Death Deserved Read online

  DEATH DESERVED

  JØRN LIER HORST & THOMAS ENGER

  TRANSLATED FROM THE NORWEGIAN BY ANNE BRUCE

  ‘Let’s do it.’

  (Gary Gilmore’s last words before he was executed.)

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  SUNDAY 9 MAY 1999

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  64

  65

  66

  67

  68

  69

  70

  71

  72

  73

  74

  75

  76

  77

  78

  79

  80

  81

  82

  83

  84

  85

  86

  87

  88

  89

  90

  91

  92

  93

  94

  95

  96

  97

  98

  99

  100

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

  COPYRIGHT

  SUNDAY 9 MAY 1999

  The police radio crackled.

  ‘0-1 seeking all available units for Agmund Bolts vei in Teisen.’

  Alexander Blix glanced across at Gard Fosse. ‘That’s just round the corner,’ he said.

  Blix slammed his foot on the accelerator as Fosse picked up the mic from the dashboard.

  ‘0-1, this is Fox 2-1,’ Fosse relayed. ‘We’re in Tvetenveien, about one minute away.’

  Blix switched on the blue light and sirens just as more crackling noises filled the car: ‘Fox 2-1, 0-1 reading you. This is a possible shooting incident. There have previously been reports of domestic violence at the address.’

  Domestic violence, Blix thought. He’d been called out on a number of similar cases, but none where a shot had been fired.

  He swung into Agmund Bolts vei at the end of the Østre Gravlund graveyard, stepped on the gas again and swept past several blocks of flats with balconies facing the street. Cars were parked on both sides of the road. Birch trees at regular intervals.

  This was what they had trained for.

  It was what they had been looking forward to – being first to arrive at a real crime scene. For a year they had been rookies, sitting in the back seats of patrol cars. Now they were in charge. Blix’s hands clenched the steering wheel.

  ‘Looks like it’s up ahead,’ Fosse said, pointing to a huddle of bystanders.

  Blix braked sharply and stopped the car at an angle across the road. He turned off the engine and sirens, but left the blue light on.

  ‘It came from in there,’ a woman cried as Blix and Fosse leapt out of the car. She pointed at a small white house.

  ‘Sounded like a high-calibre gun,’ a man added.

  ‘Has anyone come out since you heard the shots?’ Blix asked. ‘Or gone in?’

  The woman shook her head.

  ‘How many people live there?’ Fosse asked.

  ‘Four,’ another woman answered. ‘They’ve got two little girls, but I think only one’s at home.’

  Blix swore under his breath. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Go home and stay inside. And lock your doors.’

  As the small crowd dispersed, Blix pushed the garden gate open. ‘You take that side of the house, and I’ll take the other one,’ he told Fosse, pointing in both directions.

  ‘You’re not thinking of going in?’ Fosse protested.

  ‘A shot’s been fired,’ Blix replied. ‘And there could be a little kid in there.’

  ‘Safety first,’ Fosse said, repeating their police college instructors’ mantra. ‘We have to wait for backup.’

  Blix was familiar with the directive. The situation called for them to isolate and observe while waiting for reinforcements. But this was no college assignment.

  ‘Backup could take ten minutes,’ he said. ‘And we don’t know if we even have ten minutes.’

  Moving to the car, he opened the boot, unlocked the gun safe and took out his service weapon, then loaded it with six cartridges and clicked the barrel into place.

  ‘Seriously, we really have to—’

  ‘Help the kid,’ Blix interrupted, pushing past his colleague. ‘If she’s in there.’

  He walked up to the front door and squinted through the thick glass window that occupied the top half of the door. Saw nothing.

  He wheeled around to face Fosse. ‘Are you just going to stand there?’

  Fosse shifted his weight from one foot to the other. ‘I don’t like this,’ he said.

  ‘Neither do I,’ Blix replied. ‘But we have to do something.’

  He moved around to the side of the house, where he stood on tiptoe, trying to peer in through the only window on the gable wall, but it was too high. He continued on, emerging into a small garden where snow was still piled up. The bushes were brown and scraggly. He spotted a rusty swing frame and a ramshackle veranda. Armchairs dotted with cushions. Empty, brown beer bottles on the veranda floor, and an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts.

  Blix stepped warily, fearing the sound of footsteps would signal his presence. The living room had picture windows, but the reflection made it difficult to see inside; he knew, though, that the huge expanse of glass left him exposed.

  He turned around and made his way back to the front door. Fosse was now sitting in the car; Blix could hear that he was talking to the operations centre. Blix inserted his earphone and caught the operator saying that the nearest patrol car was twelve minutes away.

  Blix took a breath, settled his shoulders. Tried the door.

  It creaked as it swung open. Blix took two steps inside. Stopped. Listened. Heard nothing.

  Or…

  Was that a whimper? A sniffle? Someone saying ‘shhh’?

  He moved forwards, gun raised, leaving the door wide open behind him, hoping that Fosse would change his mind and follow.

  A passageway led him further into the house. The floorboards were noisy. He peeked into the nearest room and quickly withdrew his head. A small toilet with a wash basin. He repeated the manoeuvre at the next room. No one there either. His breath quivered as he inhaled. He struggled to listen again, but could near nothing.

  Bad sign.

  The door to the kitchen was slightly ajar. Blix slowly nudged it open. It also creaked.

  He let it swing wide.

  A wo
man lay flat on her back, lifeless, her head turned to one side, so he could see her blank, staring eyes. A large pool of blood had collected on the floor beside her, a rag rug nearby beginning to soak it up.

  He swallowed. Felt an insistent throbbing in his throat and chest. He held his breath for a few seconds, then raised his gun and stepped inside the room, making sure to avoid treading in the blood. Crouching down, he checked the body for a pulse but found none. He stood up and spoke as softly as he could into the radio attached to his lapel.

  ‘0-1, this is Fox 2-1 Alpha. A woman is dead, shot. I repeat: a woman is dead, shot.’

  The radio made a slight crackling noise. As Blix stepped away from the woman, he caught a glimpse of the gaping hole in the centre of her ribcage.

  ‘Copy 0-1.’

  ‘Don’t come any closer.’

  The voice, hoarse and strained, came from further inside the house. Blix halted. He stretched out, trying to see around the doorframe and into the living room.

  There, in front of a glass table, was a man with a gun in his hand. It was pointing at the blonde head of a girl who could not have been more than five years old. She was weeping silently. Sobbing. Shaking.

  ‘Don’t come any closer,’ the man repeated. ‘I’ll shoot. I’ll shoot both of you.’ He shoved the pistol into the little girl’s hair.

  Blix hoped she hadn’t seen the body in the kitchen. Hoped she hadn’t seen the woman die.

  ‘Relax,’ Blix said – he could hear the tremble in his voice.

  ‘Put the gun down,’ the man said.

  ‘Please, don’t…’

  ‘Put. The gun. Down.’

  The man was probably in his late thirties, bearded, sweaty, with a shock of short, straggly hair. He took the gun away from the girl’s head and turned it on Blix. No tremor. No nervousness. Just desperation.

  The girl closed her eyes. Tears ran down her face.

  ‘Don’t do anything stupid,’ Blix said – he was trying to call upon everything he had learned at college, what he should say, what he should do in a situation like this. But now he was in one, he could think of no sensible strategy. He was forced to improvise. Make an attempt to talk some sense into the man.

  His mind drifted to Merete, waiting for him at home. She had never liked his choice of profession. She’d always warned him of the dangers he would have to confront.

  He thought of Iselin, barely three months old.

  Blix lowered his gun.

  ‘What’s your name?’ he asked as he fought to control his breathing.

  The man made no response.

  ‘In only a couple of minutes, the whole house will be surrounded,’ Blix went on. ‘You won’t get out of here.’

  ‘They’re mine!’ the man wailed suddenly. ‘Mine!’

  ‘Yes, and you’ll get to see them grow up,’ Blix said, nodding. His eyes searched for a second child, but he only saw the girl.

  ‘No one is going to take them from me,’ the man said. ‘Do you hear?’

  ‘I hear you, but please – don’t make things any worse than they are.’

  ‘Put down your gun,’ the man repeated with even more desperation in his voice. ‘I won’t tell you again. Get out of here! This is my home.’

  Blix listened out for sirens. For Fosse.

  ‘I can’t do that,’ he said, looking at the little girl again and trying hard to thrust aside thoughts of his own daughter. ‘I can’t leave,’ he said. ‘Not now when you—’

  ‘You’ve got five seconds,’ the man broke in.

  Blix raised his eyes to look at him. Grubby white singlet, sweat stains on the stomach, curly chest hairs poking out.

  ‘Please…’

  ‘Five.’

  He was not going to do it. These were just empty threats.

  ‘Can’t we just sit down and—’

  ‘Four.’

  Blix took a deep breath. Gulped.

  ‘Let’s talk about this…’

  ‘Three.’

  Blix gripped his gun even harder. ‘Think of your daughter, think of what you’re taking away from her.’

  ‘Two.’

  The guy looked completely mad, Blix thought. He raised his gun again.

  ‘She’s only, what, five years old?’ Blix flexed his finger on the trigger.

  ‘One.’

  The guy is going to do it, Blix thought. Bloody hell, he’s really going to do it.

  And then a shot rang out.

  1

  There was a slight chill in the air. Blix tugged the lapels of his jacket together over his neck and trudged towards the police headquarters building. He glanced up at the nine floors of glass and steel, feeling his usual sense of humility. He swiped his pass, keyed in his code and went inside the building, which was already buzzing with life.

  He reached the lift, thankful that he hadn’t had to chat to any of his colleagues. On the sixth floor, he grabbed a cup of coffee before sitting down at his desk at the far corner of the spacious open-plan office.

  As always he was the first one to arrive. Since turning forty, Blix had found that he’d started to wake up earlier and earlier – even before his alarm rang. But there was nothing to fill his time at home in his flat, and at the office at least he was sure of finding some coffee.

  He slung his jacket over the back of his chair, stacked four used plates from the canteen, one on top of the other, and set them down on the empty desk next to his. Then he logged on and took a swig from his cup while waiting for his computer to fire up.

  It had become a kind of ritual: every morning he visited the web pages for the Worthy Winner show. Today the faces of most of the contestants were crossed out. There were only four left in the house.

  One of them was Iselin.

  Everyone at the police station knew, but no one mentioned it. At least not to him.

  Blix had been strongly against her participating in the programme, even though he hadn’t actually been sure what it was all about. He’d wanted her to find a job or a place at college instead. Their argument had ended with Iselin making it clear that she didn’t want to see him in the studio during the live transmissions.

  He hadn’t spoken to her since.

  He clicked on the live feeds. Iselin was still asleep. The camera was in night mode and the greenish screen image had poor contrast, but he could see that she had thrown off her quilt during the night. In some strange way he felt closer to her now, looking at her through a camera lens, than he had done for many years.

  For the first few weeks of the series, he’d remained unhappy about her being on TV and was pleased that she’d decided to use Merete’s surname rather than his. But in the past few days he couldn’t help feeling a certain pride that his daughter was regarded as someone worthy of winning the million-kroner prize money.

  He clicked into the comments, where he found the usual smutti­ness. Things he’d warned her about: viewers discussing her physical appearance, the things she said and the way she behaved. Most of these contributions were negative, but there were also a few cheering her on and giving her words of encouragement.

  A movement nearby made Blix turn his head. Gard Fosse was stand­ing on the other side of the desk with a folder tucked under his arm.

  ‘A bit early in the morning for porn sites, isn’t it?’ he said, smirking.

  Blix looked up at his superintendent lazily, before clicking on to the criminal records system and lifting his cup to his mouth.

  ‘Good morning, boss,’ he said, unsure whether or not his irony was obvious.

  ‘I want you to look after the new start,’ Fosse continued in a more formal tone.

  Blix glanced up at him again. ‘Me?’

  ‘She’ll be here at nine o’clock,’ Fosse replied, darting a look at the pile of dirty plates on the empty desk beside Blix; clearly that was where she was meant to sit. He opened the folder he was carrying. ‘Sofia Kovic; twenty-six years old,’ he read. ‘Half Croatian. Graduated from police college five years ago as one
of the best in her year. She’s spent two years in Majorstua and three at Crime Prevention.’

  Fosse held out the sheet containing these personal details; Blix re­luctantly took it from him.

  ‘Has she been brought in on a quota basis or something?’ he asked.

  ‘Best-qualified applicant,’ Fosse told him. ‘I expect you to give her a good reception. And another thing,’ Fosse went on, leafing through the folder. ‘I’ve arranged for you to go to the shooting range on Thursday.’

  ‘Fine,’ Blix muttered.

  ‘You can’t keep postponing it,’ Fosse added. ‘Your permit runs out next week.’

  ‘I said it’s fine.’

  Fosse lingered for a few moments, gazing at Blix, before turning on his heel and heading into the corridor, in the direction of his grand office.

  Blix followed him with his eyes. What different paths they had taken, he thought. They’d once been classmates and were then patrol partners. Best friends too, at one time.

  He couldn’t stop the film that now began playing inside his head. The call-out to Teisen. The blue light. The sirens. Everything that had gone wrong afterwards.

  2

  Emma Ramm let herself in, stowed her bike in the hallway and slipped off her shoes. She was exhausted from her ride, but she still managed to complete her exercise routine with some pushups. She went to the kitchen and filled a glass with water, taking a long sip as she picked up her phone and checked the American celebrity websites to see if anything noteworthy had happened overnight. TMZ had a story about a break-in at Mariah Carey’s house in Bel Air. People magazine was reporting an apparent quarrel between Pink and Christina Aguilera; this was coverage she could lift. Before she put down her phone, she checked news.no and saw that her story about Vendela Kirsebom had pride of place on the front page.

  Yet another day with people who’d gained fame for a variety of reasons. Some valid, others not.

  How long could she bear working on all this? She dreamed of having something more substantial to sink her teeth into. Something that would show that she really was a competent journalist, not simply a celebrity blogger.

  It was eight o’clock. She gulped down another glass of water and switched on the TV. The news headlines rolled across the screen. There had been another suicide bombing in Kabul. A gang fight in Malmö had ended with fatal consequences. New statistics showed unemployment in Spain was at an all-time high. And the weather forecast predicted a cold, clear day in Norway’s capital city.