Where Monsters Dwell

by Jorgen Brekke

  * * *

  Knut Jensen spent a long time studying the article.

  “This is typical local news. The Web site is operated by a newspaper in Trondheim, the third-largest city in Norway. It’s really just a small town, but they do have a university. The photo here is from the university library. There was some sort of conference dealing with Norwegian manuscripts and transcriptions of documents from the Middle Ages. The article emphasizes that there are very few such manuscripts in the country, but that those that do exist are extremely interesting. The book by a certain Johannes the priest is said to be especially exciting.” Jensen looked up at Felicia Stone. “Does this really have something to do with the case?”

  “No idea. But there, underneath the photo, what does that say?”

  “It only says that the picture was taken in the Knudtzonsalen, which is probably a room named after somebody called Knudtzon. And then the names of the people in the picture. Participants at the conference, I would guess.”

  “What would you say if I told you that one of these men told me that he doesn’t know anything about Scandinavian book collections?”

  “I’d probably say that was pretty strange. I don’t think he just stumbled into this photograph.”

  “That’s what I think, too. But when is this article from?”

  “Let’s see, here’s the date. They write dates the other way around in Norway. It was published in April this year.”

  “Do a search on this room, this Knudtzonsalen,” she said.

  Jensen searched for it, and he got a number of hits. He clicked on the first one and read: “The room was named after a guy named Broder Lysholm Knudtzon,” he said, after reading for a while on what looked like the home page of some institution, maybe a library or university. “He was apparently a big-time book collector.”

  “I knew it,” Felicia Stone muttered.

  Jensen clicked onto another article. She saw that this one was from Adresseavisen, too. The article was quite recent. It was actually from today.

  Knut Jensen sat there in silence, reading.

  “I don’t get this,” he said after a while.

  “Problems with the Norwegian?”

  “No, the language is understandable enough. It’s the content that’s baffling. The mention of Knudtzonsalen refers to the fact that all the employees in a certain department of the university library in Trondheim were assembled there today during a police investigation. And the case that was being investigated … Well, that’s amazing. This changes nearly everything, I should think. Either you’re a genius, or you’re the luckiest detective I know.”

  “Tell me what the hell you’re talking about!” She almost felt like grabbing Knut Jensen by the collar and shaking him.

  “Exactly twelve hours ago a woman was found murdered in the book vault at the university library in Trondheim.”

  “All right, that’s a strange coincidence.”

  “Right, but here’s the really strange thing. The woman was found with her throat cut and her body flayed.”

  Felicia just stared at him. This is where the case cracks wide open, she thought. She might have felt even better if they hadn’t simply stumbled on this information by accident. But what difference did it make? It was moments like this that a detective lived for. A breakthrough in the case. Finally!

  Then she stared at an image on the screen. It was a picture of a red-haired, full-figured woman. And she knew right away that she’d seen her before. It was the woman from Bond’s mysterious photograph.

  “Who’s that a picture of?” she asked, pointing, even though she already knew the answer.

  “That’s the woman who was murdered.”

  She gave Jensen a long look, wondering whether she ought to hug him. She made do with putting a hand on his shoulder.

  “Jensen, we need a written translation of this article as soon as possible. I’m calling an urgent meeting for the whole team, and I want you to be there.”

  * * *

  An hour later the team was assembled in the conference room. They began with the pathologist reading aloud his translation of the article from Adresseavisen. He had also spent time before the meeting surfing other major Norwegian online papers and told them that the case was big news all over Norway, and the police already had a suspect in custody. To that, Reynolds replied, as he chewed a big wad of gum, “If the press over there is anything like ours, we can take it all with a grain of salt. We also have a probable suspect.”

  “Well, do we really?” said Felicia Stone, who’d had time to go over a number of things in her mind after the initial intoxication over the breakthrough had subsided. “How likely is it that Nevins is actually in Norway?”

  “Theoretically, Nevins could be in Norway,” said Reynolds. “He left for Europe three days ago.”

  “He went to Germany,” she pointed out. “He mentioned that trip to me last week.”

  “In the meantime I’ve checked his alibi for the day Bond was killed. He was meeting with a book dealer in Louisville. I talked to the guy as well as people at the hotel he was staying the night of the murder. There’s no reason to doubt that he was there.”

  “We don’t have anything concrete on him at the moment,” said Morris, who until now had been sitting silently at the head of the table. “But just because he didn’t personally commit the murder, it doesn’t mean we can rule him out as a suspect. We shouldn’t forget the most important discovery. Today we learned that there were two murders instead of one. And no matter how much Nevins seems to be the link, it looks as though the victims actually knew each other. Bond had a photo of this Norwegian woman, Gunn Brita Dahle, on his PC.”

  “Well, there’s one more connection. Old books,” said Felicia. “I think we have to focus on that. It’s got something to do with books and bindings made of human skin.”

  “The main thing now is to confirm that these two cases are as similar as they seem. Jensen, what did you say the inspector’s name was? The one handling the library case in Norway?” Morris asked.

  “I didn’t say,” said Jensen, leaning close to his PC. “Let me see. His name is Odd Singsaker.”

  “Odd? That’s an odd sort of name,” Patterson said with a chuckle.

  Felicia just rolled her eyes.

  “Stone, get him on the phone so you two can compare notes. Maybe you ought to start thinking about packing an overnight bag.”

  “Yes, sir. Not to be difficult, but is that the way it’s done?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’re talking about a foreign case here. Aren’t there certain procedures that have to be followed? Don’t we have to go through a higher authority?”

  “Not before we know more. For the time being we have a case we’re working on, and they do, too. All we want is to exchange information. And I’ll bet they’re just as interested in talking to us as we are in talking to them.”

  “Great. But isn’t it better for Jensen to do the talking, since he knows the lingo?”

  “Jensen’s not a cop. No hard feelings, Jensen,” said Morris.

  “Morris is right,” Jensen said. “Besides, they’re good at languages over there. I was in Norway on vacation two years ago. As they heard my accent, they switched right into English.”

  “So Norwegians who’ve lived in Norway all their lives speak better English than you speak Norwegian?” Patterson asked.

  “Yep, you could put it that way,” Jensen said with a smile.

  “So how can we trust your translation then?” asked Patterson.

  Everybody looked at him in surprise. Patterson shrugged.

  “Just a joke,” he said, with a sheepish grin.

  * * *

  One hour and several discoveries later, Felicia Stone sat with the telephone in her hand and a swarm of butterflies in her stomach that were very restless, even for butterflies. Despite Jensen’s assurances that Norwegians spoke excellent English, she was worried that they wouldn’t understand her. A friendly woman at
overseas information had found her the number of police headquarters in Trondheim. When she called and introduced herself in English, a pleasant woman there switched to her language, with a lilting accent that was nevertheless easy to understand.

  Then she was patched through to Odd Singsaker.

  22

  Padua, 1518

  “Monkeys!” The word sprayed out of Master Alessandro’s mouth as if he were spitting at them. “Monkeys!”

  The boy and the beard-cutter were sitting on the bench at the back of the room where they had eaten breakfast, which consisted of dark bread and salt-cured ham. The master was pacing the floor in front of them. He had just come home from his morning walk. As usual his head was full of thoughts that he needed to air before he could calm down. Some days they were the most elevated ideas and insights, other days they were reproaches and protests. The latter were seldom directed at Galen of Pergamon, that great scholar of the human body. But today it was his turn to be criticized. The master had not even taken off his new ocher-yellow velvet cloak, which had flowered embroidery on the chest and ermine collar. The cloak was supposed to be worn only on his morning walks and when he stood at the lectern. Now it was flapping around him like a whirl of autumn leaves in the wind. They could do nothing but listen without comment. The topic of Galen and the interior of the human body always made the master’s cheeks flush and the words spray from his mouth, but as a rule not in anger.

  “Good Lord my Creator! Monkeys!”

  The boy had never seen a monkey before. The kids on the street never tired of talking about the merchant who had brought three monkeys with him to the marketplace the summer before they arrived in Padua. The merchant had sewn hats for them, and the monkeys performed a trick in which they imitated craftsmen using various tools. He was banned from the marketplace after one of the monkeys hit a margrave on the head with a hammer. The margrave was saved only by the tall hat that he had purchased that very day. Oddly enough it was the same nobleman, a student from somewhere in North Germany, who bought the monkeys after the merchant was unable to perform with them any longer. It was because of what he had done with them that Master Alessandro was now getting all worked up.

  Even though the boy never got to see the monkeys, he’d seen many of the drawings the other kids had made of them on the walls of neighborhood houses. They looked like people with long arms. But in one of the master’s books from the Orient he had also seen a picture drawn by a more skilled artist. In it he could clearly see that the monkeys were animals with fur and big, stupid eyes. And that was exactly what the master was talking about as he circled the room, waving a quill pen, as if he were writing something in the air.

  “Dumb animals, with no resemblance to human beings whatsoever. What can they teach us about the secrets of the human body?”

  The secrets of the human body. That was something he was always going on about; the boy knew that he loved this phrase, perhaps because he knew more about these secrets than anyone else. In short, it was a matter of secrets to which he had been made privy. What he actually was thinking about now, as he paced and his cheeks flushed red, was that he knew things about which Galen had never had the slightest idea.

  Galen’s renowned anatomical knowledge had been elevated to the required curriculum, not only at Galen’s own academy—consecrated to the god Asclepius on the outskirts of the magnificent city of Pergamon long ago—but in all later studies of human anatomy. It was true at the medical school in Salerno, at the universities, and not least here in Padua, where Master Alessandro himself was a teacher.

  Many times the boy had heard him lecture on the teachings of Galen. From the lectern the master called the end of the intestine the rectum, without winking, and made a point of mentioning that a man’s rectum was not straight, but curved—all because this was what Galen had taught. But then these monkeys had shown up on Alessandro’s table. The vengeful North German margrave had bought the monkeys and then kept them captive in his study for almost a year before giving them to the medical faculty at the university. There they ended up under the expert knives of the beard-cutter and Alessandro. No public dissection, but a long examination at night of the monkeys’ anatomy.

  The boy had not been allowed to attend that evening. He was disappointed, because it was his last chance to see the monkeys. But it was during this dissection that the master had a sudden epiphany. It was well-known that Galen had performed his dissections on animals. Yet on that night the master had realized that monkeys had a completely different anatomy from us. They could not be used as a model for understanding human beings. This was the insight that occurred to him. The boy saw the change in him; he saw that the master sometimes wanted to shout it from the lectern. “It’s monkeys that have rectums, not humans.” But he did not say it. He continued to develop his ideas in secret, sharing them only with a close circle, which included colleagues, students he trusted implicitly, and the beard-cutter. The boy also heard him speak of these ideas a few times. In the biggest medical schools in the Christian world, students were being taught that the human body was like that of an ape. At a number of universities it was considered sacrilege, yes, even pure heresy, to present any theories other than Galen’s. His teachings about the anatomy of a human being were the only accepted ones. Anyone who attempted to obtain tangible proof of other ideas might find himself burned at the stake for heresy.

  That is not how things were in Padua, which was under the wise protection of Venice. The laws of the mighty trading city stipulated, on the contrary, that every active physician was duty-bound to attend the autopsy of at least one executed prisoner annually. In Padua at least two anatomical presentations were given each year. Master Alessandro lectured at many of them, and at the last of these autopsies, which took place at the home of a nobleman, it was the beard-cutter, the master’s new, trusted assistant, who had wielded the knives.

  During these public dissections the master kept a good distance from the corpse. His role was to stand at the lectern and expound his ideas. The boy knew that it was precisely this situation that had created the deep schism in the master’s mind. Because at the lectern it was Galen who was the expert, while at the corpse it was the eyes of the witness. The beard-cutter could freely see what Galen had never seen, while the master’s eyes were locked solidly on the old physician’s writings, like a captive held imprisoned by the text.

  But for every public dissection, at least five unofficial ones were performed. The boy had personally witnessed some of them in Master Alessandro’s loft, with body parts he had personally helped to procure. It was during these dissections that the master could allow himself to wield the scalpel. It was here he had begun to see with his own eyes, feel with his own fingers, smell with his own nose, discover how infinitely little we knew about ourselves.

  His suspicion that there were serious errors in Galen’s teachings had slowly become a certainty. So when he finally dissected the three rabid monkeys, he understood what the biggest mistake was. Compared to animals, human beings are superior not only by virtue of their merits or their spirits. Human organs are also superior. Certain aspects of the human body were beyond anything that could be learned from dissecting an ape.

  Tomorrow it was going to happen—what the master wanted, but had not dared. He had invited only those closest to him, and for the first time he was going to wield the knives himself during a dissection with an audience. This was no officially sanctioned dissection. They would have to obtain the corpse themselves.

  The anatomical theater was his own invention. He had long yearned for a stage like this. The solution had come to him gradually, conjuring up images, small sketches, in his mind. Eventually he was able to draw the whole thing on paper and take his drawings to Alfonso, the master builder.

  He had had the theater built in the backyard of his house in Padua. It consisted of three rows of benches in a round amphitheater. The rows were built at a steep angle above one another, in order to make the line of sight as shor
t as possible, even from the top row. The theater was built without a roof, so that daylight could enhance the view. In the middle was a rotary table, where the corpse would be placed. The whole structure was built out of wood. But as the master said, “A structure like this should be built out of stone. It should be erected on the best site in the city and should accommodate hundreds of viewers. An anatomical theater should not be hidden away in a backyard.”

  Alessandro took off his cloak and looked at the beard-cutter and the boy. Peace had returned to his countenance. His intelligent eyes were once again the way the boy remembered them.

  “Alfonso finished his work last night,” he said. “Now all we need is a corpse. We’ll have it at sundown.”

  * * *

  Located outside the city walls of Padua, a short distance along the road to Venice, was what the local populace called with dark ambivalence “the cemetery of the innocents.” This was no ordinary cemetery but a piece of land surrounded by a stone wall. This was the final resting place for the poor souls who succumbed to the plague in the years when it so ravaged the land that the churchyards closer to town could not hold all the victims. Here were also buried those who had been executed and committed suicide, as well as others whose souls, for some reason, had been condemned to eternal perdition.

  For anyone who needed a human corpse, this was the place to look. The graves here were shallow, the guards negligent, and the markers only sporadic. The boy had been out here before with the beard-cutter. Master Alessandro owed much of his knowledge to this place.

  They were not always lucky enough to find a whole body. But the master’s thirst for learning was great and could be satisfied by bones devoid of flesh, connected only by sinews, perhaps with a muscle or two still in place. The beard-cutter and the boy had rocked parts of skeletons loose from corpses in various stages of decay, and once they got hold of a shoulder blade, an arm, and a hand missing the fingers, as well as a foot. When the master saw this, they were sent back to secure the thorax. The next day they carted the skeleton piece by piece back to Alessandro via various detours to the city, so that the master at last had an almost intact skeleton.