But Anton had told Laura about the baton a couple of weeks later. And it was she who ultimately persuaded him it should be reported and that it wasn’t up to him to assess how important the find was. So he had done it. He had gone to his boss and told him what he had found. “A serious miscalculation,” the Chief of Police had called it. And the thanks he had received for spending his day off trying to help a murder investigation had been that they dropped him from active service and put him in an office answering a phone. In one fell swoop he had lost everything. For what? No one said it aloud, but René was generally known as a cold, unscrupulous bastard who had cheated friends and strangers alike, a person most considered the world was better off without. But the most mortifying part of the whole business had been that Krimteknisk hadn’t found any traces on the baton to link it with the murder. After three months of being incarcerated in the office Anton had the choice of going insane, resigning or getting himself moved. So he rang his old friend and colleague Gunnar Hagen, and he got him a job with Oslo Police. Professionally, what Gunnar offered him was a step backwards, but at least Anton was among people, and villains, in Oslo, and anything was better than the stale air of Drammen, where they tried to copy Oslo, calling their little station “Police HQ,” and even the address sounded plagiarised: Grønland 36 as compared with Oslo’s Grønlandsleiret.
Anton came over the brow of the hill, and his right foot automatically jumped on the brake when he saw the light. The tyres chewed gravel. Then the car came to a standstill. Rain was hammering down on the car, almost drowning the sound of the engine. A torch twenty metres ahead was lowered. The headlights picked up the reflectors on the orange-and-white tape and the yellow police vest of the person who had just lowered the torch. He waved him closer, and Anton drove on. This was where, behind the barrier, René’s car had driven off. They had used a breakdown truck with a crane and steel cables to drag the wreck up the river to the disused sawmill, where they’d managed to haul it onto land. They’d had to wriggle the body of René Kalsnes free as the engine had been knocked through into the car at hip height.
Anton pressed the button to open the window. Damp, chilly night air. Great, heavy raindrops hit the edge of the window, sending a fine spray over his neck.
“Well,” he said. “Where …?”
Anton blinked. He wasn’t sure if he had completed the sentence. It was like a tiny jump in time, a bad edit in a film, he didn’t know what had happened, just that he was absent. He looked down at his lap, at the fragments of glass there. He looked up again and discovered that the top part of the window was smashed. Opened his mouth, was about to ask what was going on. Heard something whistle through the air, sensed what it was, wanted to raise his arm, but was too slow. Heard a crunch. Realised it came from his own head, something breaking into pieces. Raised his arm, screamed. Got his hand on the gearstick, tried to put it in reverse. But it wouldn’t go. Everything was moving in slow motion. Wanted to slip the clutch, accelerate, but that would only send them forwards. Towards the edge. To the precipice. Straight down into the river. Forty metres. This was … This was … He shook the gear lever and pulled at it. Heard the rain more clearly and felt the chilly night air down the whole of the left side of his body now. Someone had opened the door. The clutch. Where was his foot? This was a carbon copy. Reverse gear. There we are.
Mikael Bellman stared up at the ceiling. Listened to the reassuring patter of rain on the roof. Dutch tiles. Guaranteed to last forty years. Mikael wondered how many tiles they sold just as a result of this guarantee. More than enough to pay for the ones that didn’t last that long. If there was one thing people wanted it was a guarantee that things would last.
Ulla lay with her head on his chest.
They had spoken. Spoken at length. For the first time he could remember. She had cried. Not the painful tears he hated but the others, the gentle tears that denoted less pain, more loss, the loss of something that had been and could never return. The tears that told him something in their relationship had been so precious it was worth the loss. He didn’t feel the loss until she cried. It was as though he needed her tears to show him. They removed the curtain that was normally there; the curtain between what Mikael Bellman thought and what Mikael Bellman felt. She was crying for them both, she always had done. She had laughed for them both as well.
He had wanted to comfort her. Had stroked her hair. Allowed her tears to wet the light blue shirt she had ironed for him the day before. Then he had, almost inadvertently, kissed her. Or had it been consciously? Had it been out of curiosity? The curiosity to know how she would react, the same kind of curiosity he had felt when he, as a young detective, had questioned suspects according to the Inbau, Reid and Buckley nine-step model, the step where they press the emotional button just to see what reaction they get.
At first Ulla had not reacted to the kiss, she had just stiffened. Then she had responded gently. He knew her kisses but not this one. The tentative, hesitant one. Then he had kissed her with more hunger. And she had taken off. Dragged him into bed. Torn off his clothes. And in the darkness he’d had the thought again. That she wasn’t him. Gusto. And his erection had subsided even before they were under the duvet.
He had explained that he was too tired. He’d had too much to think about. The situation was too confusing, the shame of what he had done too great. Hastening to add that she, the other woman, had nothing to do with it. And he was able to tell himself that this was actually true.
He closed his eyes again. But it was impossible to sleep. There was the unrest, the same unrest he had woken to over recent months, a vague feeling that something terrible had happened or was about to happen, and for some time he hoped it was just the lingering effect of a dream until he remembered it.
Something made him open his eyes again. A light. A white light on the ceiling. From the floor beside his bed. He turned and looked down at the display on his phone. On silent, but always on. He had agreed with Isabelle that they should never send messages at night. What her reason was, he had never asked. And she had appeared to take it well when he explained that they wouldn’t be able to see each other for a while. Even though he thought she had understood what he meant. That the bit about “a while” should be deleted.
Mikael was relieved when he saw the text was from Truls. Then taken aback. Drunk probably. Or maybe the wrong number, maybe it was meant for a woman he hadn’t mentioned. The text consisted of two words:
Sleep well.
Anton Mittet woke up.
The first thing he registered was the sound of rain, which was now no more than a light mumble on the windscreen. Then that the engine was switched off, his head ached and he couldn’t move his hands.
He opened his eyes.
The headlamps were still on. They shone down along the ground, through the rain and into the darkness where the land suddenly vanished. The wet windscreen prevented him from seeing the spruce forest on the other side of the gorge, but he knew it was there. Uninhabited. Silent. Blind. They hadn’t been able to find witnesses that time. Not that time either.
He looked at his hands. The reason he couldn’t move them was that they were bound to the wheel with plastic ties. The ties had almost completely taken over from handcuffs in the police force now. You just put the narrow bands around the wrists of the arrestee and tightened them, they restrained even the strongest suspects; the most anyone who struggled could achieve was deep cuts into the skin and the flesh. To the bone, if they didn’t give up.
Anton gripped the wheel, with no feeling in his fingers.
“Awake?” The voice sounded strangely familiar. Anton turned to the passenger seat. Stared into the eyes peering through the holes of a balaclava. Same type Delta, the special forces, used.
“Let’s release this, shall we?”
The gloved left hand gripped the handbrake between them and lifted it. Anton had always liked the rasp of the old handbrakes, it gave him a sense of the mechanics, of cogs and chains, of what was ac
tually happening. This time it was lifted and released with barely a murmur. Just a slight crunch. The cogs. They rolled forward. But only a metre or two. Anton had instinctively stamped his foot on the brake pedal. He’d had to stamp hard as the engine was not switched on.
“Good reactions, Mittet.”
Anton stared through the windscreen. The voice. That voice. He took his foot off the brake. It creaked like an unlubricated door hinge, the car moved and he stamped his foot back down. And held it there this time.
The interior light came on.
“Do you think René knew he was going to die?”
Anton Mittet didn’t answer. He had just caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. At least he thought it was him. His face was covered with glistening blood. His nose was swollen on one side, probably broken.
“How does it feel, Mittet? Knowing? Can you tell me that?”
“Wh … why?” Anton’s question was almost an automatic response. He wasn’t even sure if he wanted to know why. Just knew he was freezing cold. And that he wanted to get away. He wanted to go to Laura. To hold her. To be held by her. Smell her fragrance. Feel her warmth.
“Haven’t you worked it out, Mittet? It’s because you didn’t solve the case, of course. I’m giving you all another chance. An opportunity to learn from earlier mistakes.”
“L … learn?”
“Did you know that psychological research has shown that slightly negative feedback enhances your performance? Not very negative and not positive, but just a bit negative. Punishing all of you, killing just one detective from the group at a time, is like a series of slightly negative reports, don’t you think?”
The wheels creaked, and Anton stamped on the pedal again. Staring at the edge. It felt as though he would have to press even harder.
“It’s the brake fluid,” the voice said. “I punctured the pipe. It’s running out. Soon it won’t help however hard you press. Do you think you’ll be able to think while you’re falling? Or regret what you’ve done?”
“Regret wha …?” Anton wanted to go on, but no more words came, his mouth seemed to be filled with flour. Fall. He didn’t want to fall.
“Regret taking the baton,” the voice said. “Regret not helping to find the murderer. It could have saved you from this, you know.”
Anton had a feeling he was squeezing the fluid out via the pedal, that the harder he pressed, the quicker the fluid was being drained from the system. He eased the pressure with his foot. The gravel under the tyres crunched, and in his panic he pushed his back against the seat and straightened his legs against the floor and the brake pedal. The car had two separate hydraulic brake systems; maybe just one of them had been punctured.
“If you repent perhaps your sins will be forgiven, Mittet. Jesus is magnanimous.”
“I … I repent. Get me out.”
Low laughter. “But, Mittet, I’m talking about heaven. I’m not Jesus. You won’t get any forgiveness from me.” Little pause. “And the answer is yes, I punctured both systems.”
For a moment Anton thought he could hear the brake fluid dripping from under the car until he noticed that it was his own blood dripping from the tip of his chin into his lap. He was going to die. It was suddenly such an inalienable fact that a chill washed through his body and it became more difficult to move, as though rigor mortis had already set in. But why was the murderer still sitting beside him?
“You’re frightened of dying,” the voice said. “It’s your body; it’s secreting a scent. Can you smell it? Adrenalin. It smells of medicine and urine. It’s the same odour you smell in old people’s homes and slaughterhouses. The smell of mortal fear.”
Anton gasped for air; there didn’t seem to be enough for both of them.
“As for me, I’m not at all afraid of dying,” the voice said. “Isn’t it strange? That you can lose something so fundamentally human as the fear of dying. Of course, it’s partly to do with the desire to live, but only partly. Many people spend their whole lives somewhere they don’t want to be out of fear that the alternative is worse. Isn’t that sad?”
Anton had a sense he was being suffocated. He had never had asthma himself, but he had seen Laura when she had an attack, seen the desperate, imploring expression on her face, felt the despair at not being able to help, at being no more than a spectator of her panic-stricken struggle to breathe. But a part of him had also been curious, wanting to know, to feel what it was like to be there, to feel you were on the verge of dying, to feel there was nothing you could do, it was something that was being done to you.
Now he knew.
“I believe death is a better place,” the voice intoned. “But I can’t join you now, Anton. You see, I have a job to do.”
Anton could hear the crunching of gravel again, like a hoarse voice slowly introducing a sentence with this sound that would soon go faster. And it was no longer possible to press the pedal any further, it was on the floor.
“Goodbye.”
He felt the cold air from the passenger’s side as the door was opened.
“The patient,” Anton groaned.
He stared ahead at the edge, where everything disappeared, but felt the person in the passenger seat turn towards him.
“Which patient?”
Anton stuck out his tongue, ran it along his top lip, sensing something moist that tasted sweet and metallic. Licked the inside of his mouth. Found his voice. “The patient at the Rikshospital. I was drugged before he was killed. Was that you?”
There was a couple of seconds’ silence as he listened to the rain. The rain out there in the darkness, was there a more beautiful sound? If he could have chosen he would have sat there listening to the sound day after day. Year after year. Listening and listening, enjoying every second he was given.
Then the body beside him moved, he felt the car rise as it was relieved of the man’s weight. The door closed softly. He was alone. The car was moving. The sound of tyres rolling slowly on gravel was like a husky whisper. The handbrake. It was fifty centimetres away from his right hand. Anton tried to pull his hands away. Didn’t even feel the pain as the skin burst. The husky whisper was louder and quicker now. He knew he was too tall and too stiff to get a foot under the handbrake, so he leaned down. Opened his mouth. Held the tip of the handbrake, felt it pressing against the inside of his upper teeth, pulled, but it slipped out. Tried again, knowing it was too late, but he preferred to die like this, fighting, desperate, alive. He twisted, held the brake lever in his mouth again.
Now it was totally still. The voice had gone quiet and the rain had come to a sudden stop. No, it hadn’t stopped. It was him. He was falling. Weightless, as he swirled round in a slow waltz, like the one he had danced that time with Laura while everyone they knew stood around watching. Rotated on his own axis, slowly, swaying, step-two-three, only now he was all alone. Falling in this strange silence. Falling with the rain.
14
Laura Mittet looked at them. She had come down to the front of the block in Elveparken when they rang, and now she was standing with her arms crossed, freezing in her dressing gown. The first rays of sun glittering on the River Drammen. Something had flickered in her mind; for a couple of seconds she wasn’t there, she didn’t hear them, didn’t see anything, except for the river behind them. For a few seconds she was alone thinking that Anton had never been the right one. She had never met Mr. Right, or at least had never got him. And the one she had got, Anton, had cheated on her the same year they got married. He had never found out that she knew. She’d had too much to lose for that. And he’d probably been having another affair now. He’d had the same expression on his face of exaggerated normality when he delivered the same rotten excuses. Overtime shifts imposed from above. Traffic jam on the way home. Mobile off because the battery was dead.
There were two of them. A man and a woman, both in uniforms without a wrinkle or a stain. As though they had just taken them out of the wardrobe and put them on. Serious, almost frightened eyes. Calle
d her “fru Mittet.” No one else did. And she wouldn’t have appreciated it, either. It was his name and she had regretted taking it many times.
They coughed. They had something to tell her. So what were they waiting for? She already knew. They had already told her with those idiotic, hammed-up tragic faces of theirs. She was furious. So furious that she could feel her face writhing, distorting into someone she didn’t want to be, who had also been forced into a role in this comic tragedy. They had said something. What was it? Was it Norwegian? The words made no sense.
She had never wanted to have Mr. Right. And she had never wanted his name.
Until now.
15
The black VW Sharan slowly rose in circles towards the blue sky. Like a rocket in super slow motion, Katrine thought, watching the trail, which was not fire and smoke but water running from the doors and boot of the crushed car, dissolving into drops and glistening in the sun on its way down to the river.