The Final Murder (20 page)

Total rubbish, of course, and Vegard Krogh couldn’t be bothered to walk all the way round. It was late in the evening on

Thursday the 19th of February. The snow that had fallen over the past couple of days still lay on the bare branches and covered the ground in a thin blanket between the trees, and thankfully gave off some light. He could at least see his feet in front of him.

He was carrying two desirable designer bags. His mother had

lent him fifteen thousand krone without any hesitation and without the usual complaints that he was grown up now and a married

man, so he had to sort out his own finances. Quite the opposite, she had handed him the money with a twinkle in her eye. In

return, he had promised to spend a couple of evenings with her.

Which was easy enough, with good food on the table and free

wine in his glass.

Fifteen thousand didn’t go far. But he was happy. When he was writing the day’s blog, he was tempted to say something about the invitation. But he didn’t. Discretion, he thought to himself, and stuck to giving an account of his shopping trip. It was an ironic epistle about shops where there were only five garments and two assistants who seemed so bored with life that they might at any moment put a gun to their head.

The most important readers would perhaps understand why he,

who normally only wore jeans and hooded sweatshirts, had suddenly spent a fortune at Kamikaze and Ferner Jacobsen, the shops

where he had eventually found something that he believed was both casual and sharp.

He had released three of the essays from Bungee Jump on his

website. He hadn’t asked the publishers about it. They didn’t make any effort to get the material distributed anyway, so what did it matter? He’d release another two tomorrow morning.

People had devoured them. It was only a couple of hours before the first discussions started. The piece about established popular culture, in particular, had generated debate. He used the milk carton as a metaphor for the welfare state’s excessive mass production.

They tasted of nothing, were of no benefit to anyone and

were to be found everywhere in easily recognizable branded packaging, and were politically correctly recycled ad nauseam. The

essay was called ‘Skimmed Culture’, and once he added a link on Dagbladefs literature pages, things really took off.

Vegard Krogh walked with a light step. His new boots fitted

him like a glove. The solid soles meant that it was no problem to walk on the muddy path.

Maybe he should do a bit more to get a freelance contract with NRK television. Big Studio was not exactly his thing. Too fluffy, obviously, and far too superficial. But the show was fast, and at times could be quite hard-hitting and urban, and Anne Lindmo was a babe.

He would push harder for the job.

Soon he would be out of the woods. He just needed to go round the bend, over the brow of the hill where he had once built a tree house in an old oak tree, and then he would be at his old childhood home by the edge of the woods. His mother had promised to make him food, even if he was late.

Someone was walking behind him. Fear constricted his throat; he recognized the terror he had felt as a boy, when he ran through the woods, out of breath, with ghosts at his heels.

He turned round slowly. He noticed he was gripping his bags

even harder, as if the worst thing that could happen to him was to be robbed of his new clothes.

He realized now that the person wasn’t behind him. The

person emerged from the woods, from between the trees, where there was no path, leaving a necklace of black, uneven footsteps in the new snow. It was difficult to see anything other than the outline of the body. Vegard Krogh was nearly blinded by the beam

from a powerful torch.

Unusual outfit, he noticed.

A white boiler suit.

It rustled quietly.

His fear receded somewhat.

‘Bloody hell,’ Vegard Krogh said, holding up his arm to shield his eyes from the bright light. ‘You’ll scare people sneaking round like that.’

The torch was lowered and turned; now it lit up the other person’s face. From below, like the big boys had done when they tried to frighten the younger kids on those dusky summer nights, when they dared each other to make a terrifying dash over the living dead.

‘You?’ Vegard Krogh said in surprise and irritation; he squinted and looked at the face more closely. ‘You? Is this…?’

He leant forwards, furious now.

‘What are you… you’ve got a bloody…’

He didn’t die when the two-kilo torch hit him with great force on the temple. He simply collapsed and sank to his knees.

The torch struck him again, this time on the back of the head, with a cracking, fleshy sound that would possibly have fascinated him had he been able to hear. But Vegard Krogh was deaf to it. He died before his body hit the freezing, muddy ground.

The first thing that struck Adam Stubo as he followed

Sigmund Berli and Bernt Helle in through the glass doors of

the yellow nursing home just outside Oslo, on the morning of the 20th of February, was the institutional smell. He could not fathom why people in need of nursing care should be forced to live with the reek of overcooked fish and strong detergents. The public sector might well be struggling, but fresh air was free, after all.

When he came into the room where Yvonne Knutsen lay immobile in bed for the third year running, he could hardly resist the urge to open the window.

‘Yvonne,’ Bernt Helle said. ‘It’s me. I’ve got the police with me today. Are you asleep?’

‘No.’

She turned her face towards her son-in-law. Her smile was

reserved. Bernt Helle laid his hand on her lower arm and gave her a quick peck on the cheek. Then he pulled the only chair in the room over to the bed and sat down. Adam and Sigmund stayed

standing just inside the door.

‘I know that you don’t like talking to anyone,’ Bernt Helle said, and wrapped his great hand round Yvonne Knutsen’s emaciated

hand, with blood vessels that traced blue just under the skin.

‘Apart from me and Fiorella, that is. But this is quite important.

You see …’

He ran his hand over his hair and gave an audible sigh.

‘What is it?’ Yvonne asked.

‘You see, something has happened…’

Again he faltered. He fiddled with a tape measure that was

poking out of one of the pockets in his khaki dungarees.

Adam approached the bed.

‘Adam Stubo,’ he said, and raised his hand in greeting. ‘I’ve been here before. Just after …’

‘Yes, I remember that,’ Yvonne Knutsen said. ‘Unfortunately

I’m not senile yet. As far as I can remember, you promised not to bother me again.’

‘Yes, that’s true,’ Adam nodded. ‘But I’m afraid the situation has changed.’

‘Not for me,’ Yvonne replied.

‘There’s been another murder,’ Adam told her.

‘I see,’ said the paralysed woman.

‘And once again, the victim is a celebrity’

‘Who?’

‘Vegard Krogh,’ Adam said.

‘Never heard of the man.’

‘Well, there’s famous and there’s famous. It’s all relative. The point is that we …’

‘The point is that I’m lying here waiting to die,’ Yvonne

Knutsen said in a very calm voice, without a trace of hysteria or self-pity. ‘The sooner the better. And while I’m waiting, I don’t want to be disturbed. Or to talk to anyone. A modest request, if you ask me. Given my condition.’

Adam glanced swiftly up and down the quilt. Not even the

slightest movement to indicate that the person lying there was alive; not even her chest rose visibly beneath the covers. Only her face showed the traces of what had once been a beautiful woman, high forehead and big almond eyes. Her mouth was reduced to a slit between sunken cheeks. But there was still enough information in the pale death mask for Adam to catch a glimpse of Yvonne Knutsen as she must once have been, straight-backed, confident and attractive.

‘I understand,’ he said. ‘Really I do. The problem is that I unfortunately can’t comply with your wish. The situation is now so serious that we have to follow what leads we have.’

‘As I said, I don’t know anyone called Vegard Krag and can …’

‘Krogh,’ Sigmund corrected from where he was standing in the middle of the floor. ‘Vegard Krogh.’

‘Krogh,’ she repeated weakly without even looking in

Sigmund’s direction. ‘I don’t know anyone by that name. So I don’t see how I can help you.’

‘I’ve got some questions about Fiona’s children,’ Adam said

quietly.

‘Fiorella?’ asked the woman in the bed, surprised, looking from Adam to Bernt and back. ‘What about her?’

‘Not Fiorella,’ Adam explained. ‘Her first child. I’d like to know a bit more about the baby Fiona had when she was a

teenager.’

Yvonne Knutsen suddenly changed. Her nose reddened.

Colour spread quickly, like butterfly wings, over her grey skin.

Her breathing was faster and deeper and she made a vain attempt to sit up in bed. Her mouth grew. She licked her lips and they became redder and plumper. Her eyes, which only a moment ago had looked like they’d died already, now sparked with great distress.

Bernt

carefully laid his hand on her chest.

‘Take it easy,’ he said.

‘Bernt,’ she gasped.

‘It’s all right.’

‘But…’

‘Relax.’

Adam Stubo moved even closer. He leant against the high bed

frame and bent down over the sick woman.

‘I realize that this must be very distressing …’

Bernt Helle pushed him away. For the first time during the

long, fruitless investigation into Fiona’s murder, his behaviour was aggressive. He didn’t relent until Adam was standing about a metre from the bed. Then he stroked Yvonne’s hair.

‘Actually, hearing this has been a relief for me,’ he said in a quiet voice, as if the police were no longer there. ‘Fiona was so …

always searching, you know. I often wondered why. I don’t understand why it would’ve been so hard to tell me, though, after all

these years, so many …’

There was an edge of repressed anger in his voice, which he

heard himself and swallowed. Adam noticed that the grip on his mother-in-law’s hand was firmer when he continued:

‘I accept that there’s a lot of this I don’t understand. We have to talk. Properly, I mean. But right now you have to answer Stubo’s questions. It’s important, Yvonne. Please.’

She was crying silently. Her tears were as big as raindrops.

They gathered in the corners of her eyes for a moment before overflowing and running down her temples into her hair.

‘I didn’t want… We thought… It was …’

‘Shhh,’ Bernt comforted. ‘Take it easy’

‘Her life would have been ruined,’ Yvonne whispered. ‘She

wasn’t even sixteen. The baby’s father…’

Speech failed her. A fine stream of transparent fluid escaped from her left nostril and she wiped the back of her hand over her face.

‘He was a good-for-nothing,’ she said loudly. ‘And Fiona was just about to start upper secondary. The boy ran away and it was too late to … I should have noticed, of course, but who would … Teenagers have a right to a private life too. And a bit of puppy fat… I…’

‘Yvonne,’ Bernt Helle said firmly, trying to look her in the eyes.

‘Listen to me. Just listen to me for a minute!’

She had turned away from her son-in-law. She was trying to pull her hand from his firm grip.

‘Listen to me,’ he repeated, as if he was talking to a rebellious daughter. ‘The two of us can take all the time we need to talk about this later. But what is important right now, is that the police get some answers.’

No one said anything. Yvonne had given up the fight with her reluctant muscles. She lay there helpless once again, bereft of energy. Even her hair looked lifeless, spread out grey and thin across the pillow.

‘He’s called Mats Bohus,’ she said suddenly, the same old

voice, dismissive and indifferent at the same time.

‘Sorry?’

‘Mats Bohus. He was born on the thirteenth of October 1978. I don’t know any more.’

‘How can you …’ Bernt Helle started, but couldn’t finish the question.

Once again, Adam approached the bed.

‘And this Mats got in touch with Fiona recently,’ he stated, as if he didn’t need confirmation from Yvonne.

She mumbled in agreement all the same, without looking at

Adam.

‘Before or after New Year?’ he asked.

‘Before Christmas,’ Yvonne whispered. ‘He was… he is…’

Her nose would not stop running. Bernt Helle fished out a

handkerchief from a drawer in the bedside table and gave it to her.

She had just enough energy to lift her left hand and put the hanky to her nose.

‘I sent her away,’ she said. ‘I sent Fiona to my sister in Dokka.

Far enough away. Secluded enough to prevent any questions.’

Adam shuddered when the woman laughed. She sounded like

a wounded crow; her laughter was hoarse, grating and joyless.

‘Then she gave birth prematurely,’ Yvonne continued. ‘I wasn’t there. No one was there. They just about died, both of them.

Then …’

She gulped as she breathed in and then coughed so much that

Bernt sat her up in bed. When the coughing eventually subsided, he carefully wiped around her mouth and lowered her back down.

‘There was something wrong with the boy,’ she said, her voice hard, ‘but it was no longer our problem.’

‘Something wrong with the boy,’ Adam repeated. ‘What

exactly?’

‘He was too big. Slow, heavy and unbelievably … ugly.’

For a split second, Adam envisaged Ragnihld just after she had been taken from her mother’s womb, red, slimy and helplessly un-beautiful. He put his hand to his mouth and coughed. His

eyes narrowed. Yvonne Knutsen didn’t appear to notice his disapproval.

‘What

happened then?’ Bernt Helle asked almost inaudibly.