by Samuel Bjork
“Is she asleep?”
Mia Krüger turned around again and looked at Marion, who was still curled up under the blanket.
Miriam nodded. She liked Mia, always had. There was something about her personality. She was charismatic. She had great presence. At times she might seem a little distant and eccentric, but not to Miriam. Mia reminded her of herself, perhaps that was why Miriam had taken to her. Intelligent and strong, but also quite vulnerable.
“Your father received a coded message via a website,” Mia said.
“Mia!” Munch hissed, but Mia simply continued.
“The sender pretended to be a Swedish mathematician named Margrete. When we cracked the code, it turned out to be a direct threat against Marion.”
Miriam could see her father’s face grow redder.
“Seriously?” Miriam said.
To her surprise, she realized that she was intrigued rather than scared.
“And how long have you been in contact with her? Online, I mean?”
Her father made no reply. His jaw was clenched and his knuckles white around the steering wheel.
“Almost two years,” Mia said.
“Two years? Two whole years?”
Miriam could not believe her ears.
“Have you been in contact with this person for two years, Dad? Is that true? Have you been communicating with a killer for two years without realizing it?”
Munch still made no reply. His face was puce now, and he pressed the accelerator hard.
“He couldn’t have known,” Mia said. “Everyone on that website was anonymous. It could have been anyone.”
“That’s enough, Mia,” Holger Munch hissed.
“What?” Mia said. “Maybe Miriam knows something. If the killer has been in contact with you for two years, he might have contacted her as well. We have to know.”
Without warning, Holger Munch slammed on the brakes and pulled over, turning off the engine.
“You, stay where you are,” he ordered Miriam in the mirror. “You, out.”
“But, Holger,” Mia protested.
“Out. Get out of the car.”
Mia unbuckled her seat belt and left the Audi, against her better judgment. Holger Munch opened the driver’s door and followed her out onto the pavement. Miriam couldn’t hear the exact words, but it was clear that her father was incandescent with rage. He waved his arms about and was practically frothing at the mouth. She could see that Mia was trying to say something, but Munch did not let her get a word in edgewise. He jabbed his finger right up in her face, and for one moment Miriam feared that he might slap Mia. He ranted at length, and eventually Mia stopped talking. She was just nodding now. Then the two police officers got back inside the car. Munch started the engine, and nothing more was said. The mood in the car was tense. Miriam thought it best not to say anything. Two years? Her father had been in touch with a killer that long? No wonder he was livid. Someone had tricked him. And now four girls were dead. Was Marion meant to be number five? Had that been the message? Was that why they had to go into hiding? Miriam tightened the blanket around her daughter even more and stroked the girl’s hair while the black Audi continued through the night to a safe house whose location not even she knew.
48
Mia was standing on the pavement outside the gray apartment building in West Oslo, wondering if someone was watching her. It wasn’t the first time the thought had crossed her mind. Ever since she’d returned to Oslo, she had this horrible feeling of being followed. She’d dismissed it as paranoia. Quite normal for someone in her situation. It was vital not to give in to it. She was not anxious by nature, so that wasn’t the problem, but even so, she couldn’t shrug it off. She glanced about her, but she didn’t see anyone. The streets around her were completely quiet.
They had moved Miriam and her daughter to a safe apartment in Frogner. Safe in the sense that it wasn’t listed anywhere. Not in official archives. The night before, they’d kept mother and daughter in an apartment farther east, but Munch didn’t feel safe there and decided to move them again. The apartment they were using now was reserved for politicians and other important visitors who needed protection, but Munch had pulled a few strings on the QT so that only a small number of people were involved. He was getting really paranoid now, but she could see his point.
Mia glanced up and down the street. Still no one there. No cars. Not even a newspaper boy. She was all alone, and she was quite sure that no one had seen Miriam and her daughter enter the apartment.
A few minutes later, Munch appeared in the street. He lit a cigarette and raked a hand through his hair.
“Sorry,” Mia said.
“Don’t apologize, it was my fault,” he said. “I just wanted to . . . well, you know.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Mia said.
“Are we alone?”
“I think so. I haven’t seen anyone. Is everything okay up there?”
Munch took a deep drag of his cigarette and glanced up toward the third floor. “Everything is fine. Miriam is pissed off with me, but I understand. I hope she realizes that I’m only trying to help her.”
“Of course she understands,” Mia reassured him. “It’s just a bit too much for her right now. She’ll thank you when it’s all over.”
“I’m not so sure about that. I had to tell her that she can’t get married.”
“You told her to cancel her wedding?”
“Yes, of course.”
“That’s taking it too far,” Mia objected.
“A hundred people in the same church? And everyone with a connection to me? We couldn’t allow that,” Munch said.
It was a game to the killer, nothing more. He or she was playing with them. How do you rob a bank? You blow up the building across the street. The killer knew exactly what he was doing. What she was doing. This was about more than four girls. Than ten girls. Someone had been watching Munch for years. And knew exactly how to hit him where it hurt. How to create maximum confusion. Chaos. Terror. Mia had not slept more than four hours in the last three days, and it was starting to get to her now, she could feel it. She was struggling to think straight.
“Who’s at the office?” Munch asked when they were back in the car.
“Ludvig, Gabriel, Curry, I think,” Mia said.
“Mikkelson will take me off the case,” Munch said, lighting another cigarette without opening the window.
“How do you know?”
“What would you have done?” He looked at her without expression.
“Taken you off the case,” Mia said.
“Of course you would,” he said, and drove toward Mariboesgate.
“What’s your opinion?” Mia asked him.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s a legitimate question. We’re investigating a major incident. The killer is coming after you personally. Will you be able to stay objective? Keep your emotions in check? I don’t think so.”
Munch snorted. “Remind me again whose side you’re on.”
“Your side, obviously,” Mia said. “But someone is bound to ask that question.”
“It’s personal now,” Munch said, narrowing his eyes. “No one goes after my family and gets away with it.”
“My point exactly.”
“What?”
“One comment like that in front of Mikkelson and you’re out.” She ran her finger across her throat to illustrate.
“Ha,” Munch scoffed. “Who else would they put in charge?”
“Wenngård.”
“Yes, all right.”
“Klokkervold.”
“For Christ’s sake, Mia! Whose side are you on?”
“I’m just telling you, Holger. There are others. It is possible for you to step aside.”
Munch mulled it over before he replied. “What
would you have done? If it were a member of your family?”
“You already know the answer to that.”
“Exactly. So let’s say no more about it.”
“Don’t you think you ought to get some sleep?”
“Maybe, but it’s not going to happen.” Munch sighed before finally opening his window. “Contact everyone. Office in one hour. Those who don’t show can start looking for another job. We’re going over everything again. We turn over every stone until we find that bloody cockroach, even if it’s the last thing I do.”
Mia took out her phone.
49
“What have we got?” Munch said when everyone was gathered in the incident room. “And don’t say nothing, because that’s impossible. Somebody out there must have seen something. I know that you’ve all been working around the clock, but from now on we need to work twice as hard. Who wants to start? Ludvig?”
Mia looked around the room. A sea of tired faces stared back at her. It was agony. Everyone had put in a ridiculous number of hours in the last few weeks, but still they had almost nothing to show for it. Curry had grown a beard. Gabriel Mørk’s face was deathly pale, and he had big bags under his eyes.
“We’ve cross-referenced most of the names from Høvikveien Nursing Home with the Hønefoss case. So far we haven’t found anything, but we still have a few names to check.”
“Keep on with that, there might be something there,” Munch said. “Anything else?”
“I carried out a background check on the church you mentioned,” Gabriel said.
Munch glanced quickly at Mia, who simply shrugged. They had let the church slip to the bottom of their list. Too slow off the mark. They’d been planning to go there when the girls’ bodies were found at Isegran Fort, and immediately after that they’d discovered the threat to Marion.
“What have you found?”
“It’s a bit odd,” Gabriel said. “They call themselves the Methuselah Church, but I found no companies or religious organizations registered under that name. They don’t have a website or anything, it seems—either they haven’t quite entered the digital age or they’ve decided not to join, I don’t know.”
“Is that all you have?”
“No, there’s an individual whose registered address is the same place.” Gabriel checked the information on his iPad. “A Lukas Walner. I did a quick search, but he didn’t show up anywhere else.”
“Okay,” Munch said, scratching his beard. “I’ve visited the church myself, and as far as I remember, there were at least two people there. An elderly man with white hair and a man with short blond hair, possibly in his mid-twenties. We have to dig deeper, and it’s important that we do it quickly. The killer caught us unawares, and we need to regain the initiative. My mother attends services there, so I’ll see what I can get out of her, okay?”
“I’ll get on it as soon as we’re finished here,” Gabriel replied.
“Good,” Munch said, looking out over his team again. “Anything else?”
“We’re keeping Benjamin Bache under surveillance, but so far there’s nothing to suggest that he has anything to do with this,” Kyrre said.
“Okay,” Munch said. “We have plenty of resources, so just keep up the surveillance until we’re quite sure. Anything else?”
“I’ve run a trace on the account Margrete_08,” Gabriel said. “It’s a Hotmail address created on”—the young man looked at the iPad in front of him—“March second, 2010. A few days before you got the first email from her, isn’t that right?”
Gabriel glanced up at Munch, who looked uncomfortable. Not only was his mother’s name mixed up in the investigation, but the killer had also been in contact with him privately. And Munch had allowed himself to be used. Mia knew him well enough to see what was going on behind his furrowed brow. He was trying to pull himself together to avoid giving the rest of the team the impression that he was letting it get to him.
“That’s correct,” Munch said.
“This email account was only ever used to send emails to you. It’s been accessed from three different IP addresses.”
“Norwegian, please.” Curry yawned.
“IP addresses. Internet protocol addresses. Each device connected to the Internet has its own address that tells you where it is. Country, region, broadband supplier.”
“Its exact location?” Munch said.
“Yes.” Gabriel nodded, looking down at his iPad again. “Like I said, it was accessed from three different addresses. All Burger King outlets in Karl Johan, Ullevål Stadium, and Oslo Central Station. Using a laptop. Impossible to trace, to be honest. I’ve pinged it, but there’s no reply, so I guess it’s not connected anymore. The user probably tossed it—that’s what I would have done.”
“You can get Internet at Burger King?” Curry said.
“We’ve received just under two thousand calls,” Anette said, ignoring her tired colleague. “Most of them regarding the police sketch of the woman from Skullerud. I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but so far we haven’t received anything useful. The police sketch is too vague. It could be anyone. As for the reward . . . well, you know how this goes. You wouldn’t believe how many people like the idea of having a million kroner and think their neighbor looks a bit suspicious.”
Munch combed his hand through his beard. “Offenders with a similar MO?”
Kyrre just shook his head.
“Damn it, come on, people! We must have something! Someone must have seen something! Heard something!”
Mia gave Munch a hard stare. Calm down. Although this was a tight-knit team, she knew there would always be some who were keen to further their careers. She imagined that Mikkelson had a hotline to several of them.
She cleared her throat and got up. Walked over to the board to divert attention from Munch.
“I’m not sure if everyone is aware of what we know so far, so let me go over it again. Not everything is proved—some things are just ideas in my head, hunches, and I need your help with them. Tell me what you think, believe, feel. No suggestion is too stupid, everything is useful, okay?”
Mia looked around the room. They were quiet now. Everyone’s eyes were on her.
“This is the story as I see it. In 2006 someone takes a baby from Hønefoss Hospital. There are two main reasons to take a baby. One is blackmail, but no demands have ever been made, so we’ll ignore that. The second is that somebody wants a baby. That’s what I believe. Somebody wants a baby. I’ve thought all along, or perhaps felt it rather, that the killer is female. A woman wants a baby. Let’s imagine the following scenario: This woman has access to the maternity ward. As we’ve seen, and saw back then, it’s frightening how much easier it is to steal a baby than you would think. Especially a baby with no parents. Right, so this woman steals a baby. There’s outrage, obviously, everyone starts looking for the baby—the media, us, everyone. No one can withstand that much pressure. The woman finds a scapegoat, Joachim Wicklund. Very conveniently, he goes and hangs himself. Very convenient for us. The autopsy report tells us nothing, because no postmortem was ever carried out. Wicklund hanged himself. He confessed. Case closed. Everyone can move on.”
She drew breath and drank some of her Farris. She hadn’t planned what to say. She was talking just as much to herself as to the rest of the team.
“It occurs to me now that if we had carried out a full postmortem, there’s a good chance we would’ve found a needle mark in Wicklund’s neck. Very convenient and clever, isn’t it? An overdose in the neck, right under the rope, very hard to spot unless there was suspicion of foul play. Well, that’s one theory. So we have a woman. With a baby. Who knows how to perform injections. Who has access to drugs.”
“A nurse?” Ludvig suggested.
“A definite possibility.” Mia nodded and went on. “But we found no suspects among the nurses at Hønefoss. So we have a
woman who has stolen a baby. And everything is fine. The media is no longer writing about the kidnapping. We have given up. Then something goes wrong. Maybe the baby dies. Baby dies and she decides to come after us. It’s our fault that the baby died. We should have found her. We should have found the baby. And Munch is responsible. So she decides to come after Munch.”
She cleared her throat and took another sip of her mineral water. The room had gone very quiet now. Everyone knew that Mia was good at this. No one wanted to interrupt her now that she was in full flow.
“This woman is incredibly clever,” Mia continued. “But crazy. She thinks it’s acceptable to steal a child and has no problem with killing. It feels morally right for her, so this woman must have experienced something, something . . .”
She struggled to find the words.
“I don’t know what exactly, but it could have been any number of things. She’s logical and yet not seeing straight at the same time. Or at least she doesn’t see the world the way we do. She loved the baby, who is now dead. Perhaps. The baby was due to start school in the autumn. Now the baby is dead. I think that’s how she sees it. I’m traveling alone. The sign. The girls are going on a journey. Yes, it’s a journey. Mark 10:14, ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me.’ The girls are traveling to heaven.”
