The Bat

by Jo Nesbo

  ‘The next day Walla went to the fire. His eyes gleamed and he seemed almost excited as he asked who wanted to accompany him to collect rubber. “We have rubber,” they said, surprised to note Walla’s good mood. “You can have some of ours.” “I want fresh rubber,” he said. He laughed at their startled faces and said: “Join me and I’ll show you what I’m going to use it for.” Curious, they joined him, and after they had collected the rubber, he led them to the valley with the huge rocks. There he built a platform in the highest tree and told the others to retreat to the valley entrance. With his best friend, he climbed the tree, and from there they shouted Bubbur’s name as the echoes rang through the valley and the sun rose in the sky.

  ‘Then it appeared – an enormous yellow-and-brown head swinging to and fro, searching for the source of the sound. Around it a teeming mass of small yellow-and-brown snakes, obviously hatched from the eggs Moora had seen. Walla and his friend kneaded the rubber into small balls. When Bubbur saw them in the tree it opened its jaws, flicked out its tongue and stretched up for them. The sun was now at its zenith and Bubbur’s red-and-white jaws glistened. As Bubbur launched its attack Walla hurled the largest ball of rubber down the snake’s open mouth and instinctively it sank its fangs into it.

  ‘Bubbur rolled around on the ground but was unable to get rid of the rubber stuck in its mouth. Walla and his friend managed to perform the same trick with the smaller snakes, and soon they were rendered harmless with their jaws sealed. Then Walla called the other men, and they showed no mercy, all the snakes were killed. After all, Bubbur had killed the tribe’s most beautiful daughter, and Bubbur’s progeny would one day grow up to be as big as their mother. From that day forward the feared yellow-and-brown Bubbur snake has been a rarity in Australia. But our fear of it has made it longer and fatter for every year that has passed.’

  Andrew drained the last of his gin and tonic.

  ‘And the moral is?’ Birgitta asked.

  ‘Love is a greater mystery than death. And you have to watch out for snakes.’

  Andrew paid for the drinks, gave Harry a pat of encouragement and left.

  MOORA

  14

  A Dressing Gown

  HE OPENED HIS eyes. The city outside his window droned and growled as it woke up, and the curtain waved lazily at him. He lay looking at an absurdity hanging on the wall on the other side of the spacious room – a picture of the Swedish royal couple. The Queen with her calm, secure smile and the King looking like someone was holding a knife to his back. Harry knew how he felt – he had himself been persuaded to play the title role in The Frog Prince at primary school.

  From somewhere came the sound of running water, and Harry rolled over onto the other side of the bed to smell her pillow. A jellyfish tentacle – or was it a long, red hair? – lay on the sheet. He was reminded of a headline on Dagbladet’s sports page: ERLAND JOHNSEN, MOSS FC – FAMOUS FOR HIS RED HAIR AND LONG BALLS.

  He considered how he felt. Light. As light as a feather, in fact. So light he was afraid the fluttering curtains would lift him out of bed and whistle him through the window where he would float over Sydney in the rush hour and discover that he wasn’t wearing any clothes. He concluded that the lightness was due to draining himself of various bodily fluids in the night with such a vengeance that he must have lost several kilos in weight.

  ‘Harry Hole, Oslo Police Station – famous for his weird ideas and empty balls,’ he muttered.

  ‘Pardon?’ came a voice in Swedish.

  Birgitta was standing in the room in an unusually hideous dressing gown with a white towel wrapped around her head like a turban.

  ‘Oh, good morning, thou ancient, thou free and mountainous North, thou quiet, thou joyful beauty! I greet thee. I was just looking at the picture of the rebel king on the wall over there. Do you think he would rather have been a farmer digging the soil? That’s how it seems.’

  She studied the picture. ‘We can’t all find the right niche in life. What about you then?’ She plonked herself down on the bed beside him.

  ‘A serious question for so early in the morning. Before I answer, I demand you remove that dressing gown. Without wishing to appear in any way negative, I think, as a spontaneous reaction, your dressing gown qualifies for inclusion in my top ten “Ugliest-garment-I’ve-ever-seen” list.’

  Birgitta laughed. ‘I call it the passion killer. It performs a useful function when pig-headed strangers become too brash.’

  ‘Have you checked to see if that colour has a name? Perhaps you’re sitting on some unknown tint, a kind of undiscovered gap on the palette somewhere between green and brown?’

  ‘Don’t try and talk your way out of answering my question, you stubborn Norwegian buck!’ She hit him over the head with a pillow, but after a brief wrestling match she ended up underneath. Harry held her hands tight while bending and trying to open her dressing-gown belt with his mouth. Birgitta screamed when she realised what he was up to and freed a knee which she planted firmly on his chin. Harry groaned and rolled over onto his side. In a flash she placed her knees on his arms and sat on him.

  ‘Answer me!’

  ‘All right, all right, I give in. Yes, I’ve found my niche in life. I’m the best copper you can imagine. Yes, I would rather catch bad boys than dig the soil – or go to gala dinners and stand on a balcony waving to the masses. And, yes, I know it’s perverse.’

  Birgitta kissed him on the mouth.

  ‘You could have cleaned your teeth,’ Harry said through pinched lips.

  As she leaned back and laughed, Harry seized the opportunity. He lifted his head, grabbed the belt with his teeth and pulled. The dressing gown slipped open and he rolled her over. Her skin was hot and moist from the shower.

  ‘Police!’ she screamed, wrapping her legs around him. Harry felt his pulse pounding right through his body.

  ‘Help,’ she whispered, and nibbled his ear.

  Afterwards they lay gazing at the ceiling.

  ‘I wish . . .’ Birgitta began.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Oh, nothing.’

  They got up and dressed. Harry saw from his watch that he was already late for the morning meeting. He stood by the front door with his arms around her.

  ‘I think I know what you wish,’ Harry said. ‘You wish I would tell you something about myself.’

  Birgitta rested her head against his neck. ‘I know you don’t like doing it,’ she said. ‘I have a feeling that anything I know about you I’ve had to force out of you. Your mother was a kind, clever woman, half Sami, and you miss her. Your father’s a teacher and doesn’t like what you’re doing, but doesn’t say so. And the person you love above all else on earth, your sister, has “a touch of” Down’s syndrome. I like to know this sort of thing about you. But I want you to tell me things because you want to tell me them.’

  Harry stroked her neck. ‘Do you want to know something real? A secret?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Sharing secrets binds people together though,’ Harry whispered into her hair. ‘And that’s not always what people want.’

  They stood in the hall without speaking. Harry took a deep breath.

  ‘All my life I’ve been surrounded by people who love me. I’ve been given everything I asked for. In short, I have no explanation for why I’ve turned out as I have.’ A puff of wind brushed Harry’s hair, so gently that he had to close his eyes. ‘Why I have become an alcoholic.’

  He said it with brutal harshness. Birgitta clung to him without moving.

  ‘It takes quite a bit for a civil servant in Norway to be given the boot. Incompetence is not enough, laziness is a non-concept and you can abuse your boss as much as you like, no problem. To tell the truth, you can do just about anything – legislation protects you against most things. Except for drinking. If you turn up for work in an inebriated state more than twice in the police force, that’s grounds for immediate dismissal. For a time there it was easier to count the days I wasn’t dr
unk.’

  He relaxed his grip and held her in front of him. He wanted to see how she was reacting. Then he drew her into him again.

  ‘Nevertheless, I got by somehow and those who guessed what was going on turned a blind eye. Someone should have reported me, but loyalty and solidarity are strong in the police. One evening a colleague and I were going to a flat on Holmenkollen Ridge to interview a guy about a drugs murder. He wasn’t even a suspect, but while we were outside ringing the doorbell we saw his car come steaming out of the garage and we jumped in ours and gave chase. We put the blue light on the roof and were doing 110 kph down Sørkedalsveien. The road curved left and right, we hit a couple of kerbs and my colleague asked if he shouldn’t take over at the wheel. I was so intent on catching our man that I just dismissed the suggestion.’

  What happened later he only knew from reports. In Vinderen a car had pulled out from the petrol station. Driven by a young boy who had just passed his test and gone to the garage to buy cigarettes for his father. The two policemen shunted his car through the fence onto the train lines, dragging the bus shelter where two minutes earlier five or six people had been standing and came to a halt on the platform on the other side of the rails. Harry’s colleague was hurled through the windscreen and found twenty metres further down the line. He had struck a fence post head first. The force had been so great the post was bent at the top. They had had to take fingerprints to be absolutely sure of his identity. The boy in the other car was paralysed from the neck down.

  ‘I went to visit him in a place called Sunnås,’ Harry said. ‘He’s still dreaming about driving a car again one day. They found me in the wreckage with a cracked skull and internal bleeding. I was on life support for several days.’

  His father had visited him every day with his sister. They had sat on either side of the bed holding his hand. Because serious concussion had disturbed his vision, he wasn’t allowed to read or watch TV. So his father had read to him. Sat close to the bed and whispered in his ear so as not to wear him out while reading from Sigurd Hoel and Kjartan Fløgstad, his father’s favourite authors.

  ‘I had killed a man and destroyed someone else’s life, yet I was lying cocooned in love and attentive devotion. And the first thing I did when I was moved to a ward was bribe the man in the next bed to get his brother to buy me a bottle of whiskey.’

  Harry paused. Bigitta’s breathing was calm and even.

  ‘Are you shocked?’ he asked.

  ‘I knew you were an alcoholic the first moment I saw you,’ Birgitta answered. ‘My father’s one.’

  Harry didn’t know what to say.

  ‘Tell me more,’ she said.

  ‘The rest is . . . the rest is about the Norwegian police. Perhaps it’s better not to know.’

  ‘We’re a long way from Norway now,’ she said.

  Harry gave her a quick squeeze.

  ‘You’ve heard enough for one day,’ he said. ‘To be continued in the next issue. I must be off. Is it all right if I come to the Albury and get under your feet tonight as well?’

  Birgitta smiled a sad smile – and Harry knew he was getting more involved than he should.

  15

  Statistical Significance

  ‘YOU’RE LATE,’ WATKINS stated as Harry arrived in the office. He placed a set of photocopies on his desk.

  ‘Jet lag. Anything new?’ Harry asked.

  ‘You’ve got a bit of reading here. Yong Sue’s dug up some old rape cases. He and Kensington are having a bo-peep right now.’

  Yong laid a transparency on the overhead projector.

  ‘This year in Australia more than five thousand rapes have been reported. Obviously, trying to find a pattern from such a collection is hopeless without using statistics. Cold, concise statistics. Keyword number one is statistical significance. In other words, we’re looking for a system that cannot be explained by statistical chance. Keyword number two is demography.

  ‘I searched first for reports on unsolved murders and rapes over the last five years containing the words “strangle” or “suffocate”. I found twelve murders and a few hundred rapes. Next, I whittled down the number by adding that the victims should be blondes aged between sixteen and thirty-five and living on the east coast. Official statistics and data concerning hair colour released by the Passport Office show that this group constitutes less than five per cent of the female population. Yet I was left with seven murders and over forty rapes.’

  Yong placed another transparency on the OHP showing percentages and a bar chart. He allowed the others to read, without making any comment. A long silence followed. Watkins was the first to speak.

  ‘Does that mean . . .?’

  ‘No,’ Yong said. ‘It doesn’t mean we know anything we didn’t know before. The numbers are too vague.’

  ‘But we can imagine,’ Andrew said. ‘We can, for example, imagine that there is a person out there raping blonde women systematically and killing them a little less systematically. And who likes putting his hands round a woman’s throat.’

  Suddenly everyone starting speaking at once and Watkins held up his hands for silence.

  Harry was the first to speak up. ‘Why hasn’t this connection been discovered before? We’re talking about seven murders and forty to fifty rapes with a possible link here.’

  Yong Sue shrugged. ‘Rape is unfortunately an everyday event in Australia as well, and perhaps it isn’t given the priority you think it should be given.’

  Harry nodded. He felt no cause to swell his chest with pride on Norway’s account.

  ‘Furthermore, most rapists find their victims in the town or region where they live, and they don’t flee the area afterwards. That’s why there’s no systematic collaboration between the various states in standard rape cases. The problem in the cases that form my statistics is the geographical spread.’

  Yong pointed to the list of place names and dates.

  ‘One day in Melbourne, a month later in Cairns and the week after in Newcastle. Rapes in three different states in under two months. Sometimes wearing a balaclava, sometimes a mask, at least once a nylon stocking and a few times the women haven’t seen the rapist at all. The crime scenes are everything from dark backstreets to parks. The victims have been dragged into cars, or their homes have been broken into at night. In summary, there is no pattern here except that the victims are blonde, have been strangled and no one has been able to give the police a description of the man. Well, there is one other thing. When he carries out the murder he’s extremely clean. Alas. He probably washes the victims, removes any traces of himself: fingerprints, semen, clothing fibres, hair, skin under the victim’s nails and so on. But apart from that there are none of the things we generally associate with a serial killer: no signs of grotesque, ritual acts or calling cards for the police saying “I was here”. After the three rapes in two months it’s been quiet for a whole year. Unless he’s behind some of the other rapes reported. But we can’t know that.’

  ‘What about the killings?’ Harry asked. ‘Shouldn’t that have rung some bells?’

  Yong shook his head. ‘As I said, geographical spread. If the Brisbane police find a body that has been sexually abused, Sydney’s not the first place they’ll look. Anyway, the murders are spread over so much time it would be difficult for anyone to see a clear connection. After all, strangulation isn’t unusual in rape cases.’

  ‘Don’t you have a fully functional federal police force in Australia?’ Harry asked.

  Smiles all round the table. Harry changed the subject.

  ‘If it’s a serial killer—’ Harry started.

  ‘—then he often has a pattern, a theme,’ Andrew finished. ‘But there isn’t one here, is there?’

  Yong shook his head. ‘Some officer at some point over the years must have considered the idea that a serial killer was on the loose. He probably took out old files from the archives and compared them, but the variations have been too wide to support the suspicion.’

 
‘If it is a serial killer, wouldn’t he have a more or less conscious desire to be caught?’ Lebie asked.

  Watkins cleared his throat. This was his special area.

  ‘That’s the way it’s presented in crime fiction,’ he said. ‘The murderer’s actions are a cry for help; he leaves small coded messages and evidence as the result of an unconscious desire for someone to stop him killing. And sometimes that is how it is. But unfortunately most serial killers are like most people; they don’t want to be caught. And if this really is a serial killer he hasn’t given us much to go on. There are a number of things I don’t like . . .’

  He scrunched up his face and revealed a top set of yellow teeth.

  ‘First of all, there doesn’t seem to be any pattern to the killings, apart from the fact that the victims are blondes and he throttles them. That might suggest he views murders as isolated events, like a piece of art that has to be different from what went before, or there’s an underlying pattern here we can’t see yet. But it could also mean the murders are unplanned, so in some cases it becomes a necessity, for example if the victim has seen his face, resisted, screamed for help or something unforeseen has happened.’

  ‘Perhaps he only murdered when he couldn’t get it up?’ Lebie suggested.

  ‘Perhaps we ought to let some psychologists have a closer look at these cases,’ Harry said. ‘They might be able to come up with a profile that could help us.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Watkins said. He seemed to have his mind on other matters.

  ‘What’s second of all, sir?’ Yong asked.

  ‘What?’ Watkins was back.

  ‘You said, first of all. What’s the second thing you don’t like?’

  ‘His sudden inactivity,’ Watkins said. ‘Of course, that may be for purely practical reasons. Like he’s travelling or he’s ill. But it could also be because he’s got a feeling someone’s going to suspect a link somewhere. So he stops for a while. Just like that!’ He snapped his fingers. ‘In which case, we’ve got a really dangerous man on our hands. One who’s disciplined and cunning and isn’t driven by the kind of self-destructive passion that can only escalate and in the end betray most serial killers. A smart, calculating murderer whom we’re unlikely to catch until he’s unleashed a veritable bloodbath. If we ever do.’