Where Monsters Dwell

by Jorgen Brekke

  Vatten was seeing double now. Jens Dahle had two heads. He saw two whetstones and two scalpels. He couldn’t tell which one was real and which was the hallucination. For some reason his thoughts turned to Silvia Freud, the bookbinder and conservator at the library. The last time he talked to her she was working on producing a copy of the Johannes Book. He recalled that she’d showed it to him, and he couldn’t see any difference between the copy and the real book. And now, here was Jens Dahle. But what did it matter that his murders were copies of historical murders? Had that meant anything at all for Hedda and Edvard? Without knowing why, he saw Hedda before him at her sewing machine. She often liked to sit there, sewing. Making clothes for Edvard and him. It occurred to Vatten that she had sewn the pants he was wearing. Corduroy pants. He doesn’t take the pants off, he thought, picturing Gunn Brita’s corpse, which had been flayed with her pants on. Fortunately he doesn’t take our pants off. That was a peculiar form of triumph. His vision was getting hazier. Still, he managed to ask one last question:

  “Why?”

  “Why?” Jens Dahle emitted a creepy laugh. “You’re asking more than is good for you to know, Vatten. You’ll never understand me. You’ll never understand the obsession, or the longing for a completely open human being. For muscles, sinews, blood vessels that are still pumping blood, the breath of a person utterly without a mask. And afterward, words on dead skin. But enough chitchat, Vatten. How do you prefer your scalpel: sharp, medium, or dull?”

  * * *

  “Goddamn it to hell!” Singsaker swore in Norwegian, but continued in English. “Amateurs. We’ve been a bunch of bloody amateurs. What about some control questions? That’s standard routine when you’re questioning children. Pappa was at the cabin, you say, but were you two at the cabin with him? So fucking sloppy.” The car spit gravel as it roared out of the Krangsås courtyard. After turning onto the road down toward the cabins, he stomped on the gas.

  “Take it easy,” said Felicia. She didn’t mean his driving. “Things have moved so fast in this case. It’s only been a few days since the first murder and we already know who did it. It’s not easy to interrogate kids. You have to be so cautious, especially when they’ve just lost their mother.”

  “It’s still a huge misunderstanding, and it gave Jens Dahle an alibi for long enough to do God knows what. I should have interviewed the kids myself.”

  “Could you please forget about the kids?” she said. “Now we know who the killer is. Focus on that.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m doing,” he said with sudden insight. “Why do you think I’m so stressed-out?”

  She smiled at him. At that moment her phone chirped.

  “New report. Things are really happening fast,” she said. They had passed the turnoff to the cabin where Silvia Freud and Nevins had been.

  “My people back in Richmond found an unknown e-mail address for Efrahim Bond. After a lot of red tape it seems we’ve gotten access to the account. Bond’s inbox contained only one thing: a love letter from Gunn Brita Dahle. It turns out they had an affair during the conference last spring.”

  “That’s a lot of info they sent you in a text message,” Singsaker said.

  “Laubach had to send it in two pieces,” she said with a smile. “I’m guessing it was Gunn Brita Dahle who put Bond on the trail of this palimpsest in the spine of the Byron book. Apparently he’d invited her to his office and showed her the rare books he had in his possession. She had lots of experience with books. Besides, she knew about Knudtzon, so she noticed something that Bond hadn’t seen before. After that they not only had an affair, but they also shared a research project. I guess she spent a few exciting days in Richmond.”

  “That’s the last piece of the puzzle. Where there are love letters, there must also be replies. We thought we were searching for a psychopath with some kind of agenda. Now we have a motive. Jens Dahle found the e-mails from Bond on his wife’s PC. Then he decided to kill them. But how does a husband kill his unfaithful wife and her lover without attracting the attention of the police? The only way is to make the police believe that they’re searching for something far worse than a jealous husband: a serial killer.”

  “And in a way we’re doing just that,” said Felicia Stone. “Because Jens Dahle’s method shows that he wasn’t just blinded by jealousy. He’s had a thrill killer inside him for a long time.”

  * * *

  Singsaker had slowed down now, as they approached the fjord. Jens Dahle’s cabin was around the next curve. He didn’t want to go skidding into the driveway, in case Dahle was there.

  “Killers like this can be the best actors in the world,” Felicia said. Her tone made it sound like she knew what she was talking about.

  “They can make you see almost whatever you want in their faces. Large parts of the life of a sociopath are devoted to mimicking normal emotions. But they’re only pretending; they don’t really have these feelings. I took a course on serial killers, and the teacher called it a mask of sanity. And in many of them, the mask can be so convincing that not even the police suspect them. There are tons of stories about serial killers who were ruled out of individual cases even though the circumstantial evidence pointed to them. They don’t usually get caught until they’re linked to several murders. Jens Dahle isn’t the first thrill killer who’s had a wife and children. Often the family is part of their stage set, but sometimes the family ends up among the victims. A sociopath is unpredictable and knows no boundaries. In TV series and movies we often learn that they follow a definite plan, that they have a fixed MO, or leave some signature at the crime scenes. But that’s only partly true. A sociopath has no true personality, as we understand it. He continually adapts to the situation. It doesn’t take much for him to change things around. Just look at what happens to them in prison. Many of them become model prisoners, as if they would never hurt a fly.”

  She was talking as if all this information could somehow get them ready for what they were going to find in Jens Dahle’s cabin. Singsaker shifted down to second gear. While Felicia was giving her lecture, they had passed a grove of trees and rounded a rocky hill that ended at a bare slope of glacier-polished stone down by a beach. Beyond the beach was a meadow, and the cabin. It looked relatively new. Stained brown and simply designed on a rectangular lot, one story with a pitched roof, with only one small window facing the road. This window was covered by a dark curtain. From the beach, a wharf jutted into the water, and there was a boat tied up at the dock. The engine seemed much too large for the boat, which was hardly fifteen feet long. Singsaker and Stone didn’t need to say anything to each other. He pointed and she nodded. He was afraid they’d soon see everything they already knew about sociopathic killers.

  “Do you think he’s in the cabin?” Felicia asked.

  “I doubt it,” he said. “Can’t see his car. And the boat must have been here since he was here this weekend. He drove the car home on Monday morning.”

  “How do we get in?”

  “Let’s hope we can see something through the windows,” he said. “In Norway we have something called probable cause. I think you have the same thing.”

  She nodded.

  “We’ll only go in if we see signs of something illegal. If not, we’ll phone the local sheriff and do everything by the book, with a search warrant and the whole deal. If we see something that looks like Dahle is at the crime scene, we’ll retreat immediately. Even in Norway there are some things we don’t do unarmed.”

  He reached into the back seat and found the crowbar he had borrowed from Silvia Freud’s car before he left Austrått.

  “Just in case the situation requires it,” he explained. They parked on the side of the road and walked the last bit over to the cabin. He led the way, holding the crowbar in his right hand.

  It was impossible to see anything through the curtains covering the windows facing the road. So they went around to the front. There they found a door and two more windows, also small. The magnificent v
iew of the Trondheims fjord was shut out. Both windows were covered with the same opaque curtains. But the little window in the door wasn’t covered.

  Singsaker crept up to it carefully and peered inside. What he saw inside made his stomach turn over. He doubled over to catch his breath. He heard Felicia murmur something behind him, but couldn’t make out what she said. Then he straightened up and looked through the window again. The front door led straight into the living room. On one wall there were doors into what were probably two bedrooms. The ceiling was open under the roof in the big living room, so that the straw roof and beams were exposed. A floor lamp was on. He could clearly see the whole room. The only furniture consisted of a rough-hewn table, which was more of a workbench with no chairs around it, a plank bed, a bookcase along one wall, and a recliner in a corner. But no furniture in the world could have distracted his gaze from what was hanging from the center roof beam. A corpse dangled there by the legs, wearing brown corduroy trousers. The torso was flayed from the waist to the neck. This time the head had not been removed, and Singsaker recognized Jon Vatten’s curly hair.

  He grabbed the door handle, found that it was unlocked, and went inside. Only then did he see that it wasn’t yet a corpse. Vatten moved. He could see his exposed muscles tighten, his tendons extend as his arm lifted very, very slowly and pointed at him. Was this an accusation? Blood was trickling and dripping. The drops ran down his body to his arms and neck. Then they slid over the skin on his face and got caught in the hair, which was colored a reddish-black. Fat drops fell from Vatten’s curls to the floor, where a big red pool had formed. But the blood wasn’t gushing. No large blood vessels had been opened. Where the skin ended at the neck, he saw a blood vessel expanding and contracting. A steadily decreasing amount of blood was still circulating through his system.

  Vatten dropped his arm back toward the floor. His lips moved. He whispered something that Singsaker couldn’t hear. His eyes were dull but were undoubtedly directed at him. Singsaker went closer to Vatten and squatted down so that they were facing each other. He tried to focus only on Vatten’s face, where he still had skin. He cautiously put a hand on the back of Vatten’s neck. It felt warm and sweaty.

  “I’m so sorry,” Singsaker said. The words sounded hollow.

  “It’s his fault, not yours,” Vatten whispered. There was a gurgle in his throat. Singsaker was close enough that he could hear what he was saying. Jon Vatten gave a long and rattling cough before he went on.

  “Just promise me one thing. Don’t make him into a mythical monster. Don’t let him become … a celebrity. He’s just a wreck of a human being. Nothing more. Not worth writing … books about. We were simply unlucky to meet him.” He spoke slowly, with long pauses, as if each word was the start of a new marathon.

  “You and Gunn Brita?”

  “Hedda and Edvard and I,” Vatten said.

  “Your family—he did that, too?” Singsaker asked. He now knew what hadn’t felt right all along in the Vatten case. He knew why he had been so uneasy on the way here. Jon Vatten, with all his contradictions and paradoxes, was in a strange way one of the most believable people he’d ever met. He had landed in the police spotlight because of bad luck and coincidences, and still, for some reason Singsaker had trusted Vatten. He wanted to tell him that. But Vatten beat him to it.

  “Promise me one more thing,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  Vatten’s last wish was surprising, but oddly made sense.

  “Take … my bike. It was a gift from Hedda, and I should have taken better care of it.”

  A brief, dull smile slid across his lips. Then he coughed. A rivulet of blood ran down from the corner of his mouth and into his nose. Then he went still.

  Singsaker wanted to say something else to him. But what should he say? That his killer had been higher up on his list of suspects? Would that make things better? He doubted it, so he remained silent and looked at Vatten’s face. Slowly the last gleam of life faded from his eyes. He stopped breathing. The tiny, almost imperceptible movements that distinguish a person at absolute rest from one who is dead finally ceased.

  * * *

  He could hear Felicia breathing behind him.

  “Odd, we have to get out of here,” she said quietly. “The door was unlocked when we got here, and you know what that means.”

  She didn’t manage to say any more. He heard three quick footsteps. Then a dull thud. He turned around just as she fell toward him, a knife stuck in her back. Almost simultaneously somebody swung a crowbar against his temple.

  * * *

  “Edgar Allan Poe died in delirium. He was completely out of it,” Jens Dahle said with a laugh. Singsaker blinked three times and saw the world come back into focus. Next to him hung the corpse of Jon Vatten. Now the head was gone. A sweet, metallic smell of flesh and blood was in the air. He turned to look at the figure standing in front of him. Dahle had taken off his shirt. He was not only tall, but also muscular and fit. He had pulled a mask over his head. It was the mask of a woman with long blonde hair. Hedda Vatten, Singsaker thought. He’d made a mask out of her skin.

  There was no longer any doubt. He was the one they were looking for, but in both cases they had chosen to focus on Vatten. It had cost Vatten not only his academic career, but ultimately his life. If they’d done their job the first time, Gunn Brita Dahle would still be alive. He looked around the room desperately until he caught sight of Felicia, who still lay lifeless on the floor with a knife in her back. Dahle’s voice sounded muffled from behind the mask.

  “Personally, I belong to the school that believes Poe died of rabies. Not very glamorous or mysterious or honorable for a great author. But few other things are capable of stripping a man so completely from his wits. So I vote rabies. Vatten, on the other hand, he died with dignity. He lived with dignity and he died with dignity. Wouldn’t you say that’s a good way to sum it up?”

  Again that cackling laugh. Today was the first time Singsaker had heard Jens Dahle laugh. If anybody had asked him about it yesterday, he probably would have said that he thought Dahle was a tinder-dry academic incapable of more than a restrained chuckle. He may be masked now, but the mask of sanity is off, thought Singsaker. Then he remembered what Vatten had said: “He’s just a wreck of a human being, nothing more.”

  “The big question now is how you will meet your death,” said Dahle.

  Only now did Singsaker notice the scalpel in Dahle’s hand. He realized that he had to keep the man talking.

  “You burned down the farm where you grew up,” he said.

  Dahle laughed. “I know what you’re trying to do,” he said. “You’re searching for an explanation. Where did it start? How did I get like this? Could it be an unhappy childhood? A father who beat me?” He shrugged. He still held the scalpel firmly between his thumb and index finger. His face was covered with sweat. His lips were drawn tight. “But I have no explanation to give you,” Dahle went on. Then he came over to Singsaker and placed a hand under his head, searching with his fingertip until he found the scar. He ran his finger over it several times. He smiled. “It’s not you who’s going to be looking inside me, it’s the other way around,” he said, holding the scalpel up to Singsaker’s eyes and staring at him.

  Even now Singsaker thought he noticed something reminiscent of sorrow in the gaze of the insane killer. He knew it was something else but had no idea what else it could be.

  * * *

  The knife was a dagger. It differed from Johannes the priest’s other knives in that it didn’t serve any hygienic, surgical, or other practical purpose. It was more of a decorative, deadly knife. It had entered Felicia Stone’s back between two of her ribs, then it penetrated one of her lungs and punctured it. The dagger had missed hitting her heart by only half an inch, and had not severed any of the major, vital arteries.

  When she came to, the first thing she noticed was the knife. She couldn’t tell whether it felt ice cold or glowing hot. Then she heard a voic
e and a heartless laughter. Someone was speaking Norwegian. It was a strangely subdued voice, as if from far away, although other sounds revealed that it must be close: little creaks in the floorboards, a body shifting its weight. Without even raising her head she knew it was the murderer’s voice. Don’t move any more than is absolutely necessary, Felicia, she told herself.

  At first all she could do was move the fingers on her right hand. They slowly moved up her pants leg. Eventually she got her whole hand onto her butt. From there it proceeded at an excruciating pace until her fingers touched the knife. She fumbled with it, concentrating on not making a sound. The voice above suddenly sounded clearer but still turned away from her. The tendons in her arm were burning as she made a heroic effort to get a strong grip on the hilt of the dagger. With a jerk she yanked it out. She knew that doing this could be fatal, that she might sever things that were unharmed, open wounds that the knife had kept closed. But it was nothing compared to what the killer had planned.

  She instantly got to her feet, managing to get Jens Dahle in her field of vision before he had turned around all the way. Then she struck. She plunged the knife into the side of his neck. He took a step backward. There he stopped and stared at her, wide-eyed. She studied his gaze, looking for traces of despair, sorrow, and regret, anything that might make him human. But all she saw was a face contracted in pain and rage. She looked at the knife and the blood that ran down his neck, mixing with sweat, and continued down his bare chest. She was starting to have trouble seeing clearly. The hot pain in her back spread over her whole body, even to her head. She wanted to close her eyes, lie down, and go to sleep. But she couldn’t. She had to see him fall to know it was over.

  Jens Dahle did not fall. Her vision fuzzy, like a movie that was out of focus, she saw him sway back and forth a few times before he slowly raised his left hand and took hold of the hilt of the knife sticking into his neck. With a maniacal howl he yanked it out. For a few brief seconds she could see the gaping wound in his neck. A red torrent was spurting out of it over his left shoulder. She heard his wail become strangled by blood.