From the internet he printed out a map of Åsnes county, located Åmoen. Nearly ten kilometres further north, it said in the letter. He searched with his fingers across his father’s map: Fallsjøen, Åmoen, a farm track leading north, a timber road branching off from it. He checked the distance. It coincided with one of the places Torstein Glenne had circled.
– That’s where you’re keeping her, you bastard, he muttered. But I’ve got you now.
Sergeant Norbakk answered at once. Axel said: – I know where she is.
– What the hell are you talking about? Miriam?
Axel described what he had found in the letters. He had expected scepticism, but the sergeant appeared to take him seriously.
– Were the letters signed? he wanted to know.
– No, but there is a name mentioned in one. Axel took out the photo. – Oswald, it says. That must be the person in the picture with Miriam. A very tall man who appears to have Down’s syndrome.
– Excellent, I’ve got all that. Anything else?
– The letter-writer says he used to work at an Esso station at a place called Åmoen.
Norbakk expelled a long, slow gush of air.
– We’ll get in touch with the owner. Maybe the guy still works there. He added: – You’ve made more progress in one evening than the police have in four weeks.
Axel didn’t know quite how to take this. Maybe it was meant as an apology.
– We’ll get people out there straight away, Norbakk said. – Give me a route description while I call the operational centre.
– You turn off a couple of kilometres past Åmoen. Axel described the route up through the forest.
Norbakk said: – I’ve got a map on my screen; are there any place names after you turn off the A road?
Axel checked his own map.
– It says Åheim at the end of the first side road. You drive on. Turn off east quite a way after that.
Norbakk asked him to repeat his description of the route. – Good, he said. – We’ll take someone with us who knows the area. We’ll also need people from the Emergency Response Unit. I’ll call you if we need to check anything else.
– I’m going myself, said Axel.
Silence from the other end.
I must find her, he thought. Maybe I’ll never see her again after this. But I must find her, or I’ll lose everything.
– D’you think that’s such a good idea? said Norbakk at last. – This is an armed operation.
– I’ll take the map and the letters with me, Axel replied.
After ending the call, he felt a peculiar calm. A few raindrops came spinning through the night and splattered in a pattern on the window. It felt as though layers of dross had suddenly been cleared away from his mind.
– I’m going myself, he repeated aloud as he let himself out of the office.
LAST NIGHT WE sat in the car after I’d taped your mouth. I didn’t say a word. Only now, when you’re lying in bed, are you going to hear what I have to say. Summer three years ago was the last time we lay in this bed together. We will lie here again tonight. Maybe I’ll free your hands, so you can touch me. I didn’t touch any of the others. I’m not like that. Just lay there beside them so they wouldn’t feel too alone. But you belong to me. I want you one last time before I take you down into the cellar. You’ve been there before. If only you knew how much pleasure it has given me to think of your beautiful eyes the moment you realise the way this is going to happen. You told that story about the twins who were inseparable. One of them had to go to the kingdom of the dead. Maybe I’ll join you down there soon so we can be together. The god of chance decides when it will be.
You’re the only one there’s any urgency about. Soon they’ll know you’re missing. I asked you to bring the pictures I put in your letter box. You left them behind. Maybe I’ll have time before I go to work tomorrow. Maybe I’ll let someone else find them. I’ve been leaving clues for them to follow the whole way. Scores of opportunities to get to me before I took you. If they’d done their job properly down at the police station, this would never have happened. Not to you or any of the others. It’s all their own bloody fault.
I told you once that unfaithfulness is the worst of all sins. Actually, the only one. I said it on one of the first days at the school. We bunked off and took a walk along the fjord. You said you felt the same way. I thought you realised that I meant it. You pretended to understand. You should have listened to me. You did what you should never have done. I don’t care a damn who he is. He’s just anybody at all. Now it’s too late. I’m coming to you now, Miriam.
PART V
60
Friday 26 October
IT WAS 1.45 WHEN Axel passed Kongsvinger. The fuel gauge was dipping down into the red but he didn’t want to stop yet.
As he emerged from the valley around the River Glomma, the landscape changed. The road cut its way through kilometre after kilometre of thick pine forest. If he found her, what would their future be? He knew the answer, but couldn’t bear the thought. If you want to go on living with yourself, then you must do the right thing, he told himself, and it was as though the words came to him in his father’s voice. More than anything else Torstein Glenne had despised people who failed todo the right thing. Who ran off leaving others to face the music. The way he thought Brede always did. You must never bethat kind of person. His mother’s voice: Axel is his father’s son all right.
He drove past a lake that had to be Fallsjøen. Reached the village of Åmoen, swung in at the Esso station. It wasn’t a twenty-four-hour station and he stopped in front of the pump with the credit card slot. This is where you used to work, he thought as he flipped open the petrol cap and started to fill the tank. Maybe you still do work here. I’m right behind you and you don’t even know it.
He was thirsty. He found a tap on the wall at the rear of the building, slurped water from it. A waste bin stood on the corner. He picked out a container that had held windscreen cleaner, rinsed it out and filled it, got back into the car and looked again at the map. And the photo of the creosoted wall of the cabin that was up there in the forest somewhere. Driving on, he counted the farm tracks, turned off at the third. Åheim, it said on the sign.
He glanced down at the mileage. He’d driven nearly five kilometres since Åmoen. A forest track appeared on his right. It continued north-east and disappeared between the spruces. He followed the stony and pitted road for fifteen minutes. It made a sharp turn and climbed steeply. At the top of the rise the way was blocked by a barrier. He could see that it was firmly padlocked. He reversed down the hill. A couple of hundred metres before he reached a place where he could leave the car. He found the torch that Rita had put back in the glove compartment after he had borrowed it last time. Jogged back up to the barrier. If the police had been there before him they would have cut the lock. He called Sergeant Norbakk, got no answer, debated whether to wait for them. Miriam, he thought, and dismissed the idea.
The slope was even steeper on the other side of the barrier. At the top, the track swung round a small tarn. The sound of his footsteps against the soft ground broke the silence. And his breathing. His heartbeat. The cabin was behind a rise. He could only just see the outline, but he knew that was the place. When he reached it, he recognised the wall she’d been standing in front of in the photo, the brown-creosoted horizontal planking.