The Redeemer hh-6

by Jo Nesbo

  Bjorgen dried his nostrils and rubbed the rest of the cocaine into his gums. It took away the last of the pizza taste.

  He had told the manager of Biscuit that he had a headache and had gone home early. Christo – or Mike as he had said his name was – was waiting for him on a bench in Vestkanttorget as they had arranged. Christo had obviously enjoyed his ready-made Grandiosa pizza and had wolfed it down without noticing the fifteen milligrams of Stesolid in chopped-up pill form.

  Bjorgen surveyed the sleeping Christo, who was lying naked and face down on his bed. Despite the ball gag, Christo's breathing was regular and deep. He hadn't shown any signs of waking while Tore was making his little arrangement. Tore had bought the sedatives off a frenetic junkie in the street right outside Biscuit for fifteen kroner a pill. The rest had not cost much, either. The handcuffs, ankle cuffs, the ball gag with head harness and the string of shiny anal beads had followed in a so-called beginners' pack that he had bought off a website for only 599 kroner.

  The duvet was on the floor and Christo's skin glowed in the light from the flickering flames of the candles Tore had placed around the room. His body formed a Y shape against the white sheet; his hands were tied to the head of Tore's solid brass bed while his feet were attached to opposing rails at the end. Tore had managed to squeeze a cushion under Christo's stomach to raise his backside.

  Tore removed the lid of the Vaseline tin, scooped a lump with his index finger and separated Christo's buttocks with the other hand. And the thought went through his mind again. This was rape. It would be difficult to call it anything else. And the thought, just the word 'rape', made him feel horny.

  In fact, he was not sure whether Christo would have had any objection to being played with. The signals had been mixed. Nevertheless, it was dangerous to play with a murderer. Wonderfully dangerous. But not brainless. After all, the man beneath him would be locked up for the rest of his life.

  He looked down at his erection. Then he took the anal beads from the box and pulled both ends of the thin but sturdy nylon string running through the beads like through a pearl necklace: the first beads were small but increased in volume, the largest the size of a golf ball. According to the instructions, the beads were to be inserted in the anal passage and then pulled out at leisure to achieve maximum stimulation of the nerves in and around the sensitive entrance to the anus. There was a variety of colours and if you didn't know what anal beads were you could be excused for imagining they were something else. Tore smiled at his distorted reflection in the largest of the beads. Dad might be a bit taken aback when he opened Tore's Yuletide present with a greeting from Cape Town and his fervent hope that it would look nice on the Christmas tree. However, no one in the family from Vegardshei would have the slightest idea what kind of beads were glinting in front of them as they jigged round the tree singing and dutifully holding hands. Or where they had been.

  ***

  Harry led Beate and her two assistants down the stairs to the basement where the caretaker unlocked the door to the refuse room. One of the assistants was new, a girl whose name Harry retained for no more than three seconds.

  'Up there,' Harry said. The other three, wearing something that looked like a white beekeeper's outfit, stepped forward with care to stand beneath the chute opening, and the beams from their head lamps disappeared up into the dark. Harry studied the new assistant, waited for the reaction on her face. When it came it reminded Harry of the coral life that instantly retracts when touched by divers' fingers. Beate gave an imperceptible nod of the head, like a plumber's dispassionate assessment of moderate to severe frost damage.

  'Enucleation,' she said. Her voice resounded in the chute. 'Have you got that, Margaret?'

  The female assistant was breathing hard as she groped for a pen and notebook inside the beekeeper costume.

  'I beg your pardon,' Harry said.

  'The left eyeball has been removed. Margaret?'

  'Got it,' the assistant said, taking notes.

  'The woman's hanging down head first. Stuck in the chute, I suppose. There's a little blood dripping from the eye socket and inside I can see some areas of white which must be the inner cranium showing through the tissue. Dark red blood, so it's a while since it coagulated. The pathologist will check temperature and rigidity when he comes. Too quick?'

  'No, that's fine,' Margaret said.

  'We've found traces of blood by the chute door on the third floor, the same floor where the eye was found, so I assume the body was pushed in there. It's a tight opening and from here it looks as if the right shoulder has been dislocated. That may have happened when she was forced in or when her fall was broken. It's hard to know from this angle, but I think I can see bruising on the neck, which would suggest that she was strangled. The pathologist will check the shoulder and determine the cause of death. Otherwise there's not a lot we can do here. It's all yours, Gilberg.'

  Beate stepped aside and the male assistant took several flash shots of the chute.

  'What's the yellowish-white stuff in the eye socket?' he asked.

  'Fat,' Beate said. 'Clear the container and look for things that may be from the victim or the killer. Afterwards you'll get some help from the officers outside to pull her down. Margaret, you come with me.'

  They went into the corridor and Margaret went to the lift door and pressed the button.

  'We're taking the stairs,' Beate said in a light tone. Margaret regarded her with surprise and then followed her two older colleagues.

  'Three more of my people will be here soon,' Beate said in answer to Harry's unspoken question. Although Harry with his long legs was taking two steps at a time, the small woman kept up with ease. 'Witnesses?'

  'None so far,' Harry said. 'But we're doing the rounds. Three officers are ringing all the flats in the block. And after that the neighbouring blocks.'

  'Have they got a photo of Stankic?'

  Harry sent her a glance to see whether she was being ironic. It was difficult to say.

  'What was your first impression?' Harry asked.

  'A man,' Beate said.

  'Because whoever it was must have been strong to push her through the chute opening?'

  'Maybe.'

  'Anything else?'

  'Harry, are we in any doubt as to who this was?' she sighed.

  'Yes, Beate, we are. As a matter of principle we profess doubt until we know.'

  Harry turned to Margaret, who was already out of breath from following them. 'And your first impression?'

  'What?'

  They turned into the corridor on the third floor. A corpulent man in a tweed suit under an open tweed coat was standing in front of the door to Jon Karlsen's flat. He had obviously been waiting for them.

  'I was wondering what you felt when you entered the building,' Harry said. 'And looked up into the chute.'

  'Felt?' Margaret asked with a puzzled smile.

  'Yes, felt!' Stale Aune bellowed, proffering a hand which Harry shook without hesitation. 'Come along and learn, folks, for this is the famous gospel according to Hole. Before entering a crime scene empty your mind of all thoughts, become a newly born child, without language, open yourself to the sacred first impression, the vital first seconds which are your great, and only, chance to behold what happened without an ounce of a fact. It almost sounds like exorcism, doesn't it? Smart suit, Beate. And who is your charming colleague?'

  'This is Margaret Svendsen.'

  'Stale Aune,' the man said, seizing Margaret's begloved hand and kissing it. 'Goodness me, you taste of rubber, my dear.'

  'Aune is a psychologist,' Beate said. 'He often helps us.'

  'He often tries to help you,' Aune said. 'Psychology is, I'm afraid to say, a science that is still in its rompers and should not be accorded too much value for another fifty to a hundred years. And what is your response to Detective Inspector Hole's question, my dear?'

  Margaret looked to Beate for help.

  'I… don't know,' she said. 'The eye was a bit
off-putting, of course.'

  Harry unlocked the door.

  'You know I can't stand the sight of blood,' Aune warned.

  'Think of it as a glass eye,' Harry said, opening the door and stepping to the side. 'Walk on the plastic and don't touch anything.'

  Aune trod with care on the path of black plastic traversing the floor. He crouched down beside the eye, which still lay in the pile of dust next to the vacuum cleaner but which now had a grey film over it.

  'Apparently it's called enucleation,' Harry said.

  Aune raised one eyebrow. 'Performed with a vacuum cleaner to the eye?'

  'You can't suck an eye out of the head with just a vacuum cleaner,' Harry said. 'The perp must have sucked it out far enough for him to get a couple of fingers inside. Muscles and optic nerves are solid matter.'

  'What you don't know, Harry.'

  'I once arrested a woman who had drowned her child in the bath. While she was in custody she tore out one of her eyes. The doctor acquainted me with the technique.'

  They heard a sharp intake of breath from Margaret behind them.

  'Removing an eye does not have to be fatal,' Harry said. 'Beate thinks the woman may have been strangled. What's your first thought?'

  'It goes without saying that this act has been committed by a person in a state of emotional or rational disequilibrium,' Aune said. 'The mutilation suggests uncontrolled anger. There may of course be practical reasons for the perpetrator to choose to dispatch the body down the chute…'

  'Unlikely,' Harry said. 'If the intention was that the body should not be found for a while, it would have been smarter to leave it in the empty flat.'

  'In that case to some extent this kind of thing tends to be a conscious symbolic act.'

  'Hm. Remove an eye and treat the rest as rubbish?'

  'Yes.'

  Harry looked at Beate. 'It doesn't sound like the work of a professional killer.'

  Aune shrugged. 'It could well be an angry professional killer.'

  'In general pros have a method they rely on. Christo Stankic's method so far has been to shoot his victims.'

  'He may have a wider repertoire,' Beate said. 'Or perhaps the victim surprised him while he was in the flat.'

  'Perhaps he didn't want to shoot because it would have alerted the neighbours,' Margaret said.

  The other three faced her.

  She flashed an intimidated smile. 'I mean… perhaps he needed time and peace and quiet. Perhaps he was searching for something.'

  Harry noticed that all of a sudden Beate had begun to breathe hard through her nose and was even paler than usual.

  'How does that sound?' he asked, addressing Aune.

  'Like psychology,' Aune said. 'A mass of questions. And hypotheses by way of a response.'

  Outside again, Harry asked Beate if something was the matter.

  'Just a bit of nausea,' she said.

  'Oh? You're refused permission to be sick right now. Understood?'

  She answered him with a cryptic smile.

  He woke up, opened his eyes and saw lights roaming across the white ceiling above him. His body and head ached, and he was frozen. There was something in his mouth. And when he tried to move he could feel that his hands and feet had been shackled. He raised his head. In the mirror at the end of the bed, in the light from the burning candles, he could see he was naked. And there was something on his head, something black like a horse's harness. One of the straps went across his face, over his mouth, which was obstructed by a black ball. His hands were held by metal handcuffs, his feet by something black like bondage restraints. He stared into the mirror. On the sheet between his legs lay the end of a string that disappeared up between his buttocks. And there was something white on his stomach. It looked like semen. He sank back on the pillow and shut his eyes. He wanted to scream, but knew that the ball would effectively prevent any attempt.

  He heard a voice from the living room.

  'Hello? Politi?'

  Politi? Polizei? Police?

  He thrashed around on the bed, jerking his arms down and moaning with pain as the handcuffs cut into the back of his thumb, taking off the skin. He twisted his hands so that his fingers could get hold of the chain between the cuffs. Handcuffs. Steel bars. His father had taught him that building materials were almost always made to withstand pressure in one direction and that the art of bending steel was about knowing where and which way it would offer the least resistance. The chain between the handcuffs was made to prevent them being pulled apart.

  He heard the man speaking briefly on the living-room telephone, then all went quiet.

  He pressed the point where the final link in the chain met one cuff against the bar of the bed head, but instead of pulling he twisted. After a quarter-turn the link locked against the bar. He tried to twist further, but it wouldn't budge. He tried again, but his hands slipped.

  'Hello?' came the voice from the living room.

  He took a deep breath. Closed his eyes and saw his father with enormous forearms in a short-sleeved shirt before the line of steel rods on the building site. He whispered to the boy: 'Banish all doubt. There's only room for willpower. The steel has no willpower and that's why it always loses.'

  Tore Bjorgen drummed his fingers with impatience on the rococo mirror with the pearl-grey clam adornments. The owner of the antiques shop had told him that 'rococo' was often used in a derogatory sense, to mean the style was over the top, almost grotesque. Tore had realised afterwards that that was what had tipped the balance, when he had made up his mind to take out a loan to be able to lay out the twelve thousand kroner which the mirror had cost.

  The switchboard at Police HQ had tried to put him through to Crime Squad, but no one had picked up and now they were trying the uniformed police.

  He heard sounds from the bedroom. The rattle of chains against the bed. Perhaps Stesolid had not been the most effective sedative after all.

  'Duty officer.' The deep, calm voice startled Tore.

  'Um, this is… it's about the reward. For… erm, that guy who shot the guy from the Salvation Army.'

  'Who's speaking? And where are you ringing from?'

  'Tore. From Oslo.'

  'Could you be a bit more precise, please?'

  Tore gulped. He had – for several good reasons – exercised his right not to disclose his telephone number when phoning and he knew that now 'unknown number'would be flashing on whatever display the duty officer had.

  'I can help you.' Tore's voice had gone up a register.

  'First of all I need to know-'

  'I've got him here. Chained to the bed.'

  'You've chained someone up, you say?'

  'He's a killer, isn't he? He's dangerous. I saw him with a gun at the restaurant. His name's Christo Stankic. I saw the name in the paper.'

  The other end went quiet for a moment. Then the voice was back, but a little less unruffled. 'Calm down now. Tell me who you are and where you are, then we'll come at once.'

  'And what about the reward?'

  'If this leads to the arrest of the correct person I will confirm that you helped us.'

  'And I'll be given the reward straight away?'

  'Yes.'

  Tore thought. About Cape Town. About Father Christmas in the baking sun. The telephone creaked. He breathed in ready to answer and looked into the twelve thousand kroner rococo mirror. At that moment Tore realised three things. The creaking sound had not come from the telephone. You don't get top-quality mail-order handcuffs in a beginners' pack for 599 kroner. And in all probability he had celebrated his last Christmas.

  'Hello?' said the voice on the telephone.

  Tore Bjorgen would have liked to answer, but a thin nylon string of shiny beads, looking every inch like a Christmas decoration, was blocking the airway essential for the production of sound from vocal cords.

  19

  Thursday, 18 December. The Container.

  Four people were in the car driving through the darkness and the
snow between the high drifts.

  'Ostgard is up here to the left,' Jon said from the back seat where he had his arm around Thea's cowed figure.

  Halvorsen turned off the main road. Harry observed the scattered farmhouses, lit up and flashing like lighthouses at the tops of hills or among clumps of trees.

  As Harry had said that Robert's flat was no longer a safe hideout, Jon had himself suggested Ostgard. And insisted on Thea joining him.

  Halvorsen swung onto the drive between a white farmhouse and a red barn.

  'We'll have to ring the neighbour and ask him to clear away some snow with his tractor,' Jon said as they waded through the fresh snow towards the farmhouse.

  'Nothing doing,' Harry said. 'No one must know you're here. Not even the police.'

  Jon walked over to the house wall beside the steps, counted five boards and plunged his hand in the snow and under the boarding.

  'Here,' he said, holding up a key.

  It felt even colder indoors than outside, and the painted wooden walls seemed to have frozen into ice blocks, rendering their voices harsh. They stamped the snow off their footwear and entered a large kitchen with a solid table, kitchen cabinet, storage bench and Jotul woodburning stove in the corner.

  'I'll get the fire going.' Jon's breath was icy and he rubbed his hands for warmth. 'There's probably some firewood inside the bench, but we'll need more from the woodshed.'

  'I can get it,' Halvorsen said.

  'You'll have to dig a pathway. There are two spades in the porch.'

  'I'll join you,' Thea mumbled.

  It had stopped snowing and the weather was clearing. Harry stood by the window smoking and watching Halvorsen and Thea shovelling the light, fresh snow in the white moonlight. The stove was crackling and Jon was on his haunches staring into the flames.