The Devil's Star

by Jo Nesbo

  ‘Thank you very much, but –’

  ‘No buts. If nothing else, it’s a pretext for you to ring her if you’re not on speaking terms at the moment. Let me send you the two tickets, Harry. I think Lisbeth would have liked it. And Toya’s improving. It’ll be a good production.’

  Harry fidgeted with the tablecloth.

  ‘Let me think about it.’

  ‘Excellent. I’ll get things moving before I go for a nap.’ Wilhelm got up.

  ‘By the way.’ Harry put his hand in his jacket pocket. ‘We found this symbol near two of the other crimes. It’s called a devil’s star. Can you remember if you’ve seen it anywhere after Lisbeth disappeared?’

  Wilhelm studied the photograph.

  ‘Can’t say that I have, no.’

  Harry put his hand out for the photo.

  ‘Wait a moment.’ Wilhelm peered again while scratching his beard.

  Harry waited.

  ‘I’ve seen it,’ Wilhelm said. ‘But where?’

  ‘In the flat? By the stairs? Down on the street?’

  Wilhelm shook his head.

  ‘None of those places. And not recently. Somewhere else, a long time ago. But where? Is this important?’

  ‘It could be. Ring me if anything occurs to you.’

  When they separated Harry stood and stared up Drammensveien where the sun was shining on the tramlines and the shimmering hot air gave the impression that the tram was floating away.

  22

  Thursday and Friday. The Revelation.

  Jim Beam is made with rye, barley and a whole 75 per cent of maize which gives bourbon the sweet, round taste that marks it out from straight whisky. The water in Jim Beam comes from a source near the distillery in Clearmont, Kentucky, where they also make the special yeast that some people maintain is taken from the same recipe Jacob Beam used in 1795. The result is stored for at least four years before it is sent all over the world and bought by Harry Hole, who doesn’t give a shit about Jacob Beam and knows that the guff about the water source is a marketing gimmick on a par with Farris, the Norwegian mineral water, and the Farris source. And the only percentage he cares about is the one in small letters on the label.

  Harry stood in front of the fridge with a sheath knife in his hand staring at the bottle of golden-brown liquid. He was naked. The heat in the bedroom had forced him to strip off his underpants, which were still damp and smelled of chlorine.

  He had been abstinent for four days now. The worst was over, he had said to himself. It wasn’t true; the worst was far from over. Aune had once asked him why he thought he drank. Harry had answered without hesitation: ‘Because I’m thirsty.’ Harry, in a variety of ways, bemoaned the fact that he was living in a society at a time when the disadvantages of drinking outweighed the advantages. His reasons for staying sober had never been principled, merely practical. It was extremely wearing to be a hard drinker and the reward was a brief, miserable life of boredom and physical pain. For an alcoholic, life consisted of being drunk and the intervals between being drunk. Which part was real life was a philosophical question he had never had sufficient time to study since the answer would not be able to offer him a life that was any better anyway. Or worse. According to the alcoholic’s basic law of life – The Big Thirst – everything that was good, everything, would be lost sooner or later. That was how he had viewed the equation until he met Rakel and Oleg. It had given temperance a new dimension. But it didn’t invalidate the alcoholic’s law. And now he couldn’t bear the nightmares any longer. Couldn’t bear the sound of her screams. Couldn’t bear to see the shock in her rigid, lifeless eyes as her head rose towards the ceiling in the lift. His hand moved towards the cupboard. He could leave no stone unturned. He put the sheath knife down beside Jim Beam and closed the cupboard door. Then he went back to the bedroom.

  He didn’t switch on the light; a shaft of moonlight fell between the curtains.

  The pillows and the mattress seemed to be trying to rid themselves of the clammy, twisted bed linen.

  He crawled into bed. The last time he had slept without having a nightmare was when he fell asleep for a few minutes on Camilla Loen’s bed. He had dreamed about death then too, but the difference was that he hadn’t been frightened. A man can lock himself in, but he has to sleep. And in sleep no-one can hide.

  Harry closed his eyes.

  The curtains moved and the shaft of moonlight trembled. It shone onto the wall over the bedhead and the black marks of a knife. It must have been done with a great deal of force because the cut went deep into the wood behind the white wallpaper. The continuous groove formed a large, five-pointed star.

  She lay listening to the traffic outside the window in Trojská, and to his deep, regular breathing beside her. Now and then she thought she could hear screams from the zoological garden, but it might just have been the night trains on the other side of the river braking before they entered the main station. He said he liked the sound of trains when they moved out to Troja, which was located at the top of the brown question mark that the River Vltava formed on its way through Prague.

  It was raining.

  He had been away all day. In Brno, he had said. When she finally heard him unlocking the front door of their flat, she calmed down. She heard the scrape of his suitcase on the hall floor before he came into the bedroom. She pretended to be asleep, but she observed him in secret as he slowly and calmly hung his clothes up and occasionally cast a glance in the mirror beside the cupboard to look at her. Then he crept into bed; his hands were cold and his skin sticky with dried sweat. They made love to the sound of rain on the tiled roof and he tasted of salt and slept like a baby afterwards. Usually she was also sleepy after making love, but now she lay awake as his juices ran out of her and soaked into the sheet.

  She pretended that she didn’t know what was keeping her awake, even though her mind always returned to the same thing. That she had found a longish blonde hair on the sleeve of his suit jacket when she was brushing it the day after he had returned home from Oslo. That he was going back to Oslo on Saturday. That it was the fourth time in four weeks. That he still wouldn’t tell her what he did there. Of course, the hair could have come from anything, from a man or maybe even a dog.

  He began to snore.

  She thought back to the time they met. To his open face and his openhearted confidences which she had misinterpreted as meaning that he was an open person. He had melted her like the spring snows in Václav Square, but when you fell so easily for a man there would always be a suspicion gnawing at you that you were not the only one to have fallen in the same way.

  He treated her with respect, though, almost like an equal, although he could have bought her as he could any of the prostitutes in Perlová. He was a windfall, the only one she had ever had, the only one she could lose. It was the certainty of this that made her cautious, that kept her from asking where he had been, with whom he had been, what he actually did.

  However, something had happened which made it necessary for her to know that she could trust him. She had something even more precious to lose. She hadn’t said anything to him yet; she hadn’t been sure herself before she went to the doctor three days ago.

  She slipped out of bed and tiptoed across the floor. Carefully, she pressed down the door handle while watching his face in the mirror over the dressing table. Then she was in the hallway and, carefully, she closed the door behind her.

  The suitcase was a leaden grey colour, modern and bore the Samsonite trademark. It was almost new, yet the sides were scratched and covered with torn stickers from security checks and the names of destinations she had never heard of.

  In the dim light she could see that the combination dial showed 0-0-0. It always did. And she didn’t need to feel; she knew the case wouldn’t open. She had never seen the case open, except for when she was lying in bed as he was taking clothes from drawers and putting them in the case. It was pure chance that she had seen it the last time he was packing. Lucky that th
e number of the combination lock was on the inside. It wasn’t particularly difficult to remember three numbers. Not when you have to. Wasn’t difficult to forget everything else and remember the three numbers of a room in a hotel when they rang and told her that her services were required, told her what she was to wear and about any other special requests.

  She listened. His snoring was like the low sound of sawing from behind the door. There were things he didn’t know. Things he didn’t need to know, things she had been forced to do, but it was in the past now. She placed the tips of her fingers on the serrated cogs above the numbers and turned. The future was the only thing that mattered from now on.

  The lock sprang open with a soft click.

  She stared from her crouching position.

  Under the lock, on top of a white shirt, lay an ugly, black metal object.

  She didn’t need to touch it to know that the gun was genuine. She had seen them before, in her earlier life.

  She swallowed and could feel the tears coming. Pressed her fingers against her eyes. Twice whispered her mother’s name to herself.

  It lasted only a few seconds.

  Then she took a deep, calming breath. She had to get through this. They had to get through this. At least it explained why he wasn’t able to tell her much about his profession, what allowed him to earn as much money as he obviously did. And the thought had occurred to her, hadn’t it?

  She made up her mind.

  There were things she didn’t know. Things she didn’t need to know.

  She locked the case and turned the dials on the lock back to zero. She listened at the door before she carefully opened it and slipped inside. A rectangle of light fell onto the bed. Had she cast a glance at the mirror before she closed the door, she would have seen one of his eyes open. But she was too preoccupied with her own thoughts. Or rather, the one thought that she returned to again and again as she lay listening to the traffic, the screams from the zoological gardens and his deep, regular breathing. The future was the only thing that mattered from now on.

  A scream, a bottle smashed on the pavement, followed by raucous laughter. Cursing and the clatter of running feet dying away up Sofies gate in the direction of Bislett Stadium.

  Harry stared at the ceiling and listened to the sounds of the night outside. He had slept three dreamless hours before he woke up and started thinking. About three women, two crime scenes and one man offering a good price for his soul. He tried to find a system in it. To decipher the code. To see the pattern. To understand the dimension above the pattern that Øystein had referred to, the question that preceded ‘how’. Why.

  Why did a man dress up as a courier, kill two women and probably also a third? Why did he make it so difficult for himself when he chose the scene of the crime? Why did he leave messages? When all the past models of serial killers suggested they were sexually motivated, why were there no indications of sexual abuse in the cases of Camilla Loen and Barbara Svendsen?

  Harry felt a headache coming on. He kicked off the duvet cover and lay on his side. The red numbers on the alarm clock glowed: 2.51. Harry’s last two questions were for himself. Why hold onto your soul so desperately if it broke your heart? And why bother about a system that hated him?

  He dropped his feet onto the floor and went into the kitchen and stared at the cupboard door over the sink. He poured water from the tap into a glass and filled it to the brim. Then he opened the cutlery drawer, picked up the black tube, peeled off the grey lid and poured the contents into his palm. A pill would make him sleep. Two with a glass of Jim Beam would make him hyper. Three or more would have more unforeseen consequences.

  Harry opened his mouth wide, threw in three tablets and washed them down with lukewarm water.

  Then he went into the sitting room, put on a Duke Ellington record he had bought after seeing Gene Hackman sitting on the overnight bus in The Conversation to the sound of some fragile piano notes that were the loneliest Harry had ever heard.

  He sat down in the wing chair.

  ‘I only know of one method,’ Øystein had said.

  Harry started at the beginning. With the day when he staggered past Underwater on his way to the address in Ullevålsveien. Friday. Sannergata. Wednesday. Carl Berner. Monday. Three women. Three severed fingers. Left hand. First the index finger, then the middle finger and then the ring finger. Three places. Places with neighbours, no family accommodation. An old apartment building from the turn of the last century, one from the ’30s and an office block from the ’40s. Lifts. He could see the floor numbers over the lift doors. Skarre had talked to the specialist couriers in Oslo and the surrounding district. They hadn’t been able to help with cycle equipment or yellow jerseys, but via an insurance arrangement with emergency services they had at least managed to procure a summary of all the people who in the last six months had bought expensive bikes of the type that couriers used.

  He could feel the numbing sensation coming. The rough wool on the chair stung his naked thighs and buttocks.

  The victims: Camilla, copywriter for an advertising bureau, single, 28 years old, dark, slightly chubby; Lisbeth, singer, married, 33 years old, fair, slim; Barbara, receptionist, 28, living with her parents, medium blonde. All three had been good-looking, nothing outstanding. The times of the murders. Provided that Lisbeth had been murdered immediately, all on weekdays. In the afternoon, after working hours.

  Duke Ellington was playing fast. As if his head was full of notes he had to squeeze in. And now he had almost completely stopped. He was just adding the essential full stops.

  Harry had not gone into the backgrounds of the victims, he hadn’t talked to relatives or friends, he had just skimmed through the reports without finding anything to catch his attention. That wasn’t where the answers lay. It wasn’t who the victims were, but what they were, what they represented. For this killer the victims were no more than an exterior, more or less randomly chosen, like everything around them. It was just a question of catching a glimpse of what it was, seeing the pattern.

  Then the chemicals kicked in with a vengeance. The effect was more like that of a hallucinogen than sleeping tablets. Thinking gave way to thoughts, and completely out of control – as if in a barrel – he sailed down a river. Time pulsated, pumped like an expanding universe. When he came to, everything around him was still, there was only the sound of the stylus on the record player scratching against the label.

  He went into the bedroom, sat cross-legged at the foot of the bed and fixed his attention on the devil’s star. After a while it began to dance in front of his eyes. He closed them. It was just a question of keeping it in sight.

  When it became light outside he was beyond everything. He sat, he heard and he saw, but he was dreaming. The thud of the Aftenposten on the stairs woke him up. He lifted his head and focused on the devil’s star, which was no longer dancing.

  Nothing danced. It was over. He had seen the pattern.

  The pattern of a benumbed man in a desperate search for genuine feelings. A naive idiot who believed that where there was someone who loved, there was love, that where there were questions, there were answers. Harry Hole’s pattern. In a fit of fury he headbutted the cross on the wall. He saw sparks in front of his eyes and he dropped onto his bed. His gaze fell on the alarm clock: 5.55. The duvet cover was wet and warm.

  Then – as if someone had switched off the light – he passed out.

  She was pouring coffee into his cup. He grunted a Danke and turned the pages of the Observer which he would buy at the hotel on the corner. Along with fresh croissants that Hlinka, the local baker, had started making. She had never been abroad, only to Slovakia, which wasn’t really abroad, but he assured her that now Prague had everything they had in other big cities in Europe. She had wanted to travel. Before she met him, an American businessman had fallen in love with her. She had been bought for him as a present by a business connection in Prague, an executive from a pharmaceutical company. He was a sweet, innocent, rathe
r plump man and would have given her everything so long as she had gone home with him to Los Angeles. Of course, she had said yes. But when she told Tomas, her pimp and half-brother, he went to the American’s room and threatened him with a knife. The American left the following day and she had never seen him since. Four days later she was sitting, downcast, in the Grand Hotel Europa drinking wine when he turned up. He sat on a chair at the back of the room and watched her giving importunate men the brush-off. That was what he fell for, he always said, not the fact that she was very much in demand by other men, but that she was absolutely unmoved by their courtship, so effortlessly apathetic, so completely chaste.

  She let him buy her a glass of wine, thanked him and walked home alone.

  The following day he rang at the door of her tiny basement flat in Strasnice. He never told her how he had found out where she lived. But life went from grey to rosy red in the blink of an eye. She was happy. She was happy.

  The newspaper rustled as he turned a page.

  She should have known. If it hadn’t been for the gun in the suitcase she would not have given it a second thought.

  She decided she would forget it, forget everything except what was important. They were happy. She loved him.

  She was sitting in the chair, still wearing her apron. She knew that he liked her in an apron. After all, she knew a bit about what made men tick, the trick was not to let on. She looked down at her lap. She began to smile; she couldn’t stop.

  ‘I’ve got something to tell you,’ she said.

  ‘Ye-es?’ The newspaper flapped like a sail in the wind.

  ‘Promise me you won’t get angry,’ she said and could feel her smile spreading.

  ‘I can’t promise that,’ he said without looking up.

  Her smile stiffened. ‘What . . .’

  ‘I’m guessing that you’re going to tell me that you went through my suitcase when you got up in the night.’