PART III
33
Thursday 18 October
NINA JEBSEN WAS at the office by about 7.30. There was a memo she wanted to have ready for the morning briefing, and a couple of witnesses she still had to contact, including the former NRK newscaster who was on the list of people observed on the way to Ullevålseter on the day Hilde Paulsen disappeared.
Once again she had to give up the attempt to get through to the TV celebrity. A secretary in the firm he was working for now claimed he was on holiday in Tanzania. The last time she’d tried, the day before, she’d been given a different explanation for why the man wasn’t there. Not that it surprised her: the person she was trying to get hold of belonged to that exclusive group of people who had acquired the right to be inaccessible, and made use of it.
The trip up to Åsnes in Hedmark the day before hadn’t resulted in much, but Viken might well ask for an account of even insignificant details and give her a hard time if she couldn’t provide it. She’d be able to describe a visit to the mongoloids at the care home. The conversation with the bitter old woman over a cup of even more bitter coffee. Before concluding her memo on the visit to Reinkollen, she opened the STRASAK database of convicted felons, ran a search for Roger Åheim, and came up with a hit. He owned a farm and also ran an Esso station at Åmoen in Åsnes county. In other words, the place where she’d asked for directions to Reinkollen. She recalled with distaste the young lout behind the counter, who’d confirmed every one of her prejudices about backwoods Norway. She checked the notes and discovered that the owner of the petrol station had to be the cousin whom Åse Berit Nytorpet’s husband had been out with.
She bent closer to the monitor, swiped the page and a list of criminal convictions appeared on the screen. Fifteen years previously this same Roger Åheim had served time for inflicting grievous bodily harm. Lower down the list she found two charges of rape. One was dismissed on the grounds of insufficient evidence. In the other, eleven years ago, a nineteen-year-old woman alleged that she had been abducted by the accused. She’d sustained slight injuries to her face and upper body. Roger Åheim claimed that the girl had gone with him of her own free will. It was one person’s word against another and the charge was dropped. Nina scrolled down further and came across a conviction from eight years ago on an environmental charge. Illegal lynx hunting. Roger Åheim insisted he had acted in self-defence, but no one believed he had been attacked by one of these notoriously timid creatures. He had also changed his story several times in the course of the trial.
She heard Viken letting himself into his office. Waited a couple of minutes before knocking and showing him the documents she had printed out from STRASAK. He sat there for a while, his head moving from side to side, the deep furrow prominent over the bridge of his nose. He pulled at his jawline, smoothing out the wrinkles on his cheeks. Presently he said:
– I’ll give the sheriff up there a call. He sounds like an okay sort of bloke.
Five minutes later he popped his head round her door.
– Prepare for another trip out into the bush. We’ll leave straight after the morning briefing.
Heading north along the E6, she wondered what it was that had persuaded Viken to set aside yet another half-day in following up such a vague lead. He could have left it to the local sheriff’s office to take care of. It was becoming more and more obvious to her that Viken was the type who was rarely satisfied with work done by others. A lone wolf who only delegated jobs with reluctance. Not very efficient, she thought, even if the man did have an enormous capacity for work. And why bring her along, and use up a whole day’s man-hours? Not that she minded working with him; she handled it better than most of the other detectives. Some, like Sigge Helgarsson, avoided Viken like the plague. No wonder really: Viken had a go at him every chance he got. It was obvious he preferred having Arve Norbakk along when possible. And Arve knew the countryside up there in Hedmark. But today Viken had chosen Nina, and she didn’t bother trying to work out the possible reasons why.
– What are you expecting to get out of this trip? she took a chance and asked.
Viken was a surprisingly careful driver. He was wearing a pair of pilot sunglasses, which he’d taken from the glove compartment, and was sitting back and taking in the open Romerike landscape.
– Not exactly a breakthrough, he said, and didn’t sound worried. – Even if this Roger Åheim has been involved in some pretty violent stuff. And the environmental crimes.
She didn’t ask why, in that case, they should be spending half a day on it, but he seemed to guess what was on her mind.
– Often you find it’s the detours that lead you to the solutions in difficult cases, he told her.
Nina needed a smoke. She sat there trying to summon up the voice of the psychologist who had led the course on how to give up.
– We’re struggling because we can’t see a motive, she said.
Viken glanced over at her.
– And how often do you find an obvious motive in murder cases?
She thought about it.
– It depends what you mean by motive.
Viken said: – Before I started in Violent Crimes, I worked on white-collar crime. An accountant embezzles money to pay for a holiday home in Spain. An impatient broker doubles his fortune by selling insider information. Clear chain of connection between motive and deed, a calculated risk, possible to work it all out in terms of cost and benefit. But in my twenty years with Violent Crimes, I don’t think I’ve come across a single case of murder where the motive has been easy to understand. And certainly not where it’s premeditated.
Several times over the past few weeks Nina had been struck by how unaffected he appeared to be by the gruesome nature of the case they were investigating. This ability to observe things from a distance was probably what made him a top detective.
– The last murder case in Manchester I was involved in was back in ’98. The Shipman case.
– That doctor who killed huge numbers of his patients?
– It might have been fifteen or two hundred and fifty, or twice that many, we’ll never know. As you’ll remember, he hanged himself in jail. So we’ll never know either what turned him into a mass killer, even if they write a mile of books about him. There were just a couple of cases where there was even a hint of financial gain in it for him. To understand what drives a man like that, you have to look at the psychological profile.
Not many of his colleagues in Violent Crimes had turned up to hear Viken when he lectured on this subject, but Nina had. Now he glanced at her as though trying to see whether she understood what he was talking about.
– He was probably damaged early on in life, she offered, a little reluctantly. – Abuse of some kind, and then later an extreme need to manipulate the facts of life and death. The control of intolerable pain by inducing it in another.
– That’s all very well, he nodded. – Shipman ticked every box. And yet what he did remains incomprehensible. There’s something at the heart of every killing that evades any attempt to explain it. If you get too obsessed by motive, you’ll often find yourself going astray.
Nina sat back in her seat. Covertly she studied the chief inspector’s hands. Not exactly nice, she thought, but fascinating. Narrow and bony, with unusually long fingers.
– So that’s why we’re on our way to the forests of darkest Hedmark, she said, trying to neutralise the irony with a slightly sing-song childish voice.
Viken burst out laughing. He laughed for a long time – she couldn’t remember ever hearing him laugh so long before – and she felt relieved, and perhaps even a touch of pride too, at having been responsible for it.
– I think maybe you do get the point, he said, the laughter stopping abruptly.
Nina thought about it.
– So you’re saying we shouldn’t be looking for motives.
– I’m saying that shouldn’t be what dominates the investigation in a case like this. Something will start to add
up after a while. But never everything. Not even after a full confession and sessions with the shrinks. Especially not then.
– All the same, you sound optimistic, she said.
He drove faster, even though they had left the motorway and were now on a road with only two lanes.
– I don’t doubt for a moment that we’re going to solve this case, Jebsen. We’re hunting a killer who has already told us a lot about who he is. The question is, can we get to him before anything else happens?
A few kilometres past Åmoen, they saw a sign for Åheim. They pulled off the main road and headed north through forest.
– Do you think people are influenced by the landscape they grow up in? Nina wondered aloud, peering at the thick lanes of pine.
Viken seemed to have no special view on the matter. They passed a left turn-off, and he glanced at it before driving on. He had just spoken to the sheriff at Åsnes and been given a detailed description of the route. The sheriff had offered to come along with them, but Viken had rejected the idea. As he explained later, he didn’t want local people hanging around while he was working; it would be more of a hindrance than a help.
– I could never live in a place like this, said Nina abruptly. – I’d get claustrophobia after about ten minutes.
Viken ignored her.
– To find the person who’s committed these murders, we have to put ourselves in his shoes, he said. – It’s not enough to proceed analytically. You’ve got to take a leap away from your own common sense and morality. Get in tune with that part of yourself that makes it possible for you to follow a human being who doesn’t think like a human being.
Nina had heard him say this before, but it had never been clear to her how this could be turned into a method.
– Animals aren’t bestial, Viken went on. – An animal can’t act like a monster. Only human beings can do that. Anyone who plans a murder has this inside him. It is deviant, but both you and I can find something inside ourselves that enables us to follow this kind of thinking.
– Are you sure we’re on the right road? Nina asked. – Surely there can’t be a farm this deep in the primeval forest?
– Guess we just have to trust the sheriff, said Viken as he took a right and swung on to an even narrower lane. His lecture continued unabated. – Every murder that has been planned has its own signature. That is the gateway to the sick mind behind it.
– So these bear tracks then, said Nina, increasingly certain that the chief inspector had got the directions wrong.
– And the way the body has been disfigured. As though by a predator. If you combine all the signals from the killer, you can draw a picture of him. It’s not too hard. It’s harder to get to know the primitive instinct in yourself that makes it possible for you to get inside his skin. See the world through his eyes, move like him, think like him. If you can do that, then you’re breathing right down his neck.
Nina glanced again at the dials. They’d driven more than five kilometres now since the last turn-off. It didn’t seem to worry Viken.
– From the moment I stood up there in the trees of the Oslomarka and looked down at that dead woman in the gully, I’ve been working on a profile of him. I can tell you that the man we’re looking for is in his thirties, possibly early forties. He is above average intelligence and not necessarily a loner. If he has a family, then he’s living a double life, probably has a split personality. He may be educated and hold down a good job. He has not killed before but he has, I would think, a history of abusing women in one way or another. The disfiguring of the victims indicates that. The anger he feels towards these women. He’s had a difficult upbringing with a domineering and emotionally cold mother. He feels no regret for what he has done; satisfaction is more likely, and he is capable of killing again.
The forest seemed to be closing ever more tightly around them, and the track became more and more bumpy and rocky. Nina thought briefly of her father, a stubborn old brewery worker who would never ask for directions, and definitely not when he had lost his way. They rounded a sharp bend; beyond it there was a steep rise. There was a barrier at the top of it. Viken sat glaring at it for a few seconds before jumping out and tugging at the padlock.
– Locked, he confirmed, and wiped the mud off his shoes before getting back into the car. – That monkey of a sheriff must have given me the wrong directions.
Nina risked a joke.
– I don’t know what to think of you, taking a woman for a ride down a deserted forest track.
Viken wasn’t in the mood for it; he was busy trying to worm the car back down the slippery narrow hill. Beyond the bend he had to reverse another several hundred metres before finding a place to turn.
So much for the well-refined instinct, thought Nina, but decided against sharing the observation with the chief inspector. It occurred to her that the investigation might have something in common with this futile trip of theirs.
34
AS VIKEN PULLED into the Esso station at Åmoen, he was feeling a little annoyed. He called Sheriff Storaker again but went no further than to say that the route description had not been accurate. It didn’t make his mood any better when Storaker insisted that it had been, nor when Storaker then insisted that he would come along to show them the way in person.
– I’ll be at Åmoen within fifteen minutes, he assured them. In fact it took seventeen and a half minutes, as Viken pointed out irritably when he did finally turn up.
It would be short-selling him to describe Sheriff Kjell Roar Storaker as a big man. He walked around with his head permanently bent even when there was nothing in the vicinity even remotely at head height, as there wasn’t in the car park beside the Esso station. Viken guessed it was doubtless as a result of innumerable encounters with roof beams and door frames. The hand the sheriff offered him was the size of a frying pan.
– Roger Åheim, the man we’re looking for, is the owner of the petrol station, he told them.
Viken nodded abruptly. Nina Jebsen had told him this some time ago.
– That’s no help to us. The guy isn’t here.
Nevertheless the sheriff suggested a cup of coffee and a bun from the counter. Viken couldn’t afford to waste any more time and as politely as he could declined the offer, though it was obvious Jebsen was hoping for something to eat. Do her good to wait, he thought with satisfaction as he sat himself behind the wheel. He offered her a sugar-free salt pastille.
As he started the car, she pointed to a male figure emerging from the door of the petrol station, a lanky guy with a shaven head and wearing red overalls covered with paint stains. He started filling the newspaper stands outside the door.
– If you want somebody that gives you the creeps, just have a word with that specimen there.
Viken glanced at her. – You know him?
She started talking about her previous visit, something about this lout here who worked behind the counter, seemed like a complete maniac and immediately picked a quarrel with her, a total stranger. Viken listened with only half an ear.
As they once again turned off at the sign for Åheim, Viken kept close behind the Volvo driven by the sheriff and one of his men. The weekend was approaching, and they were clearly short handed up here, but Storaker seemed happy enough to add another call-out to the budget. It was probably not every day they got the chance to take part in a murder inquiry.
They turned off at the first left. The sheriff never said anything about that, fumed Viken. That was why they had ended up deep in the forest. Wasted almost an hour through his carelessness. He swore and punched the wheel with his fist. Nina said nothing. Just then his mobile phone rang. He put in his earpiece. The woman at the other end forgot to say who she was, but that broad Australian accent was identification enough. People who didn’t know the pathologist sometimes wondered if Jennifer Plåterud was American, a suspicion she denied strenuously every time she was confronted with it.
– We haven’t found much biological material on Cecilie
Davidsen, she told him. – So far everything we’ve got looks as if it comes either from her or from members of her family.
– In other words, a perpetrator who knows what he’s doing, Viken observed.
– However, what we have found is dust and traces of plaster beneath the fingernails, and on the clothes.
She was silent for a moment before continuing.
– Most likely the same type of plaster we found on the first victim, Hilde Paulsen. It turns out to be a mixture not much used over the past sixty or seventy years, a high calcium content with added clay. If it was just one of the victims we might think it was a random find. But not when it turns up on both of them.
– That’s good, Viken exclaimed. – How about those rips and tears?
– We heard back from Edmonton. They compared our pictures with those from their own archives, including people who have been attacked by bears. They say they’re the same.
Viken swerved round a pothole in the road.
– We’re asking ourselves if these wounds might have been made by paws cut from a stuffed bear, he said. – In which case, part of the killer’s signature, or message if you like. Think that’s a possibility?
– Severed bear paws? Well, I’ll take a closer look. She added with a little laugh: – Not because I think a dead bear can scratch. At least not that hard.
Viken told Nina what the pathologist had found.
– It shows we’re right, she said eagerly. – The victims were dumped where we found them. Both women were probably killed in a cellar.
– In a house built before the war, Viken added. – Or a cabin. It has to be somewhere where people can be kept prisoner for days without anyone finding out.
At last they came to a break in the dense forest, and spied a few patches of cultivated ground. They took another turn off the road and then up towards a farm on the brow of the forest. It consisted of a fairly large barn, the farmhouse itself, and an outhouse. All the buildings looked to be freshly painted. There was a white Mercedes parked outside the outhouse, next to a tractor hooked up to a trailer full of huge plastic containers. Another car was parked behind the garage, a second Mercedes, but this one older and lacking registration plates. Smoke drifted from the chimney of the house.
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