But Singsaker wanted to push him further.
“Do you know anything about the anatomist Alessandro Benedetti?” he asked, finally getting to what he really wanted to know.
“Yes. But we don’t know as much about him as we do about Vesalius. Benedetti lived in Venice and Padua before Vesalius began working there. He’s one of several doctors who laid the groundwork for Vesalius, you might say. He presumably performed a number of dissections, possibly doing some of them with his own hands, and it’s conceivable that he already knew about many of the things that Vesalius is famous for having discovered. Like Vesalius, he stole a number of corpses from graveyards, but no doubt he also performed public dissections, which were legal and regulated in Venice starting in the fourteen hundreds. Alessandro Benedetti was the first to describe an anatomical theater.”
“An anatomical theater?”
“Correct. The first anatomical theater that we know of was built in Padua. There is still one in Padua today, and tourists can visit it. But several smaller and temporary theaters were presumably built earlier, perhaps according to Benedetti’s instructions. We don’t know for certain. The theater was supposed to be a place where public dissections could be held for many onlookers. The main point was that people who came to watch—students, doctors, and other spectators—could see what was actually revealed during the dissection. According to Benedetti, the theater had to ensure a good view, a large, well-illuminated dissection table; good ventilation; and a security staff. He also thought it was a good idea to charge an entrance fee. From Padua the concept spread from one university to the next in the fifteen and sixteen hundreds. Soon there were anatomical theaters everywhere. The northernmost one was built at the university in Uppsala, Sweden, in the mid–sixteen hundreds. This theater is actually one of only three that have been preserved from that period. I recommend paying a visit to it.”
“Maybe when this case has been solved,” said Singsaker, and once again the shadows returned to Dahle’s eyes.
“To get back to the matter at hand,” Dahle said, more bluntly, “the knife you are looking for could be one that was used for such dissections. It’s thin and very sharp, and the edge has a slight curve like a modern scalpel. No autopsies were performed in Norway during the period we’re talking about, so if the knife is Norwegian, it’s more likely that it was used for other medical purposes, such as amputations.”
“I see. But you don’t think the knife might be from Venice or Padua?” Singsaker asked.
“No, why should I? But if it was used for dissections, anything is possible, of course.”
“Who might be thought to own such a knife today?”
“Not many people. Maybe a collector, a farmer with far too much old junk in his barn, I don’t know. Most objects of this type are probably kept in storerooms at institutions like this.” The archaeologist threw out his arms.
“And if this knife turned out to be from the fifteen hundreds and privately owned, would you say that it was valuable?”
“It would be extremely valuable, because of the quality and condition of the metal. But of course it depends on the provenance. For example, if it could be linked to historical personages, the price would climb considerably in the private collectors’ market. And this one is in remarkably good condition, judging by the small fragment we have.”
The image in Singsaker’s mind was now crystal clear. The ancient scalpel he held in Siri Holm’s apartment as she dried herself off with a towel. He had only studied the shaft of the knife and hadn’t noticed whether the point of the blade was missing. The first thing I have to do when I leave here is call her, he thought.
“I hope I’ve been of some help,” said Dahle. “When I spoke with you on the phone, you mentioned that there were other things you wanted to ask me about.”
“Yes, there are,” said Singsaker. “But we’ll have to get to them later.”
26
Odd Singsaker swore on his way out of the Science Museum. He was supposed to be hunting for Vatten, but every new clue he found pointed in a different direction. This case had turned into a labyrinth, no, a cabinet of curiosities, he thought, imagining a museum storeroom full of cartons and file boxes with no catalog or labels, so it was impossible to know what might be hidden in the next box.
He dialed Siri Holm’s number. “You have reached the voice mailbox of 555 10 476. Please leave a message after the beep.” Singsaker didn’t leave a message. His feet were already carrying him toward Rosenborg.
* * *
After he had rung Siri Holm’s doorbell three times without getting a response, he began to study the locks. One was an ordinary lock that he could probably pick easily. But the deadbolt looked more difficult. It looked recently installed and wouldn’t be easy to crack. Even the door was relatively new and seemed solid. Impossible to break it down without causing a lot of damage. He looked at his watch. It was almost three. Just before he got to the apartment he’d called Hornemann to check whether Siri had shown up at work. She hadn’t. So she’d been gone almost the whole workday. But he didn’t have any indication that criminal activity was behind her disappearance. In other words, he had no legal grounds for breaking into her apartment.
He went outside the fourplex and stood there looking around. The whole building seemed empty. There were no lights on, and no one was moving about. Then he walked around the building to the backyard. There he saw a trampoline, which indicated that there were kids in one of the units. At the top right he could see Siri Holm’s balcony. He felt a prickling at the back of his neck when he saw that the balcony door was open. A ladder hung down the wall.
Police officers are never surprised at how easy it is to break into someone’s dwelling. They know it’s easy. They know that people don’t pay close enough attention, especially in broad daylight. Even though anyone could see him if he climbed up the ladder to the balcony, he knew from innumerable witness interviews that few people would think he was doing anything illegal. Most would have seen a workman doing his job, or an unfortunate renter who had locked himself out. Of those who might be suspicious, most would be reluctant to say anything to him. It was incredible the lengths people in Norway would go to in order to avoid bothering strangers, even if they happened to be thieves.
Once inside, he noticed that Siri hadn’t cleaned up since the last time he was there. Then he saw the dog, who was lying in the same spot by the door. He tried to recall if it had been there the whole time during his last visit. If it had, that would have been the first time he’d had sex with a dog watching. Now the dog merely raised an eyebrow when he came in. Obviously not a watchdog. That the dog was in the apartment might mean that her disappearance hadn’t been planned. The Afghan hound closed both eyes, yawned as if terribly bored, and rested its long snout on one paw. The dog had no objections to him taking a look around. Then he caught sight of a human form standing in the kitchen doorway. The mannequin was naked now, the way Siri Holm had been when he left her. He stood there admiring it. It was beautifully made. The whole mannequin had been carved from wood and polished; was it oak? The limbs were round and could be posed. The proportions were exact, male. And this mannequin was also an antique. He could imagine it in a nineteenth-century Italian tailor’s shop. Siri Holm’s apartment was an eclectic, disorganized museum.
His looked around the room for something in particular, and in the middle of the floor, about where it had been lying the last time, he found it. Alessandro Benedetti’s scalpel. He picked it up and studied the point.
Damn, he thought, when he saw it. He stood there with the knife blade pressed between his right thumb and index finger. It felt warm against his fingertips. Then he threw the scalpel. It spun several times in the air before it struck the oak mannequin over by the door. The arms and one leg shook as if in death spasms. The scalpel protruded from the mannequin’s chest. It had gone in right above the heart, with a point that was still intact. Damn, he thought again, but he was relieved. Siri Holm wasn’t t
he killer. But where was she?
He looked around again. It would take too much time to sift through all this junk for clues, if there were any. As he stood there thinking, his cell phone rang. Vlado Taneski again, the reporter. With a mixture of irritation, professional pride, and uncertainty regarding how long he’d be able to hold out in the siege against the warriors of free speech, he pressed the END button. Then his cell rang again. It was Brattberg. This time he took the call.
“Where are you?” she wanted to know.
“I’m outside Siri Holm’s apartment,” he lied, and gave her a brief report on his visits to Kittelsen and Jens Dahle.
“That is an interesting development,” Brattberg said. “But what are you doing at Siri Holm’s place? You know we’re still looking for Vatten, right?”
He paused to think. Then he told her about the conservator, Silvia Freud.
“That doesn’t sound like a very strong lead. She had an appointment with somebody at the Prinsen Hotel. So what?”
“I suppose it’s kind of a long shot,” he had to admit.
“A very long shot. But there’s one thing that makes me not want to discount it entirely. Grongstad just gave me a printout of everyone who used a card key at the library that Saturday. It was Gunn Brita Dahle and Vatten, and also a student who was manning the counter until the library closed, and who did not have access to the office wing. But also this conservator, Silvia Freud. She left the office long before the estimated time of the murder. We also know that Siri Holm was there. But she was probably let in and out with Gunn Brita Dahle’s card key. Most likely she also left the scene before the murder. If there were any other people inside, then they must have used a key. For someone who doesn’t want to leave evidence behind, that’s actually a possibility. Several system keys are in circulation, and I don’t think that Hornemann has a complete list of who uses them.”
“But this does connect Silvia Freud more closely to the murder than we thought.”
“As I said: Both she and Siri Holm left the library early, while the video surveillance system was still on. We have footage from the book vault. I don’t know how you’re going to link either of them to what happened.”
“Me neither. But I’ve got a hunch.”
“Now listen to me, Singsaker. I have great respect for your hunches. I know they’ve been helpful before. But you’ve been through a lot, and this has been a brutal way to start back on the job. I want you to go home and lie down for a few hours. This evening you can drive out to Værnes and pick up our friend from the States. That’s the only assignment you have for tonight. The rest of us will keep looking for Vatten. He’s the one at the center of it all. If this Siri Holm is missing, and if she has something to do with the case, that still doesn’t rule out Vatten. Grongstad’s people, by the way, also found an empty bottle of Spanish red wine in a trash can outside the library, and guess what?”
“Fingerprints?”
“Not just anybody’s.”
“Vatten?”
“And Gunn Brita Dahle.”
“But what about the semen samples. Do we know any more about them?”
“Singsaker, it’s September. It’s a little early to start waiting for the fat guy with the big white beard and red suit. You know the way they work at Forensics in Oslo,” Brattberg said.
“Kittelsen told me that the semen apparently landed where it did long before the murder occurred,” he said.
“I know. I’ve got the report right here. But now that we found the wine bottle, we know that Vatten lied to us.”
“Well, it’s not illegal to drink wine. And we don’t know when the bottle was tossed in the trash can. But of course you’re right, everything does point to Vatten,” he said, wondering why he instinctively came to Vatten’s defense.
“So let us handle things now. I want you to rest up for tomorrow. We’ll send a car to your apartment this afternoon to pick up the knife point. We need to take a look at it as soon as possible,” she concluded.
After Brattberg hung up, he thought going home and taking a nap wasn’t such a bad idea. Instead, he went into Siri’s kitchen. To his surprise he discovered that one of the cupboards was used as a well-stocked liquor cabinet. He perused the bottles. Most of them were unopened liter bottles, apparently bought in the tax-free shop or abroad, or maybe received as gifts. At the back of the cupboard stood a bottle of aquavit. Not Rød Aalborg from Denmark, of course, but domestic Linje. The bottle had been opened and was half full. He pulled out the cork and put the bottle to his lips. The first swallow hit the spot. The next four failed to have quite the same effect. Brattberg was right, he thought, as he replaced the bottle in the cupboard. I could use a rest.
With a leisurely gait he crossed the living room floor, glancing at the sofa where they had made love so passionately. Then he looked at the dog, who was the only one who knew about it. In the bedroom he saw that the only thing on her bed was the tae kwon do outfit. He lay down, breathing in the scent of her. She smelled like eggnog, raspberries, and a hint of mature cheese. Then he fell asleep and slept like an overworked cop who’d had brain surgery, with just the right amount of aquavit in his blood.
* * *
The female passport officer gave her a big smile.
“How are you?”
“I’m fine,” Felicia Stone lied. It was more than twenty hours since she’d left Richmond via Atlanta, and ever since changing planes she’d been sitting in the same damned seat in front of the emergency exit. For safety reasons the seat could barely be reclined, and her lumbar region had almost collapsed before they reached London. Nothing had improved on the connecting flight to Oslo.
“How long is the flight to Trondheim?” she asked impatiently, as the passport officer tried to get the scanner to read the code in her passport. Couldn’t she just look at the picture? Felicia thought. It’s not that hard to see that it’s me, is it? Finally the computer beeped, and the officer got the information she needed on her monitor.
“The flight is only forty-five minutes,” she said. “But I hear there’s a good deal of turbulence because of the wind and the unusually warm weather in the Trondheim region.”
Felicia groaned.
“I thought I’d at least escaped the heat,” she said, taking her passport and heading off to search for the domestic terminal.
* * *
At eight o’clock, the phone rang. Singsaker had been in a dark corner of dreamland for five hours. At one point he had found himself lying on a dissection table in an anatomical theater. He had been unable to move, as if he were anesthetized, but he was still conscious. It was Dr. Kittelsen who was in charge of the dissection. He slowly flayed him. Then he tried to sell the skin to the highest bidder. The dream ended when Singsaker bought the skin himself and wrapped it around his shoulders like a cape. When he woke up he was far from rested.
“Singsaker,” he coughed into the phone he’d fished out of his pocket without getting up from the bed.
The officer introduced himself, saying a name he didn’t catch.
“We’re outside your place and need to pick up a piece of evidence. It’s going to the crime lab.”
Singsaker sat up slowly and looked around. Outside it was getting dark. Shadows filled the room, but he quickly saw that he was not at home.
“I’m out shopping right now. Tell them I’ll bring the object in myself a little later,” he replied, and ended the call. He felt sick. Nausea was not good. He hated nausea almost as much as sweating. He gingerly moved his feet off the bed and set them down on a throw rug. He sat there swaying on the edge of the bed. Finally he fixed his eyes on the nightstand. He saw a stack of mysteries. On top of it was a wireless phone, and next to it a yellow note was stuck to the spine of the book on top. It took a few seconds for his eyes to focus on what was written neatly on the note. And it took a little longer for his brain to understand what the words actually meant.
“Egon at the Prinsen Hotel. 10 o’clock. Bring the book,” it sai
d.
He grabbed the note and stood up. The deadbolt couldn’t be opened from the inside without a key, so he took the ladder back down the way he’d come. From the tenth rung he hopped down onto the lawn. Now there were two kids sitting on the trampoline, a boy and a girl. They were staring at him as if he’d fallen off the roof. He waved to them and calmly went around the corner of the building.
* * *
Odd Singsaker called Hornemann at home.
“I need Silvia Freud’s phone number,” he said.
“I can send her business card to your cell,” Hornemann replied politely.
“Do you know what time she left work today?” he asked.
“No, but it must have been early. I didn’t see her this afternoon.”
“I have one more question,” Singsaker said before he hung up. “The copy that Freud made of the Johannes Book. It’s very good, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is.”
“How can you tell it’s not the real thing?”
“It’s easy if you examine it properly with a loupe, fluorescent light, things like that, but even then you’d need to know a lot about it.”
“But if you just looked at the book with the naked eye?”
“You’d have to be very sharp to be able to see any difference from the original.”
“How many people at the library would notice that difference without a closer examination?”
“Not many. Probably nobody but Silvia herself, I should think.”
“And if someone were to examine a book to see whether it was genuine, who would do that?”
“That would also be Silvia.”
“Are the books in the book vault ever loaned out?”
“Some of them are occasionally loaned to researchers. But they are monitored closely.”
“I see. What about the Johannes Book?”
“It has been sent for inspection to a select few historians. Otherwise the plan was for future borrowers to read Silvia’s copy. The genuine book would be kept in the book vault, untouched, indefinitely. It’s simply too valuable.”
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