By about 10.30, Roar was finished. He avoided going back to Berger’s apartment again, didn’t want to meet Jennifer, who would almost certainly still be working there. On his way to the car he came across a couple of forensic staff working on a black BMW that he knew had to be Berger’s.
He crossed the road. – Started already?
– A preliminary look. We’ll be taking it in for a thorough examination.
– Any titbits for a hungry investigator?
A slight grin. – What do you expect? A loaded gun? A bloodstained knife?
Roar grinned back, standing there in the rain, the memory of Viken’s outburst still fresh in his memory.
The forensics guy opened the boot. – We did find something. Don’t know how interesting it is.
He pulled away the felt mat covering the floor. There was a small object next to the seat back. Roar took out his torch and switched it on. Saw that it was a ring.
The forensics guy offered him a pair of plastic gloves. Once he’d got them on, Roar bent inside and picked it up, holding it in the light. It was a gold wedding ring, with an inscription.
– 30-5-51, he read. – Your Aage.
33
Friday 9 January
JENNIFER PLÅTERUD HAD lost count of the number of autopsies she’d carried out over the years. For several reasons she was certain that the one she was on her way to now would be one she would remember. She had finished her external examination of the body the evening before and taken the necessary blood samples, collected hairs from the head and body, sperm residue, saliva, and matter beneath the fingernails. She had called Leif and agreed on where the opening incisions should be made. Her assistant was a trusty old workhorse who always did what was asked of him, and when Jennifer switched on the light in the autopsy room at 7.14, she noted that the body cavities had been opened. The precise cut of a bonesaw had removed the skull cap, leaving the brain exposed.
She spent the first few minutes making a plan of work. Then she fetched pus bowls, test tubes and extra probes. The trainee arrived at 8.10. She was a single mother who needed a job with no exhausting night shifts, and her interest in forensic science was hardly passionate. Fortunately she was good with her hands and had a talent for finer surgery, which went some way towards making up for her lack of enthusiasm. But she also had a tendency to chatter, and with a poorly concealed pleasure at once remarked how dreadful it was that the enormous yellowing body that filled the steel table in front of them belonged to the man she had seen so many times on television that autumn.
– Does this body belong to anyone now? Jennifer responded with a touch of contempt. She couldn’t endure small talk while opening a body. The trainee took the hint and kept as quiet as she could.
Over the next few hours the two women worked in intense and deep concentration on the dissection of Elijah Berger’s body. The brain was detached from the medulla oblongata and removed and the surface closely examined without anything of note being found. As expected after the external examination there were no signs of trauma, no abnormalities in the blood vessels. Jennifer decided that it should be preserved in formaldehyde for further tests.
At about ten, Korn popped in. He had just got back from a long journey that same morning, and even though he had the weekend off, he’d driven directly from the airport to the institute after he’d heard the morning news bulletin.
Jennifer briefed him: no obvious signs of damage to the inner organs, findings thus far consistent with the cause of death that had been her first assumption: an overdose of heroin.
– I’ll be here for the rest of the day, Korn assured her. – The front desk is getting so many calls from the media, someone has to deal with them.
Jennifer was more than happy to have him around. Not that she had anything against talking to journalists. The problem was that she couldn’t say anything about what she knew, or what she thought. She bent down once more over the swollen belly and followed the blood vessels leading into the liver – it was as distended and fatty as one would expect in someone who cultivated an image as a substance abuser – to the place on the underside of it where she would make her cut to detach it. Just at the point where she put the tip of the scalpel, she discovered a swelling. It was as large as a golf ball, with a lumpy surface.
She took a break at a couple of minutes past eleven. Tried to get in touch with Viken to let him have a preliminary report. He had switched to voicemail. At the same moment her own phone rang. The number was unrecognised, and she didn’t have time to take the call but did so anyway.
– This is Ragnhild Bjerke… Mailin’s mother.
Jennifer was surprised she thought it necessary to add that information just a few days after her hour-long visit to the office.
– Of course, she said.
– I’ve seen the news. Ragnhild Bjerke was silent for a moment. – Is it true what they’re saying? That he might have killed her?
Jennifer breathed out heavily. – Well of course that’s something the investigators will have to…
– Do you believe it was him?
Ragnhild Bjerke’s voice was as toneless as before, but the fear lying just beneath it was even more noticeable over the phone.
– I wish I could give you an answer, but I have no grounds for making any assumptions about that. Jennifer felt the same helplessness as when they had spoken together last time. – I am sorry, she added.
– It was a relief to see you on Tuesday, Ragnhild Bjerke continued.
– You’re welcome to come back, Jennifer said. – Any time, if you think it’ll help.
– I’ve been thinking over what you asked me about.
Jennifer did a quick scan of their conversation. – Oh? she said, but with no idea what Ragnhild Bjerke was talking about.
– I lay awake thinking about it all that night. Of course I was worried at the time, when I had to spend nights away from home. Lasse drank. Later on I realised he must have been on drugs as well. He was more unstable than I gave you the impression of. He had these really huge mood swings. But he was so fond of the girls, I could never bring myself to believe that…
Jennifer looked at her watch. She still had a lot of work left to do, but she couldn’t end the call.
– Mailin never mentioned anything. But then I never asked straight out. And when I think back, perhaps she did say something after all. Once she wanted me to put a safety lock on their doors. One like she’d seen in a film on TV. Why didn’t I react to that and get her to tell me what she meant? And every time I had to spend the night away, she would behave in a funny way, despairing, but she never said anything, never cried, never protested. Thinking back on it now, I don’t understand how I could have left them alone like that. Trusted Lasse like I did. He’d been having those nightmares for a long time.
She fell silent.
– I don’t think you should blame yourself, said Jennifer. – You’re suffering enough as it is.
– Did I tell you that he knew Berger?
Jennifer didn’t know anything about that.
– They were hanging around with the same crowd at the time I met Lasse. Those were wild parties. But then that kind of thing is exciting when you’re a teenager and you’ve met an artist with a boundless faith in his own talent.
After the call, Jennifer tried Viken again, but still no luck. She decided to call Roar. It would give him the chance to invite her round on her way home that evening.
– Stuck in traffic, he groaned, sounding annoyed. – First off I sleep in big-time, then I get caught up in an accident at the Teisen junction. Should have been at a team meeting five minutes ago.
– Then you’ll probably get a ticking-off from Dad, she teased, though she had gathered that he was in no mood for jokes.