The Boy in the Headlights

by Samuel Bjork

  Was there someone who …?

  Had the Virgin decided to show him mercy?

  He sat down quickly and made the sign of the cross.

  Light, cautious steps on the hard floor, and they came right up to the confessional. Father Malley smiled broadly as someone opened the door and slipped into the small cubicle next to him.

  He waited a few seconds until the new arrival had sat down before he opened the hatch.

  ‘Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women. Blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.’

  He made the sign of the cross again as he heard the other person join in.

  ‘Amen.’

  It came tentatively. A young man. He could make him out behind the lattice, but he couldn’t see him clearly, of course; that was the whole point of this box. Closeness, yet enough distance for it to feel safe to confess.

  ‘Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It is … It is my first confession.’

  His first confession?

  Father Malley could feel his heart start to pound beneath his cassock; there was nothing quite like a new member of the flock.

  ‘I have … well, I don’t really know,’ the young man said, clearly struggling to find a door to his soul.

  ‘Take all the time you need, my son,’ Father Malley said calmly. ‘There’s no one here but you and the Lord. He judges no one, and He will listen to you no matter what you wish to say to Him.’

  ‘Thank you,’ the penitent mumbled, and fell quiet again for a moment. Then it seemed as if he were steeling himself. ‘I don’t know if it’s a sin because I’m not here about me but about something I might have witnessed.’

  ‘Go on,’ Father Malley said levelly. ‘May I ask who this is about?’

  ‘My brother,’ the voice said at length.

  The young man was now speaking so softly that Father Malley had to lean close to the small lattice.

  ‘Your brother? Do you mean your actual brother, or is he a fellow parishioner?’

  The young man seemed taken aback at the question but eventually answered directly.

  ‘No, no. He’s my actual brother. My big brother. We live together. There’s just the two of us now. Our parents have passed.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Father Malley said kindly. ‘And what is it that you have witnessed? Is it something you want to share with God?’

  Again there was silence behind the lattice.

  ‘Can I ask a question?’

  ‘Of course, my son.’

  ‘I don’t even know why I’m here. I just needed someone to talk to. Perhaps it ought to be a therapist of some kind. I don’t know if it’s appropriate to come here. I don’t want to take someone else’s space or anything—’

  Father Malley had never interrupted anyone during confession, and yet now he felt it was the right thing to do.

  ‘My son. Big things or small things – it doesn’t matter. If you have come here to talk, then you’re welcome. You don’t need to feel shame or guilt in here. You’re pure and I’m happy to listen.’

  ‘Thank you.’ The young man sounded relieved.

  ‘So, your brother? What have you witnessed?’

  ‘I’m scared of him.’

  ‘Scared, how?’

  ‘He’s changed. I’m scared that he … does things.’

  ‘What kind of things are you talking about?’

  Father Malley was becoming intrigued.

  ‘He hardly talks to me any more. He goes out at night. He locks his door when he comes home. He won’t let me into his room. I think he’s hiding something in there.’

  ‘I see. May I ask how old he is?’

  ‘Twenty-eight.’

  ‘And what does he do for a living?’

  ‘Oh no, he doesn’t work. He’s been ill, you see.’

  The stranger paused again. Father Malley could hear him squirm on the wooden seat. It was clear that the young man was feeling uncomfortable.

  ‘Ill? In what way?’

  ‘I don’t know if I should be saying any of this, Father. I feel I’m letting him down. That I—’

  ‘This is about you and God,’ Father Malley interrupted calmly. ‘You’re not letting anyone down. God is father to us all.’

  ‘No, it’s no good. It was a mistake. I’m too scared.’

  Father Malley was struggling to sit still.

  ‘What are you scared of, my son?’

  ‘He’s dangerous.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘My brother. He’s dangerous.’

  ‘Are you afraid that he might … hurt you?’

  There was total silence in the other cubicle now. Then Father Malley thought he could hear soft weeping.

  ‘My son, listen to me.’

  ‘No,’ the young man said, getting up. ‘I don’t dare. It’s too evil. I’m sorry for disturbing you, Father.’

  Father Malley heard the small handle being turned and quickly made up his mind.

  ‘Son,’ he said, some gravity in his voice this time. ‘I have a suggestion. Please, would you listen to it?’

  That worked.

  The stranger sat down hesitantly.

  ‘I think you should go home, I do, but not before you and I and God have made a deal. It’s clear that you’re carrying a burden, and I can see that it’s difficult for you. But you’ve been here today and you know who I am. Now go home and think about it, and then come back when you feel the time is right. Tomorrow, in a few days, it makes no difference, but I want us to promise one another that we will meet again. Can we do that?’

  There was a long pause. Father Malley could almost hear how the young man suffered in there, how he was being pulled in different directions, but he finally opened his mouth.

  ‘OK, Father. I’ll be back. Will you be here?’

  ‘Of course,’ Father Malley said warmly. ‘I’ll be here for you. Every morning. I want you to know that. You come back to me when you’re ready.’

  Thank you.’ The young man sounded relieved. ‘I really appreciate that. Thank you so much.’

  ‘Until we meet again,’ Father Malley said.

  ‘Until we meet again, Father. Thank you so much.’

  Father Malley smiled to himself as the footsteps disappeared across the cathedral floor and faded away.

  So it had been a good idea, after all, offering confession in the morning.

  He thought of the Virgin with gratitude before he left the confessional, folded his hands across his chest and walked calmly up towards the sacristy.

  Chapter 27

  Gabriel Mørk had slept on the sofa in the break room and was woken by Ludvig Grønlie, who had come to get himself a cup of coffee.

  ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘Kripos are here. Munch is doing a briefing now. I don’t think you need to be there. It’s pretty much the stuff we went over a few hours ago.’

  ‘I’m on my way,’ Gabriel said, stifling a yawn.

  He had had such a strange dream. He had been a postman. On a sailboat. On his way to deliver a large, important letter. It said Tove and Emilie on the envelope. He had spied an island in the distance but, no matter how hard he tried to get the boat to sail towards it, he couldn’t get any closer, he just drifted further away. A glimpse of sad faces. The letter grew bigger and bigger until it eventually dragged him into the waves.

  A subtle hint, perhaps?

  His mother had always been obsessed with dreams and their significance. How they meant much more than we thought they did: which images symbolized what in real life, and so on. She had become very New Age in recent years. Gabriel had never been into any of that – he would just nod and say, ‘Is that right?’ whenever his mother held forth about what she had experienced during the night, but now he got a feeling that his unconscious might be trying to tell him something important.

  He had been working so hard these last f
ew days he had barely had time to reply to his girlfriend’s text messages. Don’t turn into Munch, he had been thinking when the call from Goli came.

  The Fraud Squad had been a calm place to work. Regular hours. A desk job. He and Tove had eaten breakfast and dinner together, curled up next to one another every night.

  And now?

  Well, not any more.

  Gabriel rubbed the sleep from his eyes and realized that he was clammy under his collar.

  The postman.

  He had been a teenager in those days, but he still remembered him, of course he did.

  Klaus Heming.

  A man who had imprisoned his victims, played with them as though they were dolls and then sent pictures to their families.

  It had been a national trauma. People had refused to believe that it was true; they had been in collective denial in front of their TV screens when the details of the gruesome case were presented to them.

  Naive Norway.

  It had happened right in the centre of Oslo.

  No, it couldn’t be true.

  No one could be that cruel.

  It must be somewhere in the US.

  In the world out there.

  Not one of ours.

  Not here at home.

  His mother had retreated into what he later concluded must be a kind of depression. The neighbours, too. Glum faces in the stairwell, bowed heads, people almost too scared to open their postboxes in case they had received one of his packages, in case they were about to learn that he had someone they loved as his next prisoner.

  Time dulls the memory.

  It had passed.

  Normality slowly returned.

  It’s so typically Norwegian.

  We forgive.

  We choose to believe in goodness.

  But the darkness was back now. He had seen it in every member of the team throughout the night; even Munch, who was generally a big teddy bear, had walked the corridors with a deep, dark look and a furrowed brow.

  Call home.

  Gabriel stifled another yawn, took a can of cola from the small fridge and stretched his stiff body as he headed down the corridor.

  Munch was already by the screen when he entered the incident room.

  ‘Gabriel Mørk,’ Munch said quickly. ‘Tech, databases, social media.’

  Gabriel returned the nods he received from the three people he hadn’t met before and found a seat at the back next to Mia.

  Kripos officers. Tactical investigators. Two men and one woman. There had been muttering in the corridors throughout the night, a short but loud exchange between Anette and Munch as well, but now Munch was acting as if he thought it was a great idea that they had been joined by Kripos, even though it was Mikkelson who had organized it.

  More people?

  Why not?

  Gabriel couldn’t see what the problem was.

  Were they fighting over who would be top dog?

  Now?

  He had almost said something but had decided against it.

  ‘Would you say something about the name, Mia?’ Munch asked.

  ‘Karl Overlind.’ Mia Krüger remained sitting. ‘I was a bit slow, I’m sorry, but take away the v, the e, the r and the d.’

  The three Kripos officers turned to her with raised eyebrows.

  ‘Karl Olin …’ The woman sounded confused.

  ‘Karl Lion,’ Mia said, seeming strangely alert despite her tired face. ‘My mistake. I should have spotted it at once.’

  ‘OK,’ one of the Kripos investigators said.

  Blond hair. Moustache.

  A man of nondescript appearance, like these people always were.

  ‘So yet another link to The Brothers Lionheart?’ the second Kripos officer said.

  Dark hair. Beard.

  Again, he could be anyone.

  Perhaps that was why they got the job. The ability to blend into any crowd without being noticed.

  ‘Yes.’ Mia nodded. ‘Jonathan and Karl Lion. We weren’t sure to begin with, but there’s little doubt now that the killer is doing this deliberately to play with us.’

  ‘Remind me who Karl was again,’ the woman said.

  ‘The younger brother, who survives,’ Munch said. ‘Jonathan saves him but dies while doing so. Young Karl lives on with the feeling that the world around him would prefer that he had died instead.’

  ‘So there’s no Karl Overlind in real life?’ the blond Kripos officer asked, addressing Munch this time.

  ‘Not in Oslo,’ Ludvig Grønlie interjected, checking his notes. ‘We had one in Stavanger but, as we said, no one here in Oslo, as far as we can see.’

  ‘What about Raymond Greger?’ The Kripos woman was now addressing Munch.

  ‘We’re still looking.’ Munch sighed. ‘It’s obviously very unfortunate that some idiot from Larvik police leaked the name to the press, but never mind. Perhaps it’ll prove to be a blessing in disguise. The more people who know his name, the more eyes will be looking for him. We’ll have to view it like that.’

  ‘But you’re working on a theory that the murders are about Klaus Heming?’

  It was the dark-haired Kripos officer this time.

  ‘We’re not sure,’ Munch said, raking a hand through his beard.

  Eyes on Mia again.

  ‘The cameras pointing at the bodies,’ Mia said. ‘The address in Bergensgata, which he gave the cleaning company. I’ve been mulling it over and I think there are two ways of looking at it.’

  Silence in the room now while everybody waited for her to continue.

  ‘Either Klaus Heming is still alive—’

  ‘Impossible,’ Munch said. ‘I saw the post-mortem report myself.’

  ‘Or the killer wants us to know that he’s like Heming.’

  ‘Is like him how?’ the man with the blond moustache wanted to know.

  ‘That he compares himself to Heming.’

  A new silence in the room as Mia’s words sank in.

  ‘Heming had no next of kin, did he?’

  The Kripos woman this time.

  ‘No,’ Munch said. ‘No wife, girlfriend, children, not even siblings.’

  ‘And we’re quite sure that he’s dead?’

  The man with the blond moustache again. His question lingered in the room like a gust of something that no one really wanted to deal with.

  Klaus Heming.

  Alive?

  No, it …

  He wasn’t in favour of the death penalty, definitely not, but even so, all of Norway had drawn a collective sigh of relief when the news broke that Klaus Heming had taken his own life. Hanged himself with his own shoelaces in the psychiatric ward.

  Justice.

  It had felt like justice.

  ‘According to the Norwegian government and everyone I’ve spoken to, Klaus Heming is dead and buried in Our Saviour’s Cemetery,’ Munch said.

  ‘But—’ the dark-haired Kripos officer began.

  ‘We’ll stick with theory number two,’ Munch interrupted him sternly. ‘The killer is using the idea of Heming to tell us something. To make it clear to us how serious he is.’

  ‘Yes, but …’ the blond officer continued.

  Munch ignored him and flicked through the notes in front of him. He drew his hand across his forehead, suddenly looking a little lost.

  ‘The cleaning company,’ Mia prompted him.

  ‘Yes, that’s it, exactly,’ Munch said. ‘The mysterious Karl Overlind did casual work for them. If this escalates and there are more victims, it might be that they’re picked from locations where he has worked. In one way, it looks like it, but no, it doesn’t feel right.’

  He pondered it.

  ‘Perhaps the victims aren’t picked that way, but somehow the locations are relevant.’

  ‘A mountain lake and a cleaning company?’ the dark-haired Kripos officer said, sounding sceptical.

  ‘We were thinking more about the Opera,’ Munch said.

  ‘Have they ever cleaned at th
e Opera? We haven’t checked that, have we, Holger?’

  ‘We certainly will now,’ Holger mumbled, rubbing his eyes.

  ‘We know that Hotel Lundgren was one of their customers. Perhaps the Opera was too? Other venues? Can we prevent there being any more potential victims?’

  Mia glanced at the dark-haired officer, who nodded.

  ‘I’m on it, absolutely.’

  ‘Great,’ Munch said, looking across the room. ‘Ludvig?’

  ‘I’m working to get an artist’s impression of Karl Overlind from Hotel Lundgren and the cleaning company.’

  ‘Great. Ylva?’

  Munch looked about him, but she wasn’t there.

  ‘She’s asleep,’ Anette Goli said. ‘But I’ve told her to check all the CCTV. We must be able to find something. I mean, he can’t be a ghost.’

  ‘Good,’ Munch said. ‘Gabriel?’

  ‘I’ve checked Kurt Wang’s mobile and computer and Vivian Berg’s social-media activity.’

  Munch seemed very tired now; he had barely taken on board what Gabriel said.

  ‘OK, good. Jon?’

  Another silence.

  ‘We haven’t heard from Curry for a while,’ Anette said. ‘I don’t know where he is. I’ll try him again.’

  ‘OK. I need a cigarette. Anette will be the coordinator. Everything we find must go through her to me, understood?’

  There was nodding throughout the group as everybody got up.

  Gabriel returned to his office and was about to close the door when Mia quickly slipped in behind him.

  ‘I need your help.’

  ‘Of course. What is it?’

  ‘The psychiatrist. Ritter. I need access to his computer.’

  ‘Could you be more specific?’

  Mia lowered her voice and looked briefly over her shoulder.

  ‘Everything he has. Everyone else. All his other patients. Can you do it?’

  ‘You mean, can I hack his computer?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Gabriel said, as a visibly exhausted Munch passed them, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. ‘Hack Blakstad psychiatric hospital? Eh, hello? I think that breaks every rule of the Data Protection Act, plus I’ll probably lose my job and go to prison for ten years, not to mention that Munch will kill me. Can’t we just apply for a warrant?’