by Jo Nesbo
‘You should listen to Pink Floyd.’
‘Who’s that?’
The man looked round. ‘We can go inside to the computer and I’ll show you. While we’re waiting for your dad.’
‘You can spell it for me. I’ll remember.’
‘Best to show you. Then I can have a glass of water at the same time.’
Aurora looked at him. Now that he was sitting below her she had the sun in her face again, but it didn’t warm her any more. Strange. She leaned back on the swing. The man smiled. She saw something glint between his teeth. As if the tip of his tongue was there and gone again.
‘Come on,’ he said, standing up. He held one of the ropes, at head height.
Aurora slipped off the swing and darted under his arm. Started walking towards the house. She heard his footsteps behind her. The voice.
‘You’ll like it, Aurora. I promise.’
Gentle, like a priest administering confirmation. That was Dad’s expression. Perhaps he was Jesus after all? But Jesus or not, she didn’t want him in the house. Still, she kept walking. What would she say to Dad? That she had stopped someone he knew coming in for a glass of water? No, she couldn’t do that. She walked more slowly to give herself time to think, to find an excuse for not letting him in. But she couldn’t find one. And because she slowed down he came closer, and she could hear his breathing. Heavy, as though the few steps he had walked from the swing had made him breathless. And there was a weird smell coming from his mouth that reminded her of nail varnish remover.
Five paces to the doorsteps. An excuse. Two paces. The doorsteps. Come on. No. They were at the door.
Aurora swallowed. ‘I think it’s locked,’ she said. ‘We’ll have to wait outside.’
‘Oh?’ the man said, gazing round from the top step, as though searching for Dad somewhere behind the hedges. Or neighbours. She felt the heat from his arm as it stretched across her shoulder, grabbed the door handle and pushed it down. It opened.
‘Well, hello,’ he said, and he was breathing faster now. And there was a light quiver to his voice. ‘We were lucky there.’
Aurora faced the doorway. Stared into the darkened hall. Just a glass of water. And this music with the talking that didn’t have any interest for her. In the distance there was the sound of a lawnmower. Angry, aggressive, insistent. She stepped inside.
‘I have to . . .’ she began, came to an abrupt halt, and at that moment felt his hand on her shoulder, as though he had crossed a line. Felt the heat of his hand where her shirt stopped and her skin started. Felt her little heart pounding. Heard another lawnmower. Which wasn’t a lawnmower but an excitedly purring little engine.
‘Mummy!’ Aurora shouted and squirmed out of the man’s grip, dived past him, jumped down all four steps, landed in the gravel and raced off. Shouting over her shoulder:
‘I have to help with the shopping.’
She ran to the gate, listened for footsteps coming after her, but the crunch of her trainers on the gravel was almost deafening. Then she was at the gate, tearing it open and watching her mother get out of the little blue car in front of the garage.
‘Hi, sweetheart,’ Mum said, looking at her with a quizzical smile. ‘That was quite a turn of speed.’
‘There’s someone here asking for Dad,’ Aurora said, realising the gravel path was longer than she thought, she was out of breath anyway. ‘He’s on the steps.’
‘Oh?’ Mum said, passing her one of the bags from the rear seat, slamming the door and walking with her daughter through the gate.
No one was on the steps, but the front door was still open.
‘Has he gone inside?’ Mum asked.
‘Don’t know,’ Aurora said.
They went into the house, but Aurora stayed in the hallway, close to the open door while her mother continued past the living room towards the kitchen.
‘Hello?’ she heard her mother call. ‘Hello?’
Then she was back in the hall, without the shopping bags.
‘There’s no one here, Aurora.’
‘But he was here. I promise you!’
Mum looked at her in surprise and laughed. ‘Of course he was, sweetheart. Why wouldn’t I believe you?’
Aurora didn’t answer. Didn’t know what to say. How could she explain that it might have been Jesus? Or the Holy Spirit. At any rate, someone not everyone could see.
‘He’ll turn up again if it was important,’ Mum said, going back to the kitchen.
Aurora stood in the hallway. That sweet, stale smell, it was still there.
35
‘TELL ME, HAVE you got a life?’
Arnold Folkestad looked up from his papers. Catching sight of the tall guy leaning against the door frame, he smiled.
‘No, I haven’t either, Harry.’
‘It’s after nine and you’re still here.’
Arnold chuckled and stacked his papers together. ‘I’m on my way home anyway. You’ve just come and how long are you going to stay?’
‘Not long.’ Harry took one long stride to the spindle-back chair and sat down. ‘And I’ve got a woman I can be with at weekends.’
‘Oh yes? I’ve got an ex-wife I can avoid at weekends.’
‘Have you? I didn’t know that.’
‘Ex-cohabitant anyway.’
‘Coffee? What happened?’
‘Run out of coffee. One of us had the terrible idea of thinking a marriage proposal was the next step. Things went downhill from there. I called it off after all the invitations had been sent out, and so she left. Couldn’t live with it, she said. Best thing that’s ever happened to me, Harry.’
‘Mm.’ Harry used his thumb and middle finger to clear his eyes.
Arnold stood up and took his jacket from the hook on the wall. ‘Slow going in the Boiler Room?’
‘Well, we had a setback today. Valentin Gjertsen . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘We think he’s the Saw Man. But he’s not the one who’s been murdering all the officers.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘At least, not on his own.’
‘Could there be several?’
‘Katrine’s suggestion. But the fact is that in ninety-eight point six per cent of sexually motivated murders there’s only one perpetrator.’
‘So . . .’
‘She wouldn’t give in. Pointed out that in all likelihood there were two men involved in the murder of the girl at Tryvann.’
‘Is that where the body was found scattered over several kilometres?’
‘Yep. She thought Valentin might have been working with someone. To confuse the police.’
‘Taking turns to kill and thereby securing an alibi?’
‘Yes. And in fact that’s been done before. Two ex-cons, violent crim-inals, in Michigan, got together sometime in the sixties. They made it look like classic serial killings by setting a pattern they followed every time. The murders were copies. Like crimes both of them had committed before. They each had their own sick predilections and ended up attracting the attention of the FBI. But when first one and then the other had watertight alibis for several of the murders they were, naturally enough, eliminated from inquiries.’
‘Smart. So why don’t you think something similar happened here?’
‘Ninety-eight—’
‘—point six per cent. Isn’t that thinking a bit rigid?’
‘It was thanks to your percentage of key witnesses dying of unnatural causes that I found out Asayev didn’t die of natural ones.’
‘But you still haven’t done anything about that case?’
‘No. But drop that one now, Arnold. This one’s more urgent.’ Harry rested his head against the wall behind him. Closed his eyes. ‘We think along the same lines, you and I, and I’m bloody knackered. So I came straight here to ask you to help me to think.’
‘Me?’
‘We’re back to square one, Arnold. And your brain’s got a couple of neurons mine obviously hasn’t.’
> Folkestad took off his jacket again, hung it neatly across the back of the chair and sat down.
‘Harry?’
‘Yes?’
‘You have no idea how good this feels.’
Harry pulled a wry smile. ‘Good. Motive.’
‘Motive. Yes, that’s square one.’
‘That’s where we are. What could this murderer’s motive be?’
‘I’ll go and see if I can rustle up some coffee after all, Harry.’
Harry talked his way through the first cup and was well down the second before Arnold spoke up.
‘I think the murder of René Kalsnes is important because it’s an exception, because it doesn’t fit in. That is to say, it does and it doesn’t. It doesn’t fit in with the original murders, the sex, sadism and use of knives. It fits in with the police murders because of the violence to the head and face with a blunt object.’
‘Go on,’ Harry said, putting down the cup.
‘I remember the Kalsnes murder well,’ Arnold said. ‘I was in San Francisco on a course when it happened, staying at a hotel where everyone had the Gayzette delivered to the door.’
‘The gay newspaper?’
‘They ran the story of this murder in little Norway on the front page, calling it yet another hate crime against a homosexual man. The interesting bit was that none of the Norwegian papers I read later carried any suggestion of a hate crime. I wondered how this American paper could draw such a categorical and premature conclusion, so I read the whole article. The journalist wrote that the murder had all the classic features: the homosexual who exhibits his leanings so provocatively is picked up, driven to some out-of-the-way place where he is subjected to ritual, frenzied violence. The murderer has a gun, but it’s not enough to shoot Kalsnes straight away, his face has to be obliterated first. He has to give vent to his homophobia by smashing the far too attractive, effeminate face, doesn’t he? It’s premeditated, it’s planned and it’s a homo murder – that was the journalist’s conclusion. And do you know what, Harry? I don’t think it’s an unreasonable conclusion.’
‘Mm. If it’s a “homo murder”, as you call it, it definitely doesn’t fit in. There’s nothing to suggest that any of the other murder victims were gay, neither the original ones nor the officers.’
‘Maybe not. But there is something interesting here. You said the Kalsnes case was the only one that linked all the murdered policemen, didn’t you?’
‘With such a small circle of detectives it’s often the same people, Arnold, so that doesn’t make it much of a coincidence.’
‘Nevertheless, I have a hunch it’s important.’
‘You’ve got your head in the clouds now, Arnold.’
The red-bearded man sat up with an injured expression. ‘Did I say something wrong?’
‘“I have a hunch”? I’ll tell you when you’ve reached the point when your hunches are an argument.’
‘Because not many of us reach that point?’
‘Exactly. Go on, but keep your feet on the ground, OK.’
‘OK. But might I perhaps be allowed to say that I have a hunch you agree with me?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Then I’ll take a punt and suggest you employ all of your resources to find out who killed the homosexual officer. The worst that can happen is that you solve one case. The best is that you solve all the police murders as well.’
‘Mm.’ Harry finished his coffee and got up. ‘Thank you, Arnold.’
‘Thank you. Unlicensed policemen like me are happy just to be listened to, you know. Speaking of which, I met Silje Gravseng in reception earlier today. She was handing in her pass. She was . . . something.’
‘Student rep.’
‘Yes. Whatever, she asked after you. I didn’t say anything. Then she said you were a fake. Your boss had told her it wasn’t true that you had a hundred per cent clear-up rate. Gusto Hanssen, she said. Is that true?’
‘Mm. Sort of.’
‘Sort of? What does that mean?’
‘I investigated the case and never arrested anyone. How did she seem?’
Arnold Folkestad pinched one eye shut and looked at Harry as if he were aiming a weapon at him, searching his face.
‘Who knows. She’s an odd girl, Silje Gravseng. She invited me to do some shooting practice in Økern. Just like that, out of the blue.’
‘Mm. And what did you answer?’
‘I blamed my poor eyesight and the shakes. I said, and it’s true, I would have to have the target half a metre in front of me to be sure of hitting anything. She accepted that, but afterwards I wondered why she would go to a firing range when she no longer needed to pass the police firearms test.’
‘Well,’ Harry said, ‘sometimes people just like shooting for shooting’s sake.’
‘It’s up to them,’ Arnold said, getting up. ‘But she looked good, it has to be said.’
Harry watched his colleague hobble out of the door. Mused, then found the number for the Police Chief in Nedre Eiker. Afterwards he sat chewing over what she’d said. It was true that Bertil Nilsen had not been part of the investigation into René Kalsnes’s death in the neighbouring municipality of Drammen. On the other hand, he had been on duty when they had received the call telling them there was a car in the river near Eikersaga and had turned out when it was unclear whose jurisdiction it was. She also told him the Drammen police and Kripos had read them the riot act because Nilsen had churned up the soft ground where they might otherwise have found good tyre tracks. ‘So you might say he had an indirect effect on the investigation.’
It was almost ten o’clock, and the sun had long gone down behind the green hill to the west when Ståle Aune parked his car in the garage and walked up the gravel path to his house. He noticed there was no light on in the kitchen or the living room. Nothing unusual about that. She often went to bed early.
He could feel the weight of his body on his knee joints. Goodness, how tired he was. It had been a long day, but he had hoped she would still be up. Then they could have had a chat. And he would have calmed down. He had done as Harry had said and contacted a colleague. Talked about the knife attack. About how he had been sure he would die. He had done all that, now it was time to sleep. To be allowed to sleep.
He unlocked the door. Saw Aurora’s jacket hanging on the peg. Another new one. Heavens, how that child was growing. He kicked off his shoes. Straightened up and listened to the silence in the house. He couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was, but it seemed to him the house was quieter than usual. There was a sound missing, one which he obviously wasn’t aware of when it was there.
He went upstairs. Every step was a little slower, like an overloaded scooter going uphill. He would have to start getting fit, take off ten kilos, or thereabouts. It was good for your sleep, good for your well-being, good for long days at work, for your life expectancy, for your sex life, for your self-esteem, in a word, good. But he was damned if he was going to do it.
He trudged past Aurora’s bedroom.
Stopped, hesitated. Went back. Opened the door.
Just wanted to see her asleep, as he always used to. Soon it wouldn’t be so natural to do that any more, he could already feel she was more aware of certain things, private things. It wasn’t that she minded being naked when he was around, but she didn’t strut about quite so nonchalantly. And when he noticed it had stopped being natural for her, it also stopped being natural for him. But he still wanted to do this on the QT, watch his daughter sleeping peacefully, safe, protected from all the things he had experienced out there today.
But he didn’t. He would see her tomorrow at breakfast anyway.
He sighed, closed the door and went into the bathroom. Undressed and took his clothes into their bedroom, hung them over a chair and was about to crawl into bed when he was struck by it again. The silence. What was it that was missing? The hum of a fridge? The whisper of a ventilation hatch, which they usually left open?
He couldn’t be bothered t
o give it any further thought and snuggled down under the duvet. Saw Ingrid’s hair sticking up. He wanted to touch her, just stroke her hair, down her back, feel that she was there. But she was such a light sleeper and hated being woken up, he knew that. He was about to close his eyes, then changed his mind.
‘Ingrid?’
No answer.
‘Ingrid?’
Silence.
It could wait. He closed his eyes again.
‘Yes?’ He noticed that she had turned over.
‘Nothing,’ he mumbled. ‘Just . . . this case . . .’
‘Say you don’t want it.’
‘Someone has to do it.’ It sounded like the cliché it was.
‘They won’t find anyone better than you.’
Ståle opened his eyes. Looked at her, caressed her hot, round cheek. Now and then – no, more than now and then – nothing in existence was better than her.
Ståle Aune closed his eyes. And now it came. Sleep. The loss of consciousness. The real nightmares.
36
THE MORNING SUN glinted off the rooftops still wet after the short, intense burst of rain.
Mikael Bellman pressed the doorbell and looked around.
Well-tended garden. That was probably how you made time pass when you were old.
The door opened.
‘Mikael! How nice.’
He looked older. The same sharp, blue eyes, but, well, older.
‘Come in.’
Mikael wiped his wet shoes on the doormat and stepped inside. There was a smell in the house he could remember from his childhood, but which he was unable to isolate and identify.
They sat down in the living room.
‘You’re alone,’ Mikael said.
‘Wife’s with the eldest. They needed a hand from Grandma and she’s a soft touch.’ He beamed. ‘Actually, I thought I should get in contact with you. Now, the council hasn’t reached a final decision, but we both know what they want, so it’s probably wise to talk about how we do this. The division of labour and so on, I mean.’