Medusa (32 page)

– A pair of handcuffs, he said. – My wife and I … we bought them for a laugh. It was a long time ago.

– Who did you say bought them?

Axel thought back.

– It was me.

– And who usually wears them?

– Well, I’ve tried them too, yes.

Detective Chief Inspector Viken’s face remained as expressionless as a mask. But there was a hint in the eyes that he was enjoying himself.

– How did you meet Miriam Gaizauskaite?

Finally, a question Axel had been expecting.

– I was her supervisor during her practical training in general medicine.

– Supervisor? Is that all?

– We’ve been together.

– What does that mean?

– We had a relationship. A couple of weeks.

– Sexual?

– Yes.

– And your wife, does she know about this?

– Not yet.

– And you think it’s okay to deceive her?

– No.

Here Norbakk interrupted.

– You say you
had
a relationship.

Axel felt relieved at being asked the question.

– It can’t go on, he said.

– Nonetheless, you’ve rung her twelve times in just the last twenty-four hours, Viken countered. – That doesn’t sound as if you’re completely finished with the young lady yet.

Without a pause he continued: – When did you last see your twin brother?

Now Axel tried to hold the chief inspector’s gaze.

– Years ago. Don’t exactly remember when. Ten, maybe twelve.

Before he had time to think any more about it, Viken was at him again.

– In the photo albums from your childhood, there is not a single picture of you and Brede together. Not one fucking photo. That bothers us, Glenne. Anything like that, where we don’t understand shit, that bothers us.

Axel looked up at the video camera, then at the wall, then at the table between them.

– Brede isn’t in any of the pictures in those albums, he said. – All the pictures are of me.

A low growling sound emanated from Viken’s throat.

– You’d better explain that to us, he insisted.

– There’s nothing to explain. Brede was sent away to a kind of institution. All his possessions were given away. All the photos with him in them were removed.

– Removed? Who did that?

– My mother, I suppose. Nothing was ever said about it.

Viken looked to be chewing this over.

– You told your wife that several of the photos in the album are of Brede.

Axel struggled to know what to say.

– Give us the name of one person who knows him, Viken suddenly asked. – Somebody we can get in touch with who can confirm that this twin brother really existed.

A space seemed to open up. A cold wind blew in through it, and Axel heard his father’s voice:
You must always pay your dues, Axel.

– I want my lawyer, he said as firmly as he could. – Before we go any further.

Now there was no doubt about it: the detective chief inspector’s lips moved.

Enough to show a small amount of pink gum.

Axel knew several lawyers. Just four days earlier, he’d been at the fiftieth birthday celebrations of one of them. He’d been standing in the dark out on the terrace and looking up into a starry sky. That was in the days when he still believed he could choose how the rest of his life would be.

He couldn’t face the thought of involving someone he knew. At this stage someone chosen by the authorities would be good enough. At this stage? He was still thinking it would all be over by nightfall, or at the latest the following day. He’d thought he would be going to work. With patients to look after. Then home afterwards. Dimly he became aware that this was not how it was going to be.

The defence lawyer’s name was Elton. A skinny little guy about his own age, with square designer glasses and a slim-fit shirt that would have suited someone twenty years younger. His voice was slim fit too. Axel had thought that what he needed was someone who could steer a boat. That way he could lie down in the bottom and not look over the railings until they were in the harbour. Elton didn’t look like a skipper at all, but he’d got hold of the documents relating to the case and glanced through them. Afterwards he announced confidently: – Let’s hope this is all they have, Axel. I think they’re taking a flyer here. And if that’s the case, you’ll be a free man very soon.

When the interrogation resumed, Norbakk had been replaced by a young woman. She had a Bergen accent and was quite pretty, both factors that had a calming effect on Axel. There was something about the pitch of her voice that he liked. She’d taken over the part of the helpful and friendly one, read him his rights as an accused person all over again. He didn’t catch her name.

Viken picked up where he had left off a couple of hours earlier. Why had the twin brother been expelled from the family? Why had Axel not managed to get in touch with him all these years? Who could confirm that he actually existed? None of these questions excited any particular reaction from Elton, but he wanted to know why the investigators hadn’t managed to trace the twin brother using public records. Once he had been given the explanation, he advised his client to answer as fully as possible.

Axel had managed to think things over during the break. Prepare what he intended to say about Brede. Not a version based on lies, but one that avoided essentials. All these questions about his twin brother confirmed something he had had only a strange and inexplicable hunch about: that Brede was involved in the murders of the three women. Yet it merely left him still more confused, and when he was asked what he’d been doing wandering about in the Oslo forests for almost a whole day and night after he’d stumbled across Anita Elvestrand’s body, he had trouble answering. Viken leaned towards him like a hound picking up the scent of its prey. Had anyone seen him up there? He had met a tramp. Could he describe him? Wasn’t it odd that he kept on going back up into the woods? That he always seemed to be up there at roughly the times when the murders were committed? Again and again Viken came back to this business of
What were you doing up there?
And each time it became more and more difficult to avoid giving an answer.

Viken said: – Now let me help you, Glenne. I’ll run through the case for you. It’s hard to start talking. But once you’re over the first hurdle, you’ll feel as though a great burden has been lifted from your shoulders.

His voice had taken on a more conciliatory tone, as though he wanted to be a friend, an intimate friend.

– Let’s start with Thursday September twenty-seventh.

In detail he went over what Axel had told them about the bike ride in the forest. The swim in the tarn, the puncture.

– On your way back, you meet someone you know. She’s a physiotherapist, and you’ve worked with her on several occasions over the years. Let’s halt there for a moment. We’ll come back to it later. But first a bit about your family background, Axel Glenne.

Viken started talking about his father. Portrayed a man who always demanded the utmost of himself and of others. Someone whose demands his son did everything he could to live up to, but could never quite meet. A remote, punitive, god-like figure of whom Axel was terrified. But it was the mother Viken really wanted to talk about. He described her as
an
insensitive and superficial woman who always put her own needs above those of others.
Someone who had bullied her son and made him feel like a nothing. Axel, becoming increasingly confused, did not interrupt. Where had Viken got all this about his parents from?

– You might well have needed a brother. Someone to carry the burden of the suffering you endured at home. Because you were a lonely child, weren’t you, Axel? So lonely you had to invent a twin brother, since you didn’t have one.

Axel almost burst out laughing, but he was just too tired. It stuck in his throat like a ball. Viken carried on a while longer, talking about Axel’s life, the expectations, the rejections, the punishments, the emotional coldness. Then abruptly he was back in the Nordmarka again.

– You see that woman standing there, Axel. What takes place inside you at that precise moment?

Axel was still completely bewildered by the man on the other side of the table. Viken was obviously playing a game, but one that was becoming more and more difficult to understand. All Axel knew was that the rules changed the whole time.

– Nothing special, he choked out. – I hardly knew her.

– Hardly knew her. And yet all the same, that rage flared up inside you. Rage because she was an older woman. Because here she was, standing directly in front of you, blocking your way, so to speak. Things start to get thick, dense. Things start to happen you have no control over. You grab hold of her, drag her off the path and into the trees.

– No!

He heard his own voice. He should not have shouted. He should have answered calmly. Or else shaken his head with a weary smile. But he shouted because suddenly he felt an urge to say,
Yes, that’s what happened
. A temptation to assume the blame, to be so weighted down with blame he might sink to the very bottom, to a place where it was not possible to go any lower. He shouted because, in spite of it all, he did not wish to drown.

– What are you doing? he groaned. He turned to Elton, but the lawyer sat with his eyes looking straight ahead, clearly having no objections to the chief inspector’s methods.

– Let’s put it like this, Axel, Viken said in an understanding way. – Let’s say it wasn’t you who did it. Let’s imagine it was someone else who showed up at just that moment and dragged Hilde Paulsen off into the trees. Can you visualise that?

Axel bit his split lip.

– I’m certain that with an imagination like yours you can see it. It isn’t you who does this, it’s someone else. He looks like you, he’s your double. Your twin. The evil shadow that has followed you ever since you were a child. The person who suddenly takes over and does things you would never have done yourself. Things so terrible you can’t bear to think about them, things you would have stopped happening had you been able to. Let us call him Brede.

Axel stared at him in astonishment. Viken’s eyebrows were like hairy larvae, coiling and arching, not going anywhere.

– It is Brede who drags Hilde Paulsen off into the trees with him. He ties her up, hides her. A few hours later he comes back with a child-trailer, the thing kids sit in. He takes her to a place that only he knows about. Keeps her prisoner for several days in a cellar. Sedates her using a product that is familiar to you as a doctor, Axel. It’s called thiopental. Brede feels all-powerful as he stands there over the defenceless body. He can decide exactly how much longer she has to live. To the second when she is to die. He picks up a bear’s paw he has lying there. He’s no longer human now. He’s a powerful animal. He is God. He slashes her skin with the sharp claws, many times, uttering the kind of sounds an animal would make. Then he kills her. Pushes the hypodermic into her thigh. The final dose.

Viken never once took his eyes off Axel. Axel avoided them.

– After that, he takes her back into the wood, not too far away from the place where he first met her. He uses the same child-trailer. She’s a small woman and there’s plenty of room for her when he folds her over. Is it possible for you, Axel, to imagine that that is exactly how it happened?

He couldn’t bring himself to respond. Viken continued with his story. Now it was about Cecilie Davidsen. Axel goes to see her at the house in Vindern with the results of a test. His normal practice is to give patients this type of information at the clinic. Unless it was Brede who suddenly thought of visiting her at home? A few days later, Thursday October the eleventh, he follows his patient through the evening darkness. He attacks her, sedates her, drags her into his car. He kills her in the same way as he killed Hilde Paulsen. But he goes further this time, rips up more skin with the bear claws. Then he dumps the body in Frogner Park. It’s spectacular. The whole of Oslo is talking about it. It’s inconceivable, it’s evil, it’s as though someone or something very powerful is behind it all.

Then it’s Anita Elvestrand’s turn. She’s the neighbour of the beautiful young woman Axel has started spending his nights with. That’s why he chooses her. A sign to his twin brother. I’m close, Axel, I’m with you, following you, like a shadow. Even when you’re in bed with your student. He visits her on the night of Friday October the nineteenth. Somehow or other he persuades her to go out to his car with him. She gets in, and she’s already on her way to the place where the two other women lost their lives. A remote cabin perhaps. Or a summer place in Larkollen. Axel spends Monday night with his student. He gets her drunk on red wine. And while she’s asleep, that’s when it happens. The remains of Anita Elvestrand are brought in through the gate, probably using the same child-trailer that was used for Hilde Paulsen. She is carried upstairs and dumped in front of the door to the flat where the student and Axel are sleeping. – Because that’s what you’re doing, isn’t it, Axel? Or maybe you weren’t sleeping in her bed after all? Were you helping Brede carry a body?

Viken paused for a long time. A minute passed without anything being said. Maybe two minutes. Axel understood why that time was there. It was there for him to start talking in. And in the middle of this absurd game, he was pained at the thought of once again being asked to betray Brede.

The silence was broken by Elton’s feminine but surprisingly authoritative voice.

– Time to wrap this up, he said, tapping on his D&G watch with his index finger.

It was now five o’clock in the morning. But Viken had been given both time added on and extra time. He was back in his role as the tenacious Rottweiler that never lets go. Axel was still managing to keep it together, but it took him longer and longer to come up with answers to even the most simple questions. Why did he still have a child-trailer in the bike shed? Wasn’t his daughter nine years old? When was the last time it had been used? And where were the socks he was wearing when he found the dead woman outside the door?