Death By Water (39 page)

Jennifer thought it over.

– What about the toll roads? she suggested. – Every vehicle that enters the city gets registered somewhere or other.

Roar grunted. – We’ve checked, of course. Mailin Bjerke paid by phone. The car was photographed on its way through the toll, but the company deletes the pictures after a couple of days.

Jennifer couldn’t resist it. – So in other words, you were a little bit slow on the uptake. She added, jokingly: – For once.

The attempt to tease him seemed to have no effect, though the three seagulls on his forehead were almost gone now.

– There are limits to what you can manage to cover in the first few days in a missing persons case, was all he would say. – And the car had been found a long time before.

He gave her what was left of the scrambled egg.

– Do I look
that
hungry? she wanted to know.

– The evening is still young, it’s not even eleven yet. He laid his hand over hers. – And I want you to be able to keep going all the way into the early hours of the morning.

With a sigh that was considerably less than a vociferous protest, she gave him to understand that she might be persuaded to spend the night in a bachelor apartment in Manglerud.

W
HEN THE KNOCK
came on the office door, Jennifer jumped to her feet and opened it. The woman standing out in the corridor was considerably taller than her. She might be in her fifties, the hair dark but the eyebrows not dyed, revealing that she had probably been a blonde.

– Ragnhild Bjerke, the other woman responded once Jennifer had introduced herself. – A pleasure.

The voice sounded stiff and flat, and the phrase hardly reflected what was going through the woman’s mind as she stood there. Jennifer held the door open for her, but she stayed where she was.

– If you don’t mind, I would rather see her at once.

Jennifer could well understand that Mailin Bjerke’s mother didn’t want to postpone what she had made up her mind to go through with. On the way down the corridor she said:

– It isn’t unusual for relatives to be unsure whether or not they want to see the body.

She glanced over at her visitor. Ragnhild Bjerke’s face was as stiff as her voice and showed no expression.

– I wasn’t able to think about it before, she said. – Haven’t been able to think at all, actually. Tage, my husband, suggested that he and Liss go that morning, Christmas morning. I didn’t understand the significance of it. But now I must see her.

– Most people feel glad afterwards, Jennifer agreed.

The mortuary assistant was waiting by the chapel. His name was Leif, and Jennifer had asked him to handle the preparation of the body. He’d worked at the institute for twenty-five years and knew all the tricks of the trade when it came to making a body look as good as possible. After admitting them and folding back the sheet that covered the bier, he withdrew soundlessly. Hesitantly Ragnhild Bjerke approached. For almost ten minutes she stood looking down at her dead daughter, who lay there with hands folded across her chest and her ruined eyes shut. Then Jennifer broke the silence, moving a couple of steps closer. The click of the high heels on the floor startled Ragnhild Bjerke, as though bringing her out of a trance. She turned and wandered back out of the door again.

They sat at the small round table in Jennifer’s office. Not a word had been said on the way back from the chapel. The visitor’s face was as expressionless as when she had arrived.

– The ring, she murmured at last.

Jennifer recalled that Liss had noticed the same thing, the gold ring Mailin always wore. – It wasn’t there when we found her, she confirmed.

– Someone’s taken the ring, Ragnhild Bjerke said quietly, as though she were talking to herself.

Jennifer thought it curious that this was what Mailin’s mother had noticed especially. – It must have been very special, she said.

It took a few moments for her visitor to respond.

– She never took it off. Mailin was named after my mother. When she was eighteen, she inherited her wedding ring.

– Then there must have been an inscription on it.

Ragnhild Bjerke nodded almost imperceptibly. –
Your Aage
, and the date of the wedding. No one could have done a thing like this just for a ring.

Jennifer didn’t reply.

– I thought something would happen, Ragnhild Bjerke went on. The voice was still a monotone, hollow. – I thought I would realise that she’s gone. Her gaze was stiff too, but beneath lurked something that might have been panic. – I don’t understand. I feel nothing.

Jennifer could have told her a lot about that. Told her of the conversations she had had with the bereaved down through the years. Now and then she had thought of herself as the ferryman who carried the dead person’s relatives over the river, and then rowed them back again. She could have told her how common it was to be overwhelmed by feelings it was impossible to control. That it was normal, too, for a person to cocoon themselves and feel nothing but emptiness. But standing there she couldn’t bring herself to say any of this. Something she hadn’t felt the faintest breath of for a long time now surged through her, the strong desire for a daughter. A recognition of the fact that she would never have one was like the palest echo of the grief that hovered around the dead woman’s mother.

– Liss trusts you, said Ragnhild Bjerke.

Jennifer felt that inevitable flush tinge her cheeks. – She’s a fine girl.

Ragnhild Bjerke looked out across the car park. – She’s withdrawn so far from me. In a way, I lost her first. Many years ago.

– Surely it’s not too late to change things.

Without moving her gaze, Ragnhild Bjerke shook her head. – I’ve tried everything. She’s never really felt any connection to me. Always been a daddy’s girl.

– But she hasn’t seen her father for years?

– Not since she was six. Ragnhild Bjerke swallowed a couple of times. – She blames me for his leaving. She thinks I was the one who drove him away.

– Isn’t this something you could talk to her about now, now that she’s grown up?

Jennifer could guess how like the mother the eldest daughter had been. Liss, on the other hand, she could find no trace of in Ragnhild Bjerke’s face or body.

– Maybe it was wrong of me not to tell her the truth. Mailin was told, after all, but Liss … She’s always been so fragile. I was probably afraid it would break her.

Jennifer struggled to divorce her own curiosity from her visitor’s need to tell the story. – Did something happen between you and your husband? she asked cautiously.

– Happen? Something was happening all the time. He was a painter. All that mattered to him was success … That’s a little unfair. He cared about the girls, in his way. Liss especially. As long as they didn’t get in the way of his work. He had a studio in town, but often used a room down in the basement when he was at home. That was okay, because in those days there was a lot of travelling involved in my job.

Jennifer knew that Ragnhild Bjerke worked for one of the big publishing houses.

– I was away a lot promoting books, especially in the autumn. Often spent nights away.

– Why did he leave you?

Jennifer heard that her question was too private and was about to apologise when Ragnhild Bjerke said:

– He had a very high opinion of his own talent. Was convinced he was a great artist and that nothing must stand in his way. It meant he could allow himself to live any way he liked.

Jennifer didn’t find the answer particularly illuminating but didn’t pursue it.

– For years after he left, he wandered around without settling down anywhere. Suddenly we heard he had a big exhibition in Amsterdam. There were things about him on TV and in the newspapers. Everybody was talking about how this was the big breakthrough. Then it all went quiet again, and nothing came of it. It never did with him. Now he’s in Montreal. He met a young woman who lives there. But he’s been away travelling for several months. They can’t get in touch with him. He still doesn’t know that Mailin is …

Jennifer tried to imagine what it would be like to move so far away from one’s children.

– Canada is quite a long way away, she said, encouraging her visitor to say more.

Ragnhild Bjerke continued to stare at a point far beyond the window. – That’s not the reason he hasn’t seen the girls for so many years. He didn’t even get in touch when he was living in Copenhagen. He chose to live without them. But I think also there was a kind of compulsion involved.

She took out a handkerchief, held it to her nose as though about to sneeze, but took it away again without anything happening.

– He was a tormented man. Not when we first met, not when the children were very small. It started after a few years. Of course I knew his mother had a serious mental illness, and I got worried about him. Tried to get him to see a doctor, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He began staying up all night. Wandering restlessly about the house. Or standing talking to himself by the window.

– Hallucinations?

– I don’t think so. It was as though he was sleeping with his eyes open. Afterwards he couldn’t remember me talking to him.

She took a little tube of lip salve from her handbag and ran it across her dry lips.

– And he had the most dreadful nightmares. Once I found him in Mailin’s bedroom, standing by her bed and screaming. Finally I managed to get through to him. He was shaking, completely beside himself. ‘I didn’t kill them,’ he was shouting. I got him out of there before he woke her up. ‘You haven’t killed anyone, Lasse,’ I kept telling him. ‘I dreamed it,’ he sobbed, ‘and I can’t wake up.’ ‘What did you dream?’ ‘The girls,’ he murmured, ‘I dreamed I cut them up and ate their little bodies.’

She closed her eyes. Jennifer couldn’t think of anything to say. The conversation had taken a direction she had no idea how to deal with. Roar had mentioned several times that the police were trying to get in touch with this father. What she was hearing now, in all confidence, was something that would interest the investigators. She ought to have interrupted and asked for permission to pass this information on.

– I called his doctor the next day, Ragnhild Bjerke continued before Jennifer could make up her mind. – But Lasse refused to go and see him. A couple of weeks later he moved out. He didn’t say goodbye. Not to me. Not to Mailin. But Liss had some idea that he had been there and spoken to her.

She closed her handbag, sat with it on her lap.

– Can you understand why I never told this to Liss? She worshipped her father. Can you understand why it was better for her to blame me for his disappearance and to make me an object of hatred?

Jennifer didn’t know how to respond to that.

– You said you were away a lot, she said instead. – Are you afraid he might have …

Ragnhild Bjerke opened her eyes wide. – He can’t have done … I mean, it was just a nightmare. She shook her head for a long time, slowly. – I would have known. Mailin never hinted at anything of the kind … She tells me everything … always did …

Jennifer suddenly felt helpless and regretted having let things go so far. – Can I offer you something to drink? Coffee?

– A glass of water, perhaps.

With the glass on the table in front of her, Ragnhild Bjerke said: – I know why Liss came here. It’s good to talk to you.

Again Jennifer felt herself flush. – Liss doesn’t trust the police, she said.

– She never has done. Not since she kept getting arrested going on all those innocent demonstrations. And I don’t know, I really don’t, it isn’t easy to sit through those interrogations. Being pressed about the slightest detail. As though they suspected you were the one who’d done something terrible to Mailin. Can you imagine what that’s like, to feel yourself suspected of murdering your own daughter?

Jennifer heard something happening in the woman’s voice and was waiting for it to surface again, but when Ragnhild Bjerke continued, it was still in that same toneless pitch.

– And Tage? He’s the most trustworthy person in the world. He came to us and he was the father the girls had been missing and needed so much. He’s never had any thanks for it. Even I haven’t been good enough at telling him how grateful we ought to be. And then came all these questions about where was he when Mailin went missing, and when did he get back home. And I start thinking how I called him at the office several times that evening. He was supposed to be picking up Viljam, and I wanted to remind him to buy something to eat. He’s always available on the telephone when he works late like that, but on that particular evening …

– You couldn’t get hold of him.

– He said later there was some problem with the phone lines at the institute. But then you get all these questions, and suddenly this doubt is there, it worms its way inwards, and you can’t face trying to think it all through.

– Did you tell the police about the telephone?

She didn’t answer. Again Jennifer thought about asking for her permission to pass the information on, but when she looked into Ragnhild Bjerke’s eyes, she dropped the idea. Certain stones should be left unturned, she decided. Later maybe, if it turned out to be important, but for the time being this woman should be left in peace.

Under the circumstances, even the pleasure of calling DCI Viken with several bits of information his own people hadn’t got hold of was muted.

J
IM
H
ARRIS CAME
running down from Fagerborg, crossed Suhms Street and carried on down Sorgenfri Street. No cars around, he had the whole road to himself. He could run faster a few years earlier, but he still wasn’t far off. Had made up his mind now. No one believed in him any more, no one expected anything. He could hit back from below. Run his way out of it. Pay this debt, then back to the sports academy and set up some training sessions. Not a personal trainer, not yet, no one who mattered would have anything to do with him. But things would turn around. First pay off the thirty thousand. Karam had been asking about him. Repeated the threat to make a cripple of him. The only thing Jim was afraid of. End up in a wheelchair. He’d sent Karam a message. Before the week was over, he’d have his thirty thousand.