordered another espresso. The waiter was from the Middle East, probably, or maybe Pakistan. The way he was looking at her was easy to interpret. He wanted her body without knowing anything else about who she was. It was uncomplicated. Awakened something in her, something she had control over. She held his gaze so long that in the end he was the one who had to look away. He returned, put her coffee on the table, remained standing there as though waiting for something.
– Do you want me to pay now?
– Pay when you leave.
He leaned slightly towards her. He had a dense growth of hair and thick eyebrows. He smelt strongly of something fatty and salty, disgusting in a way that for a few seconds allowed her to stop thinking.
As he walked back to the counter, she followed him with her eyes. So intensely did she scrutinise the broad back and the narrow hips that he must have noticed it.
She took the notebook out again.
Tell Mailin everything. About what happened in Bloemstraat.
Zako was choked. Someone put sleeping tablets in his beer.
What would you have said, Mailin?
You would have told me to talk to someone or other about it.
Ring Dahlstrøm.
She sat for a few moments, pressing the pen against a point on her forehead.
You mustn’t go away, Mailin. I need you.
7
Wednesday 17 December
TORMOD DAHLSTRØM TOOK her hand and held it tightly, obviously to express his sympathy. She knew he was somewhere in his mid-fifties, but there was something about him that made him seem younger. It wasn’t the jutting chin or the outline of the almost bald head beneath the thin crest of fair hair. Maybe the deep-set pale blue eyes. She had met him for the first time four years previously. The second time was six months ago, when he attended the conference in Amsterdam with Mailin. He was one of the keynote speakers, said Mailin proudly, and insisted that Liss take them to a really good restaurant. Liss had her suspicions about why her sister was so keen, but went along with it anyway. For some years Dahlstrøm had had a regular column in Dagbladet where people could write in about their problems. He advised them on their marital difficulties, gambling and drug addictions, infidelities, lack of libido, and eating disorders. On this latter topic he had written several books, Mailin pointed out to her.
His office was in a daylight basement room in his villa, with a view of the garden and some spruce trees in a copse along Frognerseter Way.
– Does she still come to you for mentoring? Liss asked after sitting down in the soft leather chair.
– Did you know that? He seemed surprised. – Mailin doesn’t usually reveal whom she’s going to for mentoring, does she?
– She tells me lots of things. She trusts me.
– I didn’t mean it like that, Dahlstrøm reassured her.
She hadn’t taken it that way either, but she had an idea that Mailin had talked to him about her, and now she sat there with an uncomfortable feeling that he knew what was going on in her head.
He poured coffee from a thermos, tasted it, made a face, offered to brew a fresh pot. She said no. There was a girl of about her own age sitting in the waiting room. – I won’t take up much of your time, I know you’re busy.
– I’m glad you want to talk to me, he said.
Liss had always felt a need to be on the alert when she was with her sister’s colleagues. When she was younger and Mailin introduced her to her fellow students, she had had the idea that psychologists could see through people, and that the slightest thing she said or did, or even thought, might give her away. In time her belief in such magical powers faded, and instead she had to guard against her own irritation, control that urge to provoke that all therapists aroused in her. Twice she had started in treatment and both times terminated after a few sessions. She had sworn never again to see a psychologist, and definitely not a psychiatrist.
Dahlstrøm was a psychiatrist.
– I’m having trouble functioning normally, he added. – At the moment it’s hard to think of anything apart from Mailin.
It sounded as though he meant it. He began by asking how things were at home in Lørenskog, and she had no problem talking about her mother’s reaction, or about Tage’s well-meaning but hopeless attempts to comfort her. But Dahlstrøm also wanted to know how she was coping.
– What’s your opinion on that TV show Mailin was supposed to be on? she interrupted.
He ran a finger over the depression in the bridge of his nose; it was crooked and looked to have been broken. Sitting in the Vermeer restaurant in Amsterdam, he had joked about how he used to box when he was younger.
– I mentor Mailin on the treatment of patients, he answered. – Anything else she does is none of my business. But if she had asked, I would have advised against having anything to do with Berger and what he’s up to.
– So you don’t like him either, Liss pressed.
Dahlstrøm appeared to be thinking this over.
– Any bully with a minimum of talent who is sufficiently ruthless is doomed to succeed, he said.
– There’s no harm in laughing at ourselves, is there?
– On the contrary, Liss, it’s good for us. But for those of us who work with the victims of cynicism, the world looks a little different.
He put one leg over the other and leaned back. – There is nothing we aren’t prepared to joke about. No matter what you say about sex or death or God, you won’t be breaking any taboos. Not as long as you do it ironically. Seriousness is the only taboo of our age. Taboo has migrated from content to form.
Liss said suddenly: – Mailin found out something about him. Something Berger’s supposed to have done. She was going to expose it on TV that evening. She was due to meet him directly before the show to give him a chance to cancel the broadcast.
– How do you know this?
– Viljam, her partner.
But I don’t know if I can trust him, she was on the point of adding.
Dahlstrøm sat up straight. – Have the police been informed of this?
– Viljam has tried to tell them. But they don’t seem interested. At least according to him.
– They have to work through a great many possibilities.
– I don’t think they’re doing anything at all.
– That isn’t correct, Dahlstrøm said firmly. – But I’ll make a call. I know someone at police headquarters you can talk to.
Liss prepared to bring the conversation to a close. She noticed how good it felt to sit with this man whom Mailin admired and trusted. If she went on sitting there much longer, she might end up telling him things she didn’t want him to know.
– It’s impossible to imagine someone hurting Mailin.
Dahlstrøm nodded. – Mailin is what I would call a fundamentally decent human being. But she’s also courageous, which means she makes enemies. On top of that, she’s spent a long time working in a landscape that is basically a minefield.
He sat there, brow wrinkled, looking out of the window.
– I know you can’t tell me anything about Mailin’s patients, said Liss. – But I know she’s working on a doctoral thesis about incest and that kind of thing. That’s no secret?