Norwegian by Night (24 page)

Or there is someone in the flat right now.

She shakes her head. She knows right away that her father would never approve of this. Not only the action, but the logic that supports the action.

There's also a possibility that the landlord is in there right now, wearing women's undergarments. There's a further possibility that a drug addict is stealing jewellery. There's a possibility that a boatload of recent Chinese immigrants without a television are watching Russia vs Finland at hockey and placing bets over beer.

You have no idea what's behind that door. You can't just pick the options within your field of vision. Reality comes from everywhere. At best, you can narrow down the likelihoods. But in the end, it's not a matter of deduction. It's a matter of fact. One bullet will kill you if you're stupid or unlucky. So at least don't be stupid
.

This is what her father would say.

Sigrid removes her radio from her belt and calls in the intrusion. She does this very quietly. The radio crackles and then returns to silence.

Sigrid presses her ear to the door and listens.

She just isn't sure. She stands outside the door for a few minutes, playing with things on her utility belt. She's always liked the utility belt. It carries a lot of weight, but rests rather nicely on her hips.

The button on the mace has a nice crisp click to it. The handcuffs don't jiggle, but rather stay snug in the black pouch. Everything is well designed. These are the little things that people do to make the world a bit better, but for which they never receive thanks.

If she had a gun, it would really throw off the weight. She figures that's why the cowboys tie it to their thighs.

‘Right. That's it.'

Sigrid opens the door widely, but doesn't step in.

The crime scene is familiar to her. It has been described in all the poorly spelled reports she's received. She has seen dozens of photos, and watched a video walk-through that they have started using. One industrious cadet has even rendered it in a CAD program so they can walk through it and imagine scenarios.

But she has not experienced the apartment before. The murder scene. There is no explaining why we see things differently in person, but we do. She travelled to Florence once. She saw the David, a figure so visually familiar, but in person it left her speechless.

The floors have been refinished with wide Danish planks. Walls have been knocked down, creating a cavernous space through the living room and kitchen, which is tastefully appointed in stainless steel and maple. There's an oversized American refrigerator and an island in the middle with a grill. The stove is fuelled by natural gas. This is a rarity in Oslo, as the city is not equipped for it. Lars must go trekking out every few months for a new blue canister.

Sigrid does not step in. Instead, with the door open, she steps back and looks through the space along the hinges for anyone who might be standing there with a knife.

She looks at her watch. She has been standing in the hall for eight minutes. It is, she thinks, long enough.

Sigrid steps into the room. It feels as though she is drawn in by a whisper from the dead and the promise of a revelation.

She removes her shoes in the hall and flicks on all the lights as she passes them, surveying the room. It is fresh, bright, and feels lived in by people who are worldly and cosmopolitan. Also somewhat foreign. There is a wine rack of some twenty bottles, with the reds higher up than the whites. Four different olive oils sit beside the stove. On a magnetic strip beside the sink hang an assortment of utensils from IKEA, and fine cutlery from Japan and Germany. There are American appliances from Kitchenware. There is a bowl full of fresh apples, pears, lemons, and limes that will soon rot.

There is a
Penthouse
coffee mug beside the sink. It is unwashed and well used.

This apartment is much bigger than the one upstairs. Maybe one hundred and twenty square metres or more. There's a master bedroom to her right, and between that doorway and the refrigerator is a short staircase leading down to where the old man stays and to the closet where they found the urine stain.

She opens the folder now and takes out the photos. She walks to the spots where each was taken, and compares what she sees with what the camera saw only last night. She wonders whether anything is out of place, and what someone might have been doing here.

Sigrid goes into the bathroom and pokes around. It contains finer cosmetics than upstairs, subtle fragrances, loofahs. In the cabinet under the sink are ‘marital aids', and Sigrid closes the cabinet respectfully, though perhaps a bit enviously.

There are a few novels from people she has not heard of: Philip Roth, James Salter, Mark Helprin, Richard Ford. There are copies of a periodical called
The
Paris Review
.

There is nothing odd here, but there are many things she does not understand. These three people have crafted some existence that is not natural to any one of them.

The effort, and even the result, is admirable.

In the mirror above the sink she sees the shower curtain. It is closed.

Turning, she takes out her nightstick. The curtain has moved since she came into the room.

Her backup should be on the way. The police station is not far.

Sigrid takes her flashlight from her belt and, rather than push the curtain away, she steps back to the bathroom door, switches off the light, and then shines the flashlight at the white ceiling above the bathtub, illuminating the white curtain.

There are no shadows cast. There is no one inside.

Switching the light back on, she now moves the shower curtain to the side, just to be sure, finds it empty, and then leaves the bathroom, switching off the light behind her.

The living room has been carefully preserved by her detectives. There is evidence of a struggle everywhere. The fragments of fragile objects are clustered closer to the spot of the murder. The woman's final moments were spent suffocating and with a knife in her chest, lying over the back of the coffee table in front of the sofa. Her blood has dripped down the sides, and soaked into the white floorboards.

He had the leverage here. Once she was on her back, he pressed his knee on her. The hatred was personal and remorseless.

The downstairs room is less a cellar than another room to the apartment. The building itself accommodates the slight drop in the land that explains the odd floor plan.

The room is orderly. The bed is made. On a red chair there is a black suit, a white shirt, and a grey tie, as though waiting to be filled with a mourner. She opens the wooden dresser. There are a few sweaters, trousers, and pieces of underwear.

On the nightstand by his bed there is a lamp, and at its base is an antique silver picture-frame. It folds on tiny hinges. In its left side is a black-and-white picture, taken maybe fifty years ago of a woman who was almost Sigrid's age. She had dark hair and the sorts of eyes that women only had in the 1950s. She is petite, and is sitting on a stone wall with one leg up. A white sneaker rests on top of a park bench below her along the wall, and she's laughing. It looks like autumn. It is probably his wife — the one who died back in America and prompted his move here.

On the right is a young man, probably a teenager. He is slender, and has the same eyes as the woman. This one is a colour photograph and is slightly out of focus. It may have been taken quickly or with a cheap camera, like a Polaroid Land camera or even an old Minox. His arms and legs are crossed as he leans against a 1968 Mustang. It is baby blue, and he is smiling as though he designed and built it himself.

The only other item on the night table is a jacket patch placed carefully against the base of the lamp opposite the photos. It is drab green with a thin, red trim, and looks worn. It is the motto of the US Marine Corps.

Semper Fidelis
.

Always faithful.

‘Where the hell have you gone to, Mr Horowitz?' Sigrid says aloud to herself. ‘Why are you missing and what are you doing?'

Just before leaving Sheldon's room, Sigrid drops to one knee and looks under the bed. And, for the first time, something seems off.

There is a large pink jewellery box with a silver lock on the front. The midday light reflects off the floor, and she sees it easily.

She reaches under and pulls it out.

Staying on one knee, she fiddles with the latch. It doesn't open. With her Leatherman knife she could easily pry it off and open the box, but that — for the moment — isn't the point.

Sigrid looks again at the woman in the picture frame — at her white sneaker, her fine wristwatch, her white collar tipping out of a V-neck sweater. She has a wide smile. Her universe is full of possibilities. It must have been taken in the late 1950s. Sheldon was back from Korea. Her son was probably about five or six then. She had her figure and her grace. The bad things in her life hadn't happened yet.

Would this box belong to her?

Sigrid takes out a small black notepad and flips quickly to the interview with Rhea and Lars. She flips a few more times.

There. Her husband was a watch repairman and antique salesman.

She looks again at the pink box.

No way.

And then it occurs to her what she'd forgotten to do upstairs. She'd forgotten to look for a match to the key that Senka died with in her pocket.

Had all the officers forgotten to do that? If they had, she'd raise hell at the office.

If the match to that key was here in the apartment where she was murdered, it means she must have brought it down. It could have been stored here, but that would have meant Sigrid had been lied to and that Senka, Rhea, and Lars did all know each other. This does not seem likely. More likely is that Senka brought it here before she was killed. She hid it. The killer wanted it. It is part of the reason for her death. She protected herself and its contents. She fought to the death as her boy hid in the closet across from it.

Whatever is in it must be important.

This is Sigrid's very last thought before a hard object strikes her on the head and she collapses to the ground.

Chapter 14

Kadri holds the huge D-battery Maglite in his hand and looks down at the woman cop he has just bludgeoned. He doesn't like hitting women — though it doesn't especially bother him, either — and she certainly hadn't done anything to deserve it personally. But he needed that box, and he was pretty certain that asking her for it wouldn't have done the trick.

‘You should have checked the closet,' he says to her in English. ‘You check the shower, but not the closet. Who would stand in a shower? Everyone gets killed in a shower. Don't you go to the movies?
Psycho
. Dead in the shower. The Mexican in
No Country for Old Men
. Dead in shower. Michelle Pfeiffer in
What Lies Beneath
. Almost dead in the shower, or in the bath, anyway. But she did that thing with her toe and got out OK. Still the shower, though.'

He looks at his feet for a moment. Then he says, ‘Glenn Close in
Fatal Attraction
. Dead in shower. John Travolta in
Pulp Fiction
. Very dead in shower. But never closets. I can't think of anyone shot in a closet. This is why I hide in closets.'

Kadri scratches his stomach. ‘So, look. I'm taking the box and going for a coffee. Get well soon.'

Kadri checks her pulse, confirms that she's alive, picks up the box, places it under his arm, and walks out the front door. He strides up the street directly past the police car, gets on his Vespa scooter, and heads directly to the nearest Kaffebrenneriet for a bun.

It is good to see the process working as it should. Burim is infiltrating the Serbs with more than his penis, and will come back with valuable information. Gjon is collecting the guns that Enver asked for. The box — whatever is in it — has been recovered.

The sun is shining, and the air is dry and bracing. If you wave your hands in front of your face, you can pull the summer into your lungs and feel its peace and serenity. Just what an accomplished man needs.

And peaceful it is. There is no history here. No weight. No echoes or whispers of tragedy on the breeze. It is odd, really. Because, for Kadri, when he leaves Oslo itself and meets colleagues in other towns to talk politics, play cards, buy and sell drugs and the usual, he can feel the expanse of Scandinavia — the big sky, the vastness of the land — reveal itself. It is as though the lonely cannot fill that much space. It taunts them, spreads them too thinly.

They should sing, like they do in the Balkans. And dance. Something in them, here, prevents them from expressing the few words that could free them, connect them, rejoin them to each other and the heavens. They should live life. And laugh at death.

But they don't. Their Lutheran cloaks smother them and take their voices away.

Whatever is causing it, though, it is not history. There is no history here to speak of. Some old boats and a wooden church — that's not history. This is the part of Europe without a history. No Romans. No Christians. No Crusades. No religious wars. Only old gods and trolls and blondes wearing fur. Really, what's to be depressed about?