I'm Travelling Alone (44 page)

‘Can anyone update us?’

Mikkelson pushed his glasses up his nose and looked across the room again. No one said anything. The class rebellion against the teacher continued; it was childish, but the anger was real. Munch’s and Mia’s loyallest friends and colleagues sat in this room. No one had any interest in seeing them discredited.

‘Where is Holger Munch?’ Mikkelson said. ‘Where is Mia Krüger?’

At length, Anette rose to her feet.

‘We haven’t heard from Holger,’ she said calmly. ‘I have spoken to Mia.’

‘Status?’

‘She was on her way here the last time I talked to her.’

‘And Munch?’

‘We haven’t heard from him for a while, but Mia had a theory,’ Anette continued.

‘I bet she had,’ Mikkelson said sarcastically, without getting much of a reaction from the team. ‘And what was that?’

‘That Munch must have received a call from the killer,’ Anette said. ‘That the killer ordered him to meet him alone, and that’s what he’s gone to do.’

‘But all our phones are being monitored. Is there anything to suggest that this might be the case?’ Mikkelson said.

‘No,’ Gabriel Mørk said. ‘Nothing from his phone before he turned it off.’

‘The killer could have contacted him some other way, couldn’t he?’ Ludvig Grønlie ventured cautiously.

‘What do you mean?’ Mikkelson said.

‘Well, I don’t know, but he has a private email account, I mean, he’s on the Net, Gmail, and so on. We don’t have access to those, or do we?’

Grønlie looked tentatively at Gabriel Mørk; he was well aware that he belonged to a different generation of police officers and hoped that he hadn’t been mistaken.

‘Are you telling me that everything we do online is being monitored? I certainly hope not,’ Curry quipped.

A few of the others tittered.

‘No, we don’t have access to those,’ Gabriel Mørk said.

‘So he could have got a message,’ Anette said. ‘Something which meant he had to turn up for a meeting alone?’

Mikkelson sighed.

‘And is that how we work?’

He looked across the gathering, still without getting the response he was seeking.

‘And is that how we work?’ he said again, a little louder this time. ‘No, it is not, we’re a team. A team. We don’t have room for maverick gung ho operations. Here, we keep each other informed about what is happening and we work together. No wonder you haven’t come up with anything.’

‘Actually, we’ve discovered quite a lot.’ Ludvig coughed and got up.

Kim really liked Ludvig Grønlie. He had exactly what it took to belong to the special unit. It was odd, really: several people had joined the unit only to leave soon afterwards because they just didn’t fit in. No one could quite put their finger on what it was. It was more than ability, age, background or specialism, it was also chemistry. A shared tacit understanding. This is what we do, and this is what we don’t do. He had met several talented colleagues who had joined them but never settled in. People who couldn’t stand the sight of Munch. Who thought that Mia Krüger was the most overrated investigator of her generation. Kim had worked with both Munch and Mia for a long time. And he couldn’t imagine doing any other job in the whole world.

Ludvig Grønlie gave Mikkelson a brief account about what they had discovered so far. Malin Stoltz. The flat filled with mirrors. The link between Høvikveien Care Home and a support group for childless women in Hønefoss. The Kiese movie, which, if Mikkelson had not insisted they all sat here like naughty children, would soon provide them with a location where Stoltz was holding Marion Munch.

‘Right, right,’ Mikkelson said, pushing his glasses back in place. ‘And where do we stand?’

‘Can I go now?’

It was Gabriel Mørk speaking. Kim Kolsø smiled discreetly to himself. He liked this young man. He had appeared out of nowhere and in no time become an important member of the team. A Munch special. Munch had brought in Mia Krüger in the same way. Rumour had it that she hadn’t even had to complete her training at Police College.

‘Why?’ Mikkelson said with a frown.

‘If Munch has gone to find the killer, it might be a good idea for us to know where that place is,’ Gabriel Mørk said. ‘We’re in the process of cleaning up the film. I have a mate who is brilliant at this. We’ll have the GPS coordinates soon. Perhaps it would be a better use of my time than sitting here.’

Kim laughed to himself. When he had first met Gabriel Mørk in the street, the young lad had looked as if he was afraid of his own shadow. Now it was as if he had been with the team from the start.

‘And who are you again?’ Mikkelson said, taking off his glasses.

‘Gabriel,’ Mørk replied.

‘How much police experience did you say you had?’

‘Two weeks,’ Mørk replied, deadpan.

‘I have twenty years,’ Mikkelson said, putting on his glasses again. ‘Perhaps I should be the judge of what we should be spending our time on, don’t you think?’

His attempt at sarcasm landed on stony ground. Kim could see Curry winking at Gabriel Mørk, who responded with a shrug of his shoulders.

‘Anette?’ Mikkelson said, seeking support.

‘Gabriel is right,’ Anette said, getting up. ‘The Kiese film is important and should be our number-one priority. If Munch has chosen to shut us out because Stoltz has given him an ultimatum, it is understandable. He loves his granddaughter. I would have done exactly the same.’

Kim could see the colour change in Mikkelson’s face. If he had thought that Anette Goli was on his side, he had been very much mistaken. Curry winked at Kim and got a smile back in return.

‘I see,’ Mikkelson said, sounding wounded and flicking through some papers on the table in front of him. ‘So what do we do now?’

Kim Kolsø had turned off the alerts on his mobile, but he had forgotten to turn off the vibration. His mobile suddenly jumped on the table in front of him, displaying an unknown number.

‘Yes?’ Mikkelson said irritably, glaring at him.

‘I have to take this one,’ Kim said, getting up.

‘Really?’ Mikkelson said.

‘Yes,’ Kim insisted.

‘Then …’ Mikkelson said.

Kim left the room and didn’t hear what followed. He went to the kitchen to make himself a cup of coffee as he spoke on his mobile.

‘Kim Kolsø speaking.’

The caller was a woman.

‘Yes, hi, my name is Emilie Isaksen.’

‘Right, hi. What can I do for you?’

Kim opened the fridge and found a carton of milk. If there was one thing he and Mia Krüger agreed about, it was that you risked your life drinking the stuff that came out of the coffee machine.

‘I found your business card inside a mattress,’ the woman said. ‘And I don’t know what to do. I’m hoping you might be able to help?’

‘I might well be. What do you need help with?’ Kim said, adding some milk to his coffee.

Chapter 74

Tobias passed the blanket to Rakel and turned off his torch. This made the safe room seem completely dark, but they had no other choice. They had to conserve the torch batteries and their eyes quickly adjusted. Tobias didn’t know for how long they had been held prisoners in the underground room, but he estimated four to five days. He had opened the hatch and peered inside. He had whispered the name Rakel, the name of the girl he had just met, the Christian girl behind the fence, the girl in need of help, when someone had come up behind him and pushed him down inside. He had felt frightened and stupid, and he had hurt himself. He had fallen a long way, past a ladder, into a black hole where he had ended up on a hard concrete floor. Fortunately, he hadn’t landed on his head or his arms but on his side, and he believed that the latter had cushioned his fall, because he wasn’t in too much pain, only a bit in one hip and in one leg.

‘Should we try the hatch again?’ Rakel said in a soft voice through the darkness; he could barely make her out, although she wasn’t sitting far away from him.

‘I don’t t’ want to come across as defeatist, but they had made several attempts, most recently a few hours ago. He had climbed up the ladder and pressed his shoulder against the wooden hatch, but it hadn’t budged; it had been locked from the outside, and having the lock pick was no use as the lock was on the other side.

Fortunately, they had food. And blankets. And a torch. They had decided to conserve the batteries because they hadn’t found any spares. They were in a safe room. Rakel had explained it all to him. She had been down here several times. This was where they normally locked up naughty children. The ones who refused to do as they were told. Normally, they didn’t have to sit there very long; it depended on their offence. As far as Tobias had gathered, there were lots of different punishments on this farm. Being banned from talking for one week was one of them. Hence the notes Rakel had written and stuck through the fence. She could talk – she had not lost her voice, which was what he had first assumed – then he wondered if she was being difficult on purpose, like Chief Bromden in
One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
No, Rakel could talk all right and, after someone had pushed him down into the safe room where she was being held, she had talked almost non-stop. Tobias liked hearing her voice. She was unlike any other girl he had ever met and nothing like the ones at school, who mostly giggled or said silly things. Rakel spoke properly, almost like an adult. And she knew where everything in the safe room was. There was food in the boxes and large canisters of water and petrol and clothes. Everything you would need, although they had yet to find more batteries – but they surely had to be there somewhere.

Tobias had been inside a safe room before; they had one at his school and it had formed part of a drill. The Territorial Army had sounded the alarm and everyone had to walk in single file and pretend that war had broken out. The safe room at his school contained nothing but old PE mats and hockey sticks, not like this one, which was fully equipped. He had been scared for the first few days, but the feeling was subsiding. After all, nothing bad had happened so far and they had been there for a long time. They will let you out again, Rakel had said, they let you out in the end; sometimes, it just takes time. He was more worried about his brother. Torben would be upset when he came home and found Tobias missing. He had written him a note – at least he had done that – and hidden it inside the mattress on his bed, the one with the zip which was their secret hiding place. ‘I’m going to spy on the Christian girls. I will be back soon’, he had written. He hoped it would reassure him a bit.

‘I don’t think God exists any more,’ Rakel said, fumbling for his hand.

Tobias had held a girl’s hand before, but this was different. Rakel liked holding his hand for a long time, and he liked holding hers. Her fingers were soft and warm and, when she sat close to him, he could also sense the heat from her body. It was almost cosy; he wouldn’t have minded the two of them sitting like this for a long time. That is, if they hadn’t been trapped underground.

‘I don’t believe in God either,’ Tobias said, and not for the first time.

They had discussed this at length. It seemed important to Rakel. Talking about God. Sometimes he felt that she spoke mostly to herself, but he tried to reply to the best of his ability.

‘If there really is a God, he would not let people do horrible, disgusting things, don’t you agree?’

Rakel moved a little closer and squeezed his hand. He squeezed it back. They would do this from time to time.

Everything will be fine. We’re together.

‘I agree,’ Tobias said, even though he was not that interested in whether or not God existed.

At school he had learned there were many different gods; across the world people believed in different things, but Religious Studies was not his favourite subject and he had never given it much thought before.

‘So who do you believe in if you stop believing in God?’ Rakel pondered.

‘Superman?’ Tobias said, mostly in jest; it was the kind of comment he might make when to cheer his brother up when he felt sad.

‘Who?’ Rakel said.

He kept forgetting that Rakel was very ignorant of the world.

‘A man who is very strong and can fly.’

‘People can’t fly, surely?’ Rakel said in disbelief.

‘No, he can’t fly, and he’s not a real person, he’s a character in a comic strip.’

‘We have comics about Jesus,’ Rakel said, and fell silent again.

Tobias realized that he felt a little sorry for her. Not that he had that many things himself; it was the others in his class who had everything. Computers and iPods and iPhones, always the latest gadget, but at least he had a television and comics and books. Rakel had none of these.

‘When do you think they’ll let us out? What’s the longest anyone has ever sat here?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Rakel said. ‘There was a girl called Sara, she was here for two weeks, I believe, but she wasn’t here when I arrived.’

‘What did she do?’

‘They said she tried to run away.’

‘Like you?’

‘Yes.’

The room was colder now. Perhaps it was evening outside, maybe that would account for it. Tobias took a corner of the blanket and draped it around his shoulder. Rakel moved even closer and put the blanket all around him. They sat quietly for a while, close to each other under the blanket, holding hands tightly. Rakel rested her head on his shoulder and, after a while, he could hear her breathing deepen. She was dozing now. Tobias sat very still so as not to wake her, and closed his eyes. Soon he, too, was asleep. Not soundly, like at home in his bed; just napping. He didn’t realize that he had been sound asleep until he heard a loud noise. He woke with a start and saw that the hatch above them was in the process of being opened.

At last, he thought, as the light from a torch shone down the ladder.

Tobias Iversen roused the girl with the fine freckles and got up from the floor.

Chapter 75

The rain had eased off when Mia pulled up outside Høvikveien Care Home. She could see the dark clouds drift towards the centre of Oslo as she got out of the car and went up the steps.