– Is it so funny? the little girl said, rolling her eyes. – I know this girl in 2b who’s called that. Plus a teacher. Plus Mum’s aunt.
Tormod Dahlstrøm appeared in the hallway.
– Liss, he said, not surprised, because he knew of course that she was coming, but it seemed to her that he was pleased to see her. She didn’t like it when people she hardly knew hugged her, but if he had done so she would have let him.
He turned to the little girl.
– Remember to look both ways before you cross the road, Betty. With a worried look he stroked her hair.
His daughter sighed. – Daddy, you’ve told me that a hundred times!
Liss couldn’t help smiling.
– Yes, I probably have, Dahlstrøm conceded, gathering the two braids in his hand. The bands that fastened them at the ends were decorated with ladybirds, one yellow and one red. – Don’t forget to wear a hat. There’s a terrible wind blowing.
Once the little girl had run off down the driveway, he took Liss’s leather jacket and hung it behind a curtain next to the mirror in the spacious hallway.
– I’ve got the house to myself for a couple of hours. Let’s go up into the living room.
Liss was glad they wouldn’t be sitting in his office; it made her feel more like a guest and less like a patient.
He let her go up the stairs ahead of him. There was an open fire at the far end of the room.
– Do you want anything to eat with it? he asked when he arrived with the coffee. – Not even a piece of Belgian chocolate?
He said it in a teasing way, she thought, and for a moment she wondered if he was testing her, noting the way she declined, coming to his own conclusions about her attitude towards food. She felt as if she was revealing herself the whole time. Astonishingly enough, it didn’t make her irritable.
– What did the doctor say about your eye? He peered at the bandage.
– They don’t know yet. They think I’ll keep my sight. But it’ll never be as good as it was before.
He nodded, didn’t try to comfort her. – What about all the other things that happened?
The other things? Did he mean the rope that was tightened around her neck? Viljam’s face as he was strangling her?
– I want to talk to you about something else, she said. – Viljam was destroyed on the inside. He came to Mailin for help. She seduced him.
Dahlstrøm sat there looking at her. The eyes widened slightly, but even now he still didn’t seem surprised.
– You knew that, she exclaimed.
He settled into the high-backed chair. The eyes were deep-set beneath the forehead. The gaze from within them made her feel calm. Was there nothing that made him uneasy? She knew there was. She had heard the slight fear in his voice as he said goodbye to his daughter. Her name was Elisabeth, and there was a road full of cars she had to cross.
– During several of our counselling meetings a couple of years back, Mailin talked about a patient she was particularly worried about, he said. – It was clear that he was very badly damaged.
– Viljam was abused by Berger from the age of twelve. Mailin sent me a CD with a record of the conversations she had with him that time he came to see her.
– A CD? This is something you should talk to the police about, Liss.
– I’ve already told them. But when I called Viljam, he got me to tell him where it was. He destroyed it. He seemed obsessed by the idea that no one should know about him and Jacket – that was the name he called Berger.
– But Mailin might have made other copies.
Liss picked up a chocolate from the little rose-patterned plate. – I’m certain Viljam destroyed them all. Or else the police would have found them.
Dahlstrøm crossed one leg over the other, rubbed the hollow in the bridge of his nose with a finger. – He can’t have seen Mailin more than three or four times before she suddenly decided to end the treatment. I asked if he’d threatened her. Her reply was evasive. And then I realised what was happening.
Suddenly Liss felt a terrible anger. – Exactly what she wrote about. That people get abused. Children who need tenderness and care, who open themselves and are met with desire and abused. He went to see Mailin because he felt so fucking bad. She was supposed to help and ended up sleeping with him instead. Fucking hell!
She tore the paper off the chocolate and bit it in half, squeezed the soft centre between her tongue and her palate.
– Mailin ended the treatment immediately, she said once she had calmed down. – It would have been considered a crime if she hadn’t gone on seeing him. And the moment she broke up with him, he could have reported her and had her convicted. Maybe she would have been barred from practising for life. You read about shits like that in the papers. How could she have done such a thing?
Dahlstrøm looked to be thinking long and hard about what she said, yet he never seemed to lose touch with her.
– You know, even the best of us are capable of mistakes, he said at last. – Serious ones sometimes. We’ll never know what went on in her office. I think the best thing is to just drop it.
– I don’t think I can.
Dahlstrøm stood up, looked out of the window. The day had begun to turn grey. He stroked the thin wisps of hair back over his head, went out into the kitchen, returned with the coffee jug and refilled their cups.
– Mailin was skilled. She helped a lot of people. She meant well. A thoroughly good person. But she’s something more than that to you, Liss. Something far more than a human being.
Liss looked down. Regretted what she had said.
– She’s an image of everything that’s good in life. You needed that image. It might be that you’ve reached a point now where you’re going to have to live without your guardian angel. And maybe that’ll be better for you.
What he said was quite right. Every single word. And yet she shook her head, suddenly frozen.
– I’ve killed someone.
Dahlstrøm leaned towards her. – You had no choice, Liss, if you were to survive yourself.
– I’m not talking about Viljam. I killed someone else.
She closed her eyes. For an instant she was sitting high above the ground; she let go the reins, was tossed up into the air and came hurtling downwards… She didn’t dare to look at him. Finally she noticed that he had leaned back in his chair.
– Is this something you want me to know, Liss?
She couldn’t answer, but realised that he was giving her a choice. It might remain unspoken, unsaid.
– His name was Zako. He lived in Amsterdam. We were a couple, in a way.
She spoke with lightning rapidity, as though it was a matter of urgency to close off that road ahead on which she could walk alone.
Tormod Dahlstrøm said nothing. He sipped some coffee, put the cup back into the saucer so softly that the chink of porcelain was almost inaudible.
How long she sat there telling her story she didn’t know. She felt as though she were anaesthetised. Her body was numb, time stopped, the only thing in the room was her voice. First she told him the most important facts. Then she started again, in more detail. Not once did she look up. If she met his eyes now, her story would recoil on her, it would turn inside and explode everything it encountered.
When she fell silent, he once again crossed his legs. She could see his foot dipping up and down once or twice, then still, then dipping again.
– It sounds as though I’m the first person you’ve told all this to.
She felt herself nodding. He was the only one who knew. If there was a single person she dared give so much power to, it had to be Dahlstrøm. Only now did she fully understand why she had come to him. His reaction would decide what she must do once she left that room.
– I don’t think you want advice from me, he said. – It’s enough that I know about it.
She tried to work out if that was right. His mobile started to vibrate. It was on the desk behind him.