The Devil's Star

by Jo Nesbo

  ‘Convenient serial murders are rare, boss.’

  Møller went quiet for a few moments.

  ‘Harry?’

  ‘I’m still here, boss.’

  ‘I’m going to ask you to spend your final weeks assisting Tom Waaler on this case. You’re the only person in Crime Squad who has any experience of serial killings. I know you’ll say no, but I’m going to ask you anyway. Just to get us moving, Harry.’

  ‘OK, boss.’

  ‘This is more important than the disagreements between you and Tom . . . What did you say?’

  ‘I said it was fine.’

  ‘Do you mean that?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll have to be going now though. We’ll be here most of the evening, so it would be good if you could organise the first meeting of those involved in the case for tomorrow. Tom suggests eight o’clock.’

  ‘Tom?’ Møller asked in astonishment.

  ‘Tom Waaler.’

  ‘I know who it is. I’ve just never heard you use his Christian name before.’

  ‘The others are waiting for me, boss.’

  ‘OK.’

  Harry slipped the phone back into his pocket, tossed the plastic beaker into the litter bin, locked himself in one of the cubicles in the Gents and clung onto the toilet bowl as he threw up.

  Afterwards he stood in front of the basin with the tap running, looking at himself in the mirror. He listened to the buzz of voices from the corridor. Beate’s assistant was urging people to keep behind the barriers; Waaler was telling policemen to find out who had been in the vicinity of the building; Magnus Skarre was shouting to a colleague that he wanted a cheeseburger without chips.

  When the water finally ran cold, Harry stuck his face under the tap. He let the water run down his cheek, into his ear, down over his neck, inside his shirt, along his shoulder and down his arm. He drank greedily. He refused to listen to the enemy deep inside him. Then he ran into the cubicle and threw up again.

  Outside, the evening had drawn in quickly and Carl Berners plass lay deserted as Harry walked out of the building, lit a cigarette and raised a hand in defence to one of the newspaper vultures approaching him. The man stopped. Harry recognised him. Gjendem, wasn’t that his name? He had chatted to him after the case in Sydney. Gjendem was no worse than the others, maybe even a little better.

  The television shop was still open. Harry went in. There was no-one about except for a fat man in a filthy flannel shirt sitting behind the counter reading a newspaper. On the counter an electric fan was blowing around his carefully placed strands of hair intended to conceal his baldness, and radiating his sweaty odour all over the shop. He sniffed when Harry showed him his ID and asked whether he had seen anyone suspicious inside or outside the shop.

  ‘They’re all suspicious here,’ he said. ‘This area is going to the dogs.’

  ‘Anyone who looked like they might kill someone?’ Harry asked drily.

  The man squeezed one eye shut. ‘Is that why there are so many police cars round here?’

  Harry nodded.

  The man shrugged his shoulders and began to read the paper again.

  ‘Who hasn’t thought about killing someone at one time or another, Constable?’

  On his way out Harry stopped when he saw his own car on one of the television screens. The camera swept across Carl Berners plass and stopped when it met the redbrick building. Then the picture went back to TV2 news and the next moment it was a fashion show. Harry sucked hard at his cigarette and closed his eyes. Rakel was coming towards him on a catwalk, no, twelve catwalks. She walked through the wall with the television sets on and stood in front of him with her hands on her hips. She fixed him with a look, tossed her head back, turned round and left him. Harry opened his eyes again.

  It was 8.00. He tried not to remember that there was a bar close by, in Trondheimsveien. They had a licence to serve spirits.

  The hardest part of the evening lay before him.

  Then there was the night.

  It was 10.00, and even though the mercury had mercifully dropped by two degrees, the air was still hot and static, waiting for an offshore breeze or an onshore breeze, or any kind of breeze. Forensics was deserted except for Beate’s office where a light still burned. The murder in Carl Berners plass had turned the whole day upside down and Beate was still at the crime scene when her colleague Bjørn Holm had rung to say there was a woman in reception from De Beers who had come to examine some diamonds.

  Beate had returned in a hurry and now she was concentrating on the short, energetic woman in front of her who spoke the perfect kind of English you would expect from a Dutch person settled in London.

  ‘Diamonds have geological fingerprints which, theoretically, makes it possible for us to trace them right back to the owner as certificates, which go everywhere with the diamond, are issued showing their origin. Not in this case though, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Why not?’ Beate asked.

  ‘Because the two diamonds I have seen are what we call blood diamonds.’

  ‘Because of the red colour?’

  ‘No, because they most probably come from the Kiuvu mines in Sierra Leone. All the diamond dealers in the world boycott diamonds from Sierra Leone because the diamond mines are controlled by rebel forces who export diamonds to finance a war that is not about politics, but about money. Hence the name, blood diamonds. I believe these diamonds are new, and I suppose they have been smuggled out of Sierra Leone to another country where false certificates have been issued claiming they come from well-known mines in, say, South Africa.’

  ‘Any idea which country they were smuggled into?’

  ‘Most of them end up in ex-communist countries. When the Iron Curtain came down, the expertise acquired making false ID papers had to find a new outlet. And authentic-looking diamond certificates cost a pretty penny. That’s not the only reason, however, that I would go for Eastern Europe.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I have seen these star-shaped diamonds before. They were smuggled in from the former GDR and Czechoslovakia. Like these ones, they were ground into diamonds of mediocre quality.’

  ‘Mediocre quality?’

  ‘Red diamonds may look attractive, but they’re cheaper than the white ones, the clear diamonds. The stones you’ve found also have substantial remains of uncrys-tallised carbon in them which makes them less clear than one would like. If you have to grind away so much of the diamond to produce the star shape, then you prefer not to use diamonds that are perfect from the very start.’

  ‘So, East Germany and Czechoslovakia.’ Beate closed her eyes.

  ‘Just an educated guess. If there’s nothing else, I can still make the evening flight back to London . . .’

  Beate opened her eyes and got up.

  ‘Please forgive me. It’s been a long, hectic day. You’ve been a great help. Thank you very much for coming.’

  ‘Not at all. I only hope that it can help you catch the person who did this.’

  ‘So do we. I’ll call you a taxi.’

  While Beate waited for Oslo Taxis to answer she noticed that the diamond expert was looking at her right hand holding the telephone. Beate smiled.

  ‘That’s a very attractive diamond you’ve got there. Looks like an engagement ring.’

  Beate blushed without quite knowing why.

  ‘I’m not engaged. It’s the engagement ring my father gave my mother. I inherited it when she died.’

  ‘Right. That explains why you are wearing it on your right hand.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Yes, you would usually wear it on your left hand. Or on the middle finger of your left hand, to be precise.’

  ‘The middle finger? I thought your ring finger was next to your little finger.’

  ‘Not if you have the same beliefs as the Egyptians.’

  ‘And what did they believe?’

  ‘They thought that the vein of love, vena amoris, went directly from the heart to the middle finger on the left hand.’r />
  After the taxi had arrived and the woman had left, Beate stood for a moment looking at her hand, at the middle finger on her left hand.

  Then she rang Harry.

  ‘The gun was Czech, too,’ Harry said when she finished.

  ‘Perhaps there’s something in it,’ Beate said.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Harry said. ‘What was the vein called again?’

  ‘Vena amoris?’

  ‘Vena amoris,’ Harry mumbled. Then he put down the receiver.

  16

  Monday. Dialogue.

  You’re sleeping. I place my hand against your face. Have you missed me? I kiss your stomach. I go down lower and you begin to stir. Waves. A dance of elfins. You’re silent. You pretend to sleep. You can wake up now, darling. You have been found.

  Harry sat bolt upright in bed. It took a few seconds before he realised that it was his own scream that had woken him. He stared out into the semi-darkness and studied the shadows by the curtains and the wardrobe.

  He laid his head back on the pillow. What had he been dreaming about? He’d been in a dark room. Two people were moving towards each other in a bed. Their faces were hidden. He switched on his torch and was shining it at them when he was woken by his own scream.

  Harry looked at the digits on the clock on his bedside table. It was still two and a half hours away from 7.00. You can dream your way to hell and back in that time. He had to sleep though. Had to. He took a deep breath as if he were going to dive under water, and closed his eyes.

  17

  Tuesday. Profiles.

  Harry watched the second hand on the wall clock over Tom Waaler’s head.

  They’d had to bring in extra chairs to accommodate everyone in the large conference room in the green zone on the sixth floor. There was almost an atmosphere of solemnity in the room: no chatting, no drinking of coffee, no reading of newspapers, just people scribbling on notepads, the silent waiting for the clock to advance to 8.00. Harry counted 17 heads, and that meant that only one person was missing. Tom Waaler stood at the front with his arms crossed, staring at his Rolex wristwatch.

  The second hand on the wall clock moved, stopped and, quivering, stood to attention.

  ‘Let’s start,’ Tom Waaler said.

  There was a rustle of movement as everyone, with one accord, sat up in their chairs.

  ‘I’ll be leading this investigation, assisted by Harry Hole.’

  Heads round the table turned in surprise towards Harry, who sat at the back of the room.

  ‘First of all, I’d like to thank those of you who uncomplainingly cut short your holidays,’ Waaler continued. ‘I’m afraid you’ll be asked to sacrifice more than your holidays in the days to come, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to get round to you all to thank you personally, so let’s just say that this “thank you” is for the whole month. OK?’

  There were smiles and nods round the table. As one smiles and nods to a future divisional commander, Harry thought.

  ‘This is a special day in many ways.’

  Waaler switched on the overhead projector. The front page of Dagbladet appeared on the screen behind him. SERIAL KILLER ON THE LOOSE? No pictures, just this screaming headline in block capitals. It’s rare now for a news desk with any respect for the profession to use question marks on a front page, and what very few people knew – and no-one in Room K615 – was that the decision to add the question mark had been taken only minutes before the paper went to press after the acting editor rang his superior – on holiday in Tvedestrand – for advice.

  ‘We haven’t had a serial killer in Norway – as far as we know at least – since Arnfinn Nesset went berserk in the ’80s,’ Waaler said. ‘Serial killers are rare, so rare that this is going to attract attention beyond the borders of Norway. We’re already the subject of a lot of interest, folks.’

  Tom Waaler’s subsequent pause for effect was unnecessary. All those present had already been made aware of the significance of the case when they were briefed on the phone by Møller the previous evening.

  ‘OK,’ Waaler said. ‘If we’re really up against a serial killer now, we have a number of advantages on our side. Firstly, in our midst we have someone who has investigated and caught a serial killer. I assume you all know about Inspector Harry Hole’s star turn in Sydney. Harry?’

  Harry saw the faces turn towards him and cleared his throat. He could feel his voice threatening to desert him and he cleared his throat again.

  ‘I’m not so sure that the job I did in Sydney was a model investigation.’ He attempted a wry smile. ‘As you perhaps remember, I ended up shooting the man.’

  No laughter, not even so much as the suspicion of a smile. Harry was no future divisional commander.

  ‘We can imagine worse outcomes than that, Harry,’ Waaler said, looking at his Rolex again. ‘Many of you know the psychologist Ståle Aune, to whom we have turned for expert advice on several cases. He’s agreed to come and give us a short presentation on the phenomenon of serial killing. For some of you this is nothing new, but going over some old ground won’t do any harm. He should be here at –’

  All heads went up as the door swung open. The man who entered was panting loudly. Above the rotund stomach bursting out of a tweed jacket was a floppy orange necktie and glasses so small that you wondered whether it was possible to see through them at all. Beneath a shiny pate was a forehead glistening with sweat and beneath that a pair of dark, possibly dyed, but at any rate neatly tended eyebrows.

  ‘Talk of the devil . . .’ Waaler said.

  ‘And here he is!’ Ståle Aune completed, pulling out a handkerchief from his breast pocket and drying his forehead. ‘And devilishly hot it is too!’

  He went up to the end of the table and dropped his worn, brown leather bag onto the floor with a bang.

  ‘Good morning, lady and gentlemen. Nice to see so many young people awake at this time of day. Some of you I have met before, others of you have been spared.’

  Harry smiled. He was one of those who had definitely not been spared. Harry first went to see Aune about his drinking problems many years ago. Aune was no expert on drug abuse, but Harry had to admit a relationship had developed between them that bordered on a friendship.

  ‘Notepads out, sluggards!’

  Aune hung his jacket over a chair.

  ‘You look as if you’re at a funeral, and that’s probably true in some respects, but I want to see a few smiles before I leave here. That’s an order. And hang onto my coattails. I’m going to whistle through this.’

  Aune grabbed a marker from the ledge under the flip chart and began to write at breakneck speed while speaking:

  ‘There is every reason to believe that serial killers have existed for as long as there have been men on earth to kill. However, many consider the so-called “Autumn of Terror” in 1888 the first serial killer case of modern times. It’s the first documented case of a serial killer with a purely sexual motive. The murderer killed five women before vanishing into thin air. He was given the epithet “Jack the Ripper”, but he took his real identity with him to the grave. Our most famous national contribution to the list is not Arnfinn Nesset, who, as you will all remember, poisoned twenty patients or so in the ’80s, but Belle Gunness who was that rare thing: a female serial killer. She left for America and married a weed of a man in 1902 and settled down on a farm outside La Porte in the state of Indiana. I say a weed of a man because he weighed seventy kilos and she weighed 120.’

  Aune pulled lightly at the braces on his trousers.

  ‘If you ask me, her weight was just right.’

  Ripples of laughter.

  ‘This pleasantly plump lady killed her husband, some children and an unknown number of suitors whom she lured to the farm through lonely heart advertisements in the Chicago press. Their bodies were discovered one day in 1908 when the farm burned down under mysterious circumstances. Among them was the burned and unusually voluminous torso of a woman with her head chopped off. The woman was pre
sumably placed there by Belle to dupe investigators into believing it was her. The police received several reports from witnesses who said they had seen Belle in various places throughout America, but she was never found. And that is my point, dear friends. Unfortunately the cases of Jack and Belle are quite typical of serial killers.’

  Aune finished writing with a round smack of his marker against the flip chart.

  ‘They do not get caught.’

  The assembly looked at him in silence.

  ‘So,’ Aune said, ‘the concept of the serial murderer is just as controversial as everything else I’m going to tell you now. This is because psychology is a science that is still in its infancy and because psychologists are quarrelsome by nature. I’ll tell you what we know about serial killers – it’s much the same as what we don’t know. By the way, “serial killer” is a term which many competent psychologists consider meaningless since it is used to describe a set of mental illnesses that other psychologists claim do not exist. Is that clear? Well, some of you are smiling anyway, and that’s good.’

  Aune tapped his index finger against the first point he had written up on the flip chart.

  ‘The typical serial killer is a white man between 24 and 40 years of age. As a rule he acts alone, but he can work with others, in a pair, for example. Brutality against the victim is an indication that he is acting alone. The victims can be anyone, though generally they fall into the same ethnic group as the killer, and in exceptional cases they may be known to him.

  ‘Usually he finds the first victim in an area he knows well. In the public imagination there are always special rituals connected with the murders. This is not true, but when rituals do occur, it is often in connection with a serial killing.’

  Aune pointed to the next point where he had written PSYCHOPATH/SOCIOPATH.

  ‘However, the most characteristic trait of the serial killer is that he’s American. Only God – and perhaps a couple of psychology professors at Blindern – knows why. That’s why it is interesting that the people who know most about serial killings – the FBI and the American legal profession – distinguish between two types of serial murderer: the psychopath and the sociopath. The professors I mentioned believe that both the distinction and the concepts stink, but in the homeland of the serial killer most law courts follow the McNaughten Rules which decree that it is only the psychopath who does not know what he’s doing while committing the crime. The psychopath, therefore, unlike the sociopath, escapes a prison sentence or – as is probably the case in God’s own country – execution. Apropos serial killers, it is my opinion that, hm . . .’