The Bat

by Jo Nesbo

‘I’ve kept my mouth shut.’

  ‘So there’s still a chance you could see your red-haired friend again.’

  ‘How did you do it? How did you take her?’

  ‘I knew when she was finishing work, so I waited outside the Albury in the car and drove behind her. When she went into the park I thought someone ought to tell her it wasn’t advisable to go there at night. So I jumped out of the car and ran after her. I let her have a sniff of a cloth I had with me, and after that I had to help her into the car.’

  Harry realised he hadn’t found the transmitter in the bag.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘You sound nervous, Harry. Relax. I don’t intend to ask for much. Your job is to catch murderers, and that’s what I’m asking you to do. To continue to do your job. You see, Birgitta told me that the main suspect was a drug dealer, a certain Mr Evans White. Innocent or not, every year he and others like him kill many more than I’ve ever done. And that’s not such a small number. Ha ha. I don’t think I need to go into details. All I want is for you to make sure Evans White is convicted for his crimes. Plus a couple of mine. The conclusive evidence could be traces of blood and skin belonging to Inger Holter in White’s flat? Since you know the pathologist he could supply you with some samples of the requisite evidence and you could plant it at the crime scene, couldn’t you? Ha ha. I’m joking, Harry. Perhaps I could get some for you? Perhaps I have traces of blood and skin of the various victims, and the odd hair, lying neatly sorted in plastic bags somewhere? Just in case. After all, you never know when you might need it to send people off on the wrong track. Ha ha.’

  Harry squeezed the clammy receiver. He was trying to think. The man obviously didn’t know that the police were aware of Birgitta’s kidnapping and had revised their view of the possible murderer. That could only mean Birgitta hadn’t told him she’d been on her way to meet White, watched by the police. He had snaffled her right under the very noses of a dozen officers without even realising.

  The voice brought him back from his thoughts.

  ‘An alluring possibility, Harry, isn’t it? The murderer helps you to put another enemy of society into the slammer. Well, let’s keep in contact. You have . . . forty-eight hours to bring the charges. I’ll be waiting to hear the glad tidings on Friday night’s TV news. In the meantime, I promise to treat the redhead with all the respect you might expect of a gentleman. If I don’t hear anything I’m afraid she won’t survive Saturday. But I can promise her one hell of a Friday night.’

  Harry rang off. The fan was groaning and screeching wildly. He examined his hands. They were trembling.

  ‘What do you think, sir?’ Harry asked.

  The motionless broad back that had been in front of the board the whole time stirred.

  ‘I think we should nab the bastard,’ McCormack said. ‘Before we call the others back, tell me exactly how you knew it was him.’

  ‘To be honest, sir, I didn’t know for sure. It was just one of many theories that occurred to me and one in which at first I didn’t really have much faith. After the funeral I got a lift with Jim Connolly, an old boxing colleague of Andrew’s. With him was his wife who he said had been a contortionist with the circus when he met her. He said he had wooed her every day for a year before he got anywhere. At first I didn’t give this a second’s thought, then I realised that perhaps he meant it literally – that in other words the two of them had had the opportunity to see each other every day for a whole year. It struck me that the Jim Chivers crew were in a big tent when Andrew and I saw them in Lithgow, and that a fair was there as well. So I asked Yong to ring the Jim Chivers booking agent to check. And I was right. When Jim Chivers goes on tour it’s almost always as part of a travelling circus or fair. Yong had the old itineraries faxed over this morning, and it turns out that the fair Jim Chivers had been travelling with in recent years also had a circus troupe until a while ago. Otto Rechtnagel’s troupe.’

  ‘Right. So the Jim Chivers boxers were at the crime scenes on the relevant dates as well. But did many of them know Andrew?’

  ‘Andrew introduced me to only one of them, and I should have bloody known it wasn’t to look into an inconclusive rape case that he dragged me to Lithgow. Andrew saw him as a son. They’d experienced so many similar things and there were such strong ties between them that he may have been the only person on this earth the orphaned Andrew Kensington felt was real family. Even though he would never admit he had strong feelings for his own people, I think Andrew loved Toowoomba more than anyone else precisely because they were from the same people. That was why Andrew couldn’t arrest him himself. His innate moral concepts clashed with his loyalty to his people and love for Toowoomba. It’s hard to imagine what a brutal conflict this must have been for him. That was why he needed me, an outsider he could steer towards the target.’

  ‘Toowoomba?’

  ‘Toowoomba. Andrew had found out he was behind all the murders. Perhaps the desperate, rejected lover, Otto Rechtnagel, told Andrew after Toowoomba left him. Perhaps Andrew made Otto promise he would never go to the police by saying he would solve the case without involving either of them. But I think Otto was close to spilling the beans. With good reason – he had begun to be frightened for his own life as he realised Toowoomba would hardly want an ex-lover wandering around who could give him away. Toowoomba knew Otto had met me and it wouldn’t be long before the game was up. So he planned to murder Otto during the show. Since they’d travelled together with an almost identical show before, Toowoomba knew exactly when to strike.’

  ‘Why not do it in Otto’s flat? After all, he had the keys.’

  ‘I asked myself that, too.’ Harry paused.

  McCormack waved his hand. ‘Harry, what you’ve said already is so much for an old cop to absorb that any new theories won’t make much difference one way or another.’

  ‘The rooster factor.’

  ‘The rooster factor?’

  ‘Toowoomba isn’t only a psychopath, he’s also a rooster. And you can’t underestimate a rooster’s vanity. While his sexually motivated murders follow a pattern akin to compulsive acts, the Clown Murder is something quite different, it’s a rationally necessary murder, you see. With that murder he suddenly had a free hand, he was uninhibited by the psychoses that had set the pace in the other murders. A chance to do something really spectacular, to crown his life’s work. The Clown Murder will be remembered long after the girls he killed have been forgotten.’

  ‘Fine. And Andrew legged it from the hospital to stop the police when he realised we were going to arrest Otto?’

  ‘My guess is he went straight to Otto’s flat to talk to him, to impress on him how important it was that he kept his mouth shut about Toowoomba for now. To calm him down by saying Toowoomba would be arrested as Andrew had planned, if he could have some time. If I could have some time. But something went wrong. I have no idea what. But I’m convinced it was Toowoomba who in the end saw off Andrew Kensington.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Intuition. Common sense. Plus one tiny detail.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘When I visited Andrew in hospital he said Toowoomba was going to drop by the next day.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘At St Etienne Hospital all visitors have to register at reception. I asked Yong to check with the hospital to see if any visitors or phone calls for Andrew had been registered after I’d been there.’

  ‘I don’t follow you, Harry.’

  ‘If something had cropped up, we have to assume that Toowoomba would have called Andrew to say he wasn’t coming. As he didn’t do that, it would have been impossible for him to know Andrew was no longer in the hospital until he was standing in reception. After signing the visitors’ book. Unless . . .’

  ‘Unless he had killed him the night before.’

  Harry opened his palms. ‘You don’t visit someone you know isn’t there, sir.’

  It was going to be a long day. Shit, it’s been a long d
ay already, Harry thought. They were sitting in the conference room with rolled-up sleeves trying to be geniuses.

  ‘So you rang a mobile phone number,’ Watkins said. ‘And you don’t think he’s at his address?’

  Harry shook his head. ‘He’s cautious. He’s holding Birgitta somewhere else.’

  ‘Perhaps we can find someone at home who might have a lead as to where he’s got her?’ Lebie suggested.

  ‘No!’ Harry snapped. ‘If he discovers we’ve been to his flat he knows I’ve been talking and Birgitta’s had it.’

  ‘Well, he’ll have to go home some time and we could be ready for him,’ Lebie said.

  ‘What if he’s thought of that and can kill Birgitta without physically being present?’ Harry countered. ‘What if she’s tied up somewhere and Toowoomba won’t tell us where?’ He looked around. ‘What if she’s sitting on a ticking bomb that has to be switched off within a certain number of hours?’

  ‘Stop right there!’ Watkins slapped the table. ‘This isn’t a cartoon. For Christ’s sake, why would the bloke be an explosives expert just because he’s killed a few girls? Time’s moving on and we can’t sit on our arses waiting any longer. I think it would be a good idea to have a squizz at Toowoomba’s place. And we’ll make sure we set up a trap that will snap shut on him if he approaches his flat, trust me!’

  ‘The guy’s not stupid!’ Harry said. ‘We’re putting Birgitta’s life at risk by trying a stunt like this. Don’t you see?’

  Watkins shook his head. ‘Sorry to say this, Holy, but your relationship with the kidnapped girl’s affecting your ability to make rational decisions right now. We’ll do as I say.’

  51

  A Kookaburra

  THE AFTERNOON SUN shone through the trees in Victoria Street. A little kookaburra bird was standing on the back of the second empty bench testing its voice for the evening concert.

  ‘I suppose you think it strange that people can walk around smiling on a day like today,’ Joseph said. ‘I suppose you take it as a personal affront that the sun is playing on the leaves at a time when you’d rather see the world collapse in misery and weep tears. Well, Harry, my friend, what can I say to you? Things aren’t like that.’

  Harry squinted into the sun. ‘Perhaps she’s hungry, perhaps she’s in pain. But the worst is knowing how frightened she must be.’

  ‘Then she’ll be a good wife for you if she passes the test,’ Joseph said, whistling to the kookaburra.

  Harry gazed at him in amazement. Joseph was sober.

  ‘A long time ago an Aboriginal woman had to pass three tests before she could marry,’ Joseph said. ‘The first was to control her hunger. She had to hunt for two days without food. Then she was set before a fire with a juicy kangaroo steak or some other delicacy. The test was to see if she could control herself and not be greedy, just eat a little food and leave enough for others.’

  ‘We had something similar when I was growing up,’ Harry said. ‘They called it table manners. But I don’t think it exists any more.’

  ‘The second test was to see if she could tolerate pain. Nails were put through her cheeks and nose, and they made marks on her body.’

  ‘So? Today girls pay to have that done.’

  ‘Shut up, Harry. At the end, when the fire was dying she had to lie across it with only a few branches between her and the embers. But the third test was the hardest.’

  ‘Fear?’

  ‘Right, Harry. After the sun had gone down the members of the tribe gathered round the fire and the elders took turns to tell the young woman terrifying, hair-raising stories about ghosts and Muldarpe, the shape-shifting evil spirit. Pretty rough stuff, some of it. Afterwards she was sent off to sleep in a deserted place, or near the burial places of her forefathers. At the dead of night the elders sneaked up on her with their faces daubed with white clay and wearing bark masks—’

  ‘Isn’t that a bit like taking sand to the beach?’

  ‘—and making eerie noises. You’re a poor listener, Harry.’ Joseph was offended.

  Harry rubbed his face. ‘I know,’ he said at length. ‘Sorry, Joseph. I just came here to think aloud and to see if he’d left any clues that might give me a pointer as to where he might’ve taken her. But I don’t seem to be getting anywhere, and you’re the only person I can use as a sounding board. You must think I sound like a cynical, insensitive bastard.’

  ‘You sound like someone who thinks he has to fight the whole world,’ Joseph said. ‘But if you don’t drop your guard now and then, your arms will be too weary to fight.’

  Harry cracked a smile. ‘You’re absolutely sure you don’t have an older brother?’

  Joseph laughed. ‘As I said, it’s too late to ask my mother now, but I think she would have told me.’

  ‘You two sound just like brothers.’

  ‘You’ve said that a few times now, Harry. Perhaps you should try to get some sleep.’

  Joe’s face lit up when Harry came in through the door of Springfield Lodge.

  ‘Nice afternoon, eh, Mr Holy? By the way, you’re looking good today. And I’ve got a parcel for you.’ He held up a package in grey paper with ‘Harry Holy’ written on it in capital letters.

  ‘Who’s it from?’ Harry asked, taken aback.

  ‘I don’t know. A taxi driver delivered it a couple of hours ago.’

  In his room Harry placed the package on the bed, unwrapped it and opened the box inside. He had already more or less worked out who it was from, but the contents eliminated any lingering doubt: six small plastic tubes with white stickers on. He picked up one and read a date he instantly recognised as the day Inger Holter was murdered, bearing the inscription ‘pubic hair’. It didn’t require much imagination to guess that the other tubes would contain blood, hair, clothes fibres and so on. And they did.

  Half an hour later he was woken by the phone.

  ‘Have you got the things I sent you, Harry? I thought you’d need them as soon as possible.’

  ‘Toowoomba.’

  ‘At your service. Ha ha.’

  ‘I’ve got the things. Inger Holter, I assume. I’m curious, Toowoomba. How did you murder her?’

  ‘Easy as wink,’ Toowoomba said. ‘Almost too easy. I was in a girlfriend’s flat when she rang late one evening.’

  So Otto’s a girlfriend? Harry almost asked.

  ‘Inger had some dog food for the girl who owns the flat, or should I say, owned the flat? I had let myself in, but spent the evening on my own as my girlfriend was out on the town. As usual.’

  Harry noticed the voice sharpen.

  ‘Weren’t you taking a huge risk? Someone might have known she was going to . . . er, your girlfriend’s flat.’

  ‘I asked her,’ Toowoomba said.

  ‘Asked her?’ Harry replied, sceptical.

  ‘It’s incredible how naive some people are. They speak before engaging the brain because they feel safe and therefore don’t have to think. She was such a sweet, innocent girl. “No, no one knows I’m here, why?” she said. Ha ha. I felt like the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood. So I told her she’d come just at the right time. Or should I say wrong time? Ha ha. Do you want to hear the rest?’

  Harry did want to hear the rest. Preferably everything, right down to the last detail, how Toowoomba had been as a child, when he had first killed, why he didn’t have a fixed ritual, why he sometimes only raped, how he felt after a murder, whether he became depressed after the ecstasy the way serial killers do because it hadn’t been perfect that time, either, it hadn’t been how he had dreamed and planned it would be. He wanted to know how many, when and where, the methods and the tools. And he wanted to understand the emotions, the passion, what the driving force of his madness was.

  But he didn’t have the energy. Not now. Right now he couldn’t care less whether Inger had been raped before or after she had been killed, whether the murder was a punishment because Otto left him alone, whether he had killed her in the flat or done it in the car. Harr
y didn’t want to know whether she had begged, cried or if her eyes had stared at Toowoomba as she was on the threshold, knowing she was going to die. He didn’t want to know because he wouldn’t be able to stop himself exchanging Inger’s face for Birgitta’s, because it would make him weak.

  ‘How did you know where I was staying?’ Harry asked, for something to say, to keep the conversation going.

  ‘Harry, are you beginning to feel tired? You told me where you were staying last time we went out together, didn’t you. Oh, yes, thank you for that, by the way. I forgot to say.’

  ‘Listen, Toowoomba—’

  ‘I’ve been pondering in fact why you rang me to ask for help that night, Harry. Apart from to slap the two anabolically enhanced dinner jackets about a bit. Well, that was fun, but were we really at the nightclub just to pass on your gratitude to the pimp? I may not be much good at reading people’s minds, Harry, but I couldn’t make that stack up. You’re in the middle of a murder investigation and you waste time and effort getting your own back after being roughed up in a club.’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘Well, Harry?’

  ‘That wasn’t the only reason. The girl we found in Centennial Park happened to work at the club, so I had a theory that the person who killed her might have been there that evening, waited at the back exit and followed her home. I wanted to see how you would react if you discovered what we were up to. Besides, you’re a pretty conspicuous sort, so I wanted to point you out to Mongabi to check whether he’d seen you that evening.’

  ‘No luck?’

  ‘Nope. My guess is you weren’t there.’

  Toowoomba laughed. ‘I didn’t even know she was a stripper,’ he said. ‘I saw her walk into the park and thought someone should tell her it’s dangerous there at night. And demonstrate what can happen.’

  ‘Well, at least that case is solved,’ Harry said drily.

  ‘Shame no one else but you will have the pleasure,’ Toowoomba said.

  Harry decided to take a risk.

  ‘Since no one else will have the pleasure of anything, perhaps you could also tell me what happened to Andrew at Otto’s flat. Because Otto was your girlfriend, wasn’t he.’