As she headed up the steps towards the gallery, she thought of Roar Horvath. Earlier that day, she had called him and hinted that she might possibly find herself in the Manglerud area one day soon. But he had other things on his mind and for the third time that week she got a vague response. Why couldn’t he tell it like it was? Did he think she wouldn’t be able to take it? It annoyed her, not having had the chance to show him how little it bothered her. She’d made a mistake about him. The first time she met him, at the Christmas party, she had got the impression of a man of sanguine disposition. But then who isn’t sanguine at a Christmas party? Now he seemed to her more and more a combination of the phlegmatic and the melancholic, not all that different from Ivar and Norwegian men generally. It wasn’t the first time she had got something so badly wrong, but any re-evaluation of the Hippocratic system was completely out of the question.
As she walked along the third-floor gallery, faces streamed towards her. Some she recognised, nodded to in passing; most of them were strangers. She would miss him for a few days, she had decided, and then it would be over. That was the usual way of it when things were allowed to rest in peace. She had even got over Sean. At least, it had become possible not to think about him. And this fling with Roar Horvath hadn’t really amounted to anything more than a bit of therapy. For a while it had muted the fear of withering away completely, and now she didn’t need it any longer.
Following instructions from the reception desk, she knocked on the next-to-last door in the corridor. It was dark inside, and it took a couple of seconds for her to realise that someone was sitting in a chair by the window.
– Hi, Liss.
The young woman turned. One eye was hidden behind a large bandage.
– Hi, she answered tonelessly.
Jennifer closed the door behind her. – I heard you were still here. Just called in to see how you are.
Liss switched on a lamp, she looked even thinner than the last time Jennifer had seen her, at her sister’s funeral. She had a Melolin compress around her neck, fastened with tape.
– Got all I need. They’re looking after me.
She nodded towards the table, where there was a jug of orange juice and a packet of Marie biscuits. On a plate beside them lay a slice of bread and cheese, untouched.
– They’re discharging you tomorrow?
– Think so.
– How’s the eye?
Liss gave a slight shrug. – They’re going to take another look at it before they let me go. They don’t know yet.
Jennifer sat down on the edge of the bed. – Have you spoken to anyone… about what happened?
Liss made a face. – Some bloke doing a psychiatric survey was here. A complete nerd. I turned him down as politely as I could, and that seemed to make him happy.
Jennifer had to smile. – Anyone else? Your mother, or your stepfather?
– They do the best they can. My mother needs help more than I do.
In the pale light of the lamp Liss’s face was a faded grey oval beneath the bandage. Jennifer felt like stroking a hand across her hair.
– The detective chief inspector came by. The one named Viken. He wanted answers to a few questions.
– They’ll probably have to interview you, Jennifer nodded. – Even if your doctors say as much rest as possible.
– It took them almost ten hours to find him.
– I heard that.
Jennifer had carried out the autopsy on Viljam Vogt-Nielsen after he was brought up from under the ice, but she didn’t want to say anything about that.
– Do you think he suffered?
– No, Jennifer said firmly, adding: – He lost consciousness before he hit the water. He must have hit his head on a rock when he fell.
Liss sat a while staring out of the window.
– I pushed him. I heard his head crack against the outcrop. But I ran away. It sounded as if she was rebuking herself.
– That’s why you’re sitting here today, Jennifer protested.
Liss began twisting a lock of hair around her index finger. – And because the detective chief inspector decided they should come out to the cabin. He realised Viljam might be there.
It didn’t surprise Jennifer to hear that Viken had made it obvious who Liss could thank for having been found.
– I’ve killed someone.
Jennifer got up and stood beside the chair. – Dear Liss, she said as she touched her shoulder. – I’m not a psychologist, but it’s normal to feel that way after going through such an awful experience. Survivor’s guilt, it’s called. I recommend that you talk to someone about this. Not all shrinks are nerds, after all.
After Jennifer Plåterud had gone, Liss lay thinking for a while about what she had said. Did she need to talk to a psychologist? When Chief Inspector Viken had been there, she had kept it together as much as she could so that she could tell him what had happened down by Morr Water. It had helped her. The chief inspector too claimed that the primary motive for his visit was to see how she was getting along. But he didn’t protest at all when she started telling him what she knew.
– He followed Mailin to the post office. He waited for her in the car outside and went with her to the cabin. How he managed to make it look as if he was in Oslo the whole time I have no idea.
– I can help you there, said Viken. – He came home in the evening to work, and then returned to the cabin afterwards. He must have held her captive there that night and then driven her to the factory early on the morning of the eleventh.
– Was that when he filmed her? The date on the video was the twelfth. She thought about it. – It isn’t difficult to change the date on a mobile.
Viken gave a wry smile. – Your deductions are good. I don’t think there’s much wrong with your head, even if it was frozen for a while.
She liked his tone, straightforward and no fake sympathy.
– He must have sent the message to Berger from her telephone, she said. – And probably several others. Keep Midsummer’s Day free next year. - Did he kill Jim Harris too?
– We have reason to believe he did, Viken confirmed. – Harris saw something he shouldn’t have seen.
– He was at Mailin’s office that afternoon… The car. He saw Viljam parking her car.
– Exactly. It was only later that he realised what it meant. I’m guessing he tried to make a little money from what he’d found out. Everyone has to live off something.
– But Viljam was at lectures the whole of Thursday, and then on the Justice Bus.
Viken pushed the upright chair back and stretched his fairly short legs. – We’ve been through the security camera pictures from the Ibsen car park and seen Mailin’s car on its way in in the morning. When Viljam had a break from the Justice Bus, he had time both to shop at Deli de Luca and move the car up to Welhavens Street. It’s not difficult, he wouldn’t have needed much time.
Liss realised she was sitting there twisting and twisting at a lock of hair. She let her hand fall to the armrest.
– I found something out, she said. – Viljam was sexually abused. He met Berger on a holiday in Greece when he was twelve years old.
Viken raised his eyebrows.
She told him about the CD Mailin had sent her, repeated what she could recall of the document’s contents. The inspector listened without interrupting her. Sitting there in the chair by the window of the hospital room, he seemed less insistent. Less threatening.
– Jacket was the nickname Viljam used for Berger.
– If you’re right about this, Viken exclaimed, – that fills in quite a lot of important blanks for us. If Viljam was twelve years old, it might have been 1996. He didn’t say the name of the place?