Medusa (19 page)

Last time I saw it, you were using it to dry yourself with. Removing any last traces of me.

– I left it on the floor in the alcove; it isn’t there any more.

– Were you going to wear it today? With all those stains?

– You idiot, she scolded him. She came over to the table, put her arms around him and slid down on to his lap. – Do you have to go?

– Soon.

She leaned back and looked into his eyes.

– Will you come back?

On his way down the crooked and uneven staircase, he stopped outside the door of the downstairs flat. Miriam had been so upset that the neighbour’s daughter wasn’t allowed to live there any more. And the memory of that led him to thoughts of his own family. He’d sent a text to Bie. Explained that he’d been asked to cover for someone in Oslo. It was something that happened now and then.
OK
, she’d answered. Just those two letters. He read the hand-painted ceramic nameplate on the neighbour’s door:
Anita and Victoria Elvestrand live here
. It struck him that it would always hang there, regardless of whether the words written on it were true or not.

Out on the pavement he stood a moment and inhaled the October air that rushed towards him, dense with cool exhaust fumes. He glanced up at Miriam’s window on the fifth floor. Up at the grey-black sky above the rooftops. It was Thursday morning. As he walked towards where his car was parked, he thought: Tonight I must talk to Bie.

T
HAT SOUND YOU
just heard was yourself sleeping. It’s Thursday morning. The time is 6.30. I’m sitting here with the morning paper and a cup of coffee. Like any average person who’s got up early and is about to set off for work. It was no more than three hours ago that I made this recording of you. Both of you. Played it back to myself lots of times while I’ve been sitting here. You’ve probably got up too. You’re tired because you slept badly last night. Lay there muttering and tossing and turning. Your bad conscience getting to you. That would be just like you. Tons of stuff in the papers about the woman they found in Frogner Park. I can just see your face when you found out who it was. The unease that makes you curdle inside. You still don’t know what this is about. But you hear a sound in the distance and it’s beginning to dawn on you that it’s coming closer. You’re a good listener. Which makes what you did even worse. There’s no way back now. No way back for me either after what
I
did back then. But now I’ve done something a lot worse, so it doesn’t matter any more.

She was different from the first one. It took a while for her to get scared. She seemed indifferent when she woke up and found herself taped up. Asked what I wanted with her. I told her straight away. She didn’t believe me. Mocked me and tried to make fun of me. But when we got there and I showed her what I had in mind, then she turned into a little child, just like the first one. Emptied all her orifices. Began to scream, too. I let her carry on until she was all screamed out. Then I told her when it was going to happen so she’d know exactly how much time she had left. By the time you hear this, I’ll have told you the same thing. How many hours and minutes before it happens.

I lay beside her all through that first night. Removed her stinking clothes. Didn’t touch her. Lay there in a semi-doze. Glanced at her now and then. I’d wrapped her in a woollen blanket so she wouldn’t get cold. Gave her water too. She wouldn’t have any food. She calmed down with me lying there. Started talking. That she was ill and going to have an operation. That she had a child. An eight-year-old daughter who was afraid to sleep alone. Would I let her go so she could get home and tuck in her daughter, who was lying in bed afraid? For a while I let her believe I would. Dried round her mouth with a damp cloth and stroked her cheek. And when she realised I was lying, she began to wail again. But she wasn’t angry. I could lie with my face pressed right up against her neck. She wanted me to.

I’ve killed twice. And still it’s not your turn yet. I’ve chosen the next one. The day has been appointed. I know already how I’m going to get her to come along with me. Know where she’ll be found. You’ll find her. But not everything will be planned beforehand. I don’t like things to be too neat. Chance has to be allowed to play its part. Things can go wrong. And if I’m caught, you’ll get away.

N
INA
J
EBSEN WAS
at the office by about 7.30. There was a memo she wanted to have ready for the morning briefing, and a couple of witnesses she still had to contact, including the former NRK newscaster who was on the list of people observed on the way to Ullevålseter on the day Hilde Paulsen disappeared.

Once again she had to give up the attempt to get through to the TV celebrity. A secretary in the firm he was working for now claimed he was on holiday in Tanzania. The last time she’d tried, the day before, she’d been given a different explanation for why the man wasn’t there. Not that it surprised her: the person she was trying to get hold of belonged to that exclusive group of people who had acquired the right to be inaccessible, and made use of it.

The trip up to Åsnes in Hedmark the day before hadn’t resulted in much, but Viken might well ask for an account of even insignificant details and give her a hard time if she couldn’t provide it. She’d be able to describe a visit to the mongoloids at the care home. The conversation with the bitter old woman over a cup of even more bitter coffee. Before concluding her memo on the visit to Reinkollen, she opened the STRASAK database of convicted felons, ran a search for Roger Åheim, and came up with a hit. He owned a farm and also ran an Esso station at Åmoen in Åsnes county. In other words, the place where she’d asked for directions to Reinkollen. She recalled with distaste the young lout behind the counter, who’d confirmed every one of her prejudices about backwoods Norway. She checked the notes and discovered that the owner of the petrol station had to be the cousin whom Åse Berit Nytorpet’s husband had been out with.

She bent closer to the monitor, swiped the page and a list of criminal convictions appeared on the screen. Fifteen years previously this same Roger Åheim had served time for inflicting grievous bodily harm. Lower down the list she found two charges of rape. One was dismissed on the grounds of insufficient evidence. In the other, eleven years ago, a nineteen-year-old woman alleged that she had been abducted by the accused. She’d sustained slight injuries to her face and upper body. Roger Åheim claimed that the girl had gone with him of her own free will. It was one person’s word against another and the charge was dropped. Nina scrolled down further and came across a conviction from eight years ago on an environmental charge. Illegal lynx hunting. Roger Åheim insisted he had acted in self-defence, but no one believed he had been attacked by one of these notoriously timid creatures. He had also changed his story several times in the course of the trial.

She heard Viken letting himself into his office. Waited a couple of minutes before knocking and showing him the documents she had printed out from STRASAK. He sat there for a while, his head moving from side to side, the deep furrow prominent over the bridge of his nose. He pulled at his jawline, smoothing out the wrinkles on his cheeks. Presently he said:

– I’ll give the sheriff up there a call. He sounds like an okay sort of bloke.

Five minutes later he popped his head round her door.

– Prepare for another trip out into the bush. We’ll leave straight after the morning briefing.

Heading north along the E6, she wondered what it was that had persuaded Viken to set aside yet another half-day in following up such a vague lead. He could have left it to the local sheriff’s office to take care of. It was becoming more and more obvious to her that Viken was the type who was rarely satisfied with work done by others. A lone wolf who only delegated jobs with reluctance. Not very efficient, she thought, even if the man did have an enormous capacity for work. And why bring her along, and use up a whole day’s man-hours? Not that she minded working with him; she handled it better than most of the other detectives. Some, like Sigge Helgarsson, avoided Viken like the plague. No wonder really: Viken had a go at him every chance he got. It was obvious he preferred having Arve Norbakk along when possible. And Arve knew the countryside up there in Hedmark. But today Viken had chosen Nina, and she didn’t bother trying to work out the possible reasons why.

– What are you expecting to get out of this trip? she took a chance and asked.

Viken was a surprisingly careful driver. He was wearing a pair of pilot sunglasses, which he’d taken from the glove compartment, and was sitting back and taking in the open Romerike landscape.

– Not exactly a breakthrough, he said, and didn’t sound worried. – Even if this Roger Åheim has been involved in some pretty violent stuff. And the environmental crimes.

She didn’t ask why, in that case, they should be spending half a day on it, but he seemed to guess what was on her mind.

– Often you find it’s the detours that lead you to the solutions in difficult cases, he told her.

Nina needed a smoke. She sat there trying to summon up the voice of the psychologist who had led the course on how to give up.

– We’re struggling because we can’t see a motive, she said.

Viken glanced over at her.

– And how often do you find an obvious motive in murder cases?

She thought about it.

– It depends what you mean by motive.

Viken said: – Before I started in Violent Crimes, I worked on white-collar crime. An accountant embezzles money to pay for a holiday home in Spain. An impatient broker doubles his fortune by selling insider information. Clear chain of connection between motive and deed, a calculated risk, possible to work it all out in terms of cost and benefit. But in my twenty years with Violent Crimes, I don’t think I’ve come across a single case of murder where the motive has been easy to understand. And certainly not where it’s premeditated.

Several times over the past few weeks Nina had been struck by how unaffected he appeared to be by the gruesome nature of the case they were investigating. This ability to observe things from a distance was probably what made him a top detective.

– The last murder case in Manchester I was involved in was back in ’98. The Shipman case.

– That doctor who killed huge numbers of his patients?

– It might have been fifteen or two hundred and fifty, or twice that many, we’ll never know. As you’ll remember, he hanged himself in jail. So we’ll never know either what turned him into a mass killer, even if they write a mile of books about him. There were just a couple of cases where there was even a hint of financial gain in it for him. To understand what drives a man like that, you have to look at the psychological profile.

Not many of his colleagues in Violent Crimes had turned up to hear Viken when he lectured on this subject, but Nina had. Now he glanced at her as though trying to see whether she understood what he was talking about.

– He was probably damaged early on in life, she offered, a little reluctantly. – Abuse of some kind, and then later an extreme need to manipulate the facts of life and death. The control of intolerable pain by inducing it in another.

– That’s all very well, he nodded. – Shipman ticked every box. And yet what he did remains incomprehensible. There’s something at the heart of every killing that evades any attempt to explain it. If you get too obsessed by motive, you’ll often find yourself going astray.

Nina sat back in her seat. Covertly she studied the chief inspector’s hands. Not exactly nice, she thought, but fascinating. Narrow and bony, with unusually long fingers.

– So that’s why we’re on our way to the forests of darkest Hedmark, she said, trying to neutralise the irony with a slightly sing-song childish voice.

Viken burst out laughing. He laughed for a long time – she couldn’t remember ever hearing him laugh so long before – and she felt relieved, and perhaps even a touch of pride too, at having been responsible for it.

– I think maybe you do get the point, he said, the laughter stopping abruptly.

Nina thought about it.

– So you’re saying we shouldn’t be looking for motives.

– I’m saying that shouldn’t be what dominates the investigation in a case like this. Something will start to add up after a while. But never everything. Not even after a full confession and sessions with the shrinks. Especially not then.

– All the same, you sound optimistic, she said.

He drove faster, even though they had left the motorway and were now on a road with only two lanes.

– I don’t doubt for a moment that we’re going to solve this case, Jebsen. We’re hunting a killer who has already told us a lot about who he is. The question is, can we get to him before anything else happens?

A few kilometres past Åmoen, they saw a sign for Åheim. They pulled off the main road and headed north through forest.

– Do you think people are influenced by the landscape they grow up in? Nina wondered aloud, peering at the thick lanes of pine.

Viken seemed to have no special view on the matter. They passed a left turn-off, and he glanced at it before driving on. He had just spoken to the sheriff at Åsnes and been given a detailed description of the route. The sheriff had offered to come along with them, but Viken had rejected the idea. As he explained later, he didn’t want local people hanging around while he was working; it would be more of a hindrance than a help.

– I could never live in a place like this, said Nina abruptly. – I’d get claustrophobia after about ten minutes.

Viken ignored her.

– To find the person who’s committed these murders, we have to put ourselves in his shoes, he said. – It’s not enough to proceed analytically. You’ve got to take a leap away from your own common sense and morality. Get in tune with that part of yourself that makes it possible for you to follow a human being who doesn’t think like a human being.