His legs feel strangely jelly-like as he walks down the road, which he can barely see in the darkness. The headlights of an oncoming car sweep towards him and he steps on to the verge and bows his head as the car passes him. He doesn’t want anyone to know that he has been back home.
Home.
Where is his real home now? He is about to be evicted from his flat. And given what he has just done to his father, he can never go home to his mother again.
How strange
, he thinks,
that you can do something and not see it
. It wasn’t until the display cabinet got knocked over that his sight returned and he realised what he had done.
Smoke is coming from a chimney on one of the houses he passes. The smell drifts down towards him, even though the smoke itself is rising. He is reminded of something he learned at school. After a forest fire everything regenerates. New plants and flowers will grow from under the ash as if the flames have pressed a reset button that makes everything default to the start position.
And, as he stands on the platform at Nordby Station, he wonders if anything will rise from his ashes when the time comes. If he has a reset button.
Fortunately there is no one around so he takes a step closer to the edge of the platform and looks at the thick, rough-hewn stones between the railway sleepers and the tracks. It is very quiet. He closes his eyes and recognises the buzz he used to get as a child though no trains are approaching. And he doesn’t know how long he has been standing there, how long it takes before the rail tracks start humming, charging him up and preparing him for what comes next. The alarm bells start to ring, the lights on the plate change from white to red, and the barriers hesitate for a second before they begin to lower. The ringing that was steady to begin with ends up out of time, just like when he was little and it takes maybe thirty seconds before the barriers at the level crossing have come down and the ringing stops.
But it doesn’t stop inside him; he can feel it in his head. And then a light appears; a glow deep inside the forest as if the trees are the walls of a tunnel that gradually comes alive. And standing here now, so many years later, it feels even better; he can see the rail tracks glisten in the darkness. They look like shiny, white ski tracks.
Then the eyes appear, fierce and beckoning, huge like the eyes of a troll. And the train doesn’t slow down, the tracks become even more alive, they hiss, they snarl, they make themselves look sinister and dangerous, and he takes another step forward, feels his foot touch the edge of the concrete. The train is coming and the driver sounds his horn, perhaps he has seen him. But it doesn’t stop him from sticking out his foot. He lets it dangle over the edge; the gleaming rail tracks are just one metre below him as is the light in the lovely, big eyes that will devour him.
*
Henning shakes off his distressing thoughts and finds the paper towel with the sketch he drew in the car. He copies out the map on an A4 sheet, paying more attention to the details this time and before long a clearer image emerges in front of him.
He has seen this map before.
He goes to the kitchen, opens his laptop and starts a search engine. Types in the name of the city and clicks on the first map that comes up. And as he sees the characteristic canals, bridges and parks, he realises that his memory was correct.
It’s a map of Copenhagen.
Henning thinks about Trine’s watch that told her how far she had walked along the coastal path. He has heard of fitness fanatics who log their exercise efforts, who wear pulse and distance counters and God knows what. The fat line that looked like a worm on her laptop was the route she had run and walked. In Copenhagen. At 20.17. The same evening she was supposed to be at a party conference in Kristiansand sexually assaulting a young man. The same evening no one remembers seeing her during dinner.
Bloody hell.
The young politician’s statement is false. And Henning starts to get an inkling of what is going on. The reason why the politician doesn’t want to be named, but chose to write an unconvincing account of a ‘sexual assault’ and sent it anonymously by fax.
It’s because it never happened.
It’s because that person doesn’t exist.
And since the media appear to have accepted that they will never be able to interview him, they have turned their attention to all the other stories being written about Trine instead. The sex scandal was the perfect detonator. The character assassination destroying her reputation was only the beginning.
This is the work of someone who is an expert in media manipulation, who knows which buttons to press to trigger an avalanche of negative publicity about a Minister who has made too many enemies along the way.
But there is one thing Henning can’t understand. Why doesn’t Trine speak up? And since she was studying her running profile on her laptop, she would appear to be aware of the evidence that would clear her name. So why doesn’t she defend herself? Why doesn’t she fight?
There must be more to this than meets the eye
, Henning thinks. And the only thing that makes any sense to him is that Trine is protecting someone or something. Herself, possibly, from anything else that the media might uncover. That could also explain the nature of the attack. Her enemy knows that she knows. He knows her secret, knows that she can’t defend herself because then the truth of what she was really doing that day will come to light.
So the question is: who else knows? And what on earth was Trine doing in Denmark?
Henning falls asleep around three o’clock in the morning, slumped over the kitchen table, but he wakes again three and a half hours later. The first thing he does is make himself a cup of coffee. Then he sits down with the printout of the map of Copenhagen.
If the fat lines he saw on Trine’s laptop match the lines he has just drawn on the printout, it would mean that Trine’s run on the evening of 9 October started in Nørre Søgade, a long, wide street that runs parallel with Peblinge Lake.
Henning opens his own laptop, retrieves the map and zooms in on the area. More details appear. Bridges, parks, buildings.
What was Trine doing there?
he wonders again.
Apart from going for an evening run?
Kristiansand isn’t that far from Copenhagen. Flying from Kjevik Airport would probably take forty-five minutes, possibly less. She could have been at the party conference until the afternoon and then left.
But surely someone would have seen her?
Of course they would. Unless she took steps to avoid being seen. But why would she do that? Because no one must know. It’s the only explanation Henning can come up with.
Right. What is so important about Nørre Søgade or its surroundings?
Henning does a quick Internet search and finds only one hotel in the same street. Kong Arthur, four stars. She probably stayed there. He finds a nearby spa. Hardly the reason she would leave Norway. The Catholic Apostolic church. No. Belldent Dental Lab? Unlikely.
Then he sees it.
StorkKlinik.
The fertility clinic. The place you go if you have tried and failed to get pregnant. Henning knows that Trine wanted children. He remembers seeing a feature about her in
Se og Hør
magazine in his mother’s flat once where Trine gave childlessness a face. He knows that more and more Norwegian women travel to Denmark for fertility treatment. It’s usually not something people broadcast to the world. Trine could have gone to Denmark in secret to remain anonymous. And the procedure could have taken place the day after the conference. Perhaps she went for a run when she arrived the night before to release some of her tension.
Even so, something doesn’t ring true. How likely is it that someone had found out what Trine was doing in Denmark and then – almost a year later – thrown her to the wolves? Why the delay? Didn’t they know until now? And what’s so terrible about travelling to Denmark to try to get pregnant?
Henning doesn’t think it adds up. Nor can her trip to Denmark have been particularly successful because Trine is still childless. Though that in itself is not unusual. Fertility clinics don’t offer guaranteed success.
Henning tries to work out who would stand to gain the most if Trine were to leave politics. It’s a long list. It could be a rival in the Labour Party, someone in her department or someone who quite simply doesn’t like her.
But someone is pulling the strings here
, Henning thinks. Someone who has it in for his sister.
But who?
Once Bjarne had repeated his conversation with Emilie Blomvik to the team, his theory of just one killer was elevated from ‘possible’ to ‘highly likely’. Even Pia Nøkleby had to admit that the similarities could no longer be ignored and the investigation was reorganised on that basis. The job of identifying Erna Pedersen’s former pupils was prioritised and their names cross-referenced with anyone the police had been in contact with in the investigations of both murders. In addition, covert protection was arranged for Pedersen’s son and family, and the family of Emilie Blomvik – especially for two-and-a-half-year-old Sebastian.
Bjarne Brogeland, however, has no intention of sharing this information with Emilie Blomvik when he goes down to meet her. It’s already ten o’clock in the morning and he gets her a visitor’s sticker, which she puts on her dark blue jacket before he escorts her through security and up to his office on the fifth floor.
‘How are you?’ he asks when they have sat down.
It takes a while before Blomvik answers.
‘I didn’t sleep much last night, to be honest.’
She smiles feebly. Her cheeks are drained of colour.
‘So perhaps you did some thinking instead?’ Bjarne asks to encourage her.
‘I did little else,’ she says and brushes aside a strand of hair that has fallen down in front of her eyes. ‘But my mind is completely blank. I haven’t got a clue who could have done this.’
‘There’s no ex-boyfriend who might have cause to be mad at Johanne because of something she said or did a long time ago?’
Blomvik turns down the corners of her mouth.
‘Well, Johanne has had hundreds of boyfriends. I mean, not literally, but it’s possible that some of them were more interested in her than she was in them. But I find it hard to believe someone might be upset with her now. As I told you yesterday, it’s been a long time since Johanne saw anyone.’
Bjarne nods and moves a little closer to the table. The ensuing silence prompts Blomvik to put her hand into her shoulder bag.
‘This is all I could find,’ she says, placing a photograph in front of Bjarne. ‘It’s from Year Six at Jessheim School.’
Bjarne takes the photograph and studies it. A much younger version of Erna Pedersen is standing at the back to the left, several heads taller than any of her pupils.
‘Johanne is sitting there,’ Blomvik says, pointing to a small girl with big dimples and long plaits on a chair at the front. ‘And I’m next to her.’
Bjarne looks up and senses her embarrassment.
‘It was a very long time ago,’ she says by way of explanation.
Bjarne continues to study the faces. He sees no similarities to anyone he has met in the last few days.
‘If you’re anything like me, you’ll be able to remember the names of most of the people in this picture,’ he says, sliding it back to her. ‘Please would you write down as many names as you recall?’
Bjarne finds a sheet of paper and a pen for her.
‘I’ll try,’ Blomvik says.
‘Please start at the front row from the left.’
She nods and starts writing. She can only remember the first names of some pupils, but most of those sitting in the front get their full name, including their middle name.
Then she looks up.
‘Yesterday you asked me if someone might have reason to be angry with my son,’ she says. ‘With Sebastian.’
Bjarne nods.
‘Why did you want to know that?’
Bjarne hesitates for a second before he takes out a crime scene photograph from a file and shows it to her.
‘This photo was taken in Johanne’s living room yesterday afternoon,’ he says. ‘As you can see, the picture of your son has been destroyed. Or at least the glass has been smashed.’
Blomvik studies the photograph.
‘And you’re quite sure that it didn’t just happen in . . . in the heat of the moment?’
‘Absolutely,’ Bjarne replies.
Blomvik scratches her head with the pen.
‘It all seems very strange,’ she says. ‘I fail to see why someone would get so angry with a little boy. And how Johanne could have anything to do with it, it – it—’
Blomvik shakes her head.
Bjarne says nothing; he gives her time to think things through. But she doesn’t come up with anything. Soon her attention returns to the school photo and a few minutes later she puts down the pen.
‘Right,’ she says. ‘I think those are all the names I can remember.’
‘That’s great.’
Bjarne takes the sheet back. Studies the names and the faces. Row one – no names he recognises. Middle row – no hits there, either. In the back row—
No.
He swears under his breath. Surely he is due a break now. Then he thinks back to his own childhood and the girls he had crushes on when he was growing up. To begin with the girls were his age, but eventually they started to be younger. One year, two years. In sixth form he was head over heels in love with Henning Juul’s sister. And as for the girls, they wouldn’t even consider going out with you unless you were a little older than they were. Or at least many wouldn’t. And Erna Pedersen taught a lot of pupils.
We need to go through the years she taught when the pupils were one, two and three years older than Emilie Blomvik and Johanne Klingenberg
, Bjarne realises.
If nothing else, it might limit our search.
‘Okay,’ he says, gets up and extends his hand to Emilie Blomvik. ‘Thank you so much. You’ve been a great help.’