32
IT HAD STARTED to rain by the time Roar Horvath parked his car further up Odins Street, and when he turned the corner, it struck him like a whip. He turned up the fur collar of his leather jacket.
The area in front of the entrance was cordoned off. A crowd of people thronged around the warning tape. A couple of TV cameras were present, journalists, but most of them were just curiosity-seekers who had heard the news of Berger’s death. It had been broadcast at 21.30, as his show was about to start. As Roar stepped over the tape, someone shouted: could he say anything about the cause of death? It wasn’t part of his job to talk to the press. and he carried on towards the door without turning round.
Five or six forensic specialists were at work up in the apartment. He was handed a pair of plastic shoe covers and shown the narrow channel in the corridor he could use to walk along. There were people working in every room he passed.
He looked into the living room. Berger was seated in the same office chair as he had been in when Roar had arrived to interview him nine days earlier. The chair had been pulled out into the room and turned round. On the desktop computer a screen saver displayed movement inside a stellar cluster that ended in an explosion before the whole thing started all over again. In front of the computer, just out of Berger’s reach, a tourniquet and a hypodermic syringe lay in a silver bowl. Inside the syringe was the residue of a milky white liquid and something that looked like blood. Berger was wearing a kimono. It was open – the belt lay next to the chair – and he was naked beneath it, his body collapsed like a sack containing some doughy substance, his organ hanging over the lip of the chair. It occurred to Roar that maybe it would be Jennifer who had to bend over this corpse and open it.
In the kitchen, he found Viken talking to the man who had let Roar in when he was there before. His name was Odd Løkkemo, Berger’s live-in partner and the owner of the flat. Roar nodded, indicating that he remembered him, but Løkkemo didn’t notice him.
– Let me just check I’ve got all this, said Viken. – You had been to Hamar to visit your sister and you got here a few minutes before seven thirty.
He turned his head, interrupting himself: – Horvath, can you get someone from the patrol to go and locate Berger’s car. It’s a BMW X3. Metallic black. It’s parked somewhere around the block here. He handed Roar a piece of paper with the registration number on. – Tell them to cordon off the area round the car. Forensics will fetch it as soon as one of them is free.
Roar went out into the corridor and left the apartment, following the channel shown to him. He hadn’t spoken to Viken since the encounter in the garage that morning. He’d had to think quickly to explain where he’d got his information from. Something in the detective chief inspector’s tone in the kitchen suggested to him that he had been exposed. – Alert, please, Roar, he muttered to himself. Level seven.
He passed the message about the car on to a constable who was standing by the outside door. Just then Jennifer appeared, stepping over the tape. She was wearing white overalls that looked a couple of sizes too big. He held the door for her.
– What have you got for me today? she said in a formal way and walked on by without waiting for an answer.
Once the street door had closed behind them Roar replied: – TV celebrity dead in his own home.
– Anyone watching TV tonight knows that.
Roar added: – Found an hour and a half ago with a used syringe next to him. Looks like heroin.
He followed her up the stairs. She was wearing the same perfume as usual, but had obviously given herself a double dose. He had never liked it, he realised.
Up in the kitchen, Viken had finished with Løkkemo. Jennifer put her head in, briefly greeted the detective chief superintendent before turning to Roar. He was looking the other way.
– I’ve checked with Hamar, said Viken, who seemed rather abrupt. – It looks as if it checks out, he did spend the day there. We’ll talk to him again tomorrow. I asked him to book in at a hotel for the night. He won’t get much peace here.
– He won’t get much out there either, Roar observed with a nod in the direction of the outer door. – The crocodiles are waiting to be fed.
Viken made a face. – Bon appétit.
Løkkemo’s skinny, bent figure slipped by them out into the corridor; they heard the click of the front door.
– Accident or suicide, Roar offered provisionally.
– Or someone was here and lent him a helping hand, Viken interrupted. – According to Løkkemo, Berger had someone here all afternoon. He showed me a text that appears to confirm that. Received a couple of hours before he arrived back.
In the car on the way over, Roar had managed to call Nydalen. – Berger sent his producer an email half an hour before he was found, he offered. – He asked to have a statement read out on TV.
He fished out his notebook and read the quote: – I have left and do not expect to return. Regret is futile, forgiveness meaningless. The end is the end. Afterwards – nothing.
– Is that all? Viken didn’t seem as interested as Roar had hoped.
– The same message was mailed to Dagbladet, VG, Aftenposten and NRK. It might be read as a sort of confession. I mean, he was planning to make this revelation live on TV.
– And you think this mail is what he was referring to? Viken growled. – The man lived and breathed publicity, and then he goes and kills himself and ends these Taboo shows with a tame fart of an email read out by someone else? He shook his head. – The people in charge of the programme tonight must have known what it was going to contain.
– Not a lot of joy there, Roar answered. – A couple of guests had been invited, but Berger was going to be running the show. He liked to improvise, didn’t want others deciding too much in advance. But the producer maintains that the guy was going to talk about his own death.
Viken stood up. – Anyone trying to persuade me that what we have here is the suicide of a repentant killer is going to have a pretty tough time of it, he said firmly. – You’d better go and talk to the neighbours, here and in the houses on either side. If Berger did have a visitor, one of them might have seen someone arriving or leaving.
He was on his way out when he seemed to change his mind and pulled the door closed. – One other thing, he said, looking directly at Roar. – It’s none of my business what you get up to when you’re not at work.
Roar glanced across at him, held his gaze.
– Who you shag is your own private business. But as long as we’re working as a team, we need to be able to trust each other. I’m sure you understand.
Roar could have pretended not to have any idea what Viken was talking about. But suddenly he felt an anger he hadn’t felt for a long time. And if he opened his mouth, there was a chance it would explode right in the detective chief inspector’s face. He decided to say nothing.
– When you say something to me about who you’ve been talking to, where you got your information from and so on, it has to fit with the facts. If that isn’t something I can take for granted, then it’s no use.
Viken left, closing the door behind him and leaving Roar to wonder just what it was that would be no use.
The neighbours weren’t much help. The elderly woman on the floor above had let her cat out and thought she might have heard a door slam. That would have been about 7.30, which fitted with when Odd Løkkemo said he came back home. Not surprisingly, most of those living in the same house on Løvenskiolds Street had plenty to say on the subject of Berger. Enough opinions there to enthuse the editor of the letters column in Aftenposten, but nothing of any value to the investigation.