by Anne Holt
She would devise perfect plots. She would never misjudge the effect of a weapon. She would learn all there was to know about human anatomy, about stab wounds and punches, about bullet wounds and poison. Investigations and tactics. Chemistry, biology, psychology. She would build up an understanding of the business of crime, from the big, powerful organizations down to the pathetic junkies who sat at the very bottom of the ladder, holding out a hand: Can you spare any change?
She hadn’t managed to keep the first promise.
She read the reviews as soon as they came out.
But no one could say that Wencke Berger didn’t know what she was talking about.
And no one did.
She had studied and read constantly since 1985. Done field studies. Traveled. Observed and researched. And eventually she realized that theory could never surpass practice. She had to look to real life. The fictional universe wasn’t concrete enough. Real life was full of details and unexpected turns. Just sitting at a desk, it was hard to imagine the multitude of seemingly insignificant, trivial events that could in fact be decisive in a murder case.
She started to catalog real people.
Her archive dated back to 1995. She had needed a principal of a children’s home and a policeman with a threadbare reputation for a book she was going to write. She was shocked at how easy it was to find them. Surveillance was boring, naturally, with hours of waiting and unimportant observations. Her notes were dry and dispassionate.
But it was easier to write.
The reviews were positive. Book number eight was received with considerable enthusiasm, as her first book had been. A couple of critics remarked that Wencke Berger was fresher than she had been for a long time, almost revitalized.
They were wrong.
She was more bored than ever. She lived in a parallel world. She cataloged other people’s lives without ever taking part in them. Her archive grew. She bought a steel cabinet, a fireproof device that was installed in the bedroom.
Sometimes she would sit in bed at night and read through a file. Often she got irritated. People led such similar lives. Work and children, infidelity and drink. There were renovation projects and divorces, financial problems and tag sales for the football team. Whether they were politicians or dentists, rich or on welfare, men or women, the people she observed were all so damn similar.
“I am unique,” she thought to herself and settled back in the comfortable taxi seat. “And now they can see me. Finally I’m being seen for what I am. An extraordinary expert. Not someone who publishes a book like handing in an exam every autumn, for bitchy comments. I can. I know. I do.
“He saw me. He was frightened. I could tell, the way he withdrew his hand and looked away. They see me now, but not like I see them. Not the way I see her. Her file is fat. It’s the biggest file I have. I have watched her for a long time, and I know her.
“They see me now, and there’s nothing they can do.”
“Take a look at this.”
Adam held up page five of that day’s edition of Dagbladet for her to see. He was still pale, but he didn’t look fatally ill anymore.
“Wencke Berger,” said Johanne. She was walking around the room with Ragnhild over her shoulder. “And?”
“Look at the pin. On her lapel.”
She carefully passed the baby over to him, took the newspaper, and went a few steps closer to the lamp.
“It all fits,” he said, rocking Ragnhild. “Too much of your profile fits. Wencke Berger really does have crime as her profession. An internationally acclaimed crime writer! Superior to most when it comes to serial killers. Eccentric and difficult, if we’re to believe the portraits they’ve managed to put together, even though she doesn’t speak to Norwegian journalists. Until now, that is. Something must have changed. She’s been a loner for a long time. Just like you said. Just how you put it in your profile.”
Ragnhild’s eyes were heavy. He stroked her forehead and said, “Look at her pin.”
The picture in Dagbladet was not particularly flattering. Wencke Berger was just about to say something: her mouth was open, and her eyes were wide behind her glasses, which were perched on the end of her snub nose. But the outlines were sharp. The pin on the author’s left lapel was clear.
“She knew who I was,” he said to no one in particular. “It was me she was interested in.”
“This is worse than you think.”
“Worse—”
“Yes.”
“What do you mean?”
She went into the bedroom without answering. He heard her rummaging around in the big chest of drawers. A cabinet door banged. The steps went further, into the closet, he guessed.
“Look.”
She had found what she was looking for. She took Ragnhild from him and put her down on her back under a baby gym on the floor. She gurgled and reached for the colorful figures. Johanne handed him the binder she’d been looking for. It was white, with a big circular logo on the front.
“The FBI logo,” he said and wrinkled his brow. “Of course I recognize it. I’ve got a poster of it in my office. That’s my point, that’s why I . . .”
He pointed to the photograph in Dagbladet.
“Yes,” she said, “but that’s why it’s worse than you think.”
She sat down beside him on the edge of the sofa.
“Americans love their symbols,” she said and straightened her glasses. “The flag. The Pledge of Allegiance. Their monuments. Nothing is arbitrary. This blue”—she pointed to the emblem’s background color—“symbolizes justice, along with the scales in the top center of the emblem. The circle contains thirteen stars to represent the thirteen original American states. The red and white stripes here are from the flag. Red stands for courage and strength. White for purity, light, truth, and peace.”
“They obviously think that courage and strength are more important than truth and peace,” Adam observed. “I think there are more red stripes than white.”
Johanne couldn’t bring herself to smile.
“It’s the same in the Star-Spangled Banner,” she said. “One red stripe more than white. The toothed edge around the emblem symbolizes the challenges the FBI faces and the organization’s strength.”
Ragnhild wriggled and kicked. The wooden figures banged against each other. Adam scratched his neck and mumbled, “Impressive, but I don’t see what you’re getting at.”
“You see these two branches?”
She ran her finger along some branches on each side of the innermost red and white shield.
“Laurels,” she told him. “With a magnifying glass, you can count exactly forty-six leaves, the number of states in the U.S. in 1908, when the FBI was founded.”
“I’m still very impressed,” Adam said. “But—”
“Now look at this.”
She held the newspaper photograph of Wencke Berger up to the light.
“Her pin. The laurels. You see?”
“They’re not laurels.” He narrowed his eyes.
“No,” she confirmed.
“Are they feathers?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Feathers instead of laurels. Why?”
“They’re eagle feathers,” she told him.
“Eagle feathers?”
“Who used eagle feathers?”
“The native Indians.”
“Chieftains.”
“Chieftains,” he repeated lamely, confused.
Johanne walked over to Ragnhild. She gently lifted her up and put her across her shoulder. She breathed in the scent of soap and poo. A sludgy brown stain was spreading over the baby’s romper leg. She held her tight.
“The Chief,” she said. “Warren Scifford. A group of students got those pins made. A hundred or so. All hell broke loose when it was discovered. You don’t mess with the FBI heraldry. The pins became quite valuable after a while. People wore them on the inside of their jacket collars. A sort of membership badge, a sign that you were in the inner circle. One of Warren�
��s disciples. He . . . he loved it, of course. Didn’t want to get involved with it, but . . . loved it.”
“So that means that —”
“That means that Wencke Berger knows Warren in some way or another. She has either met him, heard him, or spoken to someone who knows him.”
“Which in turn means—”
“That she wants us to see her,” Johanne said.
“What?”
“She’s giving us an invitation. She’s challenging us. She pops up on TV after being silent for twelve years. She lets herself be photographed. She talks. She kills her neighbor and calls the police. She doesn’t want to hide anymore. She’s been hiding for years and found it unbearable. She wants to be in the limelight, not out of it. And she’s wearing that pin in the hope that she’ll be recognized. By us. In the hope that we’ll understand. She’s playing with us.”
“Us? The two of us?”
Johanne didn’t answer. She made a face at the increasingly pungent smell and disappeared into the bathroom. He followed.
“What do you mean?” he asked in a subdued voice.
She still didn’t want to answer. She turned on the water and bent down to pick up a cloth, keeping one hand on Ragnhild’s stomach where she lay on the changing table. Her poo was green and runny, and Adam held his nose.
“Wasn’t there a book that disappeared?” she asked.
“A book?”
“Don’t hold your nose, Adam, it’s your daughter.”
She let the water run over Ragnhild’s bottom and continued, “Yes, Trond Arnesen. He said a book was missing. And a watch. The watch was found, but was the book found? Pass me the cream.”
He rummaged around in the basket by the sink.
“There was a book,” he said slowly and stopped. He had a tube of zinc cream in one hand and a clean diaper in the other. “That’s right. I was preoccupied with the watch for a while. I’d forgotten about the book. Completely. Especially once Trond found his damned watch. The book seemed pointless. It was a crime novel, I think, a book that Trond claimed had been lying on his bedside table, but—”
“Wencke Berger,” she said. “Wencke Berger’s latest novel.”
Her hands were unusually swift, almost impatient as she slid the diaper under the baby and then taped it on.
“It was her first murder,” she said just as fast. “She was careful. Victoria Heinerback’s house was isolated, and she was on her own that night. Anyone who visited her Web site knew that. Not a dangerous murder. Almost risk-free, if you knew what you were doing. Wencke Berger knows what she’s doing. So she took the book. It was a clever signature, but no one got it. No one understood what it meant. And the next time . . .”
The baby resisted. Johanne couldn’t get her right arm into her sleeve, and Ragnhild started to cry.
“Here, let me do it,” Adam murmured and took over.
Johanne sat down on the toilet seat with her elbows on her knees and her chin cupped in her hands.
“The next time she pushed it a bit more. Went further.”
Johanne seemed to be afraid of her own reasoning. Her voice was low, and she was speaking more slowly. She sat up straight and chewed her thumb. Adam dressed Ragnhild in clean pajamas. She made contented noises when he laid her on her stomach over his lower arm and held her to his body.
“The second time,” Johanne continued without making any sign of getting up. “The second time she chose Vegard Krogh. Whom she hated. Presumably she was mad at him. He had mocked her for years. Ridiculed everything she stood for. Wencke Berger knew that Vegard Krogh’s”—she hit her forehead with her hand—“ridiculous campaign,” she groaned, “would give a tiny nudge in her direction. Not too obvious. Definitely not. He had lots of enemies. But still . . .”
Finally she got up. A fleeting smile crossed her face as she kissed the baby’s head.
“Then she went the whole way. Killed her neighbor, called the police. Was pulled into the investigation. She’s in the spotlight, Adam. She is standing there, floodlit. In the center of attention. And she’s loving it. She’s thumbing her nose at us, and she knows she’s won.”
“Won? She hasn’t won yet! Now that we know what—”
She put her finger to her mouth and hushed him. Then she gently stroked Ragnhild’s neck.
“She’s asleep,” she whispered. “Can you put her down?”
She went back into the living room. She took a bottle of wine out from the corner cabinet and opened it. Took the most beautiful glass she owned, a crystal glass from her grand-parents’ summer house. She’d had four of them originally, big glasses with fine chased metal rings and thin gold leaf around the rims. Three had been broken. And this one was never used. She took it out a couple of times a month. Dusted it, looked at the pattern in the light from the lamp. It reminded her of long summers and saltwater, of her grandfather on the terrace with a glass of white wine, his nose red from sun and happiness, with cake crumbs in his beard. He used to let her have a taste. She wet her tongue and made a face, then spat it out. He always laughed and gave her some Fanta instead, even if it wasn’t Saturday.
She poured out the wine and watched it swirl around the glass.
“What do you mean, she’s won?” Adam asked.
“Is she asleep?”
He nodded and looked surprised when he saw which glass she had chosen. He went out into the kitchen to get another glass and helped himself.
“What do you mean?” he repeated. “Now we know it’s her. Now we know where to look. In a way—”
“You won’t manage it,” she said and took a drink.
“What do you mean?”
His glass stood untouched on the dining table. Johanne turned to face the window. The garden looked sad, with some patches of snow left on the yellow, sodden lawn. The streetlights in Haugesvei had finally gotten new bulbs. A man in a yellow raincoat was out walking his dog. It wasn’t on a leash and rushed from side to side on the road, sniffing the ground. It stopped by Johanne’s old Golf and cocked its leg. It stood there for a long time before following its master, tail wagging.
“She was in France,” she said, “when Victoria Heinerback was killed. And when Vegard Krogh was murdered in the small forest in Asker. You seem to have forgotten that.”
“Of course I haven’t,” he said, a touch irritated. “But both you and I know that she can’t have been there. Unless she has an accomplice, a—”
“Wencke Berger doesn’t have an accomplice. She’s a loner. She kills in order to feel alive, to prove her strength. To . . . grow. To show how smart . . . how superior she is.”
“Make up your mind,” he said. “If she was in France, she can’t have killed them. What do you actually mean?”
“Of course she wasn’t there. Not all the time, at least. She must have traveled up and down in some way or another. We can speculate about how she succeeded. We can make up theories and reconstructions. But the only thing that is certain is that we will never find out.”
“I don’t know how you can say that,” he said and put his arm around her. “What makes you so sure? How can you—”
“Adam,” she interrupted, and looked up into his face.
His eyes were so clear. His eyebrows were growing long and looked like an old man’s pointy, optimistic brows. His skin was clear and smooth. His broad mouth was half open, and she could feel his breath on hers; wine and a taint of garlic. She put her finger on the deep cleft in his chin.
“I’ve never said this before,” she whispered. “And I hope I will never have reason to say it again. I am a profiler. Warren used to say that I was profiler by nature. That it was something I could never run away from.”
She laughed quietly and stroked her finger over his lips.
“For years I’ve tried to forget it. Do you remember how reluctant I was that spring four years ago? When all those children were abducted and you wanted . . .”
She wasn’t whispering anymore. He bit her fingertip gently.
“I was working on my research. Digging deeper. I had more than enough with Kristiane and . . . then you came along. Our life here and Ragnhild. I don’t want anything else. Why do you think I’ve sat here night after night, working on a murder case that, strictly speaking, has nothing to do with me?”
“Because you’re compelled to,” he said, his eyes not leaving hers.
“Because I’m compelled to,” she nodded. “And I’m telling you this because I have to: Wencke Berger has won. In all these weeks, you haven’t found one, not one piece of evidence that is linked to her. Nothing. She doesn’t want to be caught. She wants to be seen but not caught.”
“But I still have to try,” Adam said. It sounded more like a question, as if he needed her blessing.
“Yes, you still have to try,” she confirmed. “And the only hope you have is to find a way of proving that she was at the scene of the crime. Prove that she wasn’t in France.”
“But you will never manage it,” she thought to herself again, but she didn’t repeat it out loud. Instead she drank the rest of her wine and said, “The children can’t stay here. Wencke Berger still has one case left. We have to move the children.”
And with that, she went to call her mother, even though it was nearly midnight.
“So what you’re saying,” the head of the NCIS said as he scratched his ear with his pinkie, “is that the whole investigation should be reorganized on the basis of a missing crime novel and a brooch? A goddamn brooch?”
“A pin,” corrected Adam. “It’s a pin.”
The head of the NCIS was seriously overweight. His stomach bulged over his belt like a sack of potatoes. His shirt was stretched over his navel. He had stayed silent while Lars Kirkeland and Adam Stubo gave their reports. Even when the rest of the small gathering had discussed the case for more than half an hour, the boss had not said a word. Only his small, plump fingers had given him away as they rapped impatiently on the table whenever anyone spoke for more than twenty seconds.
His double chin was quivering in anger. He got up with great difficulty and went to the flip chart, where the name Wencke Berger was written in red letters under a timeline with three dates. He stopped and snorted three times. Adam was unsure whether it was with scorn or whether he had breathing difficulties. He smoothed down his comb-over with his right hand before tearing off the sheet and scrunching it up.