Medusa (20 page)

Nina had heard him say this before, but it had never been clear to her how this could be turned into a method.

– Animals aren’t bestial, Viken went on. – An animal can’t act like a monster. Only human beings can do that. Anyone who plans a murder has this inside him. It is deviant, but both you and I can find something inside ourselves that enables us to follow this kind of thinking.

– Are you sure we’re on the right road? Nina asked. – Surely there can’t be a farm this deep in the primeval forest?

– Guess we just have to trust the sheriff, said Viken as he took a right and swung on to an even narrower lane. His lecture continued unabated. – Every murder that has been planned has its own signature. That is the gateway to the sick mind behind it.

– So these bear tracks then, said Nina, increasingly certain that the chief inspector had got the directions wrong.

– And the way the body has been disfigured. As though by a predator. If you combine all the signals from the killer, you can draw a picture of him. It’s not too hard. It’s harder to get to know the primitive instinct in yourself that makes it possible for you to get inside his skin. See the world through his eyes, move like him, think like him. If you can do that, then you’re breathing right down his neck.

Nina glanced again at the dials. They’d driven more than five kilometres now since the last turn-off. It didn’t seem to worry Viken.

– From the moment I stood up there in the trees of the Oslomarka and looked down at that dead woman in the gully, I’ve been working on a profile of him. I can tell you that the man we’re looking for is in his thirties, possibly early forties. He is above average intelligence and not necessarily a loner. If he has a family, then he’s living a double life, probably has a split personality. He may be educated and hold down a good job. He has not killed before but he has, I would think, a history of abusing women in one way or another. The disfiguring of the victims indicates that. The anger he feels towards these women. He’s had a difficult upbringing with a domineering and emotionally cold mother. He feels no regret for what he has done; satisfaction is more likely, and he is capable of killing again.

The forest seemed to be closing ever more tightly around them, and the track became more and more bumpy and rocky. Nina thought briefly of her father, a stubborn old brewery worker who would never ask for directions, and definitely not when he had lost his way. They rounded a sharp bend; beyond it there was a steep rise. There was a barrier at the top of it. Viken sat glaring at it for a few seconds before jumping out and tugging at the padlock.

– Locked, he confirmed, and wiped the mud off his shoes before getting back into the car. – That monkey of a sheriff must have given me the wrong directions.

Nina risked a joke.

– I don’t know what to think of you, taking a woman for a ride down a deserted forest track.

Viken wasn’t in the mood for it; he was busy trying to worm the car back down the slippery narrow hill. Beyond the bend he had to reverse another several hundred metres before finding a place to turn.

So much for the well-refined instinct, thought Nina, but decided against sharing the observation with the chief inspector. It occurred to her that the investigation might have something in common with this futile trip of theirs.

A
S
V
IKEN PULLED
into the Esso station at Åmoen, he was feeling a little annoyed. He called Sheriff Storaker again but went no further than to say that the route description had not been accurate. It didn’t make his mood any better when Storaker insisted that it had been, nor when Storaker then insisted that he would come along to show them the way in person.

– I’ll be at Åmoen within fifteen minutes, he assured them. In fact it took seventeen and a half minutes, as Viken pointed out irritably when he did finally turn up.

It would be short-selling him to describe Sheriff Kjell Roar Storaker as a big man. He walked around with his head permanently bent even when there was nothing in the vicinity even remotely at head height, as there wasn’t in the car park beside the Esso station. Viken guessed it was doubtless as a result of innumerable encounters with roof beams and door frames. The hand the sheriff offered him was the size of a frying pan.

– Roger Åheim, the man we’re looking for, is the owner of the petrol station, he told them.

Viken nodded abruptly. Nina Jebsen had told him this some time ago.

– That’s no help to us. The guy isn’t here.

Nevertheless the sheriff suggested a cup of coffee and a bun from the counter. Viken couldn’t afford to waste any more time and as politely as he could declined the offer, though it was obvious Jebsen was hoping for something to eat. Do her good to wait, he thought with satisfaction as he sat himself behind the wheel. He offered her a sugar-free salt pastille.

As he started the car, she pointed to a male figure emerging from the door of the petrol station, a lanky guy with a shaven head and wearing red overalls covered with paint stains. He started filling the newspaper stands outside the door.

– If you want somebody that gives you the creeps, just have a word with that specimen there.

Viken glanced at her. – You know him?

She started talking about her previous visit, something about this lout here who worked behind the counter, seemed like a complete maniac and immediately picked a quarrel with her, a total stranger. Viken listened with only half an ear.

As they once again turned off at the sign for Åheim, Viken kept close behind the Volvo driven by the sheriff and one of his men. The weekend was approaching, and they were clearly short handed up here, but Storaker seemed happy enough to add another call-out to the budget. It was probably not every day they got the chance to take part in a murder inquiry.

They turned off at the first left. The sheriff never said anything about that, fumed Viken. That was why they had ended up deep in the forest. Wasted almost an hour through his carelessness. He swore and punched the wheel with his fist. Nina said nothing. Just then his mobile phone rang. He put in his earpiece. The woman at the other end forgot to say who she was, but that broad Australian accent was identification enough. People who didn’t know the pathologist sometimes wondered if Jennifer Plåterud was American, a suspicion she denied strenuously every time she was confronted with it
.

– We haven’t found much biological material on Cecilie Davidsen, she told him. – So far everything we’ve got looks as if it comes either from her or from members of her family.

– In other words, a perpetrator who knows what he’s doing, Viken observed.

– However, what we
have
found is dust and traces of plaster beneath the fingernails, and on the clothes.

She was silent for a moment before continuing.

– Most likely the same type of plaster we found on the first victim, Hilde Paulsen. It turns out to be a mixture not much used over the past sixty or seventy years, a high calcium content with added clay. If it was just one of the victims we might think it was a random find. But not when it turns up on both of them.

– That’s good, Viken exclaimed. – How about those rips and tears?

– We heard back from Edmonton. They compared our pictures with those from their own archives, including people who have been attacked by bears. They say they’re the same.

Viken swerved round a pothole in the road.

– We’re asking ourselves if these wounds might have been made by paws cut from a stuffed bear, he said. – In which case, part of the killer’s signature, or message if you like. Think that’s a possibility?

– Severed bear paws? Well, I’ll take a closer look. She added with a little laugh: – Not because I think a dead bear can scratch. At least not that hard.

Viken told Nina what the pathologist had found.

– It shows we’re right, she said eagerly. – The victims were dumped where we found them. Both women were probably killed in a cellar.

– In a house built before the war, Viken added. – Or a cabin. It has to be somewhere where people can be kept prisoner for days without anyone finding out.

At last they came to a break in the dense forest, and spied a few patches of cultivated ground. They took another turn off the road and then up towards a farm on the brow of the forest. It consisted of a fairly large barn, the farmhouse itself, and an outhouse. All the buildings looked to be freshly painted. There was a white Mercedes parked outside the outhouse, next to a tractor hooked up to a trailer full of huge plastic containers. Another car was parked behind the garage, a second Mercedes, but this one older and lacking registration plates. Smoke drifted from the chimney of the house.

The sheriff and his assistant had jumped out and stood waiting as Viken and Jebsen walked over.

– Tried to call ahead, Storaker told them. – That Roger Åheim is the type that only answers the phone when he feels like it.

– Wouldn’t we all like to be like that, murmured Viken.

The woman who opened the door must have been over eighty. Her white hair was cut short and had recently been permed. It made her look like a sad old poodle, the chief inspector thought. But she was wearing a tracksuit and trainers, and looked in good shape for her age. Sheriff Storaker told her who they were, and she responded that of course she knew who
he
was. She subjected the others to a close scrutiny.

– The reason we’re here is we want a word with Roger Åheim, Storaker explained. – That would be your son, if I’m not mistaken. Is he around?

– You just wait a moment, the old woman croaked. – I’ll go and see.

She closed the door behind her.

– Funny, said Viken. – When you live somewhere like this, you ought to know who’s home and who isn’t.

He wandered across the yard to the barn, returning just as the woman opened up again.

– What’s it about? she asked, not exactly forthcoming, but the sheriff seemed to be as friendly as he was big, and without raising his voice he said: – Just go and fetch that lad of yours, will you, and then we’ll tell you what it’s about. Maybe we could come inside for a moment.

Grudgingly the old woman let them into the house.

The man who came down the stairs was in his late fifties. He was wearing tracksuit bottoms too. There was no hair left at the front of his head, but the large pores showed clearly where it had once been. The rest was combed back smoothly. He was wearing a T-shirt and looked like he’d been pumping iron. His skin was so golden-brown that Viken wondered if he’d spent most of the autumn in some kind of banana-ripening facility.

– Well I’ll be … exclaimed the man.

Storaker beamed good-naturedly.

– No need for me to introduce myself, Åheim. These are my colleagues from the Oslo police.

– Well, well, that’s posh.

– I’ll get straight to the point, the sheriff continued. – A few years ago you were sentenced for that business of shooting lynx. You were also found guilty of attacking a man with a broken bottle.

Roger Åheim opened his arms. A broad gold chain jangled around his wrist.

– It’s about time you let all that stuff go, Kjell Roar.

– There’s a lot of rumours floating about the village, Storaker went on, clearly not too happy about being on first-name terms with the owner of the farm.

– Rumours, yeah, plenty of them about. Åheim winked at Nina. – More rumours up here than there are mosquitoes at midsummer.

– Some people say you engage in illegal hunting activities, Storaker persisted.

Åheim came down to the foot of the staircase. Even wearing his clogs, he was half a head shorter than Viken.

– You got nothing better to do than run around listening to gossip?

– It’s all part of my job, Storaker said. – But if I suggest to you that people have been hunting bears up here recently, what would you have to say to that?

Åheim shook his head.

– Don’t believe a word of it.

Nina Jebsen interrupted.

– Would you know about it?

He let his gaze wander slowly up and down her before turning back to the sheriff.

– Now I’m going to be damned honest with you, Kjell Roar. I keep away from stuff like that. None of my business how other people wipe their arses.

Showing no hint of what he thought of people who announced that they were going to be completely honest, Viken said: – You were quoted in the local newspaper,
Glåmdalen
. He pulled out the printout. – You and one of your relatives, Odd Gunnar Nytorpet …
Someone should catch a hungry bear and release it in the woods near Oslo, then we’d see what they said, these bureaucrats and politicians who are so bloody set on taking care of all the predators.

–
For Chrissakes, Åheim exclaimed. – That must’ve been at least ten years ago. You’re not trying to tell me you think any of us actually meant it.

No one answered.

– This is a free country. People can say what they like.

Nina Jebsen said: – It’s not a bad idea to think before you speak. Especially when what you say is going to end up in a newspaper.

Viken turned as the living-room door opened behind him. A young woman stood there. From southern Asia, somewhere round there, he noted. She was holding a baby in her arms.

– Got a visitor? he asked Åheim.

– Visitor, no, this here is mine.

It wasn’t clear whether he meant the woman or the child. Probably both, Viken decided. Sixty years old and he fathers a nipper, good luck with that. He couldn’t help wondering how the young woman had ended up out here on this farm. Åheim had probably fetched her back home with him after a trip to Thailand.

– What do you use the barn for? he asked.

Åheim jumped. He took the bundle out of the woman’s arms and began to rock it back and forth, though it looked to be already fast asleep.

– The barn? Some hay, pig feed, tools … Why d’you ask?