Rita leaned towards him, put a hand on his arm.
– Sounds like the worst kind of mid-life crisis to me. Maybe you’d better pick up the pieces before it’s too late.
He had to smile. Just for a moment he felt he was standing on something firm that wouldn’t give way beneath him. A place where it was possible to take a decision. Doubt is what makes you crack up, he thought. You’ve never been the brooding type. You’ve always acted. Always moved on.
– You’re right, Rita. Time to get things straightened up. I’ll go to the police. But there’s one thing I have to do first.
He could see that she very much wanted to know what that might be, but he didn’t give her the chance to ask.
50
NINA JEBSEN POPPED a piece of Nicorette into her mouth and again tried to get into the register of residents site. When she got the same message again, that the server was down, she reached for the phone to call Viken, and remembered in the same instant that he was in a meeting. She considered postponing the search, but then had a better idea. The chief inspector had popped in to see her after returning from Nesodden. She had rarely seen him looking more pleased. He congratulated her once again for establishing that Axel Glenne had been at the student’s flat in Rodeløkka. Nina had no objection to being praised by Viken, and she was encouraged to continue her search for Axel Glenne’s twin, even though she was unable to access the register of residents. Even when Viken was at his most provoking, she found herself inspired to try her hardest. It was by no means everyone’s reaction. Sigge Helgarsson, for example, responded to Viken’s style in the opposite way, becoming reluctant, passive, inclined to do no more than the bare minimum.
She called the Rikshospital. Was informed that the departmental head was the only one able to give permission to divulge information from the maternity ward, even when the information was over forty years old. The head had gone home for the day, but would be back tomorrow. Nina looked at the pile of documents on her desk, thought things over. Viken had said Glenne was born in Oslo, but not where in Oslo. She could try the other hospitals, but reasoned that the same rules of access would apply there. She decided that Axel Glenne’s twin brother could wait another day. If he exists, as Viken had commented, with that rascally smile of his.
For a man like Axel Glenne, a successful doctor and father of three, to have invented a twin brother and persuaded even those closest to him that he was out there somewhere seemed a little far-fetched, to put it mildly. Even more so that it all had something to do with the murders of three women. It was no secret that Viken had a weakness for convoluted psychology. He had persuaded her to read books by John Douglas and other writers on the subject of the psychological profiling of killers, and he was apparently still in regular contact with a profiling expert he had got to know during his much-vaunted period with the CID in Manchester. Not long ago he had given a lunch-hour lecture on split personalities. But he had no respect at all for the opinions of Norwegian psychologists and psychiatrists on such matters, know-alls and phoneys that they were, every last one of them.
Nina had already managed to assemble a fair amount of information on Glenne and his family. The wife, Vibeke Frisch Glenne, known as Bie, had studied theatre and art history. In the eighties and nineties she had been editor of the Norwegian edition of Anais, later working as a freelancer for a number of other women’s magazines. She wrote about literature, travel, sex, fashion, and of course about health. Nina had found images of her on the net, from which it was obvious that she was an attractive woman. The Glennes’ joint income was of a size she could only dream about, and they had enough in the bank to keep them in style for the rest of their lives. Axel Glenne had been in practice for sixteen years and there had never been any complaints against him. He had three tickets for speeding and a conviction for driving while under the influence of alcohol that was over twenty years old. Not a lot that could be used against him.
She read through the memorandum Arve had written about Miriam Gaizauskaite. As usual, he had done a thorough job and had come up with a lot of stuff. Miriam hailed from a small country town in the south of Lithuania. Catholic family. Oldest of four children. Mother a doctor. Father a naval officer in the former Soviet Union who died in a submarine accident in the Barents Sea when Miriam was eight years old. Miriam came to Norway six years ago to take up a place at the faculty of medicine in the University of Oslo. From there on the information was a little sparse, and Nina reflected that for once, she could have done a better job than Arve. She also noted a few errors.
It was gone 6.30. Her stomach was rumbling. All she’d had to eat since lunchtime was a piece of crispbread. Convenient to have so much to do that she had no time to think about food, but it was going to be a long evening, and she ought to eat something to keep her concentration levels up. She could probably allow herself a little more now, seeing as she’d missed dinner. Arve Norbakk was also going to be working late, and she had nothing against a visit to a local café in his company.
He glanced up when she popped her head in.
– Busy?
He thought about it. Didn’t exactly seem open to invitations.
– I’m trying to find out whether old Mrs Glenne gave birth to one or two children all those years ago, she told him.
– Probably no point in asking the woman herself, he observed with a show of interest.
– I called the home where she’s living. According to the carer I spoke to, she denies ever having had any children at all.
– Like that, is it, he grinned absently, but Nina was not going to give up that easily.
– Actually, I’ve just been looking through that memorandum you wrote about the medical student.
As she had expected, this interested him more.
– I was just sitting here thinking about her, he said. – Do you think it’s enough with only one man on guard up there?
Nina had been wondering the same thing.
– She was given the offer of a personal alarm but said no. So there’s nothing more we can do.
He looked as if he was considering the matter.
– I guess you’re right at that. And something’s going to happen pretty soon now.
– An arrest? asked Nina. – Glenne?
Arve Norbakk leaned back in his chair.
– Bet your bottom dollar.
– But do we have enough? It all seems a bit thin.
He looked up into her eyes, and she wanted to sit down on the desk, right next to his hand.
– Viken’s made up his mind, he said. – Show me the police prosecutor in Oslo who could say no. Certainly not Jarle Frøen.
She understood what he meant.
– What I was going to say about your memo, she said, resuming her thread, – is that it contains one big mistake plus one major oversight.
Her ironic tone was supposed to convey that she was exaggerating, but it couldn’t be too obvious, not if she was to succeed in arousing his interest. From the look he gave her, she guessed she had succeeded. She suspected him of being more ambitious than most of the others, and she felt certain that this oversight she was teasing him about was the result not of carelessness but of the fact that he took on more work than everyone else.
– Let’s hear it then, he encouraged her.
It had often struck her that Arve Norbakk had a chance of going far in the business, and she didn’t think any the less of him for it.
– The mistake first. Miriam hasn’t been in Norway six years, it’s seven years. She told me she spent a year in school here before she began studying medicine.