Helgarsson rolled his eyes, but Nina saw that the corners of Agnes Finckenhagen’s mouth were twitching.
– Some people keep animals illegally, she offered.
Viken clicked his tongue a few times.
– I’ve heard of boa constrictors in bedsits, even Amazonian lizards sticking their heads up out of the next-door neighbour’s toilet bowl, but a bear in a bedroom? Any other suggestions? Arve, you know more about wildlife than the rest of us – can we rule out the possibility that there was a bear in Frogner Park, or can we not?
Arve Norbakk looked around, and to Nina it seemed his gaze rested on her a moment.
– Bears avoid people, he told them. – It’s unthinkable it might make its way down into a town. Not on its own.
– What do you mean? Could somebody have brought it here and turned it loose?
Norbakk shrugged his shoulders.
– Either that, or the victim has been moved after being ripped by bear claws.
Viken nodded.
– The plaster that was found under Hilde Paulsen’s nails might have come from a cellar. Maybe the body was taken out into the marka. But what about the tracks?
Arve Norbakk dotted his pen against a sheet of paper as though sending a signal in Morse code.
– I was wondering about that. The tracks have clearly been made by a bear’s paw, but all of them look like marks made by hind paws. So the bear must have been walking upright the entire time.
– Like a circus act, Viken observed.
Norbakk permitted himself a smile.
– A bear will rise up on to its hind legs when faced with a potential danger, he said. – It does so to get a better overview and to pick up the scent of whatever’s approaching. It can look as if it’s dancing. But if it’s going to attack or flee, it quickly gets back down on all fours. Another thing is that the pattern of movement seems odd. There are about twenty metres of tracks before they disappear into the water. But the two paws are much too close together. On top of that, there isn’t a single track further down the bank, or on the other side. So where did the animal go?
The question was still hanging in the air when the meeting broke up a couple of minutes later.
Nina scrolled down through the list of witness statements on the subject of Paulsen’s disappearance. She carefully read the account given by the man who found the body. Or rather, the man who owned the dog that found the body. Fifteen people had come forward to confirm that they had seen Paulsen in the marka on the day she disappeared. She noted the names down in her notebook. The last confirmed sighting was that made by a doctor, Axel Glenne, who had called them a few days later. She leaned back in her chair, thinking. Something had struck her. She looked out of the window, over the row of hazels and the rooftops down in Grønland. Something she’d read. Her computer had already gone into hibernation and she woke it up and scrolled through the names once again. Found the interview with Cecilie Davidsen’s husband. He had attended at Majorstua police station to give his statement. He had raised the alarm after a couple of hours when his wife had failed to return from the hospital and didn’t answer her phone. She had just been told she had cancer and would be operated on in a few days’ time. The prospects weren’t good. He was afraid she might be in shock. At last Nina found what she was looking for: Cecilie Davidsen’s doctor. He had been a great help to her, according to the husband. His name was Axel Glenne.
27
Tuesday 16 October
IT HAD BEEN snowing since early morning. A total surprise to everyone, even the meteorologists, who had forecast rain.
Signy Bruseter stood on the steps in front of her house and looked out miserably across the fields sloping down towards the village. She didn’t like the winter, it was too long already, and now here it was snowing heavily and only the middle of October. Her house lay at the end of a farm track, almost two kilometres from the main road. The farmer who did the snow-clearing for her was reliable, but suppose he was ill? Or if he couldn’t get his tractor started and had to take it in for repairs? The thought of being snowed in here at the edge of the forest made her shiver, and she bitterly regretted ever having moved up here. She pulled the shawl tighter around herself, trotted across the yard and opened the garage door. She kept her winter tyres down at the petrol station in Åmoen; she knew the owner and he was always good to her and changed them at short notice. Now it was a question of how to get to the main road and then the seven kilometres to the Esso station.
Luckily the snow was fairly light and hadn’t frozen hard yet. All the same, she drove in first gear all the way down. There was more on the news about the murders in Oslo. She couldn’t bear hearing about them but couldn’t stop herself either. No suspects as yet, they said, and interviewed a female officer. Fincken-something-or-other. We’re following up all the leads we’ve had so far, we’re encouraging anyone who thinks they might be able to help to come forward. Signy didn’t like her voice; it was brittle. Yes, we do believe it’s likely that the two cases are connected. But neither of the victims was killed by a bear. She sounded arrogant. No, absolutely not. It would be meaningless under the circumstances to demand that southern Norway be a bear-free area.
The news continued with a story about a car bomb in Iraq. Signy switched off and stared out at the white flakes that came streaming towards the windscreen. They’re not in control, she complained to herself. They’ve no idea what to do. She’d been lying awake all night. She had hardly any coffee or bread left and hadn’t had time to shop. She’d said yes to the offer of an extra shift. Mette Martin was always nice and cheerful, but she evidently expected Signy to cover whenever anyone was sick. That was the way it was when you lived on your own and had no one else to look after. These afternoon shifts were stupid; it meant she didn’t get home until about eight, too late to bother making supper. She had a bowl of spinach soup she could heat up. She’d boil a couple of eggs to have with it.
Roger Åheim, who owned the petrol station, was a man Signy wouldn’t hesitate to describe as ‘warm hearted’. It turned out he was cousin to Åse Berit Nytorpet, whom she worked with at Reinkollen. He always gave Signy a little wink. Though he wasn’t far off sixty, he was still a ladies’ man. In fact, if what she heard was true, he’d just become a father again. Now, seeing how desperate she was, he put everything else to one side to fix her wheels for her so she could get about.
A young lad Signy knew from before she moved house took over from him behind the counter. Although he couldn’t be that young, she thought; it must have been all of twenty years ago when she was his teacher at the primary school in Kongsvinger. Not that that was any kind of happy memory; he’d been a right little mischief. Smart enough when it suited him, but that wasn’t very often. He was always playing truant, hanging out with boys five or six years older than him and drinking beer. When he went to secondary school, things turned really bad. He’d been in jail apparently, and now he’d ended up here. He was probably still struggling and didn’t exactly look a picture of health with his shaven head and tattooed skull. But Signy was the kind of person who cared about people. Every now and then she called in at the petrol station, bought a few small things and had a chat with the lad.
But on this particular morning she sat on the battered sofa in the corner and nervously flipped through the newspaper as Roger Åheim jacked up the car and started work. The last murder victim had a daughter just eight years old. They’d found bear tracks everywhere, all around where she was lying.