The Last Fix (42 page)

    Gunnarstranda
watched the woman take a lungful of cigarette smoke and exhale with her eyes
closed. 'I think something must have happened when he went back,' she said.

    'Like
what for example?'

    'I
don't know, but I have my own ideas.'

    'What
ideas?' Gunnarstranda asked.

    'He
found the corpse. Her dead body.'

    Gunnarstranda
crushed his cigarette in the ashtray. 'Did he say anything else about her?'

    'No.'

    'Did
he talk about his police interview?'

    She
nodded.

    'What
did he say?'

    'He
said he had lied. He hadn't told you about going back to search for her the
second time. I said that was stupid of him. I said you would see through the
lie.' She paused.

    'How
did he answer?' Gunnarstranda asked in a quiet voice.

    'He
said: "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it,'" she replied.

    'How
do you interpret that?' the policeman asked.

    'Don't
know.'

    Gunnarstranda
mumbled, 'We'll cross that bridge when we come to it…'

    They
exchanged glances.

    'I
don't know,' she said. 'But I do know he didn't kill her.'

    Gunnarstranda
waited. In the end, she glanced up and said with a joyless smile: 'Mothers know
that kind of thing.'

    The
policeman nodded to himself. 'Your son's death is tragic and I appreciate you
don't like to think about the events, but what you have told me now may have
had an effect on Henning. He may have felt guilty about what happened and gone
into a depression…'

    The
detective's face was tired and lines of resignation began to appear around his
mouth and eyes.

    'I
know he didn't do it,' she whispered.

    'From
what you've told me, I cannot exclude the possibility that he killed her.'

    'But
I think he was serious about this girl.'

    'What
do you mean by
serious
?'

    'That
there was something more between her and Henning than with anyone else.'

    'You
mean their relationship was special. But there is very little to suggest that
is the case, fru Kramer. Katrine Bratterud had a boyfriend.'

    'But
she still felt something special for Henning. She was also precious to him.'

    'Of
course, the special relationship between them, if he did kill her, must have
meant that the final act would have brought on a very bad depression.'

    'Would
you kill the person with whom you were going to share your life?'

    'Share
your life?' Gunnarstranda opened his eyes wide. 'You just said he was sceptical
about concepts like love.'

    'Being
sceptical about such concepts does not mean he stopped loving her. What
bothered Henning was that words like love camouflaged other things. He wanted
to go deeper, to the core, beneath her skin.'

    She
sat looking into space, and added: 'And that is in fact the essence of love,
isn't it?'

    In
silence, the policeman stared into the middle distance. He was thinking about
his conversations with Edel, his own loss and his longing for isolation. 'I'm
sure Henning was a very intelligent young man and a wonderful human being,' he
said by way of a conclusion and sprang to his feet. 'But we in the police have
to work with hard evidence and facts, so we would be interested in anything you
might turn up… or remember.' He grasped her hand and took his leave.

    Gunnarstranda
had just put a pan of potatoes on the stove when the telephone rang.

    'I
know what you're going to say,' Frølich said before Gunnarstranda could
answer with his usual arrogance. Frølich went on: 'I'm ringing from the
archives.'

    Gunnarstranda
watched Kalfatrus swimming restlessly around his glass bowl. The water was
beginning to get dirty. Algae and sediment. 'Why's that?' he asked looking down
at himself. In his hand he was holding a knife with a blob of butter on the tip
and a fork.

    'Because
of Tormod Stamnes - the social worker who administered Katrine Bratterud's
adoption. The guy's over seventy years old and in reduced circumstances,' Frølich
said.

    'Reduced
in what sense?'

    'He
goes to Lorry during the day. He's one of the boys who hangs his head over his
beer glass for ten minutes, then drains it in one go.'

    'I
see.'

    'How
much would you be willing to pay for a good motive?' Frølich asked with
a grin.

    'That's
how you want to top up your pay, is it? I've got a frying pan on the go in the
kitchen,' Gunnarstranda growled.

    'Stamnes
was involved in the relocation of Katrine in 1977. But that's not the most
interesting bit. The crazy thing is that this guy spoke to Katrine the day
before she was killed.'

    Gunnarstranda
put the kitchen utensils down beside Kalfatrus's bowl. His eyes glowed with the
fiery intensity of old as he bit his lip and inhaled.

    'This
guy seems a bit dodgy,' Frølich said. 'For a long time he pretended he
didn't understand what I was talking about. But then when I mentioned her name
and said she was dead it gave him a shock. There was a real reaction and it all
came out. She'd been there and he'd given her the name of her real mother.
Katrine had got everything he knew out of him. The day before she was killed!'

    'What
was her real name?'

    'Lockert,'
Frølich said. 'Katrine's real mother's name was Helene Lockert.'

    'There's
something about that name,' Gunnarstranda muttered, thinking hard.«- 'I thought
you would say something like that,' Frølich whinnied down the line.
'Does it ring a bell?'

    'Not
at this moment.'

    'Helene
Lockert died when Katrine was two years old. But that's not the most
interesting thing. The most interesting thing is the cause of death.'

    'And
that was?'

    'The
Lockert case. In Lillehammer in 1977. Helene Lockert was strangled and left for
dead in her house. Killer unknown.'

    After
the policeman had gone she plucked up her courage and began to tidy Henning's
things. The thought of being in contact with his clothes still repelled her.
Seeing his things lying around, where they'd been left, knowing he would never
use them again, every little detail reminded her of him, reminded her that he
was dead. Outliving your children is a terrible fate, she thought. It is the
worst thing that can happen to anyone. When she had finally brought herself to
enter his room, she stood studying the room as though it were the first time
she had seen it.

    The
policeman had asked about a letter. But she dreaded going through his drawers,
touching his things, confronting her grief, her loss, her emotion. She was
exhausted from thinking thoughts about what he would never achieve, what his
would never learn, what he would never do or the joys he would never bring her.
You should never have dreams, she thought. It's dangerous to dream because
dreams make you vulnerable. Dreams that plummet to earth create the greatest
pain. She should never have nurtured dreams for Henning. Everyone has enough to
deal with inside themselves. She stood in a daze, contemplating sweaters,
trousers, shoes that would never be filled with his body, his spirit or his
personality.

    I
have to think about something practical, she said to herself. She didn't want
to lift the clothing. It was impregnated with his scent and she knew that would
be too much for her. I have to reconcile myself to the fact that Henning is
dead, she thought, that he will never come back - not here, not to this life.
Her gaze fell on a red book on the bed. The author was Carl Gustav Jung, one of
Henning's favourite gurus. Henning had said Jung was the internalized Hindu;
Jung had a theory that time was an illusion. Those were the words he had used.
The soul isn't reborn, Mum. We live different lives all the time. While you are
living this life as my mother you're living another life, in another time,
maybe as a French citizen in a Paris commune, maybe as a Stone Age woman, maybe
as a camel!

    'Camel!'
she had screamed in consternation, rejecting his suggestion. The incident still
made her smile. She sat down on the bed. Of course he was right. There had to
be something after death. Something roaming other places, beyond the mortal
frame, whether it was called a soul or a spirit or energy. But Henning had not
done away with himself, she was certain of that. The mere idea of doing away
With yourself would have been totally alien to him; it wasn't a way of thinking
he would have been able to accept. She should have said that to the policeman.
In those precise words. Henning did not understand what suicide was.

    If
Henning was living on some other transient spiritual plane, there was still
hope. Hope of a spiritual plane, some form of mental substance - a god. But how
would Henning meet God? After all, he had criticized the Bible as no more than
a collection of myths and good stories, and called himself a religious
agnostic.

    Her
eyes fell on the white marble box he had brought back with him from India last
summer. She stood up and wondered whether she dared to hold it. A small marble
box decorated with onyx and mother of pearl. She studied the box, fought
against her feelings, overcame her desire to turn away and lifted the box up.
At once she flinched. There was something inside. A low, dry sound indicated
that something slid around every time she moved her hand. There was something
in the little box. A flood of new emotions streamed through her. It had to be
precious. And therefore something secret. Henning had a secret. Would it be
right to pry? Or to be more accurate: did she have the strength to pry? Would
another unachievable dream issue forth only to dash all her hopes yet again,
with all the injustice of fate?

    She
fought an internal struggle. With tears in her eyes she removed the lid from
the little marble box. And found herself looking at a ring.

    A
ring. She put the box down on his desk and lifted the ring. A heavy ring, a
broad ring with two stones inset. She examined it. The ceiling lamp was
reflected in all the facets of the two jewels. The light seemed to be sucked
into the stones and to explode out again. This was no cheap bauble. She
scrutinized the ring. There seemed to be something engraved on the inside.
Katrine,
she read and burst into tears. The box had contained a vain dream,
a dream that might have been better remaining a secret.

    Gunnarstranda
used his legs and strolled down Maridalsveien to Beyer Bridge. He needed to
think and he hated changing buses, so he decided to take a tram instead, a tram
to the other side of town. He crossed the Akerselva on foot. By the bridge
there was a kind of art installation with balloons. He continued down Thorvald
Meyers gate towards Birkelunden. He tried to imagine Katrine Bratterud at the
moment she found out the truth about her biological mother. Katrine at the end
of her quest. A social worker who would open the door for her, the door out of
a life lived in dreams. Would she have been disappointed? He supposed not. The
discovery that the mother had been a murder victim of an unknown killer simply
threw up yet more secrets.

    Gunnarstranda's
attitude to the new development in the case was split. On the one hand, it was
not good to extend the confines of the investigation too far since it is
important to concentrate your energies on the most fertile, and the most
logical, ground. In this sense, a murder committed many years ago in a
different location could be a dead end. On the other hand, the information
about Katrine's biological mother was so sensational that it would be a
dereliction of duty to ignore it.