by Jo Nesbo
“This is to be treated as a crime scene until further notice,” Harry said. “Start work. I’ll check where this trail leads.”
“OK.”
Harry swallowed before stepping out the back door. It had been more than thirty years ago. And still his body bristled.
He had been staying at his grandparents’ house in Åndalsnes during his autumn vacation. The farm lay on a hillside with the mighty Romsdal Mountains towering above. Harry had been ten and had gone into the forest to look for the cow his grandfather was searching for. He wanted to find it before his grandfather, before anyone. So he hurried. Ran like a maniac over hills of soft blueberry bushes and funny, crooked dwarf birch trees. The paths came and went as he ran in a straight line toward the bell he thought he had heard among the trees. And there it was again, a bit farther to the right now. He jumped over a stream and ducked under a tree and his boots squelched as he ran across a marsh with a rain cloud edging toward him. He could see the veil of drizzle beneath the cloud showering the steep mountainside.
And the rain was so fine that he had not noticed the darkness descending; it slunk out of the marsh, it crept between the trees, it spilled down through the shadows of the mountainside like black paint and collected at the bottom of the valley. He looked up at a large bird circling high above, so dizzyingly high he could see the mountain behind it. And then a boot got stuck and he fell. Facedown and without anything to grab. Everything went dark, and his nose and mouth were filled with the taste of marsh, of death, decay and darkness. He could taste the darkness for the few seconds he was under. And then he came up again, and discovered that all the light had gone. Gone across the mountain towering above him in its silent, heavy majesty, whispering that he didn’t know where he was, that he hadn’t known for a long time. Unaware that he had lost a boot, he stood up and began to run. He would soon see something he recognized. But the landscape seemed bewitched; rocks had become heads of creatures growing up out of the ground, bushes were fingers that scratched at his legs and dwarf birch trees were witches bent with laughter as they pointed the way, here or there, the way home or the way to perdition, the way to his grandparents’ house or the way to the Pit. Because adults had told him about the Pit. The bottomless swamp where cattle, people and whole carts vanished, never to return.
It was almost night when Harry tottered into the kitchen and his grandmother hugged him and said that his father, grandfather and all the adults from the neighboring farm were out looking for him. Where had he been?
In the forest.
But hadn’t he heard their shouts? They had been calling Harry; she had heard them calling Harry all the time.
He didn’t remember it himself, but many times later he had been told that he had sat there trembling with cold on the wooden box in front of the stove, staring into the distance with an apathetic expression on his face, and had answered: “I didn’t think it was them calling.”
“Who did you think it was, then?”
“The others. Did you know that darkness has a taste, Grandma?”
Harry had walked barely a few yards into the forest when he was overtaken by an intense, almost unnatural silence. He shone the flashlight down on the ground in front of him because every time he pointed it into the forest, shadows ran between the trees like jittery spirits in the pitch black. Being isolated from the dark in a bubble of light didn’t give him a sense of security. Quite the opposite. The certainty that he was the most visible object moving through the forest made him feel naked, vulnerable. The branches scraped at his face, like a blind man’s fingers trying to identify a stranger.
The tracks led to a stream whose gurgling noise drowned his quickened breathing. One of the trails disappeared while the other followed the stream on lower ground.
He went on. The stream wound hither and thither, but he wasn’t concerned about losing his bearings; all he had to do was retrace his steps.
An owl, which must have been close by, hooted an admonitory to-wit-to-woo. The dial on his watch glowed green and showed that he had been walking for more than fifteen minutes. Time to go back and send in the team with proper footwear, gear and a dog that was not afraid of foxes.
Harry’s heart stopped.
It had darted past his face. Soundless and so fast that he hadn’t seen anything. But the current of air had given it away. Harry heard the owl’s wings beating in the snow and the piteous squeak of a small rodent that had just become its prey.
He slowly let out the air from his lungs. Shone the flashlight over the forest ahead one last time and turned to go back. Took one step, then came to a halt. He wanted to take another, two more, to get out. But he did what he had to do. Shone the light behind him. And there it was again. A glint, a reflection of light that should not be there in the middle of the black forest. He went closer. Looked back and tried to fix the spot in his mind. It was about fifty feet from the stream. He crouched down. Just the steel stuck up, but he didn’t need to brush away the snow to see what it was. A hatchet. If there had been blood on it after the chickens were killed, it was gone now. There were no footprints around the hatchet. Harry shone the flashlight and saw a snapped twig on the snow a few yards away. Someone must have thrown the ax here with enormous strength.
At that moment Harry felt it again. The sensation he had had at the Spektrum earlier that evening. The sensation that he was being observed. Instinctively, he switched off the flashlight, and the darkness descended over him like a blanket. He held his breath and listened. Don’t, he thought. Don’t let it happen. Evil is not a thing. It cannot take possession of you. It’s the opposite; it’s a void, an absence of goodness. The only thing you can be frightened of here is yourself.
Harry switched on the flashlight and pointed it toward the clearing.
It was her. She stood erect and immobile between the trees, looking at him without blinking, with the same large, sleepy eyes as in the photograph. Harry’s first thought was that she was dressed like a bride, in white, that she was standing at the altar, here, in the middle of the forest. The light made her glitter. Harry breathed in with a shiver and grabbed his mobile phone from his jacket pocket. Bjørn Holm answered after the second ring.
“Cordon off the whole area,” Harry said. His throat felt dry, rough. “I’m calling in the troops.”
“What’s happened?”
“There’s a snowman here.”
“So?”
Harry explained.
“I didn’t catch the last part,” Holm shouted. “Poor coverage here …”
“The head,” Harry repeated. “It belongs to Sylvia Ottersen.”
The other end went quiet.
Harry told Holm to follow the footprints and hung up.
Then he crouched against a tree, buttoned his coat right up and switched off the flashlight to save the battery while he waited. Thinking he had almost forgotten what it tasted like, the darkness.
10
DAY 4
Chalk
It was three-thirty in the morning and Harry was exhausted as he finally unlocked the door to his apartment. He undressed and went straight into the shower. Tried not to think as he let the burning jets of water numb his skin, massage his stiff muscles and thaw his frozen body. They had spoken to Rolf Ottersen, but the formal questioning would have to wait until the morning. At Sollihøgda they had quickly wrapped up the door-to-door inquiries with the neighbors; there weren’t so many to ask. But the Crime Scene officers and the dogs were still at work and would be the whole night. They had a brief window of time before the evidence would become contaminated, melted or covered by snow. He turned off the shower. The air was gray with steam, and when he wiped the mirror a new layer of condensation immediately settled. It distorted his face and blurred the contours of his naked body.
Harry was brushing his teeth when the telephone rang. “Harry.”
“Stormann, the mold man.”
“You’re up late,” Harry said in surprise.
“Reckon
ed you were at work.”
“Oh?”
“It was on the late-night news. Woman in Sollihøgda. Saw you in the background. I’ve got the results back.”
“And?”
“You’ve got fungus. A hungry bugger, too. Aspergillus versicolor.”
“Which means?”
“That it can be any color. If and when it’s seen. Apart from that, it means I’ll have to take down more of your walls.”
“Mm.” Harry had a vague sense that he ought to show more interest and concern, or at least ask more questions. But he couldn’t be bothered. Not at this hour.
“Feel free.”
Harry hung up and closed his eyes. Waited for the ghosts, for the inevitable, just as long as he stayed away from the only medicine he knew for ghosts. Perhaps it would be a new acquaintance this time. He waited for her to come out of the forest, stumping along toward him on a huge white body without legs, a misshapen bowling ball with a head, black sockets with crows pecking at the remainder of her eyeballs, teeth bared after the foxes had helped themselves to the lips. Hard to know if she would come; the subconscious was unpredictable. So unpredictable that when Harry slept, he dreamed that he was lying in a bath with his head underwater listening to a deep rumble of bubbles and women’s laughter. Sea grass grew on the white enamel, stretching out for him like green fingers on a white hand seeking his.
The morning light cast rectangles over the newspapers lying on POB Gunnar Hagen’s desk. It lit up Sylvia Ottersen’s smile and the headlines on the front pages. KILLED AND DECAPITATED, DECAPITATED IN THE FOREST and—the shortest and probably the best—DECAPITATED.
Harry’s head had ached from the moment he woke up. Now he was holding it gingerly in his hands, thinking that he might as well have had a drink last night—it wouldn’t have made the pain any worse. He wanted to close his eyes, but Hagen was staring straight at him. Harry noticed that Hagen’s mouth kept opening, twisting and closing—in short that he was formulating words that Harry was receiving on a badly tuned frequency.
“The conclusion …,” Hagen said, and Harry knew it was time to prick up his ears, “is that this case has top priority from now on. And that means, of course, that we will increase the size of your investigation team immediately and—”
“Disagree,” Harry said. Just articulating a single word invoked a sense that his cranium was exploding. “We can requisition more people as and when, but for the moment I don’t want anyone else at the meetings. Four is enough.”
Gunnar Hagen looked dumbfounded. In murder cases, even the straightforward ones, investigation teams always comprised at least a dozen people.
“Free thinking functions best in small groups,” Harry added.
“Thinking?” Hagen burst out. “What about standard police work? Following up forensic evidence, questioning, checking tips? And what about the coordination of information? A total of—”
Harry held up a hand to stem the flow of words. “That’s just the point. I don’t want to drown in all that.”
“Drown?” Hagen stared at Harry in disbelief. “I’d better give the case to someone who can swim, then.”
Harry massaged his temples. Right now there was no one in the Crime Squad apart from Inspector Hole who could lead a murder case such as this one, and both Hagen and Harry knew it. Harry also knew that giving the case to the central investigation bureau, Kripos, would be such a huge loss of prestige for the new POB that he would rather sacrifice his extremely hirsute right arm.
Harry sighed. “Normal investigation teams fight to stay afloat in the stream of information. And that’s when it’s a standard case. With decapitations on the front pages …” Harry shook his head. “People have gone mad. We received more than a hundred calls just after the news item last night. You know, drunks slurring and the usual nuts, plus a few new ones. People telling you that the murder was described in the Book of Revelation, that sort of thing. So far today we’ve had two hundred calls. And just wait until it emerges that there may be several bodies. Let’s say we have to set aside twenty people to take care of the calls. They check them out and write reports. Let’s say that the team leader has to spend two hours every day physically going through the incoming data, two hours coordinating it and two hours assembling everyone in groups, updating them, answering their questions, and half an hour editing the information that can be revealed at the press conference. Which takes forty-five minutes. The worst part is”—Harry put his forefingers against his aching jaw muscles and grimaced—“that in a standard murder case this is, I suppose, a good use of resources. Because there will always be those out there who know something, who have heard or seen something. Information that we can painstakingly piece together or that enables us to magically solve the whole case.”
“Exactly,” Hagen said. “That’s why—”
“The problem is,” Harry continued, “this is not that kind of case. Not that kind of killer. This person has not confided in a friend or shown his face in the vicinity of the murder. No one out there knows anything, so the calls that come in won’t help us, they’ll just delay us. And any possible forensic clues we uncover have been left there to confuse us. In a nutshell, this is a different kind of game.”
Hagen had leaned back in his chair and pressed his fingertips together, and, immersed in thought, he was now observing Harry. He blinked like a basking lizard, then asked: “So you see this as a game?”
As he nodded, Harry wondered where Hagen was going.
“What sort of game? Chess?”
“Well,” Harry said, “blindfold chess, maybe.”
Hagen nodded. “So you envisage a classic serial killer, a cold-blooded murderer with superior intelligence and a proclivity for fun, games and challenges?”
Now Harry had an idea where Hagen was going.
“A man straight from the serial killings you profiled in that FBI course? The kind you met in Australia that time? A person who”—the POB smacked his lips as if he were tasting the words—“is basically a worthy opponent for someone of your background.”
Harry sighed. “That’s not how I think, boss.”
“Don’t you? Remember, I’ve taught at the military academy, Harry. What do you think aspiring generals dream about when I tell them how military strategists have personally changed the course of world history? Do you think they dream about sitting around quietly hoping for peace, about telling their grandchildren that they just lived, that no one would ever know what they might have been capable of? They might say they want peace, but inside they dream, Harry. About having one opportunity. There’s a strong social urge in man to be needed. That’s why generals in the Pentagon paint the blackest scenario as soon as a firecracker goes off anywhere in the world. I think you want this case to be special, Harry. You want it so much that you can see the blackest of the black.”
“The snowman, boss. You remember the letter I showed you?”
Hagen sighed. “I remember a madman, Harry.”
Harry knew he ought to give in now. Put forward the compromise suggestion he had already concocted. Give Hagen this little victory. Instead he shrugged. “I want to have my group as it is, boss.”
Hagen’s face closed, hardened. “I can’t let you do that, Harry.”
“Can’t?”
Hagen held Harry’s gaze, but then it happened. Hagen blinked; his eyes wandered. Just for a fraction of a second, but it was enough.
“There are other considerations,” Hagen said.
Harry tried to maintain an innocent expression as he twisted the knife. “What sort of considerations, boss?”
Hagen looked down at his hands.
“What do you think? Senior officers. The press. Politicians. If we still haven’t got the murderer after three months, who do you think will have to answer questions about the unit’s priorities? Who will have to explain why we put four people on this case because small groups are better suited to”—Hagen spat out the words like rotten shrimps—“free thinking and gam
es of chess? Have you considered that, Harry?”
“No,” Harry said, crossing his arms on his chest. “I’ve thought about how we’ll catch this guy, not about how I’m going to justify not catching him.”
Harry knew it was a cheap shot, but the words hit home. Hagen blinked twice. Opened his mouth and shut it again, and Harry instantly felt ashamed. Why did he always have to instigate these childish, meaningless wall-pissing contests, just to have the satisfaction of giving someone else—anyone at all—the finger? Rakel had once said that he wished he’d been born with an extra middle finger that was permanently sticking up.
“There’s a man in Kripos called Espen Lepsvik,” Harry said. “He’s good at leading large investigations. I can talk to him, get him to set up a group that reports to me. The groups will work in parallel and independently. You and the chief superintendent take care of the press conference. How does that sound, boss?”
Harry didn’t need to wait for an answer. He could see the gratitude in Hagen’s eyes. And he knew he’d won the pissing contest.
The first thing Harry did when he was back in his own office was to call Bjørn Holm.
“Hagen said yes, it’s going to be as I said. Meeting in my office in half an hour. Will you call Skarre and Bratt?”
He put down the phone. Thought about what Hagen had said about hawks wanting their own war. And pulled out the drawer in a vain hunt for an aspirin.
“Apart from the footprints, we haven’t found a single trace of the perp at what we assume is the crime scene,” Magnus Skarre said. “What’s harder to understand is how we haven’t found a trace of the body, either. After all, he cut off the woman’s head—there ought to have been masses of evidence left behind. But there was nothing. The dogs didn’t even react! It’s a mystery.”
“He killed and decapitated the woman in the stream,” Katrine said. “Her footprints came to an end farther up the stream, didn’t they? She ran in the water so as not to leave prints, but he caught up with her.”