The Final Murder (30 page)

In summer this place must be unbearable. Even with shuttered windows and unwelcoming shop doors, closed for the winter, the signs of the summer season were obvious. Souvenir shops stood wall to wall, and on the few small squares that opened out in the heart of the town she saw the scars from scraping chairs and countless cigarettes that had been stubbed out on the cobbles. As she

walked by herself along the wall facing the sea, she imagined the sound of the summer hordes, chirruping Japanese and loud redcheeked Germans.

She was a veritable wanderer now. She had gradually discovered the old paths and found ways to avoid the main roads that

were dangerous, with no pavements and a steady flow of roaring traffic.

Her new duffel coat was warm without being completely windproof.

She had bought it in Nice along with three pairs of trousers, four sweaters, a handful of skirts and a suit that she wasn’t really sure she would dare to use. When she came to France, just before Christmas, she only had with her two pairs of shoes. They were now in the rubbish container down on the street. Yesterday

evening she had resolutely put them in a plastic bag and dropped them into the container, even though one pair was barely half a year old. They were brown and solid. Sensible shoes, best suited for a middle-aged housewife.

The duffel coat was beige and her Camper shoes were comfortable to walk in. The lady in the shop hadn’t so much as raised

an eyebrow when she asked to try them on. A young boy sat

beside her on one of the bright yellow pouffes and tried on the same shoes. When he caught her eye, he gave a friendly smile.

Nodded in appreciation. She bought two pairs. They were very comfortable.

She walked.

Walking made it easier to think. It was during her long, slow walks along the sea, in the mountains and across the steep hillsides between Nice and Cap-d’Ail that she felt most acutely that

her life had been injected with new vigour. Sometimes, often when she came home at night, she felt a tiredness in her muscles that was a wonderful reminder of her strength. She would take off her clothes and wander naked around the house, her reflection in the windows confirming the changes she was going through. She drank wine, but never too much. She enjoyed the food, whether she made it herself or went to a restaurant where she was recognized, always recognized now, by polite waiters who pulled out her chair and remembered that she liked to have a glass of champagne before her meal.

Over the past few days, she had been filled with a sense of gratitude.

She

had driven directly from Copenhagen, where she had left her car in an anonymous car park before taking the ferry to Oslo and back. Ferry passenger lists between Denmark and Norway were a joke. She travelled as Eva Hansen and stayed in her cabin. Both ways. Then after one night in a hotel, she managed to sit behind the wheel for thirty-five hours, without ever really getting tired. She did feel a stiffness in her muscles and joints whenever she took a short break, small detours from the main road to fill the tank or to eat in a roadside cafe in a German village or along the Rhone. But she never felt the need for sleep.

She delivered the car back to the Moroccan waiter at the Cafe de la Paix. He was well rewarded for the bother of hiring the car in his name. He might perhaps not have entirely believed her explanation that she really needed a car but because she had a bad cold she wanted to avoid an unnecessary trip into Nice. As he was going back to Morocco and a newly opened restaurant owned by his father, he accepted the money with a smile and no questions.

Then she walked home. As soon as her head hit the pillow, she fell into a dreamless slumber that lasted for eleven hours.

She had derived no pleasure from all those years of meticulous planning, gathering detailed information and painstaking research, other than that it was her work. It was necessary if she was to do the job she was paid for. She was good and had never been caught out. No one could say that she made mistakes, was sloppy, or took shortcuts whenever she could.

Despite everything, she was grateful for those lifeless years.

They had given her knowledge and insight.

Even though the filing cabinet was in Norway, she could

remember enough. The huge metal cabinet contained information about the people she had studied. Known and unknown.

Famous people and celebrities, alongside the postman from Otta who always filled her postbox with junk mail, despite the clear notice that it was not welcome. She registered people’s weaknesses and routines, observed their desires and needs, stowed

their love lives, secrets and movements in files and stored it all in a huge grey metal cabinet.

She wasn’t sloppy. The secret of her trade was knowledge. Her memory never failed her.

All those living-dead years were not wasted. She was grateful for them now. She could assemble an AG-3 blindfolded and

hotwire a car in thirty seconds. It would take her less than a week to get hold of a false passport and she had an overview of the Scandinavian heroin market that the police would envy. She knew people that no one else wanted to know, she knew them well; but none of them knew her.

It had got colder. An insidious wind blew down from the hills, dispersing the mist out at sea. The duffel was not protection enough, so she hurried down the mountain path. It was too cold to walk all the way back home. If the bus came when it was due, she would take it. If not, she could always treat herself to a taxi.

She had become more generous recently.

Suddenly a splash of colour appeared in the sky to the north. A person swayed rhythmically from side to side under an orange paraglider. Another paraglider appeared over the top of the hill, red and yellow, with green writing that it was impossible to read.

A sudden turbulence made the fabric flap. The glider lost its lift and dropped some fifty or sixty metres before the pilot managed to regain control and slowly cut down into the valley below her.

She followed him with her eyes and laughed softly.

They thought they were challenging fate.

Extreme sport had always provoked her, primarily because she thought the people who did it were pathetic. Of course, not

everyone had been granted an exciting life. Quite the contrary.

Most of the world’s six billion people, the greater part of the inhabitants of Europe and probably all of the Norwegian population, lived uneventful lives. Their fight for survival consisted of getting enough food to live, taking care of their children, finding a better job or having the newest car in the neighbourhood.

Human existence was and would always be a mere bagatelle. The fact that depraved, spoilt young people found it necessary to defy death by jumping and diving from sheer rock faces at great speed was an expression of Western decadence that she had always

scorned.

Loathed.

They suffered from ennui because they believed they deserved something else, something better than what life in fact was to most: an insignificant period of time between life and death.

‘They think they can escape from the meaninglessness of life,’

she thought to herself. ‘By throwing themselves over the edge of Trollveggen with a parachute made from unreliable fabric. Or crossing one of the Poles. Climbing an unclimbable mountain.

They want to go higher, further, and to more daring lengths. They don’t notice the boredom that constantly shadows them, grey and sneering. They don’t see it until they’ve landed, before they’re safely at home. So they repeat the exercise, do something different, more dangerous, more daring, until they either understand

that you can’t outwit life or they meet their death attempting to prove the opposite.’

The paragliders were nearly down now, they were aiming to

land on a slope with long rows of dwarf vines. She thought she could hear them laughing. Only imagination, obviously, as the wind was in the wrong direction and the bottom of the valley was far away. But she could see the two pilots slapping each other on the back and jumping up and down with excitement. Two women

came running up the terraced slope. They waved happily.

She still felt disgusted by the way they played arbitrarily with death.

The only thing they risked was their lives.

Dying was nothing more than a pleasant end to the boredom.

And dying also enhanced your reputation, as obituaries were full of praise, not truth. If you died young, life had not yet aged you, made you ugly, fat or skinny. A person who doesn’t live to be old leaves behind a tragic memento: a glamorized, redeeming story where what was boring becomes exciting and what was ugly

becomes beautiful.

She thought about Vegard Krogh and bit her tongue.

She didn’t want to read about him any more. The articles were all lies. Journalists and acquaintances, friends and family all contributed to the image that was drawn of Krogh, the artist. An

uncompromising and upright champion of what was genuine and

true. A colourful spirit, a fearless soldier in the service of that great and incorruptible force, culture.

She swore out loud and started to run down the road. The bus was just pulling out from the bus stop down on the main road, but stopped when the driver saw her. She paid and plumped down

into an empty seat.

She would be going back to Norway for good soon.

That is, she had to leave the house in Villefranche. The contract had been extended until the 1st of March, but not longer. In just over a week she would be homeless, unless she went home.

She pictured her flat, tastefully decorated and far too big for one person. Only the steel cabinet in the bedroom broke with the soft style she had copied from an interiors magazine. She’d bought most of the stuff at IKEA, but had also come across a couple of the more expensive items in the sales.

She somehow didn’t fit in to her flat in Norway.

She seldom had guests and didn’t need the space. When she

was at home, she generally sat in the untidy study and therefore didn’t really get much pleasure from the fact that the rest of the flat was so tasteful. In fact, she had never really felt at home there.

It was more like living in a hotel. On her many trips to Europe, she had stayed in rooms that felt more personal, warmer and more comfortable than her own sitting room.

She didn’t fit in in Norway at all. Norway was not for people like her. She felt suffocated by its grand egalitarian philosophy.

Excluded by the narrow-minded, exclusive elite. Norway was not big enough for someone like her, she was not recognized for what she was and had therefore chosen to protect herself with the cloak of anonymity. Aloof. Invisible. They didn’t want to see her. So she wouldn’t show herself to them.

The bus rolled westwards. The suspension was French and not

good enough. She had to close her eyes so as not to feel sick.

To risk dying was no great feat. The danger they exposed

themselves to, these mountaineers and air acrobats, solitary rowers in fragile boats crossing the Atlantic and motorcyclists performing death-defying stunts in front of audiences charged with the hope that something might go terribly wrong, was limited to the journey they each took, whether it lasted three seconds or eight

weeks, one minute or maybe one year.

She was taking a gamble on life itself. The suspense of never landing, of never achieving her goal, made her unique. The risk increased each day, as she hoped it would and wanted it to. It was constantly there, intense and invigorating, the danger of being caught and exposed.

She leant her forehead against the window. Evening was

falling. The lights had been lit along the promenade below. A light rain darkened the asphalt.

There was nothing to indicate that they were getting closer. Despite the clues she had left, the obvious invitation in the pattern she had chosen, the police were still at a loss. It was so

annoying and made her more determined to continue. Of course, the fact that the woman had just had a baby did upset the equation a bit. The timing was not optimal, she had already known

that when she started, but there were limits to what she could control.

Maybe it would be a good thing to go home. To get closer.

Run a greater risk.

The bus stopped and she got off. It was pouring with rain now and she ran all the way home. It was the evening of the 24th of February.

aybe there’s someone behind it all, who’s manipulating the

.situation,’ said Adam Stubo, and tucked into his chicken

in yoghurt sauce. ‘That’s her latest theory. I’m not too sure.’

He smiled with his mouth full of food.

‘How d’you mean?’ asked Sigmund Berli. ‘That someone’s getting other people to do the killing, or what? Duping them?’

He broke off a piece of nan bread, held it between his thumb and finger and peered at it suspiciously.

‘Is this some kind of bread?’

‘Nan,’ Adam replied. ‘Try it. The theory isn’t that stupid. I mean, it’s pretty logical. In a way. If we accept that Mats Bohus actually killed Fiona Helle but none of the others, then it’s plausible that someone is behind it all. Pulling the strings. An

overriding motive, as it were. But at the same time …’

Sigmund chewed and chewed. Didn’t manage to swallow.

‘For Christ’s sake,’ whispered Adam, and leant over the table.

‘Pull yourself together. There’ve been Indian restaurants in Norway for thirty years! You’re behaving as if it’s snake meat you’re eating. It’s bread, Sigmund. Just bread.’

‘That guy over there’s not an Indian,’ his colleague muttered, and nodded in the direction of the waiter, a middle-aged man with a trimmed moustache and a kind smile. ‘He’s a Paki.’

The handle of Adam’s knife came crashing down onto the table.

‘Cut it out,’ he hissed. ‘I owe you a lot, Sigmund, but not

enough to accept that kind of crap. I’ve told you a thousand times, keep that bloody …’

I meant Pakistani. Sorry. But he is a Pakistani. Not an Indian. And my stomach can’t cope with things that are too spicy.’