Where Monsters Dwell

by Jorgen Brekke

  Then he came at her, raising the knife. She took a deep breath, seeing nothing but the knife, and knew that she wouldn’t be able to withstand another blow.

  Her legs must have acted instinctively, because she took a quick step to the side. She felt the air pressure in her ear as the knife slashed past her head. Then she felt the big, crazed monster fall toward her. She released the air she had in her healthy lung without screaming. Then she fell to the floor with Dahle on top of her and almost fainted from the weight of his body squeezing the last breath of air from her.

  She was vaguely aware of his arms scrabbling, as if he was trying to get up. She was afraid he was still holding the knife and regaining his strength. But abruptly his arms dropped limply on either side of her body. He went utterly still, having breathed his last.

  With a huge effort she managed to roll the lifeless body onto the floor beside her. Then she greedily took a few deep breaths before she got to her feet. She stood there blinking until she regained control of her vision. Finally she could take a proper look at Odd Singsaker. She saw him hanging upside down, with all his clothes on, as well as his skin. Still groggy, she heard him whisper to her, his voice as low and weak, as if he were the one with the knife wound in his lung.

  “Thanks,” he said. “Thanks, Felicia Stone.”

  It was over.

  She leaned over and put both her arms around his head. She pressed his head between her breasts. And he knew he had found what he’d been searching for ever since that damned operation. A safe place to rest his head.

  * * *

  Odd Singsaker stood on the beach, watching the helicopter fly off. In fifteen minutes Felicia would be at St. Olav’s Hospital, and the EMTs had assured him that she was stable enough to handle the flight. Up by the cabin the local police were busy securing the crime scene so that no evidence would be lost before Grongstad and his team arrived. An ambulance turned onto the road and headed away from the cabin. In addition to checking Singsaker’s vital signs, the ambulance team on the ground had declared both Jon Vatten and Jens Dahle dead. Now some technical work needed to be done before the bodies could be taken to Dr. Kittelsen’s autopsy suite in the city, where they would be subjected to a few more knives.

  Before the ambulance left, a car from Adresseavisen pulled up in front of the cabin. Probably a reporter from the local office in Botngård. It couldn’t possibly be that damned Vlado Taneski, although it didn’t really matter. Singsaker was pleased that he’d managed to get through an entire homicide investigation without talking to the press. He shuddered a bit on Gro Brattberg’s behalf when he thought of all the questions she would have to answer.

  He walked across the beach to the flat rocks, then over to the woods beyond them. At first the woods were quite dense, but after trudging through about forty feet of underbrush, he came out on a little cart path leading down to a boathouse. It must belong to the farm, he thought, because in front of it was Jens Dahle’s car. He had been a cautious man. Precise and cautious. If he didn’t want to be seen, he wasn’t. Singsaker wondered what route he had taken out of Trondheim to avoid being caught by any of the highway cameras, and what alibi he had cooked up for this last act. But it no longer made any difference. Dahle would never need an alibi again.

  Singsaker went over to the boathouse and opened the door. Inside he saw an old, dilapidated pram. Fishing nets, fast disintegrating, hung on one wall, and a buoy and some old tires were piled in a corner. Along the other wall stood a workbench. Above the bench hung tools, new and well kept. There were nippers, tweezers, knives, and various scraping tools. In a little tool chest there were needles and thread in many sizes, and next to the chest stood an inkwell. On the floor stood frames of various sizes neatly stacked against the wall. This was the workplace of an orderly man. In the middle of the bench was a frame on which a skin had been stretched. That was the one he’d been working on last. The skin on the frame was undoubtedly human. Singsaker guessed it was from Dahle’s wife, Gunn Brita. Next to the workbench stood a mannequin similar to the one in Siri Holm’s apartment. Above it hung the prepared skin from what must have been Hedda Vatten’s headless body. Another skin, apparently from a child, hung from a hook on the wall. From this skin, a large section was cut out of the back.

  There were parchment rolls on a shelf off to the side. Singsaker bent down without touching anything. The first sentences on the outside of one of the rolls were visible.

  “One can always count on a murderer having his own imaginative prose style. The boy was already dead when I started on him. Good. He lay still on the workbench.…”

  He couldn’t read more without unrolling the parchment. He didn’t want to touch it. Still, these were the confessions they needed. The last piece of evidence.

  It was too much for Singsaker. He thought about the mask of sanity. We all wear them. Right now he could no longer keep his police mask on. He couldn’t take it anymore. Chief Inspector Odd Singsaker stumbled out of the boathouse and threw up in earnest. Waffles and rage. Sorrow and drip coffee. It all came out in front of the gleaming, shiny car of Jens Dahle.

  Goddamn, what a job I’ve got, he thought, lying down in the wet heather next to the cart path. He lay there for several minutes, feeling a numbing vertigo that slowly dissipated. A drizzling rain tickled on his brow. Slowly he realized how clear everything was to him now, all that had happened in the past few hours. For the first time since the operation he remembered every single detail of the past day. The doctors had said that his memory would recover. But why couldn’t it have waited a few more days? Finally he felt strong enough to get to his feet.

  He went back to the flat rocks by the shore, where he sat down and gazed in the direction the helicopter had flown. It was more than fifteen minutes ago now. Felicia was already in the hands of the best surgeons in this part of the country. That was the victory he had to hold on to. Felicia would survive. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to tolerate it.

  He took out his cell phone and scanned the missed calls. He found Lars’s number and punched the green button.

  His son answered after the second ring.

  “Well, when’s the christening going to be?” Singsaker asked softly. A tear slid past his nose, leaving a glistening trail in its wake.

  * * *

  Siri Holm and Odd Singsaker drove back to town through the gray and green landscape of the Fosen peninsula. The rain had let up, and the afternoon sun was breaking through the cloud cover. She tried to ask him about what had happened, but he didn’t feel like talking about it, and excused himself by saying he couldn’t divulge anything because of the ongoing investigation. All he told her was that Dahle and Vatten were both dead and that Felicia was going to pull through. The news of Vatten’s death seemed to make a big impression on Siri. Neither of them said anything for a long time. When they had passed Bjugn, he finally broke the silence.

  “What exactly happened between us, at your place,” he said, feeling flustered.

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said. Then she gave him a weak smile. “It’s a nice but forgotten memory.” She sat in silence for a while before she said, “You like her, don’t you?”

  He didn’t reply.

  “She likes you, too,” said Siri.

  For a while neither of them spoke. She was looking out the window.

  Finally he said, “And you? You liked Vatten.”

  She nodded.

  “I liked him a lot. He was a man who deserved much more respect.”

  “You’re right about that,” said Singsaker.

  Again they fell silent. It was a good silence, a silence between friends. They let it go on for a long time.

  Brattberg called twice. He thought the ringtone had a rather excitable sound to it, so he didn’t bother answering.

  Siri Holm nodded approvingly.

  “Your boss, right? And you refuse to talk to her because you know she’s going to chew you out for not following procedure, or some other absurdity.”


  He nodded. “Something like that.”

  “You’re getting close, I must say.”

  “Close to what?”

  “To becoming a real crime hero.”

  “Are there any real crime heroes?” he asked.

  They both laughed. When the laughter subsided, they let the silence go on a while longer.

  30

  “Forty-two thousand kroner?” Odd Singsaker rolled his eyes, but he wasn’t really mad at anyone but himself. He was entirely unprepared for the exorbitant bill that was presented to him.

  “I told you it could be expensive,” said the repairman cautiously. “And I seem to recall that you said something to the effect that price was no object.”

  “Well, this price certainly is,” he replied. “I could have remodeled half my bathroom for that price.”

  “Maybe you’re not so familiar with racing bikes,” said the repairman. His voice was still calm. “But if you wheel in a practically wrecked Cervelo competition bike and ask us to put it into perfect shape, with all the necessary original parts, then you have to expect it to cost a few kroner.”

  Singsaker knew he was right. He had made a fool of himself.

  “Ahem.… Do you take credit cards?”

  “No, but I can send you an invoice. If you like we can split it into monthly payments.”

  “No, the quicker the better,” he replied. “Send me an invoice for the total amount.” When it came right down to it, he did have a substantial savings account he could draw from.

  The repairman made a note of his address and wheeled out the bicycle. Singsaker looked at it, impressed. Even the lacquer had been spiffed up.

  “At least I’ll have the coolest bike on the street,” he said with a laugh.

  “You can say that again,” said the repairman, smiling, and he slapped Singsaker on the shoulder. All animosity was now gone.

  From Sykkelbua in Bakklandet he headed down to Nidelva. He followed the path along the river on the lower side of the row of bungalowlike apartments that enjoyed the second-best view of the Nidaros Cathedral; they also embodied the worst view from the cathedral itself. The best view of the Nidaros Cathedral was still from the path Singsaker was riding along at a leisurely pace. He was pleased by the extreme precision of the gears on his new bike, and thought that the repairs had probably been worth the money after all. He continued to the stadium on the peninsula of Øya. There he turned down the side streets toward St. Olav’s Hospital.

  For the past three days, Felicia had been in the heart and lung ward at the hospital for observation, after she had been transferred from the ICU. He had visited her every day. Today he wanted to surprise her, so he stopped and bought flowers at the kiosk in the lobby. When he went upstairs to her ward, he asked one of the nurses how Felicia was doing before he went to her room. He’d started doing that on the first critical days. If he asked Felicia herself, she just said that everything was going fine. Even right after they had sewed her up and there was still the danger of internal bleeding and infection, she claimed that there was nothing to worry about. As the days passed, the nurses’ evaluations became more in line with Felicia’s own. She was on the way to recovery, and everything was healing as it should.

  The nurse today was a young man he hadn’t spoken with before.

  “Felicia Stone … she was released this morning,” he said.

  Singsaker stood there dumbfounded and staring at the young man.

  “That can’t be true,” he said. “Nobody informed me.”

  “She and the doctor decided this morning that she was well enough to be discharged. I was there myself,” said the nurse.

  “But she wasn’t supposed to be discharged until tomorrow,” Singsaker said, walking toward her room. He opened the door and saw an elderly man with a beard and bristly hair sticking out in all directions. He was wearing a robe that was much too tight, and sitting on the bed that used to be Felicia’s.

  On his way out of the hospital Singsaker tapped in her number on his cell phone and wondered why his pulse was racing. The case was solved. The killer had been caught. And the fact that she’d been released a day early had to be good news.

  Felicia’s number was busy.

  * * *

  “Why didn’t you ever tell us about this, my dear?” Her father’s voice seemed so close, as if he were sitting with her in the hotel room here in Trondheim and not over four thousand miles away in a room more familiar to her than any other in the world.

  “You must have expected it was something like this.” Her voice held no trace of reproach. Guilt was the last thing they needed to come between them.

  “We talked about the fact that it could have been something sexual, yes.” Her father was honest. Distances sometimes help, Felicia thought. She understood that it was the right time to call, and from the right place.

  “The matter isn’t settled yet,” said her father.

  “Yes, it is. It finally is,” she said.

  Her father understood what she meant.

  “You’re ready to put it behind you?”

  “I don’t know. But I don’t think I’m afraid of the future anymore. Besides, it might be enough to lock up one Nevins this time around.” She laughed.

  “A heck of a job you’ve done with this case, my dear,” said her father. “Or rather, with both cases. Who would have believed that the Poe murder would be solved in just a few days?”

  “Sounds like you’re a little proud of me,” she said, noticing that there was something in her voice now, a tone that she and her father had once shared. It had been gone for far too long.

  “Not just a little,” her father replied.

  * * *

  Felicia Stone had always been slim. But when she put down the phone after talking to her father, giving him as detailed an account as she could about what had happened that night in Shaun Nevins’s room, she also felt unburdened and light for the first time in years.

  Felicia tried to touch the wound on her back where the knife had gone in. But after the stitches had been removed the day before, it no longer itched and she had a hard time locating the tenderness she still felt in the upper part of her torso. So she just sat there thinking about the case she had helped solve. Odd had updated her every day at the hospital with news from both Trondheim and Richmond.

  According to the scholars who had begun to decipher the palimpsest of Johannes the priest and the so-called knife parchment that had been in the possession of Jens Dahle, there were indications that Dahle had been inspired by the man who might prove to be the biggest serial killer in Norwegian history. A twisted priest with an excellent knowledge of anatomy. One thing that had made the work with the Johannes palimpsest easier was the availability of X-rays that had been made by Johns Hopkins University in the United States for the curator of the Poe Museum in Richmond. These X-rays were found during a search of the office of John Nevins, who’d had his own very personal reasons for not drawing attention to the Johannes Book and its missing knives. Nevins, who was familiar with the discoveries that Bond had already made in cooperation with Gunn Brita Dahle, apparently planned to use the revelations to promote his own academic career, but he had wanted to wait until things had cooled off a bit. He had managed to purloin these X-rays from the Poe Museum at the beginning of the investigation while Reynolds was doing the first interviews of the museum staff. In assessing the investigation done by the Richmond police, this was the one event that bothered Morris and his colleagues the most. In the investigators’ defense, the X-rays had been kept in a poorly secured storeroom and not in Bond’s office. Nevins was the only one who knew where to look. That remained a small yet important oversight. Felicia knew that Laubach had been livid about this, and she expected to hear more about it when she returned.

  Now she again picked up the phone and called Morris.

  “It’s early,” he said.

  She looked at the clock. It was one o’clock, barely seven in the morning in Richmond.


  “Did I wake you?” she asked.

  “No, I’m already on my second cup of coffee. But I’m actually off this morning. Things have calmed down over here. How’s it going with you?”

  “I was released from the hospital today. A day early.”

  “So I suppose you’re anxious to come home? Shall we book a flight for you?”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” she said.

  * * *

  Singsaker rode his bike past the Student Society, across Elgeseter Bridge, and followed Prinsens gate all the way to the hotel. When he got there it was twenty past one. He went inside to the front desk, explained that he wanted to see Felicia Stone, and gave her room number to a male desk clerk who had blond streaks in his hair. He was old enough that these streaks blended freely with a sprinkling of gray. He didn’t bother to type her name into the computer.

  “She checked out five minutes ago,” he said. “And left in a taxi.”

  “Do you know where she was going?” Singsaker asked.

  “No, but she’s American. I assumed she was going to the airport, although she made her own arrangements with the cab company.”

  “Damn,” Singsaker said, surprising himself by slamming his fist on the counter.

  “If you’ve got some urgent message for her, I’m sure you can catch up with her out at Værnes,” said the desk clerk.

  “On my bike?”

  * * *

  Outside the hotel he looked at his cell phone, wondering whether he ought to call her or text. But he decided that if she had really left for home without saying good-bye, there was little he could do about it. He’d just be chasing a dream. And he already had enough dreams, which had had a disturbing tendency to turn into nightmares.

  He rode his bike over to the state liquor store on Solsiden and bought two bottles of Rød Aalborg. At the grocery store in the shopping center he found some decent Danish rye bread and whole filets of pickled herring, the kind he liked but seldom ate. He had a whole weekend ahead of him, and he wondered how long he’d be able to hold out before he called Anniken.