by Jo Nesbo
‘In fact I do,’ Harry said, slipping back down in his chair and closing his eyes.
Bjørn got up, red-faced. ‘A psychopathic serial killer who, out of love, does. .’ His voice cracked and he nodded to the empty chair. ‘. . this.’
‘Look at yourself,’ Harry said, opening one eye.
‘Eh?’
‘Look at yourself and feel. You’re furious, you hate, you want to see the miscreant dangle by the neck, die, suffer, don’t you? Because you, like us, loved the woman who sat there. So the mother of your hatred is love, Bjørn. And it’s love, not hatred, that makes you willing to do whatever it takes, go to any lengths to get your hands on the guilty party. Sit down.’
Bjørn sat down. And Harry got up.
‘That’s what strikes me about these murders too. The lengths he goes to to reconstruct the original crimes. The risks the murderer is willing to take. I’m not sure, bearing in mind all the work involved, that behind everything is sheer bloodlust or hatred. The bloodthirsty murderer kills prostitutes, children or other easy targets. Someone who hates without love is never so extreme in his efforts. I think we should look for someone who loves more than he hates. And so the question is, from what we know about Valentin Gjertsen, has he really got the capacity to love so much?’
‘Maybe,’ Gunnar Hagen said. ‘We don’t know everything about Valentin Gjertsen.’
‘Mm. When’s the date for the next unsolved murder?’
‘There’s a bit of a gap now,’ Katrine said. ‘May. There was a case nineteen years ago.’
‘That’s more than a month away,’ Harry said.
‘Yes, and there was no sexual element. It was more like a family feud. So I took the liberty of examining a missing persons case that looks like murder. A girl disappeared in Oslo. She was reported missing after no one had seen her for more than two weeks. The reason no one reacted earlier was that she had texted several friends that she was off on a cheap flight to the sun and needed some time and space. A few friends answered her text but didn’t get a reply, so they concluded that getting away from it all included her phone. When she was reported missing the police checked all the airlines, but she hadn’t been on any of them. In short, she vanished without a trace.’
‘The phone?’ Bjørn Holm asked.
‘Last signal to the base station was in Oslo city centre, then it stopped. The battery may have died.’
‘Mm,’ Harry said. ‘The text. Leaving a message that she’s ill. .’
Bjørn and Katrine nodded slowly.
Ståle Aune sighed. ‘Possible to have this spelt out?’
‘He means the same thing happened to Beate,’ Katrine said. ‘I got a text saying she was ill.’
‘Of course,’ Hagen said.
Harry nodded slowly. ‘He might for example check the recent calls and then send a short message to those contacts to delay the chase.’
‘Which means it’s harder to find clues at the crime scene,’ Bjørn added. ‘He’s in the loop.’
‘What date was the message sent?’
‘The twenty-fifth of March,’ Katrine said.
‘That’s today,’ Bjørn said.
‘Mm.’ Harry rubbed his chin. ‘We have a possible sexually motivated murder and a date, but no location. Which detectives were involved?’
‘No investigation was set up as it remained a missing persons case and was never upgraded to murder.’ Katrine looked at her notes. ‘But in the end it was sent to Crime Squad and put on the list of one of the inspectors. You, in fact.’
‘Me?’ Harry frowned. ‘I usually remember my cases.’
‘This was straight after the Snowman. You’d buggered off to Hong Kong and never reappeared. You ended up on the missing persons list yourself.’
Harry shrugged. ‘Fine. Bjørn, you check with the Missing Persons Unit afterwards to see what they have on this case. And alert them to the danger of someone ringing their doorbell or receiving mysterious call-outs during the day, OK? I think we should follow this one up, despite the fact that we don’t have a body or a crime scene.’ Harry clapped his hands. ‘So, who makes the coffee round here?’
‘Mm,’ Katrine said in a deeper, hoarse voice, slumped in her chair, legs stretched out, eyes closed and rubbing her chin. ‘I reckon that has to be the new consultant.’
Harry pursed his lips, nodded, jumped up, and for the first time since they found Beate there was the sound of laughter in the Boiler Room.
The gravity of the occasion hung heavy in the chamber at City Hall.
Mikael Bellman sat at the far end of the table, the chairman at the top. Mikael knew the names of most of the councillors; it was one of the first things he did as the Chief of Police, learn names. And faces. ‘You can’t play chess without knowing the pieces,’ the outgoing Police Chief had told him. ‘You have to know what they can and can’t do.’
It had been a well-meant piece of advice from an experienced Chief. But why was this retired officer sitting here now, in this room? Had he been brought in as a kind of consultant? Whatever his experience with chess, he doubted he’d played with pieces like the tall blonde sitting two places from the chairman. The person who was speaking at this moment. The queen. The Councillor for Social Affairs. Isabelle Skøyen. The leavee. Her voice had that cold administrative timbre of someone who knows that minutes are being taken.
‘With increasing unease we have seen how Oslo Police appear to be unable to stop these murders on their own. For some time the media have naturally been applying considerable pressure for us to do something drastic, but it is of greater significance that the city’s inhabitants have also lost their patience. We simply cannot have this growing lack of trust in our institutions, in this case the police and the City Council. And since this is my area of responsibility I have initiated this informal hearing so that the council can react to the Chief of Police’s solution, which we have to assume exists, and thereafter evaluate the alternatives.’
Mikael Bellman was sweating. He hated sweating in his uniform. In vain he had tried to catch the eye of his predecessor. What the hell was he doing here?
‘And I think we should be as open and innovative as possible with regard to alternatives,’ Isabelle Skøyen’s voice intoned. ‘We, of course, understand that this may be an excessively demanding issue for a young, newly appointed Police Chief. It is indeed unfortunate that a situation requiring experience and knowledge of procedure should come so early in his period of office. It would have been better if this had landed on the desk of the previous Police Chief, given his long years of experience and his many achievements. I’m sure that’s what everyone in this room would have wished for, including the two Police Chiefs.’
Mikael Bellman wondered if he had heard what he thought he had heard. Did she mean. . was she about to. .?
‘Isn’t that right, Bellman?’
Mikael Bellman cleared his throat.
‘Excuse me for interrupting, Bellman,’ Isabelle Skøyen said, placing a pair of Prada reading glasses on the tip of her nose and peering down at the sheet of paper in front of her. ‘I’m reading from the minutes of the previous meeting we had on this matter and in which you said, quote: “I can assure the council that we have this case under control and we have every confidence that there will be a speedy resolution.”’ She removed her glasses. ‘To save ourselves and you the time, which apparently we are short of, perhaps you could skip the repetition and tell us what you’re intending to do now that differs from and is more fruitful than what you were doing before?’
Bellman rolled his shoulders in the hope his shirt would come loose from his back. Bloody sweat. Bloody bitch.
It was eight o’clock in the evening, and Harry felt tired as he unlocked the door to PHS. He was obviously out of practice at concentrating for longer periods. And they hadn’t got much further. They had skimmed through reports, thinking thoughts they had thought a dozen times before, gone in circles, banged their heads against the wall hoping that the wall would gi
ve sooner or later.
The ex-inspector nodded to the cleaner and ran up the stairs.
Tired, and yet astonishingly alert. Elated. Ready for more.
He heard his name being called as he passed Arnold’s office, turned and poked his head round. His colleague interlaced his fingers behind his dishevelled hair. ‘Just wanted to hear how it feels to be a real policeman again.’
‘Good,’ Harry said. ‘I just have to correct the last criminal investigation tests.’
‘Don’t worry about it. I’ve got them here,’ Arnold said, tapping his finger on the pile of papers in front of him. ‘Just make sure you catch the guy.’
‘OK, Arnold. Thanks.’
‘By the way, we’ve had a break-in.’
‘Break-in?’
‘In the gym. The equipment cupboard was broken into, but all that was taken were two batons.’
‘Oh shit. Front door?’
‘No signs of forced entry there. So that suggests it must have been an inside job. Or someone who works here let them in or lent them their pass.’
‘Is there no way of finding out?’
Arnold shrugged. ‘We haven’t got much here that’s worth stealing, so we don’t spend any of the budget on complex check-in procedures, CCTV or a twenty-four-hour security guard.’
‘We may not have weapons, dope or a safe, but surely we have more cash-convertible things than batons?’
Arnold smirked. ‘You’d better check to see if your computer is still there.’
Harry walked on to his office, saw that it appeared to be intact, sat down and wondered what to do. The evening had been set aside for marking tests, and at home only shadows were waiting. In answer to his question, his mobile began to vibrate.
‘Katrine?’
‘Hi. I’ve got something.’ She sounded excited. ‘Do you remember me telling you that Beate and I had spoken to Irja, the woman who rented out the basement flat to Valentin?’
‘The one who gave him a false alibi?’
‘Yes. She said she’d found some photos in the flat. Photos of rape and abuse. In one of the photos she recognised his shoes and the wallpaper from the bedroom.’
‘Mm. You mean. .’
‘. . that it’s not very likely, but it may be the scene of a crime. I contacted the new owners and it turns out they’re living with family nearby while the house is being done up. But they didn’t mind if we borrowed the key and had a scout round.’
‘I thought we agreed we weren’t looking for Valentin now.’
‘I thought we agreed to search where there was light.’
‘Touché, bright Bratt. Vinderen is practically round the corner. Have you got an address?’
Harry was given it.
‘That’s walking distance. I’ll head there right away. Are you coming?’
‘Yes, but I’ve been so tense I forgot to eat.’
‘OK. Come when you’re ready.’
It was a quarter to nine when Harry walked up the flagstone path to the empty house. Close to the wall were used paint pots, rolls of plastic and planks sticking out from under tarpaulins. He walked down the little stone steps, as instructed by the owners, and across the flagstones at the back. He unlocked the basement flat and immediately the smell of glue and paint assailed him. But also another smell, one the owners had spoken about and which was one of the reasons they had decided to do some renovation work. They had said they couldn’t work out where it was coming from; the smell was all over the house. They’d had a pest controller in, but he had said that such a strong smell had to come from more than one dead rodent and they would probably have to take up the floor and open up the walls to find out.
Harry switched on the light. Spread across the hall floor was a transparent plastic sheet, covered with grey heavy-duty boot marks and wooden boxes filled with tools, hammers, crowbars and paint-stained drills. Some boards had been removed from the wall so that you could see through to the insulation. In addition to the hall the flat consisted of a small kitchen, bathroom and sitting room with a curtain concealing the bedroom. The renovation project obviously hadn’t got as far as the bedroom yet; it was being used to store the furniture from the other rooms. To protect the furniture from the dust, the bead curtain had been pulled aside and replaced with a thick, matt plastic curtain which reminded Harry of slaughterhouses, cold-storage rooms and cordoned-off crime scenes.
He inhaled the smell of solvents and decay. And concluded, like the pest controller, that this was not a single tiny rodent.
The bed had been pushed into the corner to make more space for the furniture, and the room was so full it was hard to form an impression of exactly how the rape had been committed and the girl photographed. Katrine had said she would visit Irja in case she could give them any more information, but if this Valentin was their cop killer, Harry already knew one thing: he hadn’t left evidence implicating him lying around. Harry scanned the room from the floor to the ceiling and back down again to his reflection in the window, looking out on the darkness in the garden. There was something claustrophobic about the room, but if it really was the scene of a crime it wasn’t talking to him. Anyway, too much time had passed, too many other things had happened here in the meantime and all that was left was the wallpaper. And the smell.
Harry let his gaze wander back up to the ceiling. Held it there. Claustrophobic. Why did it feel like that here and not in the sitting room? He stretched his full height of one ninety-two, plus arm, to the ceiling. His fingertips could just reach. Plasterboard. He went back into the sitting room and did the same. Without touching the ceiling.
So, the bedroom ceiling must have been lowered. Typical of the 1970s when people were trying to reduce heating costs. And in the space between the old and the new ceiling there would be room. Room to hide something.
Harry went into the hall, took a crowbar from a toolbox and returned to the bedroom. Froze when his gaze met the window. Knowing the eye automatically reacts to movement. He stood still for two seconds staring and listening. Nothing.
Harry concentrated on the ceiling again. There was nowhere to insert a crowbar, but it was easy with plasterboard, all you had to do was cut out a big section and afterwards replace the piece, use a bit of filler and paint the whole ceiling. He reckoned it could be done in half a day if you were efficient.
Harry stepped onto a chair and took aim at the ceiling with the crowbar. Hagen was right: if a detective, without a blue chit, the search warrant, tore down a ceiling without the owner’s consent, a court would certainly overrule any evidence that this may unearth.
Harry aimed a blow. The crowbar went through the ceiling with a lifeless groan and white gypsum sprinkled down over his face.
And Harry was not even a detective, just a civilian consultant, not part of the investigation, a private individual who could accordingly be held to account and found guilty of hooliganism. And Harry was willing to pay the price.
He closed his eyes and bent the crowbar back. Felt bits of plaster fall on his shoulders and forehead. And caught the stench. It was worse here. He smashed the crowbar in again, making the gap bigger. He hunted around for something he could put on the chair so that he could get his head through the opening.
There it was again. A movement by the window. Harry jumped down and raced over to the window, shading his eyes to keep out the light and leaning against the glass. But all he could see out there in the darkness were the silhouettes of apple trees. Some of the branches were swaying. Had the wind picked up?
Harry turned back into the room, found a large plastic IKEA box, which he put on the chair, and he was about to clamber up when he heard a sound from the hall. A click. He stood waiting, listening. But no further sounds reached him. Harry shrugged it off; it was just the creaking of an old wooden house when the wind starts blowing. He balanced on top of the plastic box, stretched up gingerly, put the palms of his hands against the ceiling and poked his head through the cavity in the plasterboard.
The
stench was so intense that his eyes instantly filled with water and he had to concentrate on holding his breath. The stench was familiar. Flesh in that phase of the decomposition process when inhaling the gas seems dangerous to your health. He had only smelt such an intense stench once before, when they’d found a body that had been wrapped in plastic for two years in a dark cellar and they’d poked holes in it. No, this was not a rodent, not even from the rodent family. It was dark inside, and his head was blocking all the light, but he could glimpse something lying right in front of him. He waited for his pupils to dilate slowly to make the most of the little light there was. And then he saw it. It was a drill. No, a jigsaw. But there was something else, further back, something he couldn’t quite see; he just felt a physical presence. Something. . He felt his throat constrict. A sound. Of footsteps. Beneath him.
He tried to retract his head, but it was as if the opening had become too narrow, as if it was growing smaller around his neck, closing with him inside the atmosphere of death. He felt the panic rise, he forced his fingers between his throat and the mangled ceiling and tore off chunks. And pulled his head out.
The footsteps had stopped.
Harry’s pulse was throbbing in his throat. He waited until he was perfectly calm. Took the lighter from his pocket, put his hand through the opening, the flame leapt up, and he was about to stick his head back in when he noticed something. The plastic curtain separating the two rooms. Something was outlined against it. A figure. Someone was watching him from behind the curtain.
Harry coughed. ‘Katrine?’
No answer.
Harry’s eyes sought the crowbar he had left somewhere on the floor. Found it, stepped down as quietly as he could. Got one foot on the floor, heard the curtain being moved to the side and realised he wouldn’t have time to reach it. The voice sounded almost cheerful.
‘So we meet again.’
He looked up. In the dim light it took him a few seconds to recognise the face. He cursed under his breath. His brain searched for conceivable scenarios for how the next few seconds would play out, tossing around the question: what the hell’s going to happen now? But found no answer.
