by Samuel Bjork
Munch grunted. “Mia and I will brief everyone shortly, so you’ll soon know what we’re talking about. You have no previous experience with police work?”
Gabriel shook his head.
“Don’t worry about it. I picked you because of what you know already,” Munch told him. “Like I said, if we had more time, we would have sent you to an orientation course, a short version of the police academy, but there isn’t, so it’ll be learning by doing, and if you have any questions, then just come to me, okay?”
“Sure,” Gabriel agreed.
“Fine,” Munch muttered, looking absentminded again. “By the way, what did you think?”
“About what?” Gabriel said.
“When you read the news today?”
“Oh, right,” Gabriel replied, blushing slightly, feeling he should have realized what his new boss had asked him. “I guess I thought the same as everybody else, I presume. It was a bit of a shock. I’d been following the case about the two missing girls. Hoping they would turn up alive.”
Gabriel thought about the stories in the papers.
Pauline and Johanne found killed . . .
Like two dolls in the trees . . .
Families in deep mourning . . .
White Citroën spotted . . .
Have you seen these clothes . . . ?
“Was that what you meant?”
“What?” Munch had been lost in thought.
“Should I say anything else?”
“No, that’s fine,” Munch replied, placing his hand on Gabriel’s shoulder and turning to the door. “Or no, tell me a bit more.”
Munch gestured for Gabriel to sit down while he continued to lean against the glass wall.
“Well, I don’t really know,” Gabriel began. “When I woke up this morning, I was an ordinary guy, I didn’t know that this was the case I’d be . . . well, working on.”
The words tasted strange in his mouth. Working. On a case. A murder investigation. The newspapers wrote of little else, same for the TV channels. Everyone was talking about the discovery of the bodies of two girls who had been missing for weeks. All of Norway had been hunting high and low for them. It was obvious that the police knew more than they were saying, but they were asking anyone who had seen the clothes to come forward. The dresses. The girls had been found wearing dolls’ clothes. Between the lines a term was starting to appear, a term that had yet to be used, because this was Norway, not the United States or some other country where such things happened, and that term was “serial killer.” It had not been printed anywhere, and yet it was what everyone thought.
“I thought it must be the same killer,” Gabriel said.
“Aha. Go on.”
“I thought it doesn’t seem very Norwegian.”
“Exactly. Go on.”
“I was pleased they were not the children of someone I knew,” Gabriel continued.
Munch gestured for him to carry on talking.
“It was strange that both of them were about to start school. At first I wondered if it might be about a teacher. Then I feared that perhaps more girls will disappear. Then I thought that if I had a six-year-old daughter, I would take extra care of her right now.”
“What did you say?” Munch asked, and he seemed to come around momentarily.
“If I had a six-year-old daughter, I would take extra care of her.”
“No, before that.”
“Perhaps more girls will disappear?”
“Before that.”
“I thought it might be about a teacher.”
“Hmmm,” Munch said, scratching his beard again. He reached for the door. “Incidentally, are you any good at code breaking?”
Gabriel smiled faintly. “I thought that was why you hired me.”
“Oh, yes, so it was.” Munch smiled, too.
He stuffed his hand into his trouser pocket and produced a scrap of paper on which he had scribbled something.
“This isn’t a priority—it’s a private matter—but I’m hoping you might be able to help me.”
Munch handed Gabriel the note.
“I have several nerdy friends who like to challenge me. One of them sent me this, but I haven’t been able to crack it.”
Gabriel looked at the note Munch had just passed him.
Bwdybadynwbonnajgwpm=5
“Can you tell what it is?” Munch asked him with interest.
“Not at first glance,” Gabriel said.
“She’s been testing me for a few days.” Munch sighed. “But I think I have to give up. Let me know if you make anything of it, would you? I hate it when these pals of mine get one over on me.”
Munch chuckled and patted Gabriel on the shoulder again.
“But it’s not a priority; it’s just a private matter, okay?”
“Sure.” Gabriel nodded.
Munch finally left, and this time he made it all the way out into the corridor before he popped his head around the doorframe again.
“Full briefing has been postponed. It’ll be in just under an hour, okay?”
“Sure.” Gabriel nodded once more and stayed in his chair, studying the challenge on the note Munch had just given him.
17
Benjamin Bache could not hide his disappointment as he flicked through today’s edition of VG without spotting his own name. The paper had crowned this year’s best-dressed men, and last year he had come in a respectable third, beaten only by Morten Harket and Ari Behn; this year, however, he hadn’t even made the list. Damn it. The actor punched the wall in his dressing room but regretted it immediately. It hurt and made a noise. A moment later there was a knock on the door, and Susanne, the assistant director, appeared.
“Everything all right, Benjamin? I thought I heard something.”
Benjamin Bache stuck his still-aching hand into his pocket and put on his best smile. After all, he was an actor.
“Everything here is just peachy. Perhaps it came from Trond Espen’s dressing room?”
“Okay.” Susanne smiled. “Rehearsals start in fifteen minutes, act three from the beginning.”
“‘To be or not to be, that is the question,’” Benjamin recited with a wink.
The assistant director giggled before she disappeared. Oh, yes, he still had it. But for the love of God, he had made the list last year; what had gone wrong this time? He’d taken such care with his appearance. He had even hired a PR firm and a stylist to advise him. Making sure he looked good. Having his pictures taken at all the right events. From all the right angles. He heaved a sigh and sat down in front of his dressing table. He hadn’t aged much in one year. A few tiny wrinkles around his eyes. His temples were possibly slightly higher. He leaned forward and examined his hairline. There was cause for concern—it looked as if it had receded a bit since the last time he checked. He swept his hair to the side, as it looked thicker when he wore it like that. He began some vocal exercises. Warmed up his throat, pouted at himself in the mirror.
He had been hired by National Theater almost eight years ago. “A star is born,” Dagbladet had written after his interpretation of Estragon in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, and from then on he’d been cast almost exclusively in leading roles, at least initially. He had played Romeo. He had played Peer Gynt. And now he was in Shakespeare’s Hamlet on the main stage. He had hoped for the title role. Hamlet. To be or not to be. But instead he’d been cast as Horatio. The part of Hamlet had gone to Trond Espen because . . . well, it would, wouldn’t it? Though he didn’t really see why. He was obviously the better actor by far.
Oh, my dear Lord . . .
He was most put out. Acting in the shadow of Trond Espen. Bloody Horatio, a character ignored by practically everyone. It was pretty much only Hamlet who bothered to speak to him. Standing onstage, bowing his head, treating Trond Espen like a king . .
. no, that really went against the grain. Benjamin Bache got up and studied his body in the mirror. He really was very good-looking. It put him in a slightly better mood. His recent workout routine was producing results. The yoga, too. As were the skin treatments. He could not see a flaw anywhere.
He returned to his chair and carried on with the vocal warm-up as the stage manager’s voice crackled through the intercom.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we’re ready to run act three. Hamlet. Hamlet, act three from the top starting in five minutes.”
Benjamin Bache finished his vocal exercises, left his dressing room, and made his way to the main stage.
18
Gabriel Mørk was sitting at the back of the incident room waiting for the briefing to start. He had greeted everyone, shaken all their hands in turn, said “Hi . . . Hi” without being able to remember very many of their names. There was Kim, who had met him in the street, and a woman with long blond hair named Anette, and then there were three younger men whose names he could not remember and an older man whose name was . . . Ludvig, was it?
Holger Munch entered the room, closely followed by Mia Krüger. Mia took a seat in a chair at the front, while Holger turned on the projector and connected it to his laptop.
“Right, hello, everyone, today is the first briefing with everyone present. Full team in place, and that’s what we need. We have some new faces, welcome to you. Those of you who have done this before, please help the newcomers settle in so that we get the best out of everyone. It’s now ten days since we found the body of Pauline Olsen and eight days since we found Johanne Lange. After imposing a media blackout, we have decided to use the media to our advantage. As you have no doubt seen, we have today released pictures of the dresses the girls were found wearing.”
Holger paused briefly and looked across the assembly. Gabriel Mørk thought he could detect a faint smile behind the grave eyes.
“We should really be celebrating being back here in Mariboesgate,” Munch added. “But as you know, we have more important things to do, so that will have to wait.”
Gabriel glanced around the room. Even though the mood was somber, he saw smiles and a couple of contented faces around him. There was no doubt that this team was pleased to be back together again.
“Some of you have been here from the start, but not all, so I’m going to give you a full briefing. I would like to add that this briefing is available as a PDF file on the server, which will be up and running later today. We ask that you share all information, and by that I mean absolutely everything you discover in the course of the investigation. Please upload it to the server so everyone has access to it. Things move faster this way, and it makes it easier to write reports later.”
Munch hit a button on his laptop, and the first slide of his PowerPoint presentation appeared. These were not the same photographs that had been on the front pages of the newspapers, the two dolls’ dresses. These were of the missing girls wearing the same dresses and hanging from two separate trees. Gabriel Mørk had never seen anything like it. It was at this point he suddenly realized what he had signed up for. This was not a movie. This was not just another TV program. This was real. Those two little girls no longer existed. Someone had killed them. In real life. They were no longer breathing. They would never talk again. They would never smile again. They would never start school. Mørk tried to stay calm and forced himself to look at the photographs even though his stomach churned. He feared that he stood out enough as it was. Fainting during his first briefing would not look good.
“Pauline Olsen and Johanne Lange,” Munch said. “Both of them six years old. Due to start school this autumn. Pauline was reported missing four weeks ago. Johanne three weeks ago.”
More photographs, some maps.
“Pauline disappeared from Skøyen Church Nursery School and was found in Maridalen. Johanne disappeared from Lille Ekeberg Nursery School and was found in Krokskogen. The times of their deaths have been difficult to pinpoint exactly, but evidence suggests that the girls were kept prisoners for a period of time before they were dressed in these costumes and left in a place where we would find them.”
Munch again pressed a key on his computer, and fresh images appeared. Gabriel was unable to look at them and began glancing at the floor and at his shoes.
Dear God. What had he let himself in for? These girls were dead. The victims of some grotesque game.
He wished with all his heart he were back in his bed now. He felt that his life had changed in just a matter of minutes. He wished he had never seen these photographs. That he did not know that such people existed. People capable of such acts. Suddenly he felt utterly despondent. He was overcome by a sadness he had never previously known. Of course he knew that such things happened, and yet a part of him had refused to believe it. This was too unreal—no, it was far too real; it was reality bloody and brutal, that was what it was. Gabriel took a deep breath and concentrated very hard on sitting still.
“There was no sign of sexual assault,” Munch continued. “The girls had recently been washed, their nails trimmed and cleaned, their hair brushed. Both girls had a sign from Norwegian Airlines hanging around their neck: ‘I’m traveling alone.’ Both had backpacks on their backs. Both were killed with an overdose of anesthetics. There is no doubt that we are dealing with the same killer, and both the abductions and the murders were carefully planned. Pauline was found by a man named Walter Henriksen. He has a record, but not for anything like this. Two counts of driving under the influence some years ago, but we have no reason to think that he is involved. Johanne was found by two brothers, Tobias and Torben Iversen, aged thirteen and seven years old. The boys have a stepfather, Mikael Frank, who is also known to us. He served six months for minor offenses, but again there is no reason to think that any of them are involved. Door-to-door inquiries carried out in the vicinity of the crime scenes have not produced many leads, but as you know, a car was spotted that might turn out to be of interest, a white Citroën, the year unknown.”
Munch hit the keyboard again, and the photographs from the newspapers appeared. He took a sip from a bottle of Farris mineral water that was sitting on the desk and carried on.
“The dresses are copies of dolls’ clothes made especially to fit the girls. If the killer made them himself, we probably won’t get any useful leads from them, but there is a chance that he or she got the job done by a third party who didn’t know their intended purpose. That’s why we went to the newspapers, in the hope that someone might recognize them. We haven’t heard anything so far, Anette, is that right?” Munch turned to the blond woman.
“Nothing,” Anette said. “But it’s still early.”
“Absolutely.” Munch nodded. “For those of you who don’t know, Anette is the link between us and police headquarters at Grønland. All communication with them must go through her. We don’t want any leaks at our end. There’s a reason we’re hiding up here, isn’t that right, Kim?”
“I thought it was so that you can smoke on the terrace.”
There was muffled laughter among the small gathering.
“Thank you, Kim. Don’t get hit by the door on your way out. But seriously, and I cannot stress this enough: We don’t talk to anyone. Not to the press. Not to our colleagues down at Grønland. Not to family, friends, wives, girlfriends, roommates, mistresses, or in your case, Kim, your dog.”
There was scattered laughter once more. Gabriel Mørk looked around. He could not see how anyone could laugh in these circumstances, but then it struck him that that was all they could do. Distance themselves emotionally. They had to detach themselves. If they didn’t, then they wouldn’t be able to think straight and do their jobs properly.
Don’t feel too much. Don’t get emotionally involved.
He took a deep breath and tried to join in the laughter but didn’t manage to utter a sound.
“What we know,” Munch continued
, “we keep to ourselves. We’ll get all the help we need—just ask Anette over there. Whatever you want, talk to Anette. We’ve been allocated unlimited resources for this.”
“What do you mean by unlimited?” Kim asked.
“I mean no limits at all,” Munch said. “Overtime, vehicles, tech, manpower—this investigation is not only a priority for us and Grønland, it’s a case that concerns the whole nation. The orders are coming from the highest level, and I’m not talking about Mikkelson.”
“The justice secretary?” asked one of the men whose name Gabriel did not think he had caught.
His head was shaved and he looked like a thug. He could easily play the villain in a movie.
“Among others,” Munch allowed.
“The prime minister?” the man persisted.
“The prime minister’s office has been informed,” Munch said.
“Isn’t this year an election year?” The man with the shaved head grinned.
Kim smiled. “It’s always an election year, Curry.”
Curry. So that was his name. Gabriel had thought the man had said “Kari.”
“I don’t give a damn what the two of you think about the prime minister,” Munch continued in a more brusque tone of voice. “Those two girls could be our daughters, and we are not the only ones who feel that way, the whole country feels that way—look at the Net, at the news. We’re a nation in mourning, in shock. We’re not just solving this case to deliver justice to the girls’ families. It’s a state of emergency out there, people fearing for their lives, so I could not care less where you stand politically, Curry. A united government is backing this investigation with unlimited resources. It isn’t our job to question political motives. We have to find the killer. That’s our job, do you understand?”
For a moment the mood in the room was rather strained. Curry said nothing more, just bowed his head slightly and played with his fingers in his lap. Gabriel had not seen this side of Munch yet. On the telephone and in his office, the man had seemed incredibly kind and calm, affable, like a big teddy. Now he looked more like a grizzly bear. Dark were his eyes and dark was his purpose. Slowly Gabriel began to understand why Munch was the boss here, rather than any of the others.
