Up here we’ve always had bears,Åse Berit Nytorpet had said a few days earlier when Signy showed her a picture of the first woman to be killed. Maybe now they’ll understand what it’s like.
But there was something else she’d said too, something Signy was still puzzling over.
Some people I know would be prepared to go pretty far to make people down there see sense. Might even drug a bear and drive it down to Oslomarka and let it out there.
– You’re surely not saying you know someone who might’ve done something like that, Signy had protested.
I’m not saying anything. What I’m saying is, it’s not out of the question that I know someone with strong views on this business.
That was what had kept Signy awake last night. On several occasions over the past week Åse Berit had hinted that she knew something about what was going on down there in Oslo. And then always that zip-fastener mime across the lips with the two fingers.
By the time Roger Åheim had got the last of the winter tyres on, Signy had made up her mind. She couldn’t keep this to herself. She had to tell someone about it.
28
A POWERFULLY BUILT fair-haired man emerged from the lift on the ground floor at police headquarters and walked over to reception.
– Detective Sergeant Norbakk, he said and held out his hand. The handshake wasn’t as firm as Axel Glenne had expected, judging by the upper-arm musculature. – Come with me, he added with a nod towards the lift door.
On the way up, Axel looked him over. The sergeant was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and was probably about thirty years old, although that thick curl hanging down over his forehead perhaps made him look younger than he was.
– Probably isn’t easy for a doctor to get away from his office in the middle of the afternoon, he observed, most likely as a way of neutralising the tension that arises in a lift when two strange men are standing face to face.
– You’re right there, Axel agreed with a friendly smile, though in fact he was attending a three-day seminar on lung disease. He thought better of asking why they had requested that they meet up in person rather than deal with it over the telephone. Actually, he could understand why. The previous evening a female officer had called him and told him who the murdered woman in Frogner Park was. Afterwards he’d spent half the night lying awake, and found it hard to follow what was being said at the seminar in the morning.
They came to a halt on the seventh floor.
– We’re going over into the red zone, the sergeant told him.
Axel was led down a corridor with red-painted doors and linoleum in the same colour, with no explanation being offered for the significance of the colour-coding. Presently they came to a door that was slightly ajar. There was a nameplate on it with the sergeant’s name. His first name was Arve, Axel registered. He was shown to a chair by the window in the cramped office. It looked out across Grønland and the Plaza Hotel, with Bjørvika and the opera house just visible on the left. The desk was tidy, a pile of documents next to a computer, a couple of copies of the legal code; the shelves were crammed with folders.
– The chief inspector will be here in a moment. Coffee?
Axel nodded and Norbakk disappeared, returning with a thermos and three cups.
– Sugar? Milk?
When Axel declined he said:
– Me too, I don’t like junk in my coffee.
Just then the door opened. Axel gave a start and turned round. The man standing there was a little under medium height, wearing suit trousers and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He was thinning on top, and thick grey eyebrows formed a bridge across the powerful crooked nose.
– Viken, he said, sitting down on the chair nearest the door without offering to shake hands. – You’ve already met Norbakk.
The conversation – Axel preferred to call it that, although interview sounded reasonable enough – went on for over an hour. An unnecessarily long time. He had planned to catch the 4.30 boat. It was his turn to make dinner. Marlen had her violin lesson. And he had planned to go over Tom’s weekly homework with him, something he overlooked too often and that gave him a guilty conscience. But he was careful to give no indication of his impatience. Said what he was able to say about Cecilie Davidsen. He had never before been in the situation of being interviewed about a dead patient, and he decided to be open about her sickness. Yes, of course the diagnosis had come as a terrible shock to her. No, the prognosis had not been good. Possibly three years to live. It was the young sergeant, Norbakk, who asked about this. He looked up from the computer he was working at and observed Axel with calm, direct eyes. On those occasions when he did speak, he kept it short and his voice was relaxed, unlike the chief inspector, who sounded pressured and a little hoarse. If he had to choose which one of the two to drink a beer with, thought Axel, it would be Norbakk, no question about it. As for the other one, Viken, there was an impenetrable sullenness about him, and he seemed to exude something that filled Axel with unease. When was the last time Axel had seen Davidsen? he wanted to know. Axel gave him the date of the visit to her house. Was it usual to go to patients’ houses out of office hours? The chief inspector’s delivery was patronising and insistent, but it was the penetrating stare that irritated Axel most and brought on a sort of reluctance. He spun it out a bit, didn’t tell Viken how he’d stood outside Davidsen’s front door, how the daughter had opened up, the scared way she’d looked at him. The messenger of death, was what he had thought. Though not this death, the death he was being questioned about now.
But most of the conversation was about Hilde Paulsen rather than Cecilie Davidsen. How well had he known her? Did they work closely together? Had he had any contact with her outside work? Exactly where was it he had met her that afternoon? Had he met anyone else? Axel forced his lips into a smile. He was a good observer. He noticed things, big things, little things. But to remember every detail of a bike ride nearly three weeks ago was asking a bit much. He remembered a woman carrying a child in a back frame, three or four people out jogging. Naturally the elderly couple out at the Nordmarka chapel; he could give them a detailed description of the woman’s face if they wanted. A cyclist had raced past him, that was near the chapel too. And after meeting Hilde Paulsen, a steady stream of keep-fitters and walkers, with and without dogs, on their way to and from Ullevålseter. Approaching Sognsvann, he’d met three women in headscarves and long coats, probably Turks or Kurds. One of them limped and looked as though she had problems with her hip. Directly behind them a person he recognised from television. A former newsreader for NRK who now had his own talk show on another channel and was what you might call a celebrity. And in the car park by the lake, a cyclist with a child-trailer. It was dark by then, and he remembered thinking it was too late to be taking a child out into the forest. Why was he walking when he had the bicycle with him? He told them about the puncture in his rear tyre, then the run and the swim in the tarn. But nothing about the spruce shelter. He didn’t know why. Only that the shelter made him think of Brede. Brede had no place in this conversation.
Where were you last Thursday afternoon? the chief inspector wanted to know. When he heard the answer, he observed drily:
– Well, well, the day of your weekly bike ride. And here was me thinking you doctors worked round the clock. Were you with anyone?
Axel had come to tell them what he knew about two women who had been murdered, not to defend anything he himself might have been up to in his private life. He thought it through quickly and came to the conclusion that Miriam had no place in this conversation either.