Medusa (36 page)

– What is it?

The voice was distant; the boy had regained his composure.

– Tom, you’ve got a thousand questions you want to ask me. I’ll give you answers to all of them in just a little while. All the answers I can. But right now I need you to help me with something very urgent. Can you do that?

A grunt from the other end.

– You know Grandad’s old maps, the ones up in the loft? We used to look at them together, you and me and Daniel.

– That stuff from the war?

– That’s exactly what I’m talking about. I want you to go up to the loft and get them.

– You mean now?

– I mean now.

– What d’you want them for?

As calmly as he could, Axel said: – A woman has gone missing. I have to find her. Before it’s too late.

– Are you and Mum going to get divorced?

– I need you to do as I ask, Axel said, pulling hard at his cheek. – Go up to the cupboard behind the suitcases and the boxes with the winter gear. Take your phone with you. Don’t wake anyone.

He heard Tom opening the door of his room. Moving through the house. Axel imagined himself walking along beside him. The smells from the kitchen, the bathroom and toilet, of unwashed clothes, soap, perfume, bread, leftover food. The smell of the house itself, layered in the walls, contained his whole history within it. And the smells of the sleeping, those who meant more to him than anything in the world. If the door was slightly ajar, he could stop outside, listen out for Bie’s breathing in the dark.

He heard Tom open the door to the loft and pulled himself together. Thought about what he was looking for. The box on the second shelf down of the cupboard.

– Have you found them, Tom?

– Yes.

– I want you to fax them to me. But you have to be quiet, don’t wake your mother.

– Don’t think these’ll go in the fax.

– You’ll have to cut them up and send them in smaller sections.

– You want me to ruin them?

– We can tape them together if we need them later.

He explained to Tom what to do. Shortly afterwards, the fax machine in the photocopying room next to the office whirred into life. Once he had satisfied himself the maps were legible, he asked:

– How is Marlen?

Tom didn’t know. – She’s started sleeping with Mum. Why have I never met Brede when he’s my uncle?

Axel glanced at his watch. It was 12.55.

– He refuses to see me.

– Mum says he’s an idiot.

– She’s never met him either. Brede was treated badly. He was angry because I had all the advantages.

Tom said: – If you’re Daniel, then I’m Brede.

Axel felt his heart sink.

– That’s not true, Tom. I love you very much indeed.

– You’re in all the newspapers and on TV. Everyone I meet talks about you the moment my back is turned. Calling you a bloody killer.

– They’re wrong. He buried his face in his hands, rubbed hard up and down.

– Are you going to be moving out?

– I don’t know, Tom. All I know is that this will soon be over.

He spread the pages out across the desk. The maps were from the 1940s. Routes taken by refugees over the border into Sweden drawn by the old Resistance hero Torstein Glenne for his sons. Circles around the places where there were cabins that could be used as hideouts. Which Axel, many years later, had pointed out to his own sons, using the same words about the price of freedom as his father had.

From the internet he printed out a map of Åsnes county, located Åmoen.
Nearly ten kilometres further north
, it said in the letter. He searched with his fingers across his father’s map: Fallsjøen, Åmoen, a farm track leading north, a timber road branching off from it. He checked the distance. It coincided with one of the places Torstein Glenne had circled.

– That’s where you’re keeping her, you bastard, he muttered. But I’ve got you now.

Sergeant Norbakk answered at once. Axel said: – I know where she is.

– What the hell are you talking about? Miriam?

Axel described what he had found in the letters. He had expected scepticism, but the sergeant appeared to take him seriously.

– Were the letters signed? he wanted to know.

– No, but there is a name mentioned in one. Axel took out the photo. – Oswald, it says. That must be the person in the picture with Miriam. A very tall man who appears to have Down’s syndrome.

– Excellent, I’ve got all that. Anything else?

– The letter-writer says he used to work at an Esso station at a place called Åmoen.

Norbakk expelled a long, slow gush of air.

– We’ll get in touch with the owner. Maybe the guy still works there. He added: – You’ve made more progress in one evening than the police have in four weeks.

Axel didn’t know quite how to take this. Maybe it was meant as an apology.

– We’ll get people out there straight away, Norbakk said. – Give me a route description while I call the operational centre.

– You turn off a couple of kilometres past Åmoen. Axel described the route up through the forest.

Norbakk said: – I’ve got a map on my screen; are there any place names after you turn off the A road?

Axel checked his own map.

– It says Åheim at the end of the first side road. You drive on. Turn off east quite a way after that.

Norbakk asked him to repeat his description of the route. – Good, he said. – We’ll take someone with us who knows the area. We’ll also need people from the Emergency Response Unit. I’ll call you if we need to check anything else.

– I’m going myself, said Axel.

Silence from the other end.

I must find her, he thought. Maybe I’ll never see her again after this. But I must find her, or I’ll lose everything.

– D’you think that’s such a good idea? said Norbakk at last. – This is an armed operation.

– I’ll take the map and the letters with me, Axel replied.

After ending the call, he felt a peculiar calm. A few raindrops came spinning through the night and splattered in a pattern on the window. It felt as though layers of dross had suddenly been cleared away from his mind.

– I’m going myself, he repeated aloud as he let himself out of the office.

L
AST NIGHT WE
sat in the car after I’d taped your mouth. I didn’t say a word. Only now, when you’re lying in bed, are you going to hear what I have to say. Summer three years ago was the last time we lay in this bed together. We will lie here again tonight. Maybe I’ll free your hands, so you can touch me. I didn’t touch any of the others. I’m not like that. Just lay there beside them so they wouldn’t feel too alone. But you belong to me. I want you one last time before I take you down into the cellar. You’ve been there before. If only you knew how much pleasure it has given me to think of your beautiful eyes the moment you realise the way this is going to happen. You told that story about the twins who were inseparable. One of them had to go to the kingdom of the dead. Maybe I’ll join you down there soon so we can be together. The god of chance decides when it will be.

You’re the only one there’s any urgency about. Soon they’ll know you’re missing. I asked you to bring the pictures I put in your letter box. You left them behind. Maybe I’ll have time before I go to work tomorrow. Maybe I’ll let someone else find them. I’ve been leaving clues for them to follow the whole way. Scores of opportunities to get to me before I took you. If they’d done their job properly down at the police station, this would never have happened. Not to you or any of the others. It’s all their own bloody fault.

I told you once that unfaithfulness is the worst of all sins. Actually, the only one. I said it on one of the first days at the school. We bunked off and took a walk along the fjord. You said you felt the same way. I thought you realised that I meant it. You pretended to understand. You should have listened to me. You did what you should never have done. I don’t care a damn who he is. He’s just anybody at all. Now it’s too late. I’m coming to you now, Miriam.

I
T WAS
1.45
WHEN
Axel passed Kongsvinger. The fuel gauge was dipping down into the red but he didn’t want to stop yet.

As he emerged from the valley around the River Glomma, the landscape changed. The road cut its way through kilometre after kilometre of thick pine forest. If he found her, what would their future be? He knew the answer, but couldn’t bear the thought. If you want to go on living with yourself, then you must
do the right thing
, he told himself, and it was as though the words came to him in his father’s voice. More than anything else Torstein Glenne had despised people who failed to
do the right thing. Who ran off leaving others to face the music. The way he thought Brede always did.
You must never be
that kind of person
. His mother’s voice:
Axel is his father’s son all right
.

He drove past a lake that had to be Fallsjøen. Reached the village of Åmoen, swung in at the Esso station. It wasn’t a twenty-four-hour station and he stopped in front of the pump with the credit card slot. This is where you used to work, he thought as he flipped open the petrol cap and started to fill the tank. Maybe you still do work here. I’m right behind you and you don’t even know it.

He was thirsty. He found a tap on the wall at the rear of the building, slurped water from it. A waste bin stood on the corner. He picked out a container that had held windscreen cleaner, rinsed it out and filled it, got back into the car and looked again at the map. And the photo of the creosoted wall of the cabin that was up there in the forest somewhere. Driving on, he counted the farm tracks, turned off at the third.
Åheim
, it said on the sign.

He glanced down at the mileage. He’d driven nearly five kilometres since Åmoen. A forest track appeared on his right. It continued north-east and disappeared between the spruces. He followed the stony and pitted road for fifteen minutes. It made a sharp turn and climbed steeply. At the top of the rise the way was blocked by a barrier. He could see that it was firmly padlocked. He reversed down the hill. A couple of hundred metres before he reached a place where he could leave the car. He found the torch that Rita had put back in the glove compartment after he had borrowed it last time. Jogged back up to the barrier. If the police had been there before him they would have cut the lock. He called Sergeant Norbakk, got no answer, debated whether to wait for them. Miriam, he thought, and dismissed the idea.

The slope was even steeper on the other side of the barrier. At the top, the track swung round a small tarn. The sound of his footsteps against the soft ground broke the silence. And his breathing. His heartbeat. The cabin was behind a rise. He could only just see the outline, but he knew that was the place. When he reached it, he recognised the wall she’d been standing in front of in the photo, the brown-creosoted horizontal planking.

The door was locked. He switched on the torch and walked round the cabin. A couple of small windows on the sheltered side. He looked round for something to break one of them with. There was a small shed on the other side of the clearing. That was locked too, but the hasp holding the padlock was rusty and loose. He grabbed hold of it, managed to wrench it off, toppled backwards when it eventually gave. He shone the light into the darkness inside, saw a tall pile of logs and pulled one out. The pile started to collapse, something fell from the top of it. He twisted away, was hit by something big and heavy, tried to hurl himself out of the shed.

When he looked inside again, a dark shape was lying on the floor. He kicked at it. It didn’t move. A large, lifeless animal. A bear, he could see now. The eyes were glassy, the jaws open revealing sharp yellow teeth. The animal was stuffed and nailed to a stand. Two of the paws had been cut off. He pushed it to one side and picked up the log that had caused the woodpile to collapse. As he was about to go outside again, he noticed a trailer standing directly inside the door. It was collapsible, a child-trailer. It looked new, he registered as he hung the door back in place.

He broke a window in two places, opened the hasp, crawled inside, stood there and sniffed. Dust and resin, but mostly the odour of rotting food. He shone the torch around. Braided mats on the floor. It looked freshly varnished. Firewood piled in the fireplace. Pictures on two of the walls: a tarn, a sunset between the trees. A door leading into a small kitchen stood half open. A fridge that was closed but not turned on. A couple of cartons of sour milk on the shelves. No sign of any rotting food. By the back door he found a fuse box. It must mean the place had its own generator.

On the table in the main room was a map of the area and an envelope. It contained photos. He took them out, shone his torch on the top one. Miriam walking along a street in town. Next, one of the flat where she lived, taken looking up towards her window. The one after that showed a woman in a dark coat on her way out of a house. The woman was Cecilie Davidsen, the house the villa in Vindern. He flipped quickly through the rest. One of Miriam’s car with two people inside, the Nesodden ferry in the background. Then one of himself getting out of the car. The last one in the pile had been taken in a dark room. He could just make out his own face, in a bed. Next to him Miriam’s dark hair against a pillow. He threw the photos down on to the table.

Beyond the fireplace he found two doors. The nearer led to a bedroom with bunk beds. A cupboard in the corner stacked with woollen blankets. The second door was locked. There was something white lying in front of it. A vest. He straightened it out, recognised it at once, her name with the pink glitter lettering over the chest. It was covered in stiff yellowish patches.