He looked out across the fields, up to a copse under the bright evening sky.
– Quite nice out here, he mused.
– What about the dog?
Viken turned towards Norbakk.
– You want to hear the end of the tale? Short version, Brede got pissed off with the animal, almost certainly with good reason. He shot it with one of the colonel’s own guns. Axel pleaded for him, his wife says, but his pleas fell on deaf ears and the lad was packed off to what used to be called in those days an approved school. He never came back home.
They drove over the crest of a hill. On the other side, at the edge of the road, a number of floral bouquets were gathered, a few small lighted candles beside them.
– Accident black spot, said Norbakk. – This stretch here is supposed to be highly dangerous.
Viken didn’t hear what he said. He continued on his own train of thought.
– My idea goes something like this: imagine this twin has not merely disappeared, but never even existed in the first place.
– That ought to be easy enough to find out, Norbakk countered.
– Probably. A run through births, marriages and deaths ought to do it, even if he changed his name.
– What about asking the mother? Isn’t she still alive?
– I gather she’s senile, yodelling away in some posh rest home somewhere in the west end of town.
Norbakk appeared to be thinking about this.
– The three killings we’re working with are unlike anything else I’ve ever come across in this country before, said Viken. – We’ve been offered a profiler if we want one. But it won’t do any harm if we think along psychological lines without having so-called experts breathing down our necks. You remember the profile I made of the perpetrator after the first two murders? A highly educated man in a well-paid job, a family man with a split personality, someone who grew up with a cold and unemotional mother who tyrannised him. When you’ve got a serial killer, be sure to take a very good look at the relationship he had with his mother. That’s where you’ll find the skeleton in the cupboard.
– Are you trying to say that this doctor, Glenne, has an imaginary twin brother who carries out sick stuff like this for him?
– I’m not saying anything, Arve, but there’s no law against thinking out loud. Often very necessary, in fact. When Norbakk didn’t respond, he added: – System is alpha and omega in our kind of work, I’ve been telling you that ever since you left school. But at the same time it’s important not to overlook your gut feeling. In the end, most cases are solved by the gut, Arve, whether we like it or not.
He laid a hand on his own, rumbling and growling like a leaden sky on a late summer’s day. Maybe it was protesting about the part it had been given to play.
49
FOR THE SECOND day in succession, Axel woke up on Rita’s sofa. He looked at his wristwatch. Thought it had stopped, but the clock on the wall showed the same time, and afternoon sunlight streamed in through the living-room window.
He hadn’t told Rita he would be coming back, but when he peered into the kitchen he saw that the table was laid for him. There was a note next to the plate: You’ll find what you need in the fridge and in the cupboard on the right.
He swigged down two glasses of cold orange juice, made himself a muesli mix and started the coffee machine going as he waited for the muesli to swell. Glanced through Aftenposten. Police have important leads in bear-murder cases. On page 4 was an identikit drawing of a person they wanted to talk to, a man seen near the scene of the crime that morning. – Is that what I look like? he murmured. Wide face and curly hair flopping over his forehead.
He took his coffee into the living room, sat back down on the sofa, turned on his mobile. No message from Miriam. Three from Bie. He listened to the first of them … And the police have been here looking for you. Asking where you were when your patient went missing. They looked through the photo album and asked all sorts of things about Brede, wondered if he existed at all. It was horrible. Please come home, Axel. Now.
He sent a text in reply: Be home this evening. Couldn’t face the thought of what it would be like. An unfaithful husband. A father wanted by the police. You’re a good boy, Axel. You’ll always do the right thing. He’d reached some kind of limit. If he went any further, he’d end up losing everything he had. Was that why he was still sitting there? Did he want to give everything up? Want Bie to be so crushed that she wouldn’t have him back? Want her to do what he wasn’t capable of doing himself, breaking up? You must be a very happy man.
He waited another half-hour before ringing Miriam. Was about to disconnect when she finally answered.
– I miss you, he said.
She said nothing.
– Miriam?
– Why did you disappear yesterday?
There was a note in her voice he hadn’t heard before.
– Couldn’t you have stayed and talked to the police?
She was right. He had been cowardly.
– They found out someone had been here, Axel. I had to tell them it was you.
He looked out of the window. In the next-door garden there was a climbing frame with a swing and an orange plastic slide.
– You’ve got every right to be angry with me.
– I’m not angry, Axel, I’m afraid.
– I understand that.
– No, you don’t understand.
Between the rooftops he could make out the trees in the Nordre cemetery, and a chimney sticking up from Ullevål hospital. The sky was pale grey, with a hint of yellow.
Without knowing why, he said: – Is it me you’re afraid of?
He heard her draw breath.
– You must go to the police.
If he didn’t turn himself in, they’d soon be publishing his name and his photograph. But he sat there listening to her voice, and he couldn’t bring himself to regret any of it.
– I want to see you one more time, he said. – Then I’ll go to the police.
– It’s my fault.
– What is your fault, Miriam?
– If it hadn’t been for me, none of this would have happened.
She’s the one regretting it, he thought. I can’t bear to hear her saying that.
– I must see you.
– I’ll call you this evening, she muttered.
– Are you at home now?
She hesitated before saying: – I’m at a friend’s house. Slept here last night. I have to pull myself together and go back home soon.
– I’ll come over.
– No, Axel. I daren’t.
She ended the call. He rang her again, but she didn’t answer.
Rita arrived at 5.45. He was still sitting on the sofa, looking out at the evening sky. It had turned a dark yellow.
– Are you still sitting here, Axel? she exclaimed. – You’re becoming a fixture.
He smiled feebly.
– Don’t worry, Rita, I’m not moving in.
She carried in some bags of shopping.
– I didn’t mean it like that. Have you spoken to the police yet?
He didn’t answer.
– Axel, for God’s sake. They’re all over the place looking for you. I had to tell a little white lie at the office. Actually, it was more dark grey.
She was getting in trouble too because of him.
– You’ve got no call to be in hiding. What’s the matter with you?
She sat down in a chair.
– Is it that student? Miriam?
He leaned his head back.
– I don’t expect you to understand it, Rita. I don’t understand it myself. I turn my back on Bie and the kids, spend the night with a student seventeen years younger than me. I stumble over a dead woman and run off. Last night I was wandering about up in the Nordmarka and terrified the life out of some old tramp.