The Fifth Element Page 2

  Then he drove off to work.

  * * *

  “Aren’t you on vacation?”

  Eriksen glanced up from the papers he was reading. It was Sunday, and there weren’t many people in the office.

  “Yup. Just had to come in and get a few things.” He pulled out a drawer and took out a Mammut X-Zoom and a Panasonic LX5. He stuffed both the headlamp and the camera in his jacket pocket.

  “Are you taking a trip somewhere?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How’s the wife?”

  “Fine. Why do you ask?”

  “Just wondered whether you were going on vacation together.”

  He stared at Eriksen, whose desk was across from his.

  “Don’t mean to be nosy, but we do share this office, and I actually thought we shared a little more than that. I ran into one of your wife’s friends the other day. She said your wife left you.”

  Fagerhus glanced at his heart rate monitor. Still thirty-nine.

  “That’s why I’m taking my vacation in the wintertime,” he said. “Trying to work things out.”

  “I heard she’d moved out of town. Where’d she go?”

  “She hasn’t moved. We’re just taking a break. That’s all.”

  “How long have you and I shared this office, Fagerhus?”

  “Two years.”

  “And how many years before that did we work together? Sitting with the scope in empty apartments on Akerselva, chatting with each other?”

  “A long time.”

  “You know I’ve got your back, right? You can always talk to me.”

  “It’ll work out, Eriksen.”

  “I hope so. That would be best for your little girl too.”

  “I know. She’s more important than anything else. Listen, have you seen my handheld GPS anywhere? Didn’t you borrow it from me? Is it in your locker?”

  “Oh, right. Just a sec.” Eriksen got up and left the room.

  Fagerhus went over to the key cupboard, opened it, and put back the key to the vacant surveillance apartment.

  A couple of minutes later Eriksen returned.

  “Here. So where are you headed? You’re not going out in the woods in this weather, I hope.”

  “No. But it’s a good thing to have along. See you in a few weeks, Eriksen.”

  Eriksen nodded.

  “By the way, I heard some news from the top brass. We’re starting surveillance of the Casaubon Fruit & Vegetable shop next week. Rumor has it that he’s been getting in some insanely pure heroin lately. There’s going to be lots of overdose cases in the spring. It’ll be good to put that bastard out of business. You’re going to miss all the fun.”

  “I’ll survive.”

  * * *

  Fagerhus got onto the E6 and drove the speed limit, heading for Hamar. Before getting that far, he turned off and pulled into a gas station. The snow had stopped, but the wind ripped at his jacket as he filled up the gas tank. Afterward, he opened the duffel bag and got rid of the things he no longer needed, like the rubber gloves, the boy’s cap, and the used syringe. He threw everything in the garbage can next to the gas pumps. Then he backed the car into a parking place, grabbed the bag from the backseat, and placed it next to him. He set the shotgun on the floor and got out the fanny pack. Finally, he had time to count the cash. Four hundred and fifty thousand Norwegian kroner. A little less than he’d expected. He took out the counterfeit passports and studied them. One for him, one for his daughter. Stenersen was the name they’d been given. Vidar and Kristine Stenersen. Then he looked through the travel documents. The plane left Stockholm in four days.

  Finally, he took out the brief letter and read it again:

  I now realize that I’ve been putting up with things for too long. I’ve taken Tina with me. The only reason I’m even writing to you is that I want to ask you to get help. There’s no hope for you and me anymore. But maybe you can save yourself. You need to talk to someone, Rolf. Not for my sake, but for your own.

  A.

  P.S. Don’t even think about trying to find us.

  His pulse was now forty.

  He studied the blotch on the top of the page. Oil from her fingers? A tear? Saliva?

  “And why a letter?” he mumbled. Who writes letters anymore? He could understand why she wouldn’t risk sending him a text message. He was a police officer, and he had contacts. But why hadn’t she just sent him an e-mail? Did she think it would be easier for him to trace an e-mail than a letter? But she was wrong. A letter was more dangerous than an e-mail sent from an anonymous address or a message sent via Facebook. She’d never been smart like that. He’d tried so many times to explain to her how the world worked, but she’d never listened.

  He put everything back in the duffel and put it on the backseat. Then he reached for the glove compartment. Along with a book, a bag of plastic zip ties, and a pack of gum, the gun he’d taken from Casaubon was in it. He took out the book. It’d been in the glove compartment for a long time. A lousy novel written by an author Eriksen had recommended. An American named Aaron Klopstein. Not exactly the sort of book to get a reader’s pulse racing. The best thing about it was what it said on the back cover. The author had killed himself at the age of thirty-three by shooting himself in the thigh with a poisoned arrow with a blowpipe from the Amazon.

  He sat there reading until ten minutes to midnight. For a few more minutes he stayed where he was, staring at the middle-aged man who was preparing to close up the gas station. There were two teenagers inside the store. He waited until they’d gone. At exactly one minute to twelve, he got out of the car, took the duffel bag from the backseat, and went inside the store. He was hungry and needed a bite to eat.

  “We’re closing,” said the man.

  “I thought so,” he replied, setting the duffel on the counter. “A hot dog with bacon, please.”

  “I haven’t got any left.”

  “No?”

  “I just took the last hot dog off the grill to throw it out. It’s over there.” On the bench behind him was something that looked like a dead, shriveled-up finger.

  “Don’t you have time to grill another one?”

  “Sorry. I need to get home.”

  “What’s the rush?”

  Then their eyes met. The first real connection. It didn’t last long. The man turned off the radio.

  “So what do you think?”

  The gas station attendant turned to look at Fagerhus, confused by the question.

  He clarified. “So what do you think about the story on the radio? About that boy in Oslo? And his father who committed suicide?”

  “That guy in the shop? Fucking awful business.”

  “Fucking awful?” He smacked his lips.

  The man behind the counter didn’t reply. He could no longer hide his uneasiness.

  “What are you going home to?” Fagerhus went on. “Who’s waiting for you at home? A wife who tries to stay awake until you get there but who usually has fallen asleep by now, her snoring keeping you awake into the night? Or an empty bed? An old, slow computer to keep you company until you fall asleep at the keyboard?”

  The man stared at Fagerhus for a long moment before he said:

  “They didn’t say anything on the radio about a suicide. They just said that a man had been found dead in the shop.”

  “Do you believe in the Devil?”

  “Like I told you before, we’re closed.”

  “Fix me a hot dog with bacon. Then I’ll go.”

  “I could call…” He put his hand on the phone and fell silent.

  “Who are you going to call?” He left the question hanging in the air for a moment. Then he said:

  “Let’s not make things difficult. I need a hot dog. I’ve driven a long way. And the next place to get any food is miles from here.”

  The man looked down at the counter. Then he went over to the freezer and got out a frozen hot dog. He put it on the grill and turned up the heat.

  “You didn�
��t answer my question,” said Fagerhus. “Do you believe in the Devil?”

  “Why are you asking me?”

  “Don’t you think it’s an important question?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Neither do I. But my father used to say that some people believe in the Devil, while other people believe that evil is something innate. So how a man answers the question says a lot about him.”

  The gas station attendant glanced up abruptly from the hot dog he was cooking. It was slowly browning.

  “Did you just spit on the floor?” he asked, but Fagerhus didn’t answer.

  “You do believe in the Devil. I can tell. I bet you think it was the Devil who took that boy in Oslo today.”

  Drops of sweat. A hand wiping his brow. The same hand reaching for a package of hot dog buns.

  “It doesn’t look like it’s done yet.”

  Silence. Fumbling to insert the sausage into the round hole in the hot dog bun.

  “Aren’t you going to warm up the bun first?”

  The man dropped the hot dog on the counter and hastily picked it up.

  “You always warm up the bun. Isn’t it strange how little it takes to change our routines? Just a few minutes past closing time, and that’s enough to do it. I’ve seen it happen so often. I seldom change my own routines.” He smiled and glanced at his heart rate monitor.

  The man turned around and put the bun in the toaster oven.

  “It’s all in the breathing,” Fagerhus said. “Breathe deep from your abdomen, faster in than out. But never too fast.”

  “I don’t know what you’re getting at with all this. I’m fixing you a hot dog. Can’t you be satisfied with that?”

  “Do I look dissatisfied?”

  The man didn’t answer. After a moment he opened the toaster oven and put the semi-grilled sausage in the bun.

  “Catsup and mustard are over there.”

  Fagerhus took a bite without adding any condiments.

  “What about you? Are you dissatisfied?”

  “I just want to go home.”

  “I can help you with that,” said Fagerhus, picking up the duffel bag. Then he paused, considering different ways he could help this poor guy. The simplest would be to leave him alone.

  “Thanks for the hot dog,” he said. Then he turned on his heel and left.

  He sat in the car watching the man as he locked up the gas station and then drove off in an old Volvo, going home to a silent house somewhere.

  After that, he took a nap. Two hours later he continued on, driving through the snow.

  The night before it happened …

  Østerdalen. This was where they’d gone hunting.

  Even though there was no one on the road, it wasn’t possible to use his brights. The snowflakes danced toward the windshield like the splintered souls of dead animals. Some struck the warm glass and melted, while others whirled onward, disappearing into the pitch-black night behind him.

  The heater was turned up full blast. He’d stripped to the waist. A film of sweat covered his skin. He was focusing all his attention on specific points on his body. His wrists, his calves, his throat. He couldn’t feel his pulse anywhere. He imagined the blood coursing through him like spring water through pipes, steadily, evenly.

  Fagerhus thought about his father and the hunting trips here in Østerdalen. Back then there was no snow here. He was only a boy when his father was alive. That was before everything—marriage, the child, his job.

  * * *

  They had taken more breaks as they got closer to the car. His father was moving slowly at the end of the hunting expedition. Something inside of him longed to go back to the woods. He wanted to stay there.

  Then he’d stopped, breathing hard.

  Whenever his father leaned against a tree, he always gave the impression that it was actually the tree that was leaning against him. The sun was low in the sky, lighting him from behind. Night was preparing to take over the world, already creeping in as scattered patches of shade. His father was a stout man with a full beard. He was outfitted in green clothing, a creature of the woods. Something from a mythology written for the two of them alone.

  “Shall we give it one more try? Didn’t you want to take a shot?”

  His father had promised to let him shoot. It would be his first time. He had only fired a gun at the shooting range; he’d never killed. He thought he was looking forward to it. He’d been waiting for just such an invitation. Now he looked at the rifle slung over his father’s shoulder, almost as if it were a part of the big man, and he felt uncertain.

  But he nodded.

  “Come on,” said his father. “Follow me.”

  They turned around and went back into the woods, his father soundlessly leading the way. He followed, hungry and worn out after days of little sleep. His feet hurt. He had no idea what was drawing him forward—a question he needed to answer, his father’s swaying gait, an inherited force that was neither dark nor light, that was just as much outside as inside of his body. He thought it was something they shared, he and his father.

  Finally, they came to a clearing in the forest where a hill sloped down toward a meadow. The shadows hadn’t yet reached this far. He thought they’d been here before, on a previous hunting trip when he was even younger.

  “Deer often come here in the night,” whispered his father as he squatted down near a tussock in the ground.

  He stood still, looking at the moss that spread softly around his feet, as if it had settled there and instantly began to creep under his clothing.

  “We always get something here. It’s just a question of waiting. Silence. And patience.” His father looked at him and held out the rifle. “Only when the hunt is over do you use it. There’s only one reason for you to shoot.”

  He looked into the exhausted eyes of the big man. Sometimes he tried to see if he could catch a glimpse of the strange thoughts in his father’s mind. But all he saw was gray.

  “So what’s the reason?’ he asked.

  “The reason may be the only thing, deep inside, that we can agree on.”

  “What is it?”

  “That everything comes to an end.”

  “I thought we shot to get food,” he said.

  His father looked at him and laughed. The boy liked him better when he didn’t laugh.

  “That too,” he said. “But a meal is also a form of ending. Everything is. Except the hunt, the silence, and the hunter’s pulse.”

  His father handed him the rifle. He took it, holding it for a long time in both hands. He’d held it many times before, but now it felt unpleasant in his grip.

  They sat there in the dripping moss, looking out across the meadow. He’d grown used to having damp clothes and constantly wet feet, but now it felt as if the groundwater soaking through his pants was warm and soothing, something he could fall asleep in, an unmoving moisture, a floating cocoon made of fluid and the microscopic life-forms that lived in the woods.

  A couple of big birds danced past below them in the tall grass and then vanished into the forest as abruptly as they had appeared. The lingering autumn twilight was fading, and soon it would be too dark to see anything.

  All of a sudden it was there. It looked around a few times, blinking, indifferent. The evening hour and the strange beauty of the dark trees made no impression on the deer. It was young. With slender horns, a mere inkling of antlers. There was much about the deer that had not yet grown.

  He turned to look at his father, who sat in silence, meeting his eye. Then he calmly nodded. The boy put on the ear protectors, raised the rifle, and aimed it at the young buck. He pressed his cheek against the butt. Then he looked through the sight, searching the plain until he again found the deer. The buck was still there. It had begun to graze with the wariness all deer possessed, its own mortality reflected in every movement and hesitation. Slowly he squeezed the trigger.

  That was when he felt it. A sensation that seemed to come from the air hovering
between him and the deer. Something tough, like the moss he was sitting on, filled his whole head. He noticed his hands were shaking. He was a sensible boy who never had a hard time making a decision. Something was pounding inside of him. He was breathing hard. His eyes were swimming, and he could no longer see the deer clearly.

  Then he fired without taking aim. The bang never came. Only a brief click. Like a pinprick in the air. He lowered the rifle and took off the ear protectors. Below he saw the young buck disappear into the woods, vanishing in the dark.

  * * *

  The memory of that hunting expedition still got to Fagerhus, more than anything else. It always made his pulse quicken, so he didn’t look at the heart rate monitor.

  “I don’t know what’s more scary about you,” she’d once told him. “The fact that you have the resting pulse of a frozen toad, or that your pulse is always a resting pulse.”

  She’d meant it as a joke. That was before he started frightening her. Before he’d started to say things she didn’t like. Back when she still felt safe with him. His calm rubbed off on her, taming her own restlessness. She didn’t know there were certain things that could shake him up. Not many. But there were some.

  Now he began thinking about the girl. “I’ll just take Tina with me. Then I’ll leave, and you won’t ever have to see me again,” he muttered.

  He tried to remember what she looked like. His daughter. But for some strange reason his thoughts veered to the boy he had in the trunk of his car. That was a real slipup. He hadn’t foreseen that the boy would be in the shop. With those eyes of his. First the mistake with the father. Then the boy.

  Fagerhus had only planned to take some money from the guy’s rotten business, to let a cynical criminal get a taste of his own medicine. He’d been working in the narcotics division for years. He knew the junkies, and from them he’d learned what the proper dose should be. The amount that Casaubon had shot up shouldn’t have killed him. It wasn’t an overdose, at least not under normal circumstances. Of course, the shop owner had never used heroin before, but still it must have been some of the pure stuff that Eriksen had mentioned. Why hadn’t he heard about it earlier? What a mess he was in. He’d only intended to drug the shop owner for a while so he could get out of town before the bastard had time to talk to any of his friends.