Norwegian by Night

CHAPTER 13

Burim gets off the metro at Tøyen centre and walks a few blocks to the apartment in the intense sunlight. He walks up five flights of stairs, pants a bit, and hears that the music in the hallway is coming from his own flat.

The music is old fashioned and airy, and the woman is singing in an operatic voice in English. As he turns the key and opens the door, he knows it can only mean one thing.

Adrijana bursts into the hallway, barefoot and in what must be a new shirt from Zara, and yells in English, ‘Pink Martini is coming to Oslo!’

Before Burim can reply, Adrijana says, ‘Take off your shoes.’

She kisses him on the cheek and walks back into the kitchen, where she’s boiling some water for tea.

Burim takes off his shoes and puts them under the shoe rack in the hall, leaving his knapsack on a hook by the front door next to the umbrellas — one with smiley faces against a black background, and the other from the World Wildlife Fund in green with a panda bear on it.

‘Isn’t it a little hot for tea?’ Burim asks in lightly accented English.

‘Iced tea. You use English Breakfast with a bit of honey, and then put it right into the fridge.’

He sits on a pine chair from IKEA in the kitchen, and watches her go through the process.

‘We have a problem,’ he says.

Burim watches her from behind, stirring the honey into the tea, as he slouches in the chair and puts his elbows on his knees. He scratches his shoulder and rubs his face.

Drawing a deep breath, he holds it for a moment and then, finding the courage, says, ‘I just saw Kadri.’

And then, like pushing a button, Adrijana does exactly what he expected her to do.

First, she turns around. Then she says, ‘You said you’d stay away from him.’

To which Burim has no choice but to say, ‘They called. And I couldn’t say no.’

And then she gives him Lecture Number 9.

‘Kadri is dangerous. He’s still part of that mob. He’s a gangster, and he’s crazy. You promised you’d stay away from all those people. They are not your friends. And if you get pulled into their world, especially now, you will fall down a well and you will never get out. And I’ll leave you — I swear I will.’

Especially now was new. Burim decided to try it.

‘Why especially now?’

‘Why? That’s a good question. Let me see if I can think of the answer.’ Since starting her law studies at the University of Oslo, Adrijana has become a more formidable prosecutor. She always had the talent to argue, but her studies have unlocked her potential by teaching her that reasoned argumentation is a weapon worth unleashing on the feeble.

Feigning a conceptual breakthrough with a wide-open mouth, she waves the wet teabag for emphasis, which sprays on Burim, ruining his T-shirt.

‘Oh, I know. Could it be that we now live together and our futures are permanently intertwined, and part of you being a man in this relationship involves making small compromises like … oh, I don’t know … I do the laundry and, in return, you stay away from heroin-trafficking psychopaths and a dead Serbian woman three blocks from here?’

‘I’m not involved in any of that. You know that.’

‘No. What I know is that you said you’re not and I’ve chosen to believe you. I don’t really know what you’re doing and what you’re not doing.’

‘You know me.’

Adrijana softens a bit in her tone, but the focus remains the same.

‘And I know them, too. And I also read the newspaper. Please tell me they had nothing to do with that woman getting killed. Please tell me that.’

Burim opens his hands, and Adrijana slumps.

‘We should go to the police.’

‘Enver is my cousin. And I’m sure they already know.’

‘How do you know? You can’t even read Norwegian. How do you know what the papers say?’

‘There’s an English-language website. I looked.’

Adrijana shakes her head. ‘Why did you go?’

‘I’m afraid, OK? I need to know what they know.’

‘About what?’

‘About us!’

‘What about us?’

‘You’re Serbian!’

‘I’m Norwegian.’

‘Oh, please. Not this again.’

Adrijana now raises her voice, as she does every time she is forced to defend her identity and those she identifies with.

‘I am Norwegian. I have a Norwegian passport. I’ve lived here since I was eight years old. I have Norwegian parents. I go to the university. It is my best language. I am not Serbian!’

And Burim raises his voice, too. He cannot believe that she can fail to see how little any of that matters.

‘You were born in Serbia. Your name is Serbian. You escaped during a war and were adopted here. Your mother tongue is Serbian. Your blood is Serbian.’

‘So what?’ she yells.

‘It doesn’t matter what you think you are,’ shouts Burim. ‘It matters what they think you are!’

‘Who?’

‘All of them!’

And with that they both fall silent.

Pink Martini plays a glowing song of melancholy and remorse and, eventually, they look at each other. And then — the irony too rich to ignore — they smile.

She says, ‘I love you.’

And he says, ‘I love you, too.’

‘You may not see this, but I really am Norwegian. I trust them. If you think we’re in some kind of danger because the crazies don’t approve of our relationship, then I’m going to tell someone. I’ll tell the police. Because the Norwegians won’t tolerate that sort of thing. I can love whomever I want. You’re a slob, and you smoke, and you keep terrible company.’

Burim frowns and looks up. ‘But.’

‘But what?’

‘You’re supposed to list all my bad traits and then say, “But” and tell me all the reasons you love me.’

Adrijana pouts. ‘I’ve never heard that.’

She puts the tea in the refrigerator, and then readjusts a black-and-white postcard of a Flamenco dancer that slipped from its magnet.

Burim says, ‘I really am worried, though. Kadri said something that makes me think he knows about us. They’re trying to find a little boy.’

Burim looks at her carefully as he says this.

Adrijana is expressionless and says, ‘What little boy?’

‘The son of the woman who was killed.’

‘Why would they want to find a little boy?’

‘I can’t say.’ He pauses and takes out a cigarette that Adrijana immediately takes away, rinses under the faucet, and throws away. ‘You don’t know anything about it?’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Are you sure your parents are OK with us?’

‘No. They think I can do better than you. As I said, you’re a slob and you smoke and your friends suck, and you need a better job, and I’d like you to go to college. But they don’t care that you’re from Kosovo, if that’s what you mean.’

‘What about me being a Muslim?’

‘You’re not a very good Muslim.’

‘That’s not what I mean.’

‘They don’t care.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because they don’t care what you are, Burim. They care who you are. If you act like an arsehole, they’ll hate you. If you act like an arsehole because you’re a Muslim … well … that’s your business. What’s with the little boy?’

‘Can I trust you?’

‘About what?’

Sigrid receives a call from the garage informing her that the part they ordered for her car had broken in the mail and that it would be another three days before she could pick it up, so did she need a loaner? Then the chief calls again in case there is anything he can do to help. And by then the morning energy has been sucked out of the room and turned to vapour, so Sigrid throws in the towel and announces, perhaps a bit too loudly, that she is leaving and going to visit the crime scene — where the phone doesn’t ring — to find a lead.

Anything to put her in a better mood.

She goes out the front door and turns right along the building to a car park behind a chain-linked fence. There are three squad cars — a Volvo S60, a Saab 95, a Passat — and one BMW custom police bike. The fleet is a rather odd mix.

Sigrid takes a deep breath of the late-morning air and listens carefully to the sound of no phone ringing, no superiors cajoling, no theories deduced from a smattering of facts, no journalists asking when the police will know the answer.

She was actually asked this yesterday, and the reporter wanted to use Skype for a video chat. Because, apparently, talking on the phone using words isn’t enough anymore.

The journalist looked young and … generic.

‘When we’re finished with the investigation,’ she’d told the young liberal from Dagbladet as gently as she could.

‘And when will that be?’

‘When we know the answer.’

‘But that’s circular. You’re avoiding the question,’ the pipsqueak had had the nerve to say.

It was tough being in command sometimes. It wasn’t so much the rules — like the rule that you can’t grab journalists by the ears and lead them out of the building like bad children — but rather the need to set a tone for the other officers.

More to calm herself than to accomplish anything valuable, Sigrid offered a little riddle she heard as a little girl.

‘Why is something always in the last place you look?’

It was clear to the girl, and to Petter, and to the three other officers who pretended not to be listening but were, that she was being condescended to. But what choice did she have? Reject the question? Sigrid was the chief.

‘I don’t know. Why?’

‘Because you stop looking once you find it.’

Then, because the girl had insisted on video to really connect with her subject, Sigrid winked.

Oh, how’d she love to take the motorcycle! Put on a white helmet. Open the visor. Take in the smell of summer pines and cut grass. Feel the splendid isolation, the momentary step into timelessness.

Maybe she should get a licence. Learn to ride. Find a new hobby, and settle into the reality that she might never meet a man and would certainly never have a family.

Have the maturity to face the life she actually has.

She takes the Volvo. It is comfortable and has leather seats. She rolls up the windows and turns on the air conditioner, and rolls out into unusually heavy traffic for the middle of the city. The radio occasionally crackles with news, but otherwise the day is quiet and bright. There is no sign of rain again — no clouds between the Volvo and eternity. Sigrid turns on talk radio for company as she waits for the traffic to clear.

There is a talk show called Doktor in which people from all across the country can ask questions about their health. It is a national program, and it takes Sigrid out of Oslo, back to the farm, as the calls come in. Her mind wanders.

There is an old man with a terrible cough. He is calling from a very remote village. He is alone and has no family. He lives with three cats he loves very much. They are his only friends. He tells the doctor that he can’t stop smoking. He knows he should. His health is getting worse, but he doesn’t have the strength. Recently, one of the cats has started to cough. He thinks it is his fault. Sigrid hears his voice crack with guilt and remorse, underscored by terrible loneliness. Can the doctor help them?

Sigrid turns off the radio. She runs her hands over the steering wheel. She reaches for the radio again, but does not turn it on. She sits in the car for several minutes, in heavy traffic, doing nothing.

Then she calls her father.

The phone rings at least a dozen times. Then the phone — an old and heavy one — is removed from the cradle and bumps a few times before arriving at her father’s ear. Before saying hello, her father says, ‘Sigrid. What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing. I just wanted to call.’

‘Anything on your mind?’

‘I want to make sure you’re OK.’

‘My daughter. All sentimental.’

‘I’m as hard as you made me.’

Her father laughs a bit, which makes her smile, and then he coughs a bit, which takes her smile away.

‘Next time you come, I need some heavy work gloves. I don’t like the ones they sell here. Go to Clas Ohlson. They have good ones. And I want some more books. There’s a history of the Chinese I read about in Aftenposten. It was translated this year into Norwegian from the French. Bring me that.’

‘OK.’

There is silence on the line for a few moments that neither finds awkward. Eventually, Mr Ødegård says, ‘Have you met a nice man yet?’

Sigrid nods. ‘I’d been meaning to tell you. I got married and had three sons.’

‘That’s wonderful news.’

‘Huey, Dewey, and Louie. They’re delightful, but have speech impediments and very short legs.’

‘The school years may be challenging.’

There is more silence on the line as Sigrid flicks on the indicator and approaches the block of apartments where the murder took place.

‘Where are you?’ he asks.

‘I’m going to the crime scene.’

‘Who else is there?’

‘No one. It’s closed off.’

Her father says, ‘Has it been busy until now? The crime scene?’

‘Yes. I suppose. We go back periodically when we need to reconsider something. Why do you ask?’

‘Do you have your gun?’

‘Why would I need a gun?’

‘Do me a favour. Carry your night stick in your hand.’

‘Now who’s being sentimental?’

‘Do it anyway.’

‘Why?’

Mr Ødegård says, ‘A reporter says to a bank robber, “Why did you rob that bank?” The bank robber says, “Well, that’s where the money is.”’

‘Willie Sutton denied saying that.’

‘The point remains.’

‘Bye, Papa.’

‘Goodbye, Sigrid.’

There is an empty space a half-block up the street from the building, where Sigrid parks, takes her night stick from the trunk, and locks the doors. She carries it lightly and walks without haste so no one gets the idea that anything might be wrong.

Anything else, at any rate.

She opens the front door to the building and proceeds past the crime scene to the left, up the staircase to the second floor where the woman lived with her son. She steps through the tape, unlocks the front door, and goes inside. Sigrid removes her shoes, turns on the lights, and visits each room, looking for anything interesting — anything that might not have appeared in her report.

According to the rental agent, the apartment occupies sixty-seven square metres. From the front door there is a short entry hall, with a bathroom straight ahead. The bedroom is to the left, and she goes there first.

The apartment, which has been officially taped off, given its centrality to the investigation, has already been closely examined by Tomas and a new forensic specialist named Hilde. Thus far she’d been doing a good job, despite a nervous sort of officiousness that comes with too much respect for authority, which can interfere with one’s work with data — not good for a forensic specialist.

Sigrid has a folder containing copies of the photos taken here at the scene, and summaries of the reports already filed, which were thorough enough. But Sigrid wants to see it all for herself — to get a feel for the space where this small family of two once shared each other’s company, talked of small things, enjoyed small pleasures.

The medium-sized bedroom has a queen-size bed pressed into the far corner, and a single pushed into the opposite corner. The beds are unmade. The room is untidy, but not unclean. To the right of the hall is a very thin galley kitchen that has not been renovated since the 1970s. The cabinets are cheap, and there is a small, two-person table at the far end where Sigrid presumes the mother and son would eat together and talk about his school days. There are dishes in the sink, and the table is flimsy. But the surface is clean.

The second door on the right leads to the living room.

Her officers seem to have done well. She kneels on the carpet to look closely for footprints from standard-issue boots, but does not see any. Petter and the boys don’t seem to have tracked in any dirt either. There are numbers on items all around the room, and it all looks familiar from the photos.

The bathroom contains only female and child products. The larger containers — shampoo, bubble bath, talcum powder — are from the bargain end of the cost spectrum. The smaller ones are higher-end samples. In a basket there is a pile of perfume testers that have been torn from women’s magazines.

Behind the toilet, there is very little grime and little dust. The soap dish had been rinsed after its last use. There is a plastic bin of Q-tips with the lid removed, and a boy’s toothbrush in fairly new condition. The paste has been consistently squeezed from the bottom.

In the kitchen, there is no candy and only one box of sugary cereal. There are no soft drinks, but lots of fruit-flavoured syrups. There is some pasta and tomato sauce. In the freezer, there’s an inexpensive ice-cream and one pint of Häagen-Dazs cookies & cream.

Sigrid reaches in and takes it out. It is almost full. There are five small valleys that have been dug out by an experienced hand. By someone who loves this, but can’t afford the luxury, and so takes it with discipline and solitary pleasure as her son eats the other stuff.

She places it back in the freezer.

You were a good mother, and you loved your son. Whatever else, this is true.

Sigrid puts her shoes back on, turns out the lights, and closes the door behind her — feeling, though, as if she’s forgotten to do something.

The staircase is made of treated hardwood. The edges are worn from hundreds of people having stepped on them thousands of times since the building was restored in 1962, when it was converted from a cooperative into condominiums.

She turns on the landing, and steps down the second flight to visit the crime scene itself. The names ‘Rhea Horowitz’ and ‘Lars Bjørnsson’ are on the black plastic-insert above the door bell.

The police seal is broken. Sigrid removes her hand and stares at the door handle. She stares at it for quite some time.

The door should be closed. If any of her officers were posted inside, she’d have been notified.

Did she not post a guard at the door? There are officers in a van outside watching the premises, but no one directly at the door. This might have been a good idea, in retrospect.

There are some plausible explanations for the door being open.

Perhaps the old man has returned. One assumes he has a key. Or perhaps the whole family has returned. They shouldn’t have. But people act impulsively. It is illegal to enter a crime scene, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. Given what’s happening to them all, it would be understandable if not permissible. Or there has been someone else in the flat.

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.