He sounded genuinely sorry. Enough for her to let him finish what he was saying.
– I had a few appointments with her a couple of years ago, when she gave those lectures at the sports academy. Things weren’t too good for me. Some family stuff. I saw her about four or five times. She helped me, I…
– Get to the point, if there is one.
– When we finished that time, we agreed that I could get in touch later if I needed to. And a couple of months ago I found I needed someone to talk to. I went there twice. Was due to go a third time but then all this happened.
– I’ve got to hang up, she said.
– Are you coming here?
– No.
– Then we can go to my place instead, I’ll fix us something to eat.
The suggestion prodded at her smouldering anger. – It won’t work, she said as calmly as she could.
– What won’t work?
– You and me.
He was silent. Then he said:
– I want you to know what happened to me after I met you. Can we meet to talk about that?
She got up from the floor. – I have to go away for a few days. Get out of town.
– Tonight? The cabin you mentioned?
She didn’t answer.
– Can we meet when you get back?
She hung up.
3
HEAVY, WET SNOW had been falling all day. The motorway was slippery and Liss had to force herself to keep her speed down even though there was very little traffic. Driving slowly made her restless, and she clipped a headset on, connected her iPod and clicked forward to some electronica she used to like. After a couple of minutes the music got on her nerves and she tossed the player on to the passenger seat.
She had created an image of Jomar Vindheim. Fooled herself into thinking he was someone who spoke his mind and kept his word. Someone who was always straight with her. Who didn’t lie. Who wasn’t like her.
She turned off the E6. The road up into the forest was even more treacherous; she had to choose second gear on the hills, but she didn’t mind driving slowly now. The calm of the cabin at Morr Water was already reaching out to her. Fields and copses slid by in the dark, snow-clad, still… The fact that Jomar had known Mailin and been her patient changed how she thought of him. She could have found out more about what he was hiding, got things under control. Or she could have said even worse things to him on the phone, made sure that he couldn’t stand the thought of ever seeing her again. She could have told him she had killed someone.
The snowploughs had cleared the forest track from the parking place at Bysetermosan up to Vangen. But when she came to the turn-off for the summer path, she had to get out her snowshoes. The snow that had fallen during the day was drier and lighter than down in town, and beneath it was a layer of crusty snow. She began making her way into the forest. Stopped and listened. Mailin would have a grave where Liss could light candles and leave roses in a jar. But here was where she would come to feel close to her sister.
She had to use a snowshoe to brush the snow away from the outhouse door. Got out a spade, dug a path to the veranda and cleared the cabin door. It was good to feel the sweat running down her back. Good to do the things that had to be done whenever she was at the cabin. Get the stove and the open fire going, tread a path down to the water, drop the bucket into the channel in the ice below the rock. Once she’d returned with the water, she undressed and ran outside again naked, rubbed herself with snow, lay down on the ice-cold blanket, rolled around a few times, lay there on her back until she felt numb and the pain of the cold was beginning to spread from her legs and up into her back.
Afterwards she rubbed herself hard with a terry towel until patches of red appeared on her pale skin, spent a few minutes jumping and dancing around on the living-room floor before sinking down into the chair in front of the open fire. Sat there for some time, looking into the flames.
You were the one who taught me that, Mailin, how to make warmth inside your own body. Not wait for someone else to come along and make it for you.
There were a few blank pages still left in the notebook.
Everything I’ve written here is addressed to you.
Again she had the strange thought that somehow or other her sister was able to read it. As though the little notebook were the threshold to the place where Mailin was. In minute detail she began to describe the night in Bloemstraat. Everything that had happened. Everything she’d done.
When she was finished, she fetched the bottle of red wine she’d shoved into her rucksack and took two wine glasses from the cupboard. It was only after she’d looked through the kitchen drawer that she realised the corkscrew was missing. She’d noticed it was gone that evening before Christmas, but had forgotten to bring along a new one.
It wasn’t like Mailin to remove things from the cabin. At the foot of the second-last page of the book she wrote:
Remember, corkscrew is missing.
She carried the paraffin lamp over to the bookshelf to find a book. Choose one she’d already read, one she could fall asleep to before reaching page five. The row of books bulged slightly in the middle, Mailin was usually careful to adjust the spines so that they stood in a straight line. She had a way of going round the cabin and making minor adjustments to things. Getting Liss to tidy away things she’d just thrown aside, arranging the little glass figurines on the mantelpiece in a symmetrical pattern. Mailin liked to create order but didn’t let herself get irritated by other people’s chaos.
Liss pulled out a crime novel she had yawned her way through at some point in the past, tossed it on to the sofa and put both hands against the spines of the books to push them into line. They didn’t move. Determined to carry out this small correction in Mailin’s own spirit, she removed the six or seven books that were sticking out. Something lay at the back, blocking them. One of the books had obviously fallen down. It was unbound and not very thick. Liss took hold of the cover and fished it out, held it up in the light of the paraffin lamp from the table.
Sándor Ferenczi, she read. The Clinical Diary of Sándor Ferenczi.
4
ROAR HORVATH PUT his foot down in the overtaking lane. Between the lanes, a ridge left by a snowplough threatened to pull the car sideways. He dropped his speed and regained control of the wheel.
The news was over and he switched to the CD player. There was an old Pink Floyd album on the desk and he turned it up full volume. It was Friday evening and he had been at the office since early that morning. The last few nights he had slept very badly. At work he had been going through every single interview with witnesses in the Mailin case for a second time. He felt like a marathon runner who crosses the line and is then ordered to run it all over again. He had counted on following up the work done in Bergen and getting in touch with Mailin Bjerke’s closest relatives again. That he had instead been put to the task of reading documents seemed like a demotion rather than anything else. He was tempted to ask Viken straight out if there was any connection with the little deception he’d been guilty of that morning in the garage.
His mobile rang. Roar turned off the music and fumbled for his hands-free, then remembered he’d left it lying on his office desk. He clamped the phone against his ear with his shoulder.
– Hello, this is Anne Sofie.
He quickly scanned the list of women he was on first-name terms with but found no Anne Sofie. Ylva Richter’s mother wasn’t on that list, but he was quickly able to identify who he was talking to from the polished Bergen accent.
He said that it was nice to hear her voice again, something it hadn’t seemed natural to say to her husband when he had spoken to him earlier in the week. He had been checking to see if there was a possible connection with Berger, asked if their daughter had ever spoken of the celebrity or been especially interested in his music.