– I think in Mailin’s document it said Crete.
Viken seemed energised now; he took out a piece of paper and made a note. – Is it possible that there are other CDs? he wanted to know.
– Viljam destroyed the one Mailin sent me. He destroyed everything Mailin wrote. He and Jacket swore an oath together. They swore to die before they would tell the world about the two of them. Mailin couldn’t be allowed to live because she found out who Jacket was.
– And yet Berger’s plan was to name Viljam as the killer, live on television? That was what he implied in that story in VG.
Liss recalled what Viljam had said about that.
– He got Berger to believe that he was going to confess to the murder on Taboo.
Viken rubbed two fingers over his clean-shaven chin as she finished her story.
– Berger must have lost the few powers of judgement he still had left, he observed. – This business of some kind of pact is still not clear to me, but if what you say is true, it would explain why he admitted Viljam to his apartment. We can only guess exactly what happened. But we found traces of… well, the two of them engaged in sexual activity in that apartment just before Berger died of an overdose of heroin.
Liss didn’t feel the need to hear any more about that.
– That girl in Bergen, she said instead. – Ylva Richter. Why did Viljam seek her out more than seven years after the holiday in Crete? Had he been in touch with her in the meantime?
Viken spread his hands. – We’ll have to wait for the rest of the investigation to see if we find an answer to that. And anyway, certain things we just have to live with without understanding them.
There are a lot of things we have to live with, Liss thought once Viken stood up to leave. Waking up that day in hospital, it occurred to her that she had paid her debt. She had come face to face with death but been spared. In the days that followed, sitting and looking out of the window with her one good eye, that feeling had gradually diminished. Because what sort of calculation was that? Was it supposed to mean something for Zako, or his family, that she herself had very nearly been killed?
For a moment, as Viken stood with his hand on the doorknob, she was on the point of blurting out everything that had happened in Bloemstraat. She opened her mouth, but in that same second changed her mind. Don’t tell anyone. Carry it alone. Live alone.
One of the nurses came in. She knocked as she was closing the door behind her.
– Got everything you need, Liss?
She said her name as though they were old friends meeting again. Actually she was an auxiliary nurse. A bit chubby and sharp eyed, but friendly enough in her professional way.
Liss wasn’t hungry, and she didn’t need a stranger’s hand to hold. But there was something she did need.
A few moments later the nurse was back, and placed a pen and a little notebook on the bedside table.
She sits high above the ground, head almost in the clouds. She’s holding his long hair, like reins, but she’s not in charge of what happens, and suddenly she’s thrown down and comes sailing through the air towards the ground at a terrific pace. Just before she’s smashed to pieces, she is caught in an enormous pair of hands. They lift her up on to the shoulders again. She shrieks and pleads with him to stop, but again she is thrown down, flies through the air, is caught. It happens over and over again, until the point comes where all she wants is for it to go on for ever.
I should have written that in the book you gave me, Mailin. And not a word about what happened that night in Amsterdam. Because that isn’t where it began. All stories begin somewhere else. By Morr Water, maybe, or in a house in Lørenskog, long before I was born. This is the way to carry it with me: write about it without saying a word. What happened, and what could have happened, what brought something else in its wake, shadows within shadows, rings around rings. A finger dipped in the water moves round. Somewhere down in the cold darkness I am born.
The telephone on the wall rang. She recognised the nurse’s voice.
– I’ve got your boyfriend on the line, shall I put him through?
Liss screwed up her one good eye, then had to laugh. – I don’t have a boyfriend.
– Well that’s what he said when I asked.
The nurse didn’t seem to understand, but without pursuing the matter further she put the call through. Liss was not surprised to hear Jomar’s voice at the other end.
– Is this what you call the gift of cheek? she grunted. – When did you become my boyfriend?
She heard him grin. – It was the nurse’s idea. I just let her get on with it. Let people believe what they want. That usually works.
– And what makes you think I might want to talk to you?
– I have to know how you are.
She was sitting there in a worn tracksuit Tage had brought her from the house. The legs were too short and the colour was something she liked when she was about sixteen. She was unwashed, wearing no make-up, and wrapped in a bandage that covered half her face.
– Well at least don’t even think about coming here, she said, exasperated. – I’m sitting here like a one-eyed troll.
– Okay, I’ll leave it till tomorrow.
– I’m being discharged tomorrow.
– I can come and fetch you. Drive you home.
Where might that be? She realised she didn’t have anywhere to go.
– You do remember, don’t you, everything I said to you on the phone that night?
– Every single word, he assured her.
– That is how I am, Jomar Vindheim. I like you, but there can never, ever be anything more between you and me.
– You already said that eleven times. Can you hear me yawning? The noise he made into the receiver sounded more like snoring.
– I didn’t bring anything here with me, she interrupted. – So I don’t need to be picked up.
After hanging up, she wrote in her notebook:
But there is one person who could take hearing about what happened in Bloemstraat. Someone who can tell me what to do. Maybe he’s the one person in the world you trusted most, Mailin.
Wednesday 21 January
THE DOOR TO Dahlstrøm’s office was locked. Liss knocked, waited; nothing happened. She walked round the corner, past the garage, up to the stairs to the main entrance. The doorbell was in the form of a miniature relief depicting a landscape. The button itself was between a pair of peaks stretching up into a dark sky. She heard two deep notes sound inside the building. At the same moment the door opened. The girl standing there couldn’t have been more than six or seven years old. Her hair hung down her back in two thick dark braids.
– Your name is Liss, she said.
Liss had to admit she was right about that.
– Did you lose your eye? the little girl wanted to know. She was wearing a pink padded jacket and a pair of boots and looked as if she was on her way out.
– Not completely, Liss replied as she walked in. – And I see you have lost a front tooth.
– Yeah, but what does that matter, a new one’ll come. The girl opened her mouth and pointed to a white outline that was just about visible through the gums. – I’ve lost eight teeth, she explained, guiding Liss around her mouth as she went through them.
– But you lost your sister, she asserted once she was finished.
Liss realised that Dahlstrøm had told his daughter about her.
– I don’t know what your name is.
– Elisabeth, the girl replied. It was strange to hear that frail little voice pronounce the name.
– That was my grandmother’s name too, said Liss. – That’s funny.