Death By Water (15 page)

On the other door, Mailin’s name was printed on a brass plate. Liss looked through the spare bunch of keys Viljam had given her, selected the largest one and let herself in. The office wasn’t big, but the ceiling was high, as was probably the case with all the rooms in an old city-centre building like this. Here too the paint had begun to flake off, but the run-down effect was partly relieved by a woven rug on one of the walls, two children reaching out towards the sun. And the thick reddish carpet was soft to walk on. Liss recognised the desk, something inherited from their grandmother. It was in heavy, dark wood and was much too big and distinguished for the office. Behind the desk were three shelves housing books and folders.

She sat in the swivel chair and leaned across the desk. A glimpse of the street down below, the tram wires, the traffic lights. She remained sitting for a long time. Mailin’s voice was somewhere inside that empty office. If she closed her eyes and tried hard, she could hear it.

What’s to become of you, Liss?

Mailin had decided to help those who needed help the most. She took care of people who had known the worst they could know. Abuse. Violence. Incest. People with real reasons for their suffering, thought Liss. Not like me, who had chances but wasted them. She let her gaze wander over the folders on the shelves, Mailin had noted on the spines what the contents were. On the backs of the books she saw a few familiar names. Freud, Jung, Reich. Others who she’d never heard of: Igra, Bion, Ferenczi, Kohout. Now and then Liss had felt the same kind of curiosity as her sister. To understand how the world adds up. How language shapes us. How we collect memories and dispose of them. But she had never had Mailin’s patience. Could never sit for hours with a book. Had to interrupt herself, every time. Fill her thoughts with something other than letters. Sounds and pictures, something that moved.

There was a cork noticeboard next to the shelves. Two newspaper cuttings pinned to the top of it, one of them an interview with Berger. Liss switched on the desktop lamp, read something Mailin had underlined:
Nothing bores me more than watching the way a shoal of cunts move.
There was also a postcard hanging there. It was from Amsterdam, Bloemenmarket. Liss recognised it. She’d sent it a long time ago, at least a year, and Mailin still kept it up on her noticeboard. Below the card she discovered a Post-it note with something scribbled on it. Liss angled the lamp so that she could make the writing out. One of the few things she was better at than her sister was writing neatly.
Ask him about death by water
, she read in Mailin’s untidy scrawl.

She turned back towards the desk. It had been tidied. A few documents in a file. She opened the top drawer, found a stapler, some pens and a packet of paperclips. The drawer below it was locked. She managed to open it with the smallest key in the bunch. Inside was a small bound book with a wine-red cover in some kind of soft, plush material. She ran her fingers across it.
Mailin S. Bjerke
was written inside. Apart from that the pages were empty. What were you going to fill them with, Mailin? Write about your patients? Or your own thoughts? Liss shoved the book into her shoulder bag.

Further back in the drawer, she found a diary. The daily planners were covered in initials and appointment times, obviously patients her sister was treating. Six or seven every day, sometimes eight. They all came to her with their stories. Everything she had to listen to, take care of, cure them of. Dense with initials; on the hour, every hour someone crossing her threshold to unburden themselves, and Mailin was supposed to sit there and take it all in, swallow it until she felt she was going dizzy … Liss flipped through the diary, toward the end of the year. Thursday 11 December was blank, but below the listing of hours she had written:
17.00 JH.
And at the bottom of the page
BERGER – Channel Six, Nydalen, 8 o’clock
, and something about a jacket.

She had to pee, went out into the corridor. At the end of it she found a tiny loo with a washbasin. After she’d locked herself in and sat down, she heard a door go, and then footsteps. They disappeared, obviously into the waiting room. In an instant, this thought: Pål Øvreby comes striding down the corridor, tears open the door and finds her sitting on the toilet … She finished, hurried back to the office. The door was ajar. A man was leaning over Mailin’s desk, turned round on hearing her.

– I’m looking for someone, he said, and glanced round in confusion. – Mailin still works here, right?

Liss stayed in the doorway. – She isn’t here.

The guy couldn’t have been much older than her. He was thin and bony, wearing a dark blue reefer jacket with the collar turned up and a motif on the breast pocket, an anchor.

– I can see that, he said. – That she’s not here. Who are you?

Liss didn’t think that was any of his business. She closed the door behind her.

– Do you have an appointment? she countered.

The man peered out the window. The black curly hair was gelled up and hung in a thick wave down one side of his forehead.

– Not actually today. I’ve been here before, some time ago. I dropped out. Been trying to get in touch with Mailin to make an appointment, but she doesn’t answer. Thought I might as well just call in. Will she be along later today?

Liss studied him. The eyes were dark and restless. He was rubbing his hands together and obviously trying to keep them still. Abstinent, she thought.

– I don’t know when she’ll be back, she answered.
If
she’ll be back, she should have said. Mailin won’t be coming any more. – I’ll make a note that you were here. What’s your name?

The man’s gaze flickered around her, over to the rug on the wall, out the window again. He had so much gel in his hair, it put her in mind of the feathers on a seabird mired in oil.

– Doesn’t matter, he mumbled. – I’ll try again later.

He squeezed past her on his way out.

– I’m looking for Mailin too, said Liss.

He stopped. Stood there, rocked a moment on the threshold. – Are you here waiting for her?

She closed her eyes.
That’s what I’m doing
.

– Gotta go, the young man mumbled.

Liss slumped down into the office chair again. Noticed in the same instant that the appointment book, which she had left lying on the desk, was now back in the drawer. She picked it up, flipped back through. The page for Thursday 11 December had been torn out. She jumped up and ran out into the corridor. Heard the street door closing down below.

L
ARGE FLAKES OF
wet snow were falling in her hair. She was already drenched and on the point of giving up when Viljam opened the door. The heavy eyes and the creases on the pale cheeks showed what he had been doing since she left some hours earlier.

– You’re home, she said as she held up the office keys. – Sorry if I woke you. Just wanted to hand these back.

He blinked in the afternoon light. – Doesn’t matter. Come in. More coffee?

She pulled off the soaking wet boots.

– Don’t you have lectures or something to go to?

He shrugged. In the kitchen he added: – Can’t take anything in anyway. Not getting much sleep these nights.

Liss put the keys on the table. Decided to tell him about the patient who had appeared and then disappeared again.

– He tore a page out of the diary? Viljam exclaimed.

– The one with the appointments for the day Mailin went missing.

– Have you told the police?

She had called them. Still no one there who had anything to do with the case. She had left another message.

– They’re doing nothing, she groaned. – Absolutely fuck all.

He didn’t respond, but once he had produced the rolls from earlier on he asked: – What did this guy look like?

She described him. Black curly hair, unkempt. Acne scars on his cheeks, shifty eyes. – I had the feeling he was on something or other.

Viljam poured coffee from a little grey bag into the cafetière. – Quite a lot of Mailin’s patients are. I’ve asked her if it’s safe to have an office without any kind of alarm system. She just shrugs it off.

As he chewed at half a roll with nothing on it, Liss unobtrusively watched his dark blue eyes. He had a heavy growth of beard and still hadn’t shaved. On the other hand, the narrow nose and full lips accentuated the feminine prettiness of the face. Not hard to see why Mailin was attracted to him. Although her sister was more concerned about what lay behind an appearance; she dived down to investigate what was not immediately apparent to the naked eye. Liss, by way of contrast, had always been fascinated by the surface of things, what the masks looked like, not what was hidden behind them. Even so, she too tried to follow her intuition in deciding whether to trust someone or not. As regards Viljam, she still hadn’t made up her mind.

– Did you find what you were looking for in her office?

She didn’t know what she had been looking for. If she told him she’d been looking for Mailin, he might stop asking.

– I spent an evening with my mother, she said instead. – She sits there completely paralysed, can hardly get a word out. She’s wilting in front of our very eyes.

She dragged her fingers through her hair; they stopped at a knot, which she began to twist at.

– I must do something. Anything at all. Go over every single thing Mailin did recently. Go where she went. Just not carry on sitting here waiting.

He didn’t answer, sat there staring at the table.

– What about the thesis she was working on? she asked. – Is it lying around here somewhere?

He drank from his coffee cup. – Her computer is missing. It wasn’t in the car. Not at her office either, nor at the cabin. Doesn’t make sense.

Liss mulled this over.

– What else does she use it for?

– Journals. Everyone who came to her for treatment.

– Presumably she backs it all up?

– Think so. We can see up in her study.

He went ahead of her up the stairs and into the little room with the desk and the couch. A model of a seagull hung from the ceiling, and the draught from the opening door was enough to set the wings in motion.

– She’s very good at organising her work systematically, Viljam remarked. – So the journals aren’t just lying around all over the place. I helped her buy a fireproof safe for her office. She shares it with the other people who work there.

They looked through the drawers without finding anything of interest.

– What are you looking for? Viljam wanted to know.

– Don’t know. I need to see what kind of things she was doing.

As they were about to head back downstairs again, she said: – I just leapt on the plane last Sunday, didn’t have time to pack anything. Can I take a look and see if Mailin has any clothes I could borrow?

Viljam glanced at her. Clearly he now saw for the first time the wet hair and the jacket with its large dark patchy stains from the shoulders and down over the chest. He opened the bedroom door. – The furthest cupboard is hers.

He popped into the bathroom, came back with a towel.

– Sorry for not thinking of it before, he said, and disappeared out.

In the cupboard, Liss found what she was looking for. Put on a clean pair of tights, but the bras were two sizes too large and she gave up on them. Borrowed a couple of pullovers, underwear and a bottle-green cashmere cardigan. Mailin’s trousers were too short in the leg for her, so she pulled her own on again.

– I’ve heard a lot about you, Viljam said when she came down again. – Mailin liked to talk about you.

– Really. So you know the worst?

– Quite the contrary. But the fact that you arrive in Norway without a change of clothes and use her wardrobe as though it was your own fits the picture.

Briefly his face lightened. She was relieved that he took it like that.

– Does she still have the same supervisor? she asked as she forced her feet down into the wet boots. – Is it still Dahlstrøm?

– Dahlstrøm? Do you know him? Viljam asked, and looked surprised.

– I met him when he was at that conference in Amsterdam this summer, with Mailin. I’d like to talk to him. She glanced at her watch. – Actually, I met one of Mailin’s colleague’s at the office. It was her who let me in. Torunn Gabrielsen, do you know her?

– Slightly.

Really it was her other colleague she wanted to ask about. How could Mailin bring herself to share an office with him? She wondered whether Viljam knew that Pål Øvreby and Mailin had once been a couple. The thought filled her with unease, and she couldn’t face asking any more questions.

The sleet had stopped. The streets looked as though they were soaked in oil. She walked aimlessly. Crossed a park. Down a narrow street. There was a café at the end of it. She looked in. Only two customers there, sitting at the back in the half-dark, an elderly couple each with a glass of beer. She picked a table by the window. The view out was on to a factory gate and a roundabout. On the pavement outside, a bush decked with garish Christmas lights. Her phone rang. She jumped.
Wouters
; the name pounded in her head. They’ve found out. Soon they’d be there to fetch her.

– Liss Bjerke? This is Judith van Ravens.

– How did you get my number?

– My call list. You called me several times before you got here.

Everything connected with Zako had been shoved behind a door. Liss had worked to keep it there. Now that door swung open again and it all came tumbling out. Suddenly she was angry.
Why didn’t you delete me from the list?
she nearly shouted.

– I’ve been thinking so much, said the voice at the other end.

– And now you’ve got something to tell me?

Judith van Ravens sighed. – I had to find out about it.

– About what?

– This business with the photo of your sister, what Zako was going to do with it … I haven’t been able to sleep since you were here. I called some friends in Amsterdam. The police think Zako’s death was accidental.