by Jo Nesbo
‘My understanding is that their relationship is now a thing of the past.’
‘You don’t say? There was something in the blood sample, so I was wondering if there was anything in the family …’
Mathias thought he could discern a certain disappointment in her face. As for himself, he was far from disappointed by what she had to tell him.
‘Thank you,’ he said, standing up and exiting. He could feel his heart pumping eager, life-giving blood, his feet propelling him forward without consuming any energy, his pleasure making him glow like a cutting loop. For he knew this was the beginning. The beginning of the end.
Holmenkollen Residents’ Association was having its summer party on a burning hot August day. On the lawn in front of the association pavilion the adults were sitting on camping chairs under umbrellas and drinking white wine while the children ran between tables or played football on the gravel pitch. Although she was wearing enormous sunglasses that concealed her face, Mathias recognised her from the photograph he had downloaded from her employer’s website. She was standing on her own, and he went over to her and asked with a wry smile if he might stand beside her and pretend he knew her. He knew how to do this sort of thing now. He was not the Mathias No-Nips of old.
She lowered her glasses, scrutinised him quizzically and he established that the photograph had lied after all. She was much more beautiful. So beautiful that for a moment he thought plan A had a weakness: it was not a foregone conclusion that she would want him; a woman like Rakel – single mother or not – had alternatives. Plan B had, to be sure, the same result as A, but would not be anywhere near as satisfying.
‘Socially timid,’ he said, raising a plastic beaker in an embarrassed gesture of greeting. ‘I was invited here by a chum living nearby, and he hasn’t showed up. And everyone else looks as if they know each other here. I promise to decamp the second he appears.’
She laughed. He liked her laugh. And knew that the critical first three seconds had gone in his favour.
‘I just saw a boy score a fantastic goal on the gravel pitch down there,’ Mathias said. ‘I wouldn’t mind betting you’re related to him.’
‘Oh? That might have been Oleg, my son.’
She succeeded in hiding it, but Mathias knew from countless sessions with patients that no woman can resist praise of her child.
‘Nice party,’ he said. ‘Nice neighbours.’
‘You like parties with other people’s neighbours?’
‘I think my friends are worried I’m spending too much time on my own,’ he said. ‘So they try to cheer me up. With their successful neighbours, for example.’ He took a sip from the plastic glass. ‘And with the very sweet house wine. What’s your name?’
‘Rakel. Fauke.’
‘Hello, Rakel. Mathias.’
He shook her hand. Small, warm.
‘You haven’t got anything to drink,’ he said. ‘Allow me. House sweet?’
On his return, and after passing her the glass, he took out his pager and looked at it with a concerned expression.
‘Do you know what, Rakel? I’d love to stay and get to know you better, but A&E is short-staffed and needs an extra man sharpish. So I’ll put on my Superman outfit and make my way into town.’
‘Shame,’ she said.
‘You think so? It’s only for a few hours. Are you going to be here long?’
‘I don’t know. It depends on Oleg.’
‘Right. We’ll see then. Anyway, it was nice to meet you.’
Again he shook her hand. Then left, knowing he had won the first round.
He drove to his flat in Torshov and read an interesting article about water channels in the brain. When he returned at eight she was sitting under one of the umbrellas, wearing a big white hat. She smiled as he sat down beside her.
‘Saved any lives?’ she asked.
‘Mostly scrapes and grazes,’ Mathias said. ‘An appendicitis. The high point was a boy who’d got a Lemonade bottle stuck up his nose. I told his mother he was probably too young to sniff Coke. Sad to say, people in that type of situation don’t have much of a sense of humour …’
She laughed. That refined trilled laugh which almost made him wish the whole thing was for real.
Mathias had already observed the thickening of his skin in various areas, but in the autumn of 2004 he noticed the first signs that the disease was entering the next phase. The phase he did not want to be a part of. The tightening of his face. His plan had been that Eli Kvale would be the victim of the year, then the whores, Birte Becker and Sylvia Ottersen, in the years that followed. The interesting bit would be to see whether the police would pick up on the connections between the latter two victims and the lecher Arve Støp. But, as it was, his plans would have to be pushed forward. He had always promised himself that he would call it a day once the pains came, he wouldn’t wait. And now they were here. He decided to take all three of them. As well as the grand finale: Rakel and the policeman.
Hitherto he had worked under cover, and now it was time to exhibit his life’s work. To do that he would have to leave clear clues, show them the connections, give them the bigger picture.
He started with Birte. They agreed to talk about Jonas’s complaint at her house after her husband had gone to Bergen in the evening. Mathias arrived at the appointed time and she took his coat in the porch and turned to put it in the cupboard. It was rare for him to improvise, but a pink scarf was hanging on one peg and he grabbed it as if by instinct. He wound it twice before going up behind her and placing it around her neck. He lifted the little woman up and positioned her in front of the mirror so that he could see her eyes. They were bulging, she was like a fish that had been hauled up from the deep.
After depositing her in the car he went into the garden to the snowman he had made the night before. He pressed the mobile phone into its chest, filled the cavity and knotted the scarf around its neck. It was past midnight by the time he arrived at the garage of the Anatomy Department, injected fixative into Birte’s body, stamped the metal tags, tied them on and put her on an unoccupied ledge in one of the tanks.
Then it was Sylvia’s turn. He rang her, rattled off the usual spiel and they arranged to meet in the forest behind Holmenkollen ski jump, a place he had used on previous occasions. But this time there were people nearby and he wouldn’t take the risk. He explained to her that Idar Vetlesen, unlike himself, was not exactly a specialist in Fahr’s syndrome, and they would have to meet again. She suggested he rang her the following evening when she would be at home on her own.
The next evening he drove out, found her in the barn and set about her on the spot.
But it had almost gone wrong.
The crazy woman had swung her hatchet at him, hit him in the side, cut open his jacket and shirt and severed an artery with the result that his blood had gushed out all over the barn floor. B negative blood. Two people in a hundred’s blood. So after he had killed her in the forest and left her head on top of the snowman he returned, slaughtered a chicken and sprayed its blood over the floor to cover up his own blood.
It was a stressful twenty-four hours, but the strange thing was that he felt no pain that night. And over the subsequent days he followed the case in the newspapers, quietly triumphant. The Snowman. That was the name they had given him. A name that would be remembered. He would never have guessed that a few printed words in a newspaper could afford such a feeling of power and influence. He almost regretted having operated clandestinely for so many years. And it was so easy! There he was going round thinking that what Gert Rafto said was true, that a good detective would always find the murderer. But he had met Harry Hole and had seen the frustration in the policeman’s frazzled face. It was the face of someone who comprehended nothing.
But then, while Mathias was preparing his final moves, it came like a bolt from the blue. Idar Vetlesen. He rang to say that Hole had visited him asking questions about Arve Støp and pressing him for the connection. And Idar himself wonder
ed what was going on; after all, it was unlikely that the selection of the victims was arbitrary. And, apart from himself and Støp, Mathias was the only person who knew about the paternities since Mathias, as usual, had helped him with the diagnosis.
Idar was rattled, of course, but fortunately Mathias managed to calm him down. He told Idar not to say a word to anyone and to meet him in a safe place where no one could see them.
Mathias was on the point of laughing as he said it; it was practically word for word what he told his female victims. He supposed it must have been the tension.
Idar proposed the curling club. Mathias rang off and pondered his options.
It struck him that he could make it seem as if Idar was the Snowman and at the same time procure himself some downtime.
The next hour he spent elaborating the details of Idar’s suicide. And even though he appreciated his friend in many ways it was an oddly stimulating, indeed inspiring, process. As the planning of the great project had been. The last snowman. She would have to sit – as he had done on the first day of snow so many years ago – on the snowman’s shoulders, feel the cold through her thighs and watch through the window, watch the treachery, the man who would be her death: Harry Hole. He closed his eyes and visualised the noose over her head. It glinted and glowed. Like a fake halo.
34
DAY 21.
Sirens.
HARRY GOT INTO THE CAR IN THE GARAGE AT THE ANATOMY Department. Closed the doors and his eyes, and tried to think clearly. The first thing to do was find out where Mathias was.
He had deleted Mathias from his mobile phone and called directory enquiries who gave him the number and the address. He tapped in 1881, noticed while he was waiting that his breathing was accelerated and excited, and tried to calm down.
‘Hi, Harry.’ Mathias’s voice was low, but sounded pleasantly surprised as usual.
‘Sorry to bother you,’ Harry said.
‘Not at all, Harry.’
‘Ah, OK. Where are you now?’
‘I’m at home. I’m on my way down to see Rakel and Oleg.’
‘Great. I was wondering if you could deliver the something to Oleg for me.’
A pause arose. Harry clenched his jaws, making his teeth crack.
‘Of course,’ Mathias said. ‘But Oleg’s at home now, so you can –’
‘Rakel,’ Harry interrupted. ‘We … I don’t feel like meeting her today. Could I pop round to yours for a moment?’
Another pause. Harry pressed the receiver against his ear and listened hard, as if to pick up what his interlocutor was thinking. But all he could hear was breathing and fragile background music, minimalist Japanese glockenspiel or something like that. He visualised Mathias in an austere, equally minimalist flat. Not that big maybe, but tidy, that was obvious, nothing left to chance. And now he had put on a neutral, light blue shirt and a fresh bandage on the wound in his side. Because, when he had been standing on the steps in front of Harry, he hadn’t held his crossed arms so high to hide his missing nipples. It had been to hide the hatchet wound.
‘Of course,’ Mathias said.
Harry was unable to decide whether his voice sounded natural. The background music had stopped.
‘Thank you,’ Harry said. ‘I’ll be quick, but promise me that you’ll wait.’
‘I promise,’ Mathias said. ‘But Harry …’
‘Yes?’ Harry took a deep breath.
‘Do you know what my address is?’
‘Rakel told me.’
Harry cursed inside. Why hadn’t he said he got it from directory enquiries? There was nothing suspicious about that.
‘Did she?’ Mathias asked.
‘Yes.’
‘OK,’ Mathias said. ‘Come right in. The door’s unlocked.’
Harry rang off and stared at the telephone. He could find no rational explanation for his foreboding that time was short and that he had to run for his life before darkness fell. So he resolved that he was imagining things. That it didn’t help, this type of fear, the terror that comes with the onset of night, when you can’t see your grandmother’s farm.
He punched in another number.
‘Yes,’ Hagen answered. The voice was toneless, lifeless. The resignation-writing voice, Harry presumed.
‘Drop the paperwork,’ Harry said. ‘You’ve got to ring the Chief Constable. I need a firearms authorisation. Arrest of suspected murderer in Åsengata 12, Torshov.’
‘Harry –’
‘Listen. The remains of Sylvia Ottersen are in a tank at the Anatomy Department. Katrine is not the Snowman. Do you understand?’
Silence.
‘No,’ Hagen confessed.
‘The Snowman is a lecturer at the department. Mathias Lund-Helgesen.’
‘Lund-Helgesen? Well, I’ll be damned. Do you mean the—?’
‘Yes, the doctor who was so helpful in focussing our attention on Idar Vetlesen.’
Life had returned to Hagen’s voice. ‘The Chief is going to ask if it’s likely that the man’s armed.’
‘Well,’ Harry said, ‘as far as we know, he hasn’t used a firearm on any of the people he’s killed.’
A couple of seconds passed before Hagen caught the sarcasm. ‘I’ll phone him now,’ he said.
Harry rang off and turned the key in the ignition while calling Magnus Skarre with his other hand. Skarre and the engine responded in unison.
‘Still in Tryvann?’ Harry shouted above the roar.
‘Yes.’
‘Drop everything and get yourself in a car. Meet me at the Åsengata/ Vogts gate crossroads. It’s a bust.’
‘All hell broken loose, has it?’
‘Yeah,’ Harry said. The rubber screamed on the concrete as he let the clutch go.
He thought of Jonas. For some reason he thought of Jonas.
One of the six patrol cars Harry had asked the Incident Room for was already at the crossing by Åsengata as Harry came down Vogts gate from Storo. Harry drove up onto the pavement, jumped out and went over to them. They rolled down the window and passed Harry the walkie-talkie he had requested.
‘Switch off the blender,’ Harry ordered, pointing to the rotating blue light. He pressed the talk button and told the patrol cars to turn off the sirens well before they got to the scene.
Four minutes later six patrol cars were assembled at the crossing. The police officers, among them Skarre and Ola Li from Crime Squad, had thronged around Harry’s car where he sat with a street map in his lap, pointing.
‘Li, you take three cars to cut off any possible escape routes. Here, here and here.’
Li leaned over the map nodding.
Harry turned to Skarre. ‘The caretaker?’
Skarre raised the phone. ‘Talking to him now. He’s on his way over to the main door with keys.’
‘OK. You take six men and position yourselves by the entrance, back stairs and, if possible, on the roof. And you bring up the rear, OK? Has the Delta car arrived?’
‘Here.’ Two of the officers, identical to the others from the outside, signalled that they were driving the regular vehicle for Delta, the Special Forces Unit trained particularly for this kind of operation.
‘OK, I want you in front of the main entrance now. Are you all armed?’
The officers nodded. Some of them were armed with MP5 machine guns they had unlocked from car boots. The others had only service revolvers. It was a fiscal matter, as the Chief Constable had once explained.
‘The caretaker says Lund-Helgesen lives on the second floor,’ Skarre said, slipping the mobile phone into his jacket pocket. ‘There’s just one flat on each floor. No exits to the roof. To reach the rear staircase he’d have to go up to the third and through a locked attic.’
‘Good,’ Harry said. ‘Send two men up the rear stairs and tell them to wait in the attic.’
‘OK.’
Harry took with him the two uniformed officers from the car that had arrived first. An older officer and a young, pimply whippersn
apper who had both worked with Skarre before. Instead of going into Åsengata 12, they crossed the street and went into the block opposite.
Both young boys from the Stigson family living on the second floor stared wide-eyed at the two uniformed men while their father listened to Harry explaining why they had to use their flat for a short while. Harry entered the sitting room, pushed the sofa away from the window and took a closer look at the flat on the other side of the street.
‘Light’s on in the living room,’ he said.
‘Someone sitting there,’ said the older officer who had taken up a position behind him.
‘I’ve heard your eyesight deteriorates by thirty per cent after you hit fifty,’ Harry said.
‘I’m not blind. In the big chair there you can see the top of his head and the hand on the arm rest.’
Harry squinted. Shit, did he need glasses? Well, if the old boy thought he saw someone, then he must have done.
‘You stay here and radio if he moves. All right?’
‘All right,’ the older man smiled.
Harry took the whippersnapper along with him.
‘Who’s sitting inside?’ the young officer said in a loud voice over the clatter of their feet as they raced downstairs.
‘Heard of the Snowman?’
‘Oh, crap.’
‘That’s right.’
They sprinted across the street to the other block. The caretaker, Skarre and five uniformed policemen stood ready by the front door.
‘I haven’t got a key for the flats,’ the caretaker said. ‘Only for this door.’
‘That’s fine,’ Harry said. Everyone got their weapons ready? We make as little noise as possible, OK? Delta, you stay with me …’
Harry took out Katrine’s Smith & Wesson and signalled to the caretaker, who turned the key in the lock.
Harry and the two Delta men, both armed with MP5s, strode soundlessly up the stairs, three steps at a time.
They stopped on the second floor outside an unmarked blue door. One officer laid his ear against the door, faced Harry and shook his head. Harry had lowered the volume of the walkie-talkie to the very minimum and now he raised it to his mouth.