The Devil's star hh-5

by Jo Nesbo

  ‘Fine, now we’re more or less on the same wavelength,’ Otto said, looking for his socks under the bed. But all he could see were dustballs and empty beer cans.

  ‘I’ll have to add on an extra fee for working evenings. And the weekend, of course.’

  Beer! Perhaps he should buy a crate and invite Aud-Rita to celebrate getting the job? Or – if she couldn’t – Nils.

  ‘And a little advance for the equipment I’ll have to hire. I don’t have all of this on tap.’

  ‘No,’ Waaler said. ‘It’s probably in Stein Astrup’s barn in Asker.’

  Otto Tangen almost dropped the receiver.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Waaler said softly and sarcastically. ‘Did I touch a raw nerve? Something you forgot to declare? Some equipment sent by boat from Rotterdam?’

  The bed collapsed on the floor with a crash.

  ‘You can have a few of our guys to help you set up,’ Waaler said. ‘Tuck your gut into a pair of trousers, get your superbus into gear and meet me at my office for a briefing and a run-through of the drawings.’

  ‘I… I…’

  ‘… am overwhelmed with gratitude. It’s great that good friends can work together, isn’t it, Tangen. Just be smart, keep mum and make this the best job you’ve ever done and everything will be fine.’

  25

  Friday. Speaking In Tongues.

  ‘Do you live here?’ Harry asked, stunned.

  He was stunned because the likeness was so striking that it startled him when she opened the door. He focused on the pale, elderly face. It was her eyes. There was exactly the same calm, the same warmth in them. Above all it was her eyes. But also her voice when she confirmed that she was indeed Olaug Sivertsen.

  ‘Police,’ he said, holding up his ID.

  ‘Really? I hope there’s nothing wrong?’

  An expression of concern crossed the network of fine lines and wrinkles on her face. Harry wondered if her concern was on someone else’s behalf. Perhaps he thought that because of the similarity, because her concern had always been for others.

  ‘Not at all,’ he said automatically and repeated the lie with a shake of the head. ‘May we come in?’

  ‘Naturally.’

  She opened the door and made way for them. Harry and Beate stepped inside. Harry closed his eyes. It smelled of soft soap and old clothes. Of course. When he opened them she was looking at him with a questioning smile playing around her lips. Harry smiled in return. She could not possibly guess that he had been expecting a hug, a pat on the head and a few whispered words to tell him that Grandad was waiting for him and Sis with a nice surprise.

  She led them into a sitting room, but no-one was there. The sitting room – or rooms, because there were three of them one after the other – had circular mouldings in the ceiling capped with glass crowns and was furnished with elegant antiques. Both the furniture and the carpets were worn, but it was as spotlessly clean and tidy as only a house with a single occupant can be.

  Harry wondered why he had asked if she lived there. Was there something about the way she opened the door? Or let them in? At any rate, he had half expected to see a man, the man of the house, but it seemed that the National Registry Office was right. She was the only occupant.

  ‘Do sit down,’ she said. ‘Coffee?’

  It sounded more like an entreaty than an offer. Harry, ill at ease, cleared his throat, unsure whether he should tell her why they were there at the beginning or at the end of their conversation.

  ‘Sounds lovely,’ Beate said with a smile.

  The old lady returned the smile and shuffled out to the kitchen. Harry passed Beate a look of gratitude.

  ‘She reminds me of…’ he began to say.

  ‘I know,’ Beate said. ‘I could see it in your face. My grandmother was a bit like her too.’

  ‘Mm,’ Harry said, looking around.

  There were not many family photos. Just earnest faces on two faded black-and-white images which must have been taken before the war and four pictures of a boy taken at different ages. In the teenage photograph he had spots, an early ’60s mod haircut, the teddy-bear eyes that had met them in the doorway and a smile which was exactly that – a smile. Not the pained face that Harry, with more than a little difficulty, had managed to pull in front of a camera at that age.

  The elderly lady returned with a tray, sat down, poured coffee and passed round a plate of Maryland cookies. Harry waited until Beate had finished complimenting her on the coffee.

  ‘Have you read about the young women who have been recently murdered in Oslo, fru Sivertsen?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘I caught the headlines. They were on the front page of Aftenposten. You couldn’t miss them. But I never read about that sort of thing.’

  The wrinkles around her eyes pointed downwards when she smiled.

  ‘And I’m afraid I’m just an old froken, not a fru.’

  ‘I apologise. I thought…’ Harry glanced at the photos.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s my boy.’

  It went quiet. The wind brought with it the distant barking of dogs and a metallic voice announcing that the train for Halden was about to depart from platform 17. It barely moved the curtains at the balcony doors.

  ‘Right.’ Harry raised his coffee cup, but decided he’d rather speak and put it down again. ‘We have reason to believe that the person who killed the girls is a serial killer and that one of his next two targets is -’

  ‘Wonderful biscuits, fru Sivertsen,’ Beate suddenly interrupted, with her mouth full. Harry looked at her, bewildered. From the balcony doors came the hissing sound of a train arriving at the station.

  The old lady smiled, somewhat confused.

  ‘Oh, they’re just bought biscuits,’ she said.

  ‘Let me start again, fru Sivertsen,’ Harry said. ‘First of all, I would like to say that there is no reason for concern, that we have the situation completely under control. Next…’

  ‘Thanks,’ Harry said as they walked down Schweigaards gate past the sheds and the low factory buildings. They stood in sharp contrast to the detached house with the garden which was like a green oasis amid the black gravel.

  Beate smiled without a blush.

  ‘Thought we should avoid the mental equivalent of a fractured thigh bone. We are allowed to beat around the bush a little, present things in a somewhat gentler way, as it were.’

  ‘Yes, I have heard that said.’

  He lit a cigarette.

  ‘I’ve never been much good at talking to people. I’m better at listening. And perhaps…’

  He broke off.

  ‘What?’ Beate asked.

  ‘Perhaps I’ve become a little insensitive. Perhaps I don’t care so much any more. Perhaps it’s time I… did something else. Are you OK to drive?’

  He threw the keys over the car roof.

  She caught them and looked down at them with a concerned frown.

  At 8.00 the four detectives heading the investigation, plus Aune, were sitting together in the conference room again.

  Harry reported back on the meeting in Ville Valle and said that Olaug Sivertsen had taken the news calmly. She was obviously frightened, but far from panic-stricken at the thought that she might be on a serial killer’s death list.

  ‘Beate suggested that she might move in with her son for a while,’ Harry said. ‘I think that would be a good idea -’

  Waaler shook his head.

  ‘No?’ Harry said, surprised.

  ‘The killer may be keeping a lookout for future murder scenes. If unusual things begin to happen, we may scare him away.’

  ‘You mean that we should use an innocent old lady as… as… as…’ Beate tried to hide her anger, but managed to stutter out, with a red face, ‘bait?’

  Waaler held Beate’s stare. And for once she held his. In the end the silence became so oppressive that Moller opened his mouth to say something, anything, any random selection of words, but Waaler beat him to it.<
br />
  ‘I just want to be sure that we catch the guy so that we can all sleep soundly at night. And as I understand it, it isn’t the old dear’s turn until next week.’

  Moller laughed a loud, strained laugh. And it became even louder when he noticed that the tense atmosphere had not been smoothed over.

  ‘Anyway,’ Harry said. ‘She stays put. The son lives too far away, abroad somewhere.’

  ‘Good,’ Waaler said. ‘As for the students’ building, it’s pretty empty now because of the holiday, but all of the occupants we’ve talked to have been told in no uncertain terms that they have to stay in their rooms tomorrow. Other than that, they’ve been given minimal information. We told them all this was to do with a burglar we were trying to catch red-handed. We’re going to put in the surveillance equipment tonight while the killer’s asleep, we hope.’

  ‘And the Special Forces?’

  Waaler smiled. ‘They’re happy.’

  Harry gazed out of the window. He tried to remember what it was like to be happy.

  Moller concluded the meeting and Harry noticed that the patches of sweat forming on both sides of Aune’s shirt were shaped like Somalia.

  The three of them sat down again.

  Moller produced four Carlsbergs from the kitchen fridge.

  Aune nodded, with a happy expression on his face. Harry shook his head.

  ‘But why?’ Moller asked as he opened the bottles of beer. ‘Why is he voluntarily giving us the key to the code and thus to his next moves?’

  ‘He’s trying to tell us how we can catch him,’ Harry said, pushing up the window.

  In flooded the sounds of city life on a summer’s night: the desperate life cycle of the mayfly, music from a cruising cabriolet, exaggerated laughter, high heels clicking frenetically against tarmac. People enjoying themselves.

  Moller stared at Harry in disbelief and cast Aune a glance in the hope that he would receive confirmation that Harry had lost his senses.

  The psychologist placed his fingertips together in front of his floppy bow tie.

  ‘Harry may be right,’ he said. ‘It’s not unusual for a serial killer to court and assist the police because he wants, deep down, to be stopped. There’s a psychologist called Sam Vaknin who maintains that serial killers want to be caught and punished to satisfy their sadistic superego. I incline more to the theory that they need help to stop the monster in them. I put their desire to be caught down to a degree of objective understanding of their illness.’

  ‘Do they know they’re insane?’

  Aune nodded.

  ‘It must be hell,’ Moller said softly, raising his bottle of beer.

  Moller went off to return a call to a journalist on Aftenposten who wanted to know whether the police supported the Children’s Council’s appeal for children to be kept indoors.

  Harry and Aune stayed where they were, listening to the distant sounds of a party, the indistinct shouting and the Strokes, broken by a call to prayer which for some reason or other suddenly reverberated metallically and probably blasphemously, yet in a strangely beautiful way, from the same open window.

  ‘Just out of curiosity,’ Aune said, ‘what triggered it off? How did you know it was five?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I know a little about creative processes. What happened?’

  Harry smiled.

  ‘You tell me. Anyway, the last thing I saw before I went to sleep this morning was the clock on the bedside table showing three fives. Three women. Five.’

  ‘The brain is a wondrous instrument,’ Aune said.

  ‘I suppose so,’ Harry said. ‘According to a code-savvy friend of mine we have to find the answer to the question “why” before the code is fully cracked. And the answer is not five.’

  ‘So, why?’

  Harry yawned and stretched.

  ‘“Why” is your field, Stale. I’ll just be happy if we catch him.’

  Aune smiled, looked at his watch, then got up.

  ‘You’re a very strange person, Harry.’

  He put on his tweed jacket.

  ‘I know you’ve been drinking a bit recently, but you look a little better. Are you over the worst this time?’

  Harry shook his head.

  ‘I’m just sober.’

  As Harry walked home the sky arced over him in all its splendour.

  A woman wearing sunglasses stood on the pavement below the neon sign over Niazi, the little grocery in the block next to where Harry lived. She had one hand on her hip; in her other hand she was holding one of Niazi’s anonymous white plastic bags. She smiled and pretended that she had been standing there waiting for him.

  It was Vibeke Knutsen.

  Harry knew that she was play-acting. It was a joke she wanted him to join in, so he slowed down and sent her the same smile in return. To show that he had been waiting to see her there. The odd thing was that he had been. He just hadn’t realised it until that moment.

  ‘Haven’t seen you at Underwater recently, precious,’ she said, lifting her sunglasses and peering out as if the sun still hung low over the rooftops.

  ‘I’ve been trying to keep my head above water,’ Harry said, taking out a packet of cigarettes.

  ‘Ooh, a play on words,’ she said, stretching.

  She wasn’t wearing anything exotic this evening – a blue summer dress with a plunging neckline. She filled it well and she knew it. He passed her the packet, and she took a cigarette, which she managed to place between her lips in a way that Harry could only characterise as indecent.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked. ‘I thought you usually shopped at Kiwi?’

  ‘Closed. It’s almost midnight, Harry. I had to come down your way to find somewhere still open.’

  Her smile spread and her eyes narrowed, like those of a playful cat.

  ‘This is a dodgy area for a little girl on a Friday night,’ Harry said, lighting her cigarette. ‘You could’ve sent your man out if you needed a bit of shopping…’

  ‘Mixers,’ she said holding up her bag. ‘To mix drinks so that they aren’t too strong. And my betrothed is away. If it’s so dodgy here, you ought to rescue the girl and take her somewhere safe.’

  She nodded towards his block of flats.

  ‘I can make you a cup of coffee,’ he said.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Nescafe. That’s all I have to offer.

  When Harry came into the sitting room carrying boiling water and a coffee glass, Vibeke Knutsen was sitting on the sofa with her legs drawn up underneath her and her shoes on the floor. Her milky white skin shone in the semidarkness. She lit another cigarette, her own this time. A foreign brand Harry had not seen before. No filter tip. In the flickering light from the match he could see that the dark red varnish on her toenails was chipped.

  ‘I don’t know that I can go on any longer,’ she said. ‘He’s changed. When he comes home he’s just restless and either paces up and down in the sitting room or goes out training. It feels as if he can’t wait to get away and travel again. I try to talk to him, but he cuts me short or else just looks at me in total incomprehension. We really do come from two different planets.’

  ‘It’s the combination of the distance between the planets and the mutual attraction that keeps them in orbit,’ Harry said, spooning out the freeze-dried coffee grains.

  ‘More playing with words?’ Vibeke plucked a strand of tobacco off the tip of her pink, wet tongue.

  Harry chuckled. ‘Something I read in a waiting room. I probably hoped it was true. For my own sake.’

  ‘Do you know what the strangest part is? He doesn’t like me. And yet I know that he’ll never let me go.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘He needs me. I don’t know what for, exactly, but it’s like he’s lost something and that’s why he needs me. His parents…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘He doesn’t have any contact with them. I’ve never met them. I don’t think they even know I exist. N
ot so long ago the telephone rang and there was a man asking after Anders. I immediately sensed it was his father. You can sort of hear it in the way that parents say the names of their children. In one way it’s something they’ve said so many times it’s the most natural thing in the world. But then in another way it’s so intimate that the word strips them bare to the skin so they say it quickly, almost with embarrassment. ‘Is Anders there?’ When I said that I would have to wake him first the voice suddenly started to babble away in a foreign language, or… not foreign exactly, but more like you and I would speak if we had to find words in a hurry. The way they speak at religious meetings in chapels when they’re well underway, sort of.’

  ‘Speaking in tongues?’

  ‘Yes, that’s probably what it’s called. Anders grew up with this stuff, though he never talks about it. I listened for a while. First of all, there was a fair sprinkling of words like “satan” and “sodom”. Then it got dirtier. “Cunt” and “whore” and things like that. So I put the phone down.’

  ‘What did Anders say to that?’

  ‘I never mentioned it to him.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I… it’s like a place I’ve never been allowed to enter. And I don’t want to go there, either.’

  Harry drank his coffee. Vibeke didn’t touch her own.

  ‘Don’t you get lonely sometimes, Harry?’

  His eyes rose to meet hers.

  ‘Sort of alone. Don’t you wish you were with someone?’

  ‘That’s two different things. You’re together with someone and you’re lonely.’

  She shivered as if a cold front was passing through the room.

  ‘Do you know what?’ she said. ‘I feel like a drink.’

  ‘Sorry, I’ve run out of that sort of thing.’

  She opened her handbag. ‘Can you fetch two glasses, precious?’

  ‘We’ll only need one.’

  ‘Well, OK.’

  She unscrewed the lid of her hip flask, tipped back her head and drank.

  ‘I’m not allowed to move at all,’ she said laughing. A shiny brown droplet ran down her chin.

  ‘What?’