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- Herausgeber: Isis Audio
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Serie: Blix & Ramm
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020
When the mother of a missing two-year-old girl is seriously injured in a suspected terrorist attack in Oslo, crime-fighting duo Blix and Ramm join forces to investigate the case, and things aren't adding up … The second instalment in an addictive, atmospheric, award-winning series. 'An exercise in literary tag-teaming from two of Norway's biggest crime writers with a bold new take … a series with potential' Sunday Times 'Grim, gory and filled with plenty of dark twists … There's definitely a Scandinavian chill in the air with this fascinating read' Sun 'Alongside Jo Nesbo's Knife, Smoke Screen is this summer's most anticipated read, and it doesn't disappoint' Tvedestrandsposten, Norway __________________ Oslo, New Year's Eve. The annual firework celebration is rocked by an explosion, and the city is put on terrorist alert. Police officer Alexander Blix and blogger Emma Ramm are on the scene, and when a severely injured survivor is pulled from the icy harbour, she is identified as the mother of two-year-old Patricia Smeplass, who was kidnapped on her way home from kindergarten ten years earlier … and never found. Blix and Ramm join forces to investigate the unsolved case, as public interest heightens, the terror threat is raised, and it becomes clear that Patricia's disappearance is not all that it seems… _____________________ Praise for the Blix & Ramm series: 'Everything about this crime novel sings, the relationship between Blix and Emma, which is complex, but also the relationship between Blix and Fosse and Kovic. The past bleeds into the present and the clever melding of the strands of the story and the slow reveal of details that propel the story is masterly. This tale often surprises or shifts in subtle ways that are pleasing and avoid cliché. As the opener for a new series this is a cracker, long live the marriage of Horst and Enger' New Books Magazine 'A fast-moving, punchy, serial killer investigative novel with a whammy of an ending. If this is the first in the Blix and Ramm series, then here's to many more!' LoveReading 'A clever, gripping crime novel with personality, flair, and heart' Crime by the Book 'A stunningly excellent collaboration from Thomas Enger and Jorn Lier Horst …. It's a brutal tale of fame, murder, and reality TV that gets the pulse racing' Russel McLean 'Now — what happens when you put two of the most distinguished writers of Nordic noir in tandem? Death Deserved by Thomas Enger and Jørn Lier Horst suggests it was a propitious publishing move; a ruthless killer is pursued by a tenacious celebrity blogger and a damaged detective' Financial Times
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Oslo, New Year’s Eve. The annual firework celebration is rocked by an explosion, and the city is put on terrorist alert.
Police officer Alexander Blix and blogger Emma Ramm are on the scene, and when a severely injured survivor is pulled from the icy harbour, she is identified as the mother of two-year-old Patricia Smeplass, who was kidnapped on her way home from kindergarten ten years earlier … and never found.
Blix and Ramm join forces to investigate the unsolved case, as public interest heightens, the terror threat is raised, and it becomes clear that Patricia’s disappearance is not all that it seems…
SMOKE SCREEN
JØRN LIER HORST & THOMAS ENGER
Translated by Megan Turney
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
1st January 2019
The heavy iron door at the end of the corridor slammed shut. The sound reverberated along the brick walls.
Christer Storm Isaksen lifted his head from the book he was reading and listened. Short, slight steps on the linoleum floor.
It was Frankmann. He was the only one who would ever bother doing the extra round, if there were a reason to do so.
The steps came to a halt outside Isaksen’s cell. There was a rattling of keys before the sound of a knuckle knocking lightly on the door.
Isaksen put the book down.
‘Yes?’
The upper hinge creaked as Frankmann appeared in the open doorway. It looked as if he had lost even more weight over the last week. His uniform hung loosely from his thin torso.
‘Happy New Year,’ he said, accompanying the greeting with a nod. He had a white envelope in his hand.
‘Happy New Year,’ Isaksen nodded back.
He wanted to ask him how his Christmas had been, but held back. He was curious about the envelope.
‘A letter came for you,’ Frankmann said. ‘I thought you would want it sooner rather than later.’
Isaksen took it from him.
No stamp or address. Just his name, written in small, round letters. The writing was a little slanted and somewhat unclear, as if the writer had been in a hurry.
‘It was in the post box at the visitor entrance,’ Frankmann explained.
Isaksen felt the envelope. It contained something stiffer than a letter. Maybe a postcard. 2
He rubbed his thumb over the place where the stamp should have been, turned it over. No return address.
He couldn’t remember the last time he had received a handwritten letter. The Christmas cards had stopped coming too, after his mother had died.
Frankmann was still standing at the cell door, an inquisitive expression on his face.
‘We would normally check it over first, with the rest of the post,’ he said; an explanation as to why he was waiting to watch Isaksen open it. ‘But the mutt won’t be here until Friday,’ he added, referring to the sniffer dog.
Isaksen peeled away the flap on the envelope and gently unsealed it. With two fingers, he opened it just wide enough to peek inside.
It was a photo.
He took it out and felt an instant tightening in his chest.
The girl in the photo was eight, maybe nine years old. She was wearing a blue hoodie and had her long, brown hair pulled back into a high ponytail. She was sat behind a school desk, resting her hands on a book. She had braces too, which she hadn’t managed to hide – the photo capturing the exact moment she had grinned at the camera. There was a sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Her eyes were ice blue, identical to his own.
‘It’s her.’ The words escaped from between his lips.
Frankmann took a step closer.
‘Who?’ he asked.
Isaksen didn’t answer.
It’s her, he repeated to himself. Her: the girl everyone had told him was dead.
1
Twenty hours earlier
The New Year’s Eve fireworks illuminated the city. Shrieking arrows shot into the sky and exploded in an array of multi-coloured patterns. Each eruption varied in strength and intensity. Over the last few minutes, the explosions had become more and more frequent.
A heavy mist had drifted across the fjord and lay like a lid over the harbour in front of Oslo City Hall. The drop in temperature had forced the spectators to button up their coats and tighten their scarves. They huddled together in the snow, laughing and shouting.
Emma Ramm was well wrapped up in a thick winter coat. She was wearing wellies, with two pairs of woollen socks. But she was not part of the crowd milling around in the square – the New Year’s revellers staring up at the sky, holding their phones out in front of them. Neither was she among those frantically trying to get in touch with their friends and family, moments before midnight. Instead, she was making her way through the crowd, studying those she passed, looking for a sign, for anything that would indicate whether they were actually there to celebrate, or if they were there for another reason. She was unsure, however, what the signs for that would even look like.
It had been a little over half an hour since Emma had left Irene’s flat, halfway through a quarrel she had been having with Kasper, who had suddenly decided that he didn’t want to go to the annual New Year’s party in Amager after all, as he’d rather start the New Year in bed next to her. He could not understand why she absolutely had to be down by City Hall when the clock struck twelve. She didn’t even like fireworks.
‘I just have to,’ she had replied.
Kasper had laughed at her vague and childish answer. He was grumpy by that point as well, so had replied: ‘Fine, but you can go by yourself. I’m not going out just to get cold and wet.’ 4
‘I’ll go,’ Martine had chimed in. ‘I want to see the fireworks. Can’t I go with you, Aunty? Please?’
Emma had smiled but shook her head. She didn’t want to have to explain to her niece that it might be too dangerous for a small child. And for adults too, for that matter. Lots of people end up ringing in the New Year in A&E with a firework-related injury.
But there was another reason.
Over the last few months, Emma had played a major part in exposing what the media had called ‘the countdown murders’. In fact, she had almost been one of the victims. The killer had intended to make her murder the grand finale to his countdown. So as New Year’s Eve approached, and with that the public countdown to midnight, she had grown anxious that someone else might be inspired to attempt something similar.
Emma had confided in her therapist about this irrational fear. He had nodded and said that he understood her logic, but that there was no reason to believe something like that was going to happen again. Emma had tried to convince herself that her thoughts were just ridiculous speculations, but the idea had already taken hold and had only gained momentum. Her mind kept returning to the huge firework display that was always held on the square between the harbour and Oslo City Hall, where thousands of people gathered every New Year’s Eve. Her therapist had eventually suggested that she should go down to the harbour that night, that she should tackle her fear head on, see for herself that nothing bad was going to happen, and then learn from that experience.
In fact, in the end, she had decided to leave the whole thing be, but earlier that evening an almost claustrophobic panic had washed over her, a sudden fear of what Kasper might do once the clock turned twelve. Not that she thought he would get down on one knee and propose or anything – they had only known each other for eight months – but it wasn’t out of the realms of possibility that he might confess his love for her. Emma was still not quite sure how she felt about him, other than thinking that he was a nice guy who she 5enjoyed spending time with, so long as they lived in separate cities and didn’t see each other all that often. She just wanted to carry on enjoying her relatively uncomplicated existence as the new crime reporter for news.no, without having to think too much about the future.
She took her phone out. Kasper had tried to call about a minute ago, but she couldn’t be bothered to call him back. It was 23:59. Emma took a deep breath. People had started throwing their arms around each other. They shouted and sloshed around in the melting snow. The sounds of fireworks crackling and booming, people yelling and screaming filled the air around her. Emma didn’t miss a single thing about the nights she used to spend out partying in Oslo, except perhaps the momentary bliss she would feel after a glass or two, before it inevitably tipped the other way.
Someone had started the countdown. Emma felt as if something sharp and uncomfortable were bearing down on her stomach and chest. She tried to hold on to her therapist’s assurances that nothing bad was about to happen. Soon she could go home to Irene, Kasper and Martine, free from worry, ready to begin the New Year.
Five!
Four!
Three!
Two!
One!
Everything was suddenly bathed in a blinding light. A violent explosion shook the ground beneath her. The wave of pressure and heat knocked her off her feet. Debris tore through the air. She curled up on the ground, her arms wrapped around her head, trying to make sense of what was happening.
At the edge of the harbour, about thirty metres away, an immense column of orange, yellow and red flames that had just erupted into the sky was now starting to collapse, the flames cascading back down to the ground. Her ears were ringing, but she could still hear the cries, she could see the people in the crowd, who had only a moment ago 6been celebrating together. Now they were clinging on to each other, pushing past each other, panicking, searching for their friends, partners, children, something to explain what had just happened.
Emma got up. Black rags and scraps were descending from the sky. A man came staggering towards her, one of his arms on fire. He yelled and feverishly slapped at the flames before managing to tear his jacket off.
While the rational part of her had tried to hold on to the belief that her countdown hypothesis was absurd, an irrational prediction, the sensation she had felt growing over the last few weeks had still twisted itself into a painful knot in the pit of her stomach.
But there was no ominous feeling anymore. There was no fear.
It was now reality.
And around her, the fireworks continued to erupt.
2
Alexander Blix battled his way through the flood of terrified people. He leapt over a flowerbed that was hiding under the snow and slipped on a patch of ice, somehow managing to stay on his feet. Sofia Kovic was close behind him. He listened through his earpiece as she radioed into the operations centre, alerting them to the explosion that had just occurred in front of Oslo City Hall.
A man was stumbling towards them, a charred open wound on his face and a bottle of champagne still in his hand. A woman with something sticking out of her leg limped nearby.
Blix ran past her. People were sprawled across the ground, blood-soaked, groaning with pain. Others were sat half upright, dazed, their clothes in tatters. A dark, grey smoke screen had engulfed them.
He stopped, unsure where to begin.
Four bodies lay motionless near the end of the harbour. He ran towards them and knelt by the first body. A young woman with blonde hair. Shrapnel from the explosion had punctured her left eye. He searched her neck for a pulse but couldn’t find one. He moved over to another woman who had injuries to her chest and stomach. Her mouth was agape, her eyes wide open. He couldn’t find her pulse either.
Kovic had bent over a man wearing a grey coat. She looked up at Blix, met his gaze and shook her head.
Down at the water’s edge, slumped across one of the mooring posts, was another body, scorched from the waist up. A man, by the looks of it. His injuries were more severe than the others’. Half of his face and most of his chest had been torn to shreds. There was no point checking for a pulse.
Four dead.
The explosion had left a huge crater in the asphalt. The remnants of whatever had exploded were scattered around them, still on fire. Orders had started to come in over the police radio, something about a bomb, and that they should treat it as a terrorist attack. 8
Terrorism, Blix thought. Christ.
A shout close behind him made him spin round. Two well-dressed men were pointing into the dark water. There was a body floating face down, arms outstretched.
Blix tore his earpiece out, pulled his jacket off and detached his duty belt. He took a step to the edge of the quay and dived in. He hadn’t stopped to think about how cold it would be, but when he broke the surface he felt like he’d leapt into a pool of ice. The muscles of his face froze. It felt like a hard, cold clamp was tightening around his head. The water penetrated through his shirt, seeped into his trousers, filled his boots. His chest clenched. He had never tried this hard to move his limbs before, but they refused to obey him.
His buoyancy sent him back up to the surface. He struggled to catch his breath, and had to stop and wait for his muscles to relax.
He could hear someone shouting at him from up on the square.
‘Ten metres, to your left.’ It was Kovic’s voice. ‘Be careful!’ she added.
Blix drew in a breath and tried to command his body to swim, but his clothes were weighing him down, sticking to his skin. The intensity of the cold water was making his movements slow and ineffective. It felt as if he were barely moving, and his heavy boots were dragging him down.
‘Just five more metres! Further left.’
Blix propelled himself forwards with a few wide strokes, stretching out his hand on the final one. He made a grasping motion, as much of a grab as he could command his fingers to make. Clothes, a frozen, lifeless hand. Blix clutched the body just as it began to dip below the surface. He tried to roll the person over but only managed to turn them halfway before they slipped out of his grip. The effort sent him below the water again. He swallowed a mouthful, spluttered, coughed and spat. He had no choice but to wait until his body had stopped protesting, so that he could concentrate on turning the lifeless person onto their back.
It was a woman.
Her face was partially concealed by her long, dark hair, which was 9pasted across her severely burned skin. Blix took hold of her under her armpit and swam backwards towards the square.
‘Over here!’ he heard Kovic yell.
He turned his head and saw his colleague standing with one foot down on the jetty, ready to pull them up. His body stiffened with each kick. He spat and gasped as he struggled to keep the woman’s head above water. Behind him, Kovic took another step down into the water.
His body was about to give out. He managed to grab one of the steps and draw himself and the woman up onto the ladder. His right foot found one of the steps. With one last push he hoisted the limp body out of the water so that Kovic could grab her jacket collar. More people were rushing over to help. Blix was finally able to let go of the woman, and he clung to the jetty, gasping for air.
‘Do you need a hand?’ he heard Kovic shout down to him.
Blix coughed a few more times before shaking his head and attempting to heave himself up and out of the water. But his legs would not obey him. His arms were frozen stiff. Kovic reached down anyway and grabbed his forearm with both hands. Someone else came over to help. Together, they managed to haul him up.
The paramedics up on the square were already seeing to the lifeless woman. Blix leaned forwards and rested his hands on his knees, letting the water drain off him. He was not trained for this. Not in the slightest. He usually sat behind a desk. He investigated crime scenes, questioned witnesses. It had been nearly twenty years since he had last been on active duty. He had only volunteered to work on New Year’s Eve so that his younger colleagues with children could celebrate with their families at home.
He expelled the water from his nose, straightened up slightly and noticed that he was bleeding from a cut on one of his hands.
The explosions of the New Year fireworks merged with the sound of sirens. Kovic appeared with a woollen blanket and wrapped it around him. A woman was standing beside her. Blix hadn’t noticed her at first, but, recognising who it was, he attempted to smile.
‘Hi, Emma,’ he said.
3
The harbour looked like a battlefield. There was blood everywhere. The injured were leaning against one another, crying. It was unclear what had exploded, but what was left was spread across the ground and continued to burn. Emma tried to avoid looking directly at the bodies of those who were clearly dead.
The New Year was only a few minutes old. A cacophony of noise surrounded her. The sound of sirens, a firework exploding somewhere above them, the blaring of a car horn, the thumping bass of a song being played far, far away. Oslo was under attack again, Emma thought, seven and a half years after the last time, when a car bomb had been detonated in the Regjeringskvartalet area of central Oslo, killing eight people. It was well known that Norwegians enjoyed a good party, so she had often thought that the capital would be an easy target for terrorists. The streets were always packed, and never more so than on huge national celebrations like the seventeenth of May, or New Year’s Eve.
The woman Blix had rescued from the water was now laid out on a stretcher. Paramedics were attempting to fit her with an oxygen mask, but were struggling to remove the hair that had melted into the wound on her cheek. A man was kneeling beside her, performing chest compressions. If she survived, she would be forever marked by the events of that night. Emma thought of her own physical defect. A rare illness had caused her to lose all her hair. At least her condition, and the emotional scars that came with it, were easy to hide from the outside world, with the help of various wigs and a resolute attitude. A facial burn was much more difficult to conceal.
The police had started carrying out their routine operations. They had already rolled out the barrier tape and had secured the area around the site of the explosion. They were now in the process of expanding the perimeters.
Emma’s phone rang. Anita Grønvold, news.no flashed up on the screen. 11
‘Where are you?’
Emma could tell that her boss had been drinking, and that she was somewhere where the party had not yet ceased.
‘The square, in front of City Hall,’ Emma replied. ‘I came down to watch the fireworks.’
She recounted what she had seen, the bodies of the dead, the injuries of those who had survived, the woman who had been rescued from the water.
‘Have you taken any photos?’
‘Not yet.’
‘We need photos,’ Anita said. ‘You don’t need to write much, but we need those pictures. Go with the terrorism angle first. Make sure to mention the casualties and the other victims, the extent of their injuries. I’ll get Henrik Wollan to help, and some others, regardless of how drunk they are.’
‘I had thought about linking it to the countdown murders,’ Emma said.
‘Huh?’ Anita said. She didn’t understand.
‘The fact that whoever did this chose a particular time,’ Emma explained. ‘Twelve o’clock. The countdown to midnight, and the New Year.’
There was a moment’s silence.
‘You don’t think it’s just a coincidence?’
‘No.’
‘Well, copycat killer or not, you won’t be able to get the police to confirm or disprove that theory, certainly not tonight, anyway. Just focus on getting those photos and figuring out the scope of the situation.’
Emma sighed inwardly. ‘Will do.’
‘Tomorrow, you can get started on a piece about Blix and the woman he rescued. Find out who she is and how she’s doing.’
Emma hung up, swiped up to open the camera on her phone and began walking around, holding it out in front of her. She took a few shots of the first responders, the police officers rolling out more 12barrier tape, the flashing blue lights, the blood-soaked victims, the armed officers. She thought about calling Kasper or Irene – she should let them know she was still in one piece – but settled on sending her sister a quick text to say she was okay. She could pass on the message.
Emma caught sight of Blix again. He was sat in the open door of a police car, wrapped up tight in a blanket. Steam was rising from the top of his head.
Blix had saved her life once too, nineteen years ago, in an incident the media had subsequently named ‘the Teisen tragedy’. Blix had shot Emma’s father – he hadn’t had any other choice; he had to do it before her father had a chance to shoot Emma too. He had already shot and killed his wife, Emma’s mother, only minutes before, leaving her in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor.
Emma hadn’t fully understood Blix’s role in the events of that day, not until circumstances had brought them together again years later, with both of them working towards solving the countdown murders. He had kept an eye out for her then, giving her information he hadn’t shared with the other journalists. But that wasn’t the reason that Emma had grown to appreciate his presence in her life – even more so as time went on. It was because she felt that he actually cared. In conversations with her therapist, she had come to realise that she saw Blix as a kind of father figure.
Emma took a step closer to him. Blix’s lips were blue, contrasting with the stark white of his face. One of his hands was bundled up in a bloody bandage. She snapped a photo of him without him noticing, and moved on. A reply from Irene had popped up on her screen, but Emma swiped it away, resolving to read it later. Kasper hadn’t called or sent a single message to check if she were safe.
Now that there were fewer people inside the perimeter, the extent of the damage was much clearer. Her gaze was drawn to the black hole in the ground, about a metre wide. Emma held her phone in front of her, continuing to take photos of the scene. She zoomed in closer to one of the casualties – a man on his back. He was wearing 13a grey coat with a high collar. It was singed from the explosion, and was drenched in blood. He had black trousers and black gloves. Matching black shoes too. They were made of leather, and they looked like, as if they could be…
Emma drifted towards him, stepping over to the other side of the body. She heard a voice shouting her name, but didn’t look to see who it was. She only had eyes for the man on the ground in front of her, refusing to acknowledge who she was looking at. It was not Kasper. It was impossible, it couldn’t be him.
‘You can’t be here,’ the voice said behind her, closer this time. ‘You have to stay behind the cordon, Emma, like everyone else.’
But Emma wasn’t listening, she just edged closer and closer to the man lying there on his back, staring straight up at the sky. At the fireworks and the stars. The ground and snow around him were stained with the blood that had drained from the open wound in his stomach.
No, Emma whispered softly. It can’t…
She shook her head, gasping for air. She felt a hand on her side, but didn’t turn to see who was talking to her, pulling at her. All she could do was stare at his black curls against the white snow. His stubble. His eyelids. She desperately hoped they would start blinking, but they remained as they were, just as motionless. Just as dead.
4
Blix thought he knew what it felt like to be cold, to be frozen to the core. In his younger years, he had gone through a period of taking a swim in the sea every morning. Autumn or spring, summer or winter. It made no difference. He had been living on the peninsula at Bygdøy at that time, so it was only a short drive to the beaches at Huk or Paradisbukta. Gard Fosse, who was now his boss, would join him from time to time. Hollering and panting, they would race out into the water, only to sprint back to shore again a few seconds later, to a dry towel and warm clothes. Maybe even a flask of coffee.
With all the roadblocks and chaos in downtown Oslo, it had taken much longer than usual to get back to the Oslo Police Headquarters. The locker rooms were packed. The extra officers who had been called in were preparing themselves for action. The room was buzzing with activity. It was difficult to hear anything else over the sounds of weapons being loaded and the crackling of the radio transmitters.
Blix had torn off his wet clothes, closed the shower door behind him and stood under the warm jets of water until he was absolutely sure that he had fully thawed.
The cut on his hand probably needed seeing to – he had managed to bandage it up himself at least – but he decided to stay at the office regardless.
Kovic had remained at the harbour. He called her to see how things were going.
‘We’re trying to track down witnesses,’ she replied. ‘But none of the people I’ve spoken to so far were sober, and no one’s provided any new information. Hopefully, the CCTV cameras can help us out.’
Blix nodded. Cameras didn’t lie. Unlike people, they couldn’t be persuaded to change their story. And the city was full of them.
‘A lot of people were using their phones to film at the time as well,’ he commented, dropping into the chair behind his workstation. ‘We can encourage people to send us whatever footage they’ve got.’ 15
‘We’ve already secured some,’ Kovic replied. ‘But it’ll be a massive job to trawl through all of it, especially when we don’t even know what we’re looking for.’
‘Do we know anything more about the explosion?’ asked Blix.
The line crackled.
‘The bomb was placed in a waste container,’ she answered.
‘A waste container?’
‘Yes, one of those litter ones. Green, about a metre high. God, I can’t think straight – what’s the word I’m after?’
‘A rubbish bin?’
‘Yes, that, a rubbish bin.’
Blix had turned his computer on and headed straight to the news website VG Nett. Photos from the scene at City Hall dominated the front page, already supplemented with witness statements: ‘blood everywhere’ … ‘mindless terrorism’.
‘The bomb squad believe that the force of the explosion measured in at around seventy millibars,’ Kovic continued.
‘Is that a lot?’
‘Not enough to break windows or damage the nearby buildings,’ Kovic explained, ‘but enough to inflict fatal injuries on those closest to the explosion.’
‘I see,’ Blix replied.
‘There’s something else you should know…’ Kovic began.
‘Go on?’
Kovic hesitated before continuing.
‘None of the casualties have been formally identified, but Emma’s boyfriend is one of them.’
Blix moved his phone to his other ear.
‘She was inside the cordon,’ Kovic said. ‘I was next to her when she saw him. Kasper Bjerringbo. A Danish journalist.’
‘I know who he is,’ Blix replied, swallowing hard. ‘He was a good guy.’
‘From what I managed to get out of Emma, he wasn’t meant to be there.’ 16
Blix had seen Emma that night, but she’d been alone.
‘How is she?’ he asked.
‘What can I say? I think she’s in shock. She just stood there. Didn’t cry or anything. And I didn’t have the heart to pull her away when the paramedics came for him.’
Blix felt a strong urge to see Emma. Talk to her. Not that he could say much to help, he just wanted to be there for her.
‘Is there someone looking after her?’ he asked.
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘Can you make sure?’ Blix requested.
‘Will do.’
The line fell silent.
An officer walked by behind his desk. Blix straightened up a little and cleared his throat.
‘Any news on how the woman from the harbour is doing?’
‘I’ve just spoken to someone at the hospital, about ten minutes ago,’ Kovic said, sighing. ‘They said it’s too early to tell.’
‘Have we managed to identify her?’
‘We have. Bear with me.’
Blix listened as Kovic fumbled with a notepad.
‘She had a bank card in her jacket pocket.’
A few more seconds went by, before Kovic found the name.
‘Ruth-Kristine Smeplass,’ she said.
Blix’s mouth opened involuntarily. ‘What did you just say?’ he asked.
Kovic repeated the name. Blix ran a hand through his hair.
‘What’s wrong?’ Kovic asked. ‘Do you know her?’
‘Don’t you?’
‘No?’
Blix thought of the long, curly hair. That perpetually irritated expression. The hours he had spent staring at her face, searching for the truth.
‘Ruth-Kristine Smeplass is Patricia’s mother,’ he said. ‘The Patricia who’s been missing and presumed dead since 2009.’ 17
‘Shit,’ Kovic said.
In all his years as an investigator, Patricia’s disappearance had been the case Blix had spent the most time working on. It was a case that he returned to time after time, reviewing all the information they had, going over everything again and again, looking for a sliver of information that he might have overlooked the first time.
First, Kasper. Now Ruth-Kristine.
Two people he knew, both victims of that night’s attack.
Bloody hell.
He heard a siren start to wail on the other end of the phone.
‘Are you coming back to HQ soon?’ he asked.
‘Not entirely sure yet,’ Kovic replied. ‘There are still a lot of people here.’
‘I understand,’ Blix said. ‘Take care of Emma for me. See you soon.’
5
It was only three hours and six minutes into the New Year when Gard Fosse emerged from his office, decked out in a black suit and white dress shirt, now unbuttoned at the collar.
‘The large meeting room,’ he said, pointing to the floor above them.
Kovic had just arrived.
‘I should’ve grabbed some food first,’ she grumbled, chucking her notepad and pen onto the desk.
Blix pushed his chair back and stood up. He had called and messaged Emma several times over the last few hours. He was still waiting for a reply.
They followed Fosse upstairs. The seats around the long conference table filled up promptly. The leader of the Emergency Response Team, and the heads of the Intelligence and Investigation Departments were sat together at the end of the table, next to a number of leaders from various other specialist units. A handful of investigators were scattered around the table, as well as a few men and women Blix knew from Kripos, Norway’s National Crime Investigation Service, someone from the Norwegian Police Security Service, or PST as they called it, and a couple of other people he didn’t recognise. A lot of the attendees were still dressed in the clothes they had been wearing to parties they must have been attending only a few hours earlier. Some of them were struggling to keep their eyes focussed.
Blix and Kovic found a vacant chair each. A door at the far end of the room opened, and the chief of police strode in, followed by the communications advisor and another man who had the sleeves of his tuxedo rolled up.
‘Welcome,’ the chief of police announced as he sat down. ‘Let’s get started.’
He nodded at the man in the tuxedo, indicating that he should take the lead. 19
‘My name is Raymond Rafto,’ the man began. ‘I am one of the chief inspectors at PST, and will be the lead investigator on this case.’
He looked around, with a somewhat arrogant air, before continuing:
‘At midnight, an explosive device was detonated in a rubbish bin at the square located between Oslo City Hall and the harbour. As the situation stands, four people have been killed: two men and two women. Another woman has suffered life-threatening injuries. Twelve people have been seriously injured and, thus far, seventeen others are at the hospital being treated for minor injuries. We currently have no ID on the casualties. There is nothing to indicate that the victims are anything more than innocent bystanders.’
Blix felt the urge to interrupt him and inform them all about Kasper and Ruth-Kristine, but decided to leave it be.
Rafto continued: ‘No one has claimed responsibility for the bomb yet. And we have no substantial intelligence that would have led us to suspect such an incident might take place. There was some minor activity regarding restricted materials over the Christmas weekend, and further tracing has been initiated. We are also working closely with the usual security services in other countries, but no other threats have been detected. We do consider it likely that another attack may occur, however, simply because one terror attack is often followed by another. With that in mind, the national threat level has been raised to substantial.’
He pushed the sheet of paper aside and turned to Fred Malmberg, head of the Emergency Response Team.
‘What’s the current status on the ground?’ he asked.
‘The area around the harbour and Oslo City Hall has been secured,’ Malmberg explained. ‘The injured have been taken to hospital. Paramedics are currently working on the casualties, who’ll then be taken for post-mortems. Crime Scene Investigation are now on site, working with the bomb-disposal technicians. We have personnel stationed at key points around the city centre, to maintain calm and for surveillance, and we’re receiving assistance from the armed forces to search for any other explosives.’ 20
The PST investigator nodded his approval and looked to the far end of the table.
‘Investigation?’
The head of the Criminal Investigation Department sat up.
‘We’ve interviewed the witnesses with minor injuries,’ he began, ‘but nothing much has come of that. There were a lot of people who were close to the harbour and weren’t directly affected by the explosion, not physically anyway, but of those who were near the site, none have provided any useful information.’ He cleared his throat and carried on. ‘Several people have called in already with tip-offs, claiming to have seen men who they’ve assumed are of a Muslim background, but so far it seems that these tip-offs are mainly based on prejudice, not on any particularly suspicious behaviour. Large parts of the area are monitored by our own cameras. We’ve already begun a review of all the footage, and have started collecting recordings from other sources. And I expect to be informed of the type of explosives that were used sometime later this morning.’
‘What about the design and trigger mechanism?’ Rafto asked.
‘We should find out about that sometime in the next few hours as well. Some of the components have been secured and brought in, and we have divers in the harbour as we speak, searching for more remains from the bomb, seeing as the bin was located so close to the water.’
Rafto glanced at his watch. ‘I’ll be meeting the justice minister for a briefing in half an hour,’ he said, looking around the table. ‘Does anyone have anything else?’
The head of the Undercover Police Unit spoke up.
‘We’ve been tracking an escalating gang conflict,’ he said. ‘We know that the Balkan Brothers were at a bar just up the road, about three hundred metres from the site of the explosion—’
‘Details,’ Rafto cut him off. ‘Chase that up with the relevant departments.’
He began collecting his papers. ‘The investigation will be conducted from our premises in Nydalen, but everyone will be assigned 21important tasks. I ask that the unit heads remain. Everyone else can go.’
Chairs scraped against the floor as people stood up. Blix caught up with Fosse.
‘One of the injured, one of the most seriously injured, has been identified,’ he said.
‘File a report,’ Fosse replied.
‘It’s Ruth-Kristine Smeplass,’ Blix continued. Fosse slowed his pace momentarily. ‘Patricia’s mother,’ Blix clarified.
‘Some people just can’t catch a break,’ Fosse sighed. ‘Will she survive?’
‘It’s too early to say,’ Blix answered. ‘But it might be worth looking into a bit more.’
They had reached the top of the stairs.
‘How so?’ Fosse asked. ‘You think the bomb could have something to do with Patricia?’
Blix struggled to justify the suggestion, but that was how he worked – always starting with whatever stood out most, following any random angles and irregularities in a case.
‘The bomb was not positioned to inflict maximum damage,’ he said.
Kovic had appeared at his side.
‘It wasn’t intended to harm anyone other than those in the immediate vicinity,’ she added. ‘Most of the pressure wave was sent out into the fjord. The bomb would have caused far more damage if it had been located anywhere else on the square, or along one of the streets closer to the centre, like on Karl Johans gate, for example.’
Fosse scoffed. ‘It did more than enough damage,’ he retorted. ‘We should be thrilled that more people weren’t killed.’
‘It may have been a targeted attack,’ Blix pointed out.
‘And who would be the target?’ Fosse asked. ‘Ruth-Kristine Smeplass? The last I heard, she was nothing more than a haggard drug addict. Neither she nor any of the casualties were people of importance.’ 22
Blix felt a wave of anger wash over him.
‘They were important to someone,’ he said.
‘You know what I mean,’ Fosse replied. ‘They were innocent bystanders. That’s what terrorism thrives on. Inciting fear.’
‘One of the casualties was a Danish journalist,’ Blix said. ‘Kasper Bjerringbo.’
They had made their way into the corridor on the sixth floor. Fosse glanced up at the meeting room directly above them, where there had been no mention of a dead journalist.
‘How do you know that?’ he asked.
‘He was Emma Ramm’s boyfriend,’ Blix explained. ‘They were both there.’
Gard Fosse’s lips tightened. He disapproved of the close relationship Blix had with the young journalist. Fosse had been working with Blix that day, on the patrol nineteen years ago that had ended with Emma’s father, armed with a gun, barricading himself and his family in their home. While Blix had decided to go in, Fosse had stayed outside, waiting for back-up.
‘I understand,’ he said. ‘But that doesn’t change anything. He was an innocent bystander.’
Blix wasn’t ready to let it go. ‘I think we should look into it,’ he repeated.
‘Look into what?’
‘The possibility that this could be something other than a terrorist attack.’
Fosse stopped again and looked directly at Blix, shifting his gaze to Kovic and then back.
‘Our department will be handling the incoming tip-offs,’ Fosse said. ‘You’re a part of something bigger this time, Blix. You can’t just do what you want, following your own initiative. You will have to play as part of a team and do as you’re told, for once.’
Blix waited until Fosse had disappeared into his office, then turned to Kovic: ‘I’m going down to the archives.’
He pressed the button next to the lift doors. 23
‘What are you going down there for?’
‘To get the files for the Patricia case.’
6
As the lift made its way down to the basement, Blix leant back and thought about the first few weeks and months that had followed Patricia’s disappearance. The intense search, the close connection he had formed with the girl’s father. His despair, which had quickly become Blix’s own. It had been so easy to imagine that something similar could have happened to Iselin, his own daughter.
The lift juddered as it came to a stop on the bottom floor. He rarely visited the archives, but it was a well-organised system that stored every single one of their cases chronologically, regardless of whether it had been solved or shelved. The case files for the investigation into Patricia’s disappearance consisted of nine separate ring binders, all stacked inside a cardboard box. A cloud of dust swept into the air as he lowered it from the shelf.
He found Kovic waiting for him when he arrived back upstairs, eating a cold tortilla wrap.
‘It’s going to be a long night if you’re expecting us to get through all that,’ she commented, swallowing.
Blix put the box down on the desk between them.
‘It’s mainly dead ends,’ he said. ‘A lot of documentation from an investigation that led nowhere.’
Kovic wiped her mouth with a napkin. ‘Can you give me a quick run through of the main details?’
The open-plan office was packed with police officers and other investigators. It was much louder than they were used to. With a lot more people than usual, too.
Blix lifted the main folder out of the box, sat down and took a deep breath, unsure where to begin.
‘Patricia was kidnapped on the eleventh of August, 2009,’ he started, removing the band from around the folder. ‘Her au pair was assaulted on her way home, after picking Patricia up at the nursery in Tangenten. She was beaten and pushed into one of the bushes in 25Bjølsen Park, and the perpetrator disappeared with the pushchair. The au pair couldn’t remember anything about the attack. No description, other than the fact the perpetrator was wearing dark clothes.’
Blix put the folder down and took out the first few pages.
‘Patricia’s father, Christer Storm Isaksen, had full custody of the child at the time. Ruth-Kristine was one of our first suspects, seeing as she and Christer had fought so vehemently over who would get custody of Patricia. A lot of people thought she had been involved.’
‘So what was the reason Ruth-Kristine didn’t have custody of her own daughter?’ Kovic asked. ‘It must have been serious, if the father was granted full custody.’
‘Mental-health issues,’ Blix explained. ‘A long history of psychoses, personality disorders, hospital admissions, rebellious behaviour and self-harming. She was also an addict and was deemed a potential danger to the child, so she was only allowed limited visitor rights.’
‘But she wasn’t involved in the kidnapping?’
Blix rubbed his hands over his face. His cheeks were warm. He would probably end up catching a cold after his dip in the harbour.
‘She had an alibi,’ he said eventually. ‘There was nothing to suggest that she had anything to do with it. That was until Patricia’s father met with a man named Knut Ivar Skage about two years later, in the car park that leads into the forest at Solemskogen.’
‘I remember that,’ Kovic said, eagerly. ‘Skage was murdered, wasn’t he? Patricia’s father killed him?’
‘Correct,’ Blix nodded. ‘He was after the reward that Isaksen had promised for any information that might help him find Patricia. According to Isaksen, Skage admitted that he had seen his daughter after the kidnapping, and that the person behind it was a woman who Christer knew well.’
‘Ruth-Kristine,’ Kovic concluded.
Blix nodded. ‘That’s how Isaksen interpreted it anyway. As did we.’
‘But why would he kill the man who could give him all the answers?’ 26
‘When they met, Isaksen asked for some sort of reassurance, to make sure Skage actually had reliable information. Skage told him that Patricia had a birthmark on the top of her thigh, just inside the groin. Isaksen presumed the worst. He thought his daughter had been abused.’
Kovic bit her lip thoughtfully.
‘But that was unlikely,’ Blix continued. ‘The last thing Skage said before he died was that all he had done was change Patricia’s nappies. He hadn’t been involved in the kidnapping itself. He had just been contacted afterwards because the kidnapper didn’t know how to look after a baby.’
‘Oh God,’ Kovic moaned.
‘Tragic. And even more so as Knut Ivar Skage was already a dying man.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He ran a garage in Kalbakken, his own car repair workshop, so he’d been inhaling all sorts of solvents for years. He was riddled with cancer. The doctors had given him a few months to live.’
Kovic looked at what was left of her tortilla wrap and, with a grimace, chucked it in the bin.
‘So, he really did just want to tell Isaksen what he knew before he died?’ she asked, wiping her hands clean with the napkin.
‘And probably to cash in on the reward, to leave some money for his wife and children,’ Blix nodded. ‘He couldn’t carry on working, being that ill, and they were struggling, financially. It was discovered that he hadn’t been paying his taxes from the business either, so was basically left with no income.’
‘Did he have a criminal record?’
‘Nothing much. One or two cases about his lack of bookkeeping, and one report of fraud relating to a car sale,’ Blix explained. ‘When we went through the garage after he died, we found spare parts from various stolen cars. It was probably how he managed to stay afloat. Bought cars that had been written off and then repaired them with parts from stolen cars, before reselling them.’ 27
‘Did he have any connection to Ruth-Kristine?’
Blix shook his head.
‘Where was she when her daughter was kidnapped then? You said she had an alibi.’
‘She was with a friend – her neighbour. They were out shopping that day. And there were CCTV recordings and card receipts to prove it.’
‘Wasn’t it a man who had kidnapped Patricia, anyway?’
‘All the evidence we had seemed to point to that,’ Blix confirmed. ‘And after Christer told us about what Knut Ivar Skage had said, we began the search for a man in Ruth-Kristine’s social circle who had no children of his own.’
‘Because of the thing with the nappies?’
Blix nodded again. ‘We found a few who fit the criteria, but they checked out.’
‘Could the au pair have had something to do with it?’ Kovic queried.
‘Carmen Velacruz,’ Blix said, trying to pronounce the Spanish name correctly. ‘We didn’t find anything to indicate that was the case either. No motive. Besides, the attack was quite brutal. The hit she took to the head that day could easily have been fatal.’
‘Have you kept surveillance on her since?’ Kovic asked.
‘We’ve checked up on her now and then,’ Blix said. ‘She’s back in Spain now. I’ve looked into her movements occasionally, just to see if she’s had any contact with a child who might match Patricia’s age – if she’s still alive that is.’
‘And she hasn’t?’
Blix shook his head. ‘There is also a limit on the amount of resources I can request from our colleagues in Madrid.’
‘What sentence did Isaksen get?’
‘Twelve years. He’s still in prison.’
Blix could tell that she was thinking about something, and sent her an inquisitive look.
‘It’s nothing. I was just thinking that, if Ruth-Kristine did actually 28have something to do with the kidnapping, there couldn’t be anyone else who has a greater motive to kill her than Isaksen. But, if he spent New Year’s Eve in a cell, then…’
She turned to her computer and opened up the criminal-records database, the directory where all prison violations and requests for furlough were registered.
‘I don’t think he’s ever applied for furlough,’ Blix said as he watched her type in his personal details.
Kovic nodded and squinted at the screen.
‘He hasn’t left Oslo Prison since the trial,’ she said. ‘Except for when his mother died.’
Blix could hear the lingering suspicion in her voice.
‘He could have asked someone else to do it for him,’ she suggested. ‘He could’ve met someone in prison, someone with explosives expertise – or who has a connection to someone who has. Foreign criminals, maybe. What do I know? People who are willing to do that kind of thing for money.’
‘Christer has practically isolated himself while he’s been in prison,’ Blix said. ‘He barely interacts with the other inmates.’
‘Still,’ Kovic pressed. ‘We should check it out.’
Blix stood up and started to gather together the papers that were now spread across the desk. He put them back in the box with the rest of the files for the Patricia case, suddenly feeling lethargic and drowsy.
‘We’ll approach this one thing at a time,’ he said. ‘First of all, I suggest we get a few hours’ sleep.’
7
With trembling hands, Emma unlocked the door to her flat on Falbes gate and stepped inside. She found herself immediately looking down at a pair of Kasper’s trainers, one shoe left haphazardly on top of the other, next to her neatly positioned winter boots.
The door closed behind her. She shut her eyes and stood there for a few seconds. Her ears were still ringing from the explosion.
Emma drew in a short gasp and blinked a few times. It would have been at this very moment that he’d have walked down the hall to greet her, open arms and a wide smile. She would have taken in his unruly curls, his glasses, the white shirt that he had probably untucked, maybe even undone a few of the buttons, now that he was home, now that the evening, the party, was over. She would have noticed his chest hairs, just peeking out. His stomach, the slight hint of his defined muscles beneath his shirt. Emma had always been most attracted to men when they weren’t completely undressed, when she could still imagine what the rest of their body looked like underneath. For some reason, she also liked Kasper most when he was a little bit tired and surly, as he might have been now, at half past four in the morning.
