Where Monsters Dwell

by Jorgen Brekke

  “Isn’t it incredible that such a famous book could have so many gaps in its provenance?” Singsaker asked.

  “Yes, it is. We know very little for certain about the Johannes Book.”

  He thanked her for her time and left, closing the door behind him. On his way toward the stairs he remembered something that he should have asked, went back, and opened the door without knocking. The conservator, holding a cell phone in her hand when he came back in, gave a start. He apologized.

  “I just have to ask you, How well do you know Jon Vatten?”

  Her face relaxed a bit.

  “I don’t know him well. I usually only talk to him when I need books from the vault.”

  “And he never talks to you about his life outside work?”

  “I don’t think he has any life outside work.”

  “Do you know if he’s been here every day for the past three weeks?”

  “I’m quite sure that he has, though I don’t see him every day, since I’m down here in the basement. You’d have to ask Hornemann.”

  Singsaker thanked her, realizing that he should have done that already. Damn that hole in his brain! Then he left. But he didn’t go up to the second floor. Instead he took up a position under the stairway by the wall, where he couldn’t be seen from the corridor. It wasn’t even five minutes before his suspicion was confirmed. Silvia Freud came hurrying along the corridor and headed up the stairs above him.

  He followed and caught a glimpse of her as she vanished out the back door to the parking lot by the Suhm building. He watched from inside until she got into a little green Nissan Micra. As she backed out of the lot, he ran through the building to his police car, which was parked on the other side of the library. He jumped in and just managed to turn the corner at the Erling Skakkes gate in time to catch sight of the little green car as it signaled a left turn near the theater. The squad car wasn’t the best vehicle to tail someone in, and there was at least one traffic light between him and Silvia Freud. She turned down Prinsens gate and disappeared. He’d need a lot of luck to catch up with her again.

  When he reached the intersection, he had to stop for a red light. He sat there looking down the street in the direction the Nissan had gone but saw no trace of the green car. He cursed to himself. There was no point in calling for backup. All he had was a vague feeling that something was fishy here. It was a big leap from there to claiming that she had something to do with the murder, and he was well aware that tailing the library’s conservator just because she behaved a bit strangely was a detour that Brattberg wouldn’t appreciate. He’d have to go solo.

  Without much hope of making progress, Singsaker turned into traffic and followed everyone else down toward Kongens gate. A good detective always needs a bit of luck, and for a mediocre one like me, it’s an absolute necessity, he thought. When he reached the next intersection, he stopped again and looked around. He spied the car parked outside the Prinsen Hotel. He parked on the other side of Kongens gate and walked across the street.

  The Prinsen was one of the city’s better three-star hotels and a popular choice both for business travelers and tourists with urbane taste. One time he’d picked up Lars from a school dance there—his son had been half drunk, with his mouth full of peppermint gum—but otherwise Singsaker only went to the basement bar that had an entrance in the back. The Kjeglekroa bar was said to be the oldest watering hole in Trondheim, but its status as a local dive was always being jeopardized by the well-dressed hotel guests who frequented the place. Sometimes he and Thorvald would hang out there on evenings when they weren’t working, but now, at ten o’clock in the morning, Kjeglekroa was closed. He decided to try the Egon restaurant instead.

  The restaurant was only half full, with latecomers from the hotel who were busy eating breakfast. The waiters went from table to table cleaning up, taking their time. At a window table farthest from the door, Silvia Freud sat with her back turned, carrying on a heated conversation with an elderly gentleman. He was dressed like an academic, in a turtleneck sweater and tweed jacket. If not for the nonsmoking ordinance, he would probably have been sucking on a pipe. His face was furrowed with concern as he listened to what she was telling him. Singsaker moved as close to them as he could while the conservator was turned away. He fished out his cell phone and surreptitiously took a series of photos. Then he slipped the phone back into his pocket and left. Outside he looked at the photos he’d taken and was pleased to see he’d made a good choice when he bought this new phone. The camera was excellent. He’d captured the whole face of the unknown man, sharp and clear. He still didn’t know what he was going to use the pictures for, or what the meeting between those two was about, but something told him that the photos would come in handy.

  When he got back in his car, he noticed that he’d developed sweat rings under his arms. On the dashboard he could see that the temperature had risen to seventy-two. We must be approaching some kind of record high for September, he thought.

  * * *

  At the police station, Brattberg wanted to talk.

  Singsaker told her about his conversations with Hornemann and Freud but left out the part about tailing the conservator.

  Gro Brattberg was impatient.

  “But still nothing more about Vatten?”

  “Honestly, I don’t think anyone knows him very well,” he said. “But the theft of the Johannes Book has given me so much to do that I haven’t had a chance to talk to many people. It’d probably be best to send down another detective. But oddly enough, I got the impression that this new librarian, Siri Holm, knows more about Vatten than the people who’ve worked with him for years.”

  “So why haven’t you talked to her?”

  “She wasn’t at work yet. I was going to call her.”

  “All right, we’ll look into that,” she said. “But first I want you to talk to the coroner. They’re almost finished with the autopsy and should be able to give us an oral report.

  “And one more thing. We’ve gone over all the AutoPASS records, including the one between Flakk and Rørvik, and we got no hits on Jens Dahle on either Saturday or Sunday. However, his car was registered on the ferry Friday afternoon and Monday morning, as he told us. Mona Gran also went to talk to his kids at their grandparents’ house. They’ve been told what happened. The only sensible thing she got out of them was that their father was at the cabin all day Saturday.”

  “So we can rule out the husband,” said Singsaker.

  “The husband is never ruled out of any case,” said Brattberg cynically. “But all the focus has shifted to Vatten. What’s he up to? Is he the one who took the damned book? Is that how he’s going to finance his escape?” She was bubbling over with questions.

  For a moment he stood there wondering whether to say anything about Silvia Freud and the pompous academic at the Prinsen Hotel. But again he rejected the idea. His boss was right, of course. Now it was all about Vatten.

  25

  Kittelsen, the coroner at St. Olav’s Hospital, was an old, stooped doctor with an eye for detail. He never made jokes, always got straight to the point, and never had time for small talk. He was a medical examiner after Chief Inspector Singsaker’s own heart. It wasn’t often that he went to Kittelsen’s office for an oral report; usually they just received written ones. Kittelsen never said more or less than he wrote in his reports, so there wasn’t much to be gained by asking him questions. But this was no ordinary case. So much damage had been done to the corpse that he was sure Kittelsen could have written a whole book about it.

  “Give me the main points, Kittelsen,” he said, sitting down. The office was located in the new lab in the department of pathology and medical genetics. Kittelsen didn’t fit in with the modern furnishings, and the heart-shaped desk offered a sharp contrast to his blunt manner. In order to feel more at home, he’d brought with him the most important items from the rundown office he’d had before. A skeleton stood evaluating Singsaker skeptically from the darkest corner of the o
ffice. Yellowed anatomical charts covered part of the newly painted walls. Singsaker’s gaze fixed involuntarily on the poster just behind Kittelsen. It was an anatomical depiction in black and white. He couldn’t tell when it had been printed, but it wasn’t this century. The image showed a female cadaver tied into a sitting position by a rope around her neck. The spine was straight, and you could see one thigh bent forward in what would be a natural, possibly somewhat provocative position for a live young woman. On this corpse all the skin was flayed off, while along the hips the subcutaneous fat hung down over the rear section, like a blanket that had been partially removed. Was this a morbid kind of striptease? The muscles on the flayed back were numbered, as if to emphasize that this had been done in the service of science. It struck him as downright unseemly for Kittelsen to have a picture of a flayed human being on the wall, especially considering the present case, but the doctor must have had the poster for so long that he no longer noticed it.

  “The main points,” said Kittelsen, pausing to smack his lips but only as long as his efficient nature would permit. “The reports on the semen residue already came in. My findings show that the semen had been inside the victim for a good while before she was killed.”

  “How long is ‘a good while’?”

  “Based on where the semen was located in the vagina and how much had been absorbed through the vaginal wall and such, I would say an hour or two. Maybe more.”

  “So that means that the person who had sex with the victim wasn’t necessarily the same one who killed her?” he asked without understanding why that made him feel so elated.

  “I leave that sort of conclusion to you,” said Kittelsen dryly. “I’m only presenting our findings. I can tell you that the person who killed, cut the throat, and flayed Gunn Brita Dahle could possibly have done this before. But I wouldn’t describe this person as skilled. The incisions are too rough and irregular to have been made by a surgeon. The skin and most of the head were removed after the victim died.”

  “Most of the head?”

  “Yes, the cause of death was most likely the fact that the throat was cut first. While the victim was dying from the first cut, the perpetrator continued slicing at the neck. To sever the spine a small ax or a very sharp knife was used. But the murderer obviously tried various different tools. You asked for the main points, and this is probably the major one,” said Kittelsen, fishing out a dark piece of metal from an aluminum bowl on his desk.

  “And that is what?” asked Singsaker, as he felt his pulse quicken.

  “It’s a piece of metal.”

  “You’ll have to give me more than that.”

  “I found it between two of the cervical vertebrae that were still attached to the corpse. It’s my guess that one of the tools used in the attempt to cut through the spine broke, and a piece got stuck. The killer then took another tool and finished the job a little higher up the neck.”

  “So this is a piece of one of the knives that the killer used?”

  “That’s my theory, yes.”

  “Can you say any more about it?”

  “No,” said Kittelsen. “It will have to be analyzed by experts.” The doctor took out a transparent bag, placed the metal piece in it, sealed it, and handed it to him. “If I could make a suggestion,” he said as Singsaker got up, “an archaeologist should take a look at it.”

  “Why?” asked Singsaker.

  “Because it’s not exactly stainless steel,” said the pathologist laconically.

  * * *

  “Based on the quality of the steel and the little I can evaluate from the shape, I’d say it’s from at least the seventeen hundreds. It was most likely oiled and maintained almost continuously, since it’s in astoundingly good condition. If special care was taken, the knife could be even older, but probably not much older than five hundred years.” Jens Dahle raised his head from the microscope and straightened to his full height in front of Chief Inspector Singsaker.

  Gunn Brita Dahle’s husband had agreed to meet him at the office in the Science Museum. Singsaker had told him on the phone why he wanted to see him, assuring Dahle that someone else could do the evaluation, but adding that there were a couple of other questions he’d like to ask him. When the detective arrived at the museum, Dahle was already in his office, waiting to receive him. He was unshaven and had beads of sweat on his forehead. It was close to one o’clock, and the temperature outside had gone up to seventy-five degrees. Jens Dahle raised his eyebrows when he saw the knife point that Singsaker handed him.

  “The fragment is definitely steel, which is actually no different than iron but with a higher carbon content. But steel has been produced by different methods since ancient times. So that in itself tells us a little about its age. A closer analysis of the alloy could tell us more. For instance, any modern tool made of steel would contain some mineral, to give the steel different properties. The element chromium is used to make the steel stainless. In so-called surgical stainless steel we find a minimum of eleven percent chromium, as well as nickel. I can definitely state that this is not the case with this fragment. But if you want to know the exact age, it would have to be carbon-dated. I can arrange that for you, but it will take time.”

  “A test like that will probably have to go through our own technicians,” said Singsaker. “Right now I just want to get a quick preliminary evaluation. But you don’t have any idea where a knife like this might come from?”

  “This fragment isn’t big enough to tell us what sort of knife it’s from. It could be a hunting knife or a butcher’s knife. It’s from a time when pretty much every man wore a knife on his belt. Since it’s so pointed, I would guess that it’s not a barber’s knife, though it may well have belonged to a barber.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “In the period we’re talking about, barbers owned the widest selection of knives, sawing implements, and drills. They did more than just cut beards. A barber often functioned as both a local surgeon and executioner. They were experts with blades of all types. At some of the universities on the southern part of the Continent, it gradually became more accepted to dissect human bodies, starting in the fourteen hundreds. Then it was usually a barber-surgeon who performed the dissection itself, while the professor stood at a lectern above the dissection table and lectured from his notes. Often the actual findings that the barber-surgeon made did not agree with the lecturer’s manuscript, which was frequently copied out from much older sources. If there was any doubt, the professor was always right, of course.” Jens Dahle chuckled.

  Singsaker wondered if this was something Dahle had talked about so many times before that he managed to forget his grief for a moment. Even Dahle’s laughter was programmed into the subject matter.

  “In any case that’s how it was until the renowned anatomist Vesalius began his series of dissections in the fifteen hundreds in Padua. Vesalius dissected the corpses himself. He became famous for doing that and, in some places, infamous. In Pisa he was called a barber surgeon. Vesalius was one of the first to prove that the great authority in the field of anatomy until then, the Roman doctor Galen of Pergamon, had built most of his knowledge about the human body by dissecting apes and other animals. Vesalius came to this conclusion because he himself dissected animals as well as humans. But some of Galen’s erroneous conclusions are still retained in anatomical terminology. The terminus of the human intestine, for example, is curved rather than straight, as the term ‘rectum’ indicates. In apes, the rectum is straight.”

  For an archaeologist, Dahle knew a surprising amount about medical history. Singsaker couldn’t rid himself of the thought that this subject matter was somehow relevant to the murders. The corpse of Gunn Brita Dahle bore a remarkable similarity to the charts on the medical examiner’s wall. The murderer must have shared Jens Dahle’s fascination with anatomy, but in a way that was far more perverse than scientific.

  “Did this Vesalius make drawings and charts?” he asked.

  “N
ot personally, but he had one or more unknown illustrators,” said Dahle. “Vesalius published what is considered the first serious anatomical atlas, De humani corporis fabrica. That book consists of eighty-five detailed illustrations of the human body, in which the various anatomical details were revealed layer by layer.”

  Almost like a striptease, Singsaker thought gloomily. Then he described the illustration in Kittelsen’s office.

  “That’s probably not Vesalius. It sounds like a copperplate engraving by a famous anatomical illustrator from the sixteen hundreds. Now what was his name? Gerard de Lairesse, I think it was.”

  “You seem to know a lot about this topic.”

  “If you’ve dug up grave sites and studied enough bones, you begin to take an interest in the subject. But everyone ought to know more about it. Understanding one’s body is to understand oneself.” Here he stopped, and his expression turned somber. For the first time it seemed as though he was looking at himself from the outside, and he may have noticed the chasm between the scientific way he was speaking and the emotional chaos he found in himself.