Death By Water
| Death By Water |
| Oslo Crime Files [2] |
| Torkil Damhaug |
| Sweden (2015) |
Psychologist Mailin Bjerke is due to appear on the notorious TV show
Taboo
, tackling its most sensational subject yet. But she never arrives at the studio.
As
the police struggle to find any sign of Mailin, her sister Liss, living
on the edge in Amsterdam, takes matters into her own hands. Flying home
to Olso, she discovers a complex backdrop of friends and enemies, where
no one can be relied upon to tell the truth. Her battle is made harder
by the fractured memories of a childhood where Mailin was always her
protector, and by the secrets she must keep hidden.
And she has no idea that Mailin's disappearance is somehow connected to a chance meeting more than a decade before...
Døden ved vann © Cappelen Damm AS, 2010
English translation © 2015 Robert Ferguson
The right of Torkil Damhaug to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Published by agreement with Cappelen Damm AS, Akersgata 47/49, Oslo, Norway
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2015
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library
eISBN: 978 1 4722 0688 6
Cover design by
www.asmithcompany.co.uk
Cover photographs: Main image by Enis Izgi/Getty; Figure on pier by Øivind H. Eide/Getty
HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP
An Hachette UK Company
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
Contents
About Torkil Damhaug
Torkil Damhaug studied literature and anthropology in Bergen, and then medicine in Oslo, specialising in psychiatry. Having worked as a psychiatrist for many years, he now writes full time. In 2011 Torkil’s third Oslo Crime Files novel, FIRERAISER, won the Riverton Prize for Norwegian crime fiction – an accolade also awarded to Jo Nesbø and Anne Holt – and his books have been published in fifteen languages. He lives with his wife and children near Oslo.
There are four deeply dark thrillers to discover in Torkil Damhaug’s Oslo Crime Files series: MEDUSA, DEATH BY WATER, FIRERAISER and CERTAIN SIGNS THAT YOU ARE DEAD.
Medusa
Death By Water
Fireraiser
Certain Signs That You Are Dead
Psychologist Mailin Bjerke is due to appear on the notorious TV show
Taboo
, tackling its most sensational subject yet. But she never arrives at the studio.
As the police struggle to find any sign of Mailin, her sister Liss, living on the edge in Amsterdam, takes matters into her own hands. Flying home to Olso, she discovers a complex backdrop of friends and enemies, where no one can be relied upon to tell the truth. Her battle is made harder by the fractured memories of a childhood where Mailin was always her protector, and by the secrets she must keep hidden.
And she has no idea that Mailin’s disappearance is somehow connected to a chance meeting more than a decade before …
‘Exciting, original and disturbing’
VG
‘Damhaug has now taken his place in the top ranks of Norwegian crime fiction writers’
Aftenposten
‘One of the best-written and nerve-wracking works of crime fiction in a long time’
Dagens Næringsliv
To Helen
M
EDIUM DANGER.
T
HE
yellow flag flying. The breakers pound high up the beach though it’s only twelve o’clock. He throws his towel on to the sand and runs in, keeping his yellow T-shirt on. Wades out until the water reaches his navel. Starts swimming, diving into the wave that breaks right in front of him, swimming on out towards the buoys, continuing past them. The water starts a tickling and a bubbling inside his chest, as though something nasty is about to happen. But even with the red flag up, he would still have gone swimming. Red flag means hazard.
No other swimmers this far out today. He turns towards the shore. Truls is holding Nini by the hand, the way he’s been told to. Out here, past the buoys, it’s just possible to hear her shriek each time a giant of a breaker throws itself at her feet.
Further out, the troughs between the waves are deeper. They open up suddenly; he falls down into them, is lifted up and tossed over the next peak, then falls again. Has to use his strength to keep his head up, not to get sucked under. His mouth and nose fill with salty foam. He spits and snorts, gets tossed up again, down again. The waves keep coming, and when he’s up on a peak he can see the horizon where the water meets the grey-blue sky, and he knows that the sea continues long past that line, all the way down to Africa. How far would he get if he carried on in the direction of the coast he can’t see? With every wave that pulls him down and tosses him up again, he twists his upper body and feels that it is he who is strongest. How far out can he get before he has to give up and let the waves do what they like with him?
Not even when they arrived on the plane that morning, with the sky clear and bright, could he see land on the far side. He had turned to his mother, sitting in the middle seat, to ask her how many hundreds of miles she thought it was over the sea. He could tell from her eyes that she was no longer in a condition to answer a question like that. Had known it before anyway, even before they boarded the plane. They were sitting in the café right next to the gate. They’d got up at three in the morning in order to reach the airport in time. He sat there staring out at the runway. Nini was lying in her pushchair asleep. Truls was out too, curled up in a chair.