If indeed that was what he did.
Questioning his suicide seems absurd. There is nothing to suggest anything other than Markus Gjerløw chose to take his own life. But Bjarne thinks about the killer’s MO and the earlier visits he made to Erna Pedersen’s room and Johanne Klingenberg’s flat. He could have planned the murder of Markus Gjerløw as well. He could have planted the evidence that would point the police to Gjerløw so that the suspicions would be directed at a dead man. So that he himself would go free.
So that he could kill again?
Bjarne decides to ring Emilie Blomvik straightaway. While he waits for a reply, Henning catches up with him.
‘What’s going on?’ he asks.
But Bjarne doesn’t reply. His head fills with fresh thoughts while he crosses the road, still pressing the phone to his ear and navigating the traffic. He hangs up when Emilie Blomvik doesn’t answer.
Come on, he says to himself. You know what you have to do. Analyse the information quickly, accurately and effectively. Make the right call. If you hope ever to become Head of Investigation, you have to deliver in situations like this one.
If his theory is correct, the killer has to be someone close to Gjerløw. Someone who would know that Gjerløw would be at Grünerhjemmet that day.
He stops in his tracks.
Of course.
Chapter 70
Henning follows Bjarne across the street, but his police friend is deep in thought while at the same time trying to get hold of someone on the phone. At that moment, Henning’s own mobile rings; it’s a number he doesn’t recognise.
He takes the call.
‘Hello. Am I speaking to Henning Juul?’
It is an old person’s voice. Henning stuffs a finger in his ear to shut out the noise from the street.
‘You are.’
‘I’m sitting here with your business card,’ says the woman down the other end.
‘Oh, right,’ Henning says, now remembering Erna Pedersen’s old neighbour in Brinken. Borgny Ramstad, that was her name, wasn’t it?
‘I’ve been visiting my daughter in Bergen for a couple of days and I’ve only just got back. I caught the night train. And the first thing I saw when I came home was your card stuck in my front door. I hope you’re not going to try to sell me something?’
‘No, not at all,’ Henning assures her. ‘I wanted to talk to you because you knew Erna Pedersen.’
‘Indeed I did. We were neighbours for twenty-four years.’
Henning looks across to Bjarne and sees him take out his notebook and check something.
‘Mrs Ramstad, I want to ask you about something that happened quite a few years ago. It’s to do with Erna Pedersen.’
Henning tells her that Erna Pedersen has been murdered.
‘Oh, how dreadful,’ Borgny Ramstad says. ‘I haven’t been following the news recently. My grandchild has colic, you see.’
‘I understand,’ Henning says. ‘What I’m particularly interested in is the vandalism done to Erna Pedersen’s house while she was still working as a teacher. Did she ever talk to you about it?’
‘She certainly did. Erna was in such a state about it.’
‘I know she had her suspicions about who was behind it. Did she ever tell you?’
There is silence for a moment. Henning watches Bjarne press the phone to his ear again.
‘I don’t really—’
‘As far as I understand there were several culprits. But do you know if Erna was scared of any of them?’
There is another silence.
‘Well, in that case, it must have been the boy who—’
Silence again.
‘Oh, I can’t remember his name.’
‘Please try—’
‘Oh, now I remember!’ she exclaims. ‘It was the brother of the boy who died in that snow cave accident, wasn’t it?’
Bjarne remembers what Markus Gjerløw said to him on the telephone.
‘I only know Remi.’
Bjarne pulls out the list of names that Emil Hagen gave him. Sees that there is a Remi highlighted in bold.
Remi Gulliksen.
Bjarne takes out his mobile and calls Fredrik Stang.
‘Hi, it’s me,’ Bjarne says. ‘Can you check if a boy called Remi Gulliksen went to school with Markus Gjerløw?’
‘Okay, hold on.’
It has to be Remi Gulliksen, Bjarne thinks while he listens to Stang flicking through documents down the other end of the phone. Of the people who were at Grünerhjemmet on the day that Erna Pedersen was killed, Gulliksen was the only person Markus Gjerløw knew. As a friend of Gjerløw’s, Gulliksen would have been able to gain access to Gjerløw’s flat, force him to swallow the morphine capsules and then write a cryptic apology on Facebook that would make everyone think that Gjerløw was apologising for the lives he had taken.
‘No, I can’t find a Remi Gulliksen,’ Fredrik Stang says. ‘But there is another Remi in his class. A Remi Winsnes.’
Bjarne tastes the name a little. It rings no bells.
‘Okay, can you look up both Winsnes and Gulliksen for me? Try including Jessheim in your search as well and see if you get any hits.’
He hears clicking and keyboard sounds in the background. The seconds pass.
‘I’ve found a Nils Jørgen Winsnes and a Susanne Marie Gulliksen. They live in Jessheim at the same address.’
‘They must be Remi’s parents.’
‘Looks like it. He must have changed his surname as an adult.’
It has to be him, Bjarne thinks.
‘And it says here that they lost a child,’ Stang says. ‘In a snow cave accident in Jessheim in the eighties.’
Bjarne makes no reply; all he can think about is that he couldn’t get hold of Emilie Blomvik a few minutes ago. He is still very unhappy that Romerike Police decided to call off the protection Bjarne had requested for Blomvik and her family once Markus Gjerløw was found dead.
‘Call Romerike Police and ask them to go to the home of Emilie Blomvik,’ Bjarne says to Stang. ‘And tell them to hurry up.’
‘What’s going on?’
‘Just get them to check that everything is okay with her and her family.’
‘Okay.’
They end their calls. Henning comes up behind him.
‘I think I might know the name of the man you’re looking for,’ he says.
Bjarne spins around.
‘Do you now?’
‘It wouldn’t happen to be Remi, would it?’
Chapter 71
Remi can still remember it. Her birthday.
Eighteen years. The portal to adulthood. Old enough to drive and finally able to get into most bars without fake ID. Not that Emilie ever needed to. She got in everywhere, even though the doormen knew that she wasn’t old enough.
He gave her a very special present on that momentous day. A picture of two footprints, partly covering each other, on a beach. To let her know what he thought about the two of them and their future. He also gave her eighteen long-stemmed red roses, though the man in the florist told him that even numbers and flowers didn’t go all that well together.
Memories.
Memories are crap.
He wishes he had never opened the local newspaper that day when the past suddenly became the present. The years had left their marks in her cheeks, time had done something to her chin and her eyes, but he could see that she was the same girl. Just as lovely. She still had that special light in her eyes, which beamed into him and turned everything it found upside down. And it was as if the smile she sent the readers of Eidsvoll Ullensaker Blad was aimed at him. He wanted the ground to open and swallow him up.