by Jo Nesbo
‘You’ve got Aune Ståle’s mug,’ Harry said, putting the last chair in place so that all four formed a circle in the middle of the floor. ‘OK, we’re free, we’re our own bosses and we don’t report to anyone. But we keep Katrine Bratt informed, and vice versa. Sit down. Let’s start with each of us saying honestly what we think of this case. Base it on facts and experience, or gut feeling, one single stupid detail or nothing at all. None of what you say will ever be used against you later, and it’s OK to go way off beam. Who wants to start?’ The four of them sat down.
‘Obviously I’m not making the decisions,’ Smith said. ‘But I think … well, you start, Harry.’ Smith wrapped his hands around him as if he was freezing, even though they were sitting next door to the boiler that heated the whole prison. ‘Maybe tell us why you think it isn’t Valentin Gjertsen.’
Harry looked at Smith. Took a sip from his mug. Swallowed. ‘OK, I’ll start. I don’t think it isn’t Valentin Gjertsen. Even if the thought has occurred to me. A killer carries out two murders without leaving any evidence. That takes planning and a cool head. But then he suddenly carries out an assault where he liberally scatters evidence and proof, all of which points towards Valentin Gjertsen. There’s something insistent about that, as if the person responsible wants to announce who he is. And that obviously arouses suspicions. Is someone trying to manipulate us into thinking it’s someone else? If so, Valentin Gjertsen is the perfect scapegoat.’ Harry looked at the others, noted Anders Wyller’s concentrated, wide-eyed expression, Bjørn Holm looking almost sleepy, and Hallstein Smith looking friendly, inviting, as if in a setting like this he had automatically slipped into his role as psychologist. ‘Valentin Gjertsen is a plausible culprit, given his past,’ Harry went on. ‘And he is also one the murderer knows we’re unlikely to find, seeing as we’ve already tried for so long without any result. Or because the killer knows that Valentin Gjertsen is dead and buried. Because he himself killed and buried him. Because a Valentin who’s been buried in secret can’t deny our suspicions with an alibi or anything like that, but even from the grave he can carry on drawing attention away from alternative perpetrators.’
‘Fingerprints,’ Bjørn Holm said. ‘The tattoo of the demon face. The DNA on the handcuffs.’
‘Right.’ Harry took another sip. ‘The perpetrator could have planted the fingerprints by cutting off one of Valentin’s fingers and taking it with him to Hovseter. The tattoo could be a copy that can be washed off. The hairs on the handcuffs could come from Valentin Gjertsen’s corpse, and the handcuffs left there on purpose.’
The silence in the boiler room was only broken by a last rattle from the coffee machine.
‘Bloody hell,’ Anders Wyller laughed.
‘That could have gone straight into my top ten of paranoid patients’ conspiracy theories,’ Smith said. ‘That’s, er … meant as a compliment.’
‘And that’s why we’re here,’ Harry said, leaning forward on his chair. ‘We’re supposed to think differently, look at possibilities that Katrine’s investigative team don’t touch. Because they’ve created a scenario of what happened, and the bigger the group is, the harder it is to break free from prevailing ideas and assumptions. They work a bit like a religion, because you automatically think that so many other people around you can’t be wrong. Well.’ Harry raised his unnamed mug. ‘They can. And they are. All the time.’
‘Amen,’ Smith said.
‘So let’s move on to the next bad theory,’ Harry said. ‘Wyller?’
Anders Wyller looked down into his mug. Took a deep breath and began. ‘Smith, you described on television how a vampirist develops, from one phase to the next. Here in Scandinavia young people are monitored so closely that if they showed such extreme tendencies, it would be picked up by the health service before they reached the final phase. The vampirist isn’t Norwegian, he’s from some other country. That’s my theory.’ He looked up.
‘Thanks,’ Harry said. ‘I can add that in the recorded criminal history of serial killers, there isn’t a single blood-drinking Scandinavian.’
‘The Atlas Murder in Stockholm, 1932,’ Smith said.
‘Hm. I don’t know about that one.’
‘That’s probably because the vampirist was never found, and it was never ascertained that he was a serial killer.’
‘Interesting. And the victim was a woman, as in this case?’
‘Lilly Lindeström, a thirty-two-year-old prostitute. And I’d eat the straw hat I’ve got at home if she was the only one. More recently it’s become known as the Vampire Murder.’
‘Details?’
Smith blinked a couple of times, his eyes almost closed and he began to speak as if he were reciting from memory, word for word: ‘4 May, Walpurgis Eve, Sankt Eriksplan 11, one-room flat. Lilly had received a man there. She had been down to see her friend on the first floor and asked to borrow a condom. When the police broke into Lilly’s flat they found her dead, lying on an ottoman. No fingerprints or other clues. It was obvious that the murderer had cleaned up after him, even Lilly’s clothes were neatly folded. In the kitchen sink they found a sauce ladle covered in blood.’
Bjørn exchanged a glance with Harry before Smith went on.
‘None of the names in her address book, which admittedly only contained a load of first names, led the police to any suspects. They never came close to finding the vampirist.’
‘But if it was a vampirist, surely he would have struck again?’ Wyller said.
‘Yes,’ Smith said. ‘And who’s to say he didn’t? And cleaned up after himself even better.’
‘Smith’s right,’ Harry said. ‘The number of people who go missing each year is greater than the number of recorded murders. But might Wyller have a point in that a vampirist in the making would be identified at an early stage?’
‘What I described on television was the typical development,’ Smith said. ‘There are people who discover their inner vampirist later in life, just like it can take time for ordinary people to discover their true sexual orientation. One of the most famous vampirists in history, Peter Kürten, the so-called ‘Vampire of Düsseldorf’, was forty-five years old the first time he drank the blood of an animal, a swan he killed outside the city in December 1929. Less than two years later he had killed nine people and tried to kill another seven.’
‘So you don’t think it strange that Valentin Gjertsen’s otherwise pretty horrifying track record has never included blood-drinking or cannibalism?’
‘No.’
‘OK. What are your thoughts, Bjørn?’
Bjørn Holm straightened up on his chair and rubbed his eyes. ‘The same as you, Harry.’
‘Which is?’
‘That Ewa Dolmen’s murder is a copy of the killing in Stockholm. The sofa, the fact that the place had been tidied up, that the blender he used to drink the blood from was left in the sink.’
‘Does that sound plausible, Smith?’ Harry asked.
‘A copycat? If so, it would be something new. Er, paradox not intended. There have, certainly, been vampirists who have regarded themselves as the reincarnation of Count Dracula, but the notion that a vampirist would take it upon himself to recreate the Atlas Murder seems a little unlikely. A more plausible explanation would be that there are certain personality traits that are typical of vampirists.’
‘Harry thinks our vampirist seems to be obsessed with cleanliness,’ Wyller said.
‘I understand that,’ Smith said. ‘The vampirist John George Haigh was obsessed with clean hands, and wore gloves all year round. He hated dirt and only drank his victims’ blood from freshly washed glasses.’
‘How about you, Smith?’ Harry said. ‘Who do you think our vampirist is?’
Smith put two fingers between his lips and moved them up and down, making a flapping sound as he breathed in and out.
‘I think that like a lot of vampirists he’s an intelligent person who has tortured animals and possibly people since he was young, that he comes f
rom a well-adapted family where he was the only one who didn’t fit in. He’ll soon want blood again, and I think he gets sexual satisfaction not only from drinking blood, but from seeing blood. That he is seeking the perfect orgasm he thinks a combination of rape and blood can give him. Peter Kürten – the swan killer from Düsseldorf – said that the number of times he stabbed his victims with a knife depended on how much blood came out, which in turn determined how quickly he reached orgasm.’
A gloomy silence settled on the room.
‘And where and how do we find a person like that?’ Harry asked.
‘Maybe Katrine was right last night on television,’ Bjørn said. ‘Perhaps Valentin has fled the country. Taken a trip to Red Square, maybe.’
‘Moscow?’ Smith said in surprise.
‘Copenhagen,’ Harry said. ‘Multicultural Nørrebro. There’s a park there that’s frequented by people engaged in human trafficking. Mostly import, a bit of export. You sit down on one of the benches or swings and hold up a ticket – a bus ticket, plane ticket, anything. A guy comes over and asks where you’re going. Then he asks more, nothing that would give him away, while a colleague sitting elsewhere in the park takes your picture without you noticing, and checks online that you’re who you say you are and not a detective. This travel agency is discreet and expensive, but even so, no one gets to travel business class. The cheapest seats are in a shipping container.’
Smith shook his head. ‘But vampirists don’t calculate risk as rationally as we do, so I don’t think he’s gone.’
‘Nor do I,’ Harry said. ‘So where is he? Is he hiding in a crowd, or does he live alone in some secluded place? Has he got friends? Can we imagine him having a partner?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Everyone here understands that no one can know, Smith, whether or not they’re a psychologist. All I’m asking for is your hunch.’
‘We researchers aren’t good at hunches. But he’s alone. I’m pretty certain of that. Very alone, even. A loner.’
There was a knock.
‘Pull hard and come in!’ Harry called.
The door opened.
‘Good day, bold vampire hunters,’ Ståle Aune said, stepping inside, paunch first, hand in hand with a round-shouldered girl with so much dark hair hanging in front of her face that Harry couldn’t see it. ‘I’ve agreed to give you a crash course in the role of psychologist in police work, Smith.’
Smith lit up. ‘I’d really appreciate that, dear colleague.’
Ståle Aune rocked on his heels. ‘You should. But I have no intention of working in these catacombs again, so I’ve arranged to borrow Katrine’s office.’ He put one hand on the girl’s shoulder. ‘Aurora came with me because she needs a new passport. Could you help her jump the queue while Smith and I talk, Harry?’
The girl pulled her hair aside. At first Harry couldn’t believe the pale face with greasy skin and red spots belonged to the pretty little girl he remembered from just a couple of years before. Looking at her dark clothes and heavy make-up, he guessed she was now a goth, or what Oleg called an emo. But there was no defiance or rebellion in her eyes. Nor the weariness of youth, or any sign of joy at seeing Harry again. Her favourite not-uncle, as she used to call him. There was nothing there. Actually, there was something there. Something he couldn’t put his finger on.
‘Queue-jumping it shall be. That’s how corrupt we are here,’ Harry said, and got a little smile from Aurora. ‘Let’s go up to the passport department.’
The four of them left the boiler room. Harry and Aurora walked silently along the culvert while Ståle Aune and Hallstein Smith chatted away two steps behind them.
‘So, I had this patient who talked so indirectly about his own problems that I didn’t put two and two together,’ Aune said. ‘When, quite by chance, I realised that he was the missing Valentin Gjertsen, he attacked me. If Harry hadn’t come to my rescue he would have killed me.’
Harry noticed Aurora tense at this.
‘He got away, but while he was threatening me I got a clearer picture of him. He held a knife to my throat as he tried to force me to make a diagnosis. He called himself “damaged goods”. And said that if I didn’t answer, he’d drain me of blood while his own cock swelled.’
‘Interesting. Could you see if he did actually get an erection?’
‘No, but I could feel it. As well as the jagged edge of the hunting knife. I remember hoping that my double chin might save me.’ Ståle chuckled.
Harry heard a stifled gasp from Aurora and half turned to give Aune a pointed look.
‘Oh, sorry, sweetheart!’ her father exclaimed.
‘What did you talk about?’ Smith wondered.
‘A lot,’ he said, lowering his voice. ‘He was interested in the voices in the background of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon.’
‘Now I remember! I don’t think he said his name was Paul. But all my patient records have been stolen, sadly.’
‘Harry, Smith says—’
‘I heard.’
They went up the steps to the ground floor, where Aune and Smith stopped in front of the lift and Harry and Aurora carried on into the atrium. A notice on the glass in front of the counter announced that their camera was out of action, and that anyone applying for a passport should use the photograph booth towards the rear of the building.
Harry led Aurora to the booth, which looked like an outside toilet, pulled the curtain aside and gave Aurora some coins before she sat down.
‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘You’re not supposed to show your teeth.’ Then he closed the curtain.
Aurora looked at her reflection in the black glass that concealed the camera.
Felt tears welling up.
It had seemed like a good idea, telling her dad that she wanted to go with him when he went to Police HQ to see Harry. That she needed a new passport before a class trip to London. He never had a clue about that sort of thing, her mum did all that. The plan had been to get Harry on his own for a few minutes and tell him everything. But now that they were alone she found she couldn’t do it. It was what her dad had said in the tunnel, about the knife, it had frightened her so much that the trembling had started again, and her legs almost gave way beneath her. It was the same jagged knife the man had held to her throat. And he was back. Aurora closed her eyes to avoid seeing her own terrified reflection. He was back, and he was going to kill them all if she talked. And what good would talking do? She didn’t know anything that could help them find him. That wouldn’t save her dad, or anyone else out there. Aurora opened her eyes again. Looked around the cramped booth, just like the toilet at the sports hall that time. She found herself looking down automatically, at the bottom of the curtain. The pointed boots on the floor, right outside. They were waiting for her, wanted to get in, wanted …
Aurora yanked the curtain aside, pushed her way past Harry and headed for the exit. Heard him call her name behind her. Then she was out in daylight and open ground. She ran across the grass, through the park, off towards Grønlandsleiret. She heard her hiccoughed sobs mixed with gasping breath, as if there wasn’t enough air, even out here. But she didn’t stop. She ran. Knew she was going to keep running until she dropped.
‘Paul, or Valentin, didn’t mention any particular attraction to blood as such,’ Aune said. He had settled down behind Katrine’s desk. ‘But considering his history, we can probably conclude that he’s not a man with any inhibitions about acting out his sexual preferences. And someone like that is unlikely to discover new sexual sides to himself as an adult.’
‘Maybe the preference was always there,’ Smith said. ‘He just hadn’t found a way to act out the fantasy. If his real desire was to bite people until they bled, and then drink straight from the well, so to speak, maybe it was the discovery of these iron teeth that made it possible for him to put that into action?’
‘Drinking other people’s blood is an ancient tradition with connotations of assuming the powers and abilities of other
people, usually enemies, isn’t it?’
‘Agreed.’
‘If you’re going to put together a profile of this serial killer, Smith, I’d suggest taking as your starting point a person who is driven by a need for control, like we see in more conventional rapists and sexually motivated murderers. Or, to be more accurate, regaining control, reclaiming a power that was taken from him at some point. Restitution.’
‘Thanks,’ Smith said. ‘Restitution. I agree, I’ll definitely include that aspect.’
‘What does “restitution” mean?’ Katrine asked, who was sitting on the windowsill after being granted leave to stay by the two psychologists.
‘We all want to repair injuries inflicted on us,’ Aune said. ‘Or take revenge, which is much the same thing. I, for instance, decided to become the genius psychologist I am because I was so bad at playing football that no one ever wanted me on their team. Harry was just a boy when his mother died, and he decided to become a murder detective to punish people who take lives.’
There was a knock on the door frame.
‘Speak of the devil …’ Aune said.
‘Sorry to interrupt,’ Harry said. ‘But Aurora’s run off. I don’t know what happened, but it was definitely something.’
A cloud swept across Ståle Aune’s face and he heaved himself up from the chair with a groan. ‘God knows with teenagers. I’ll go and find her. This was a bit brief, Smith – give me a call and we’ll carry on.’
‘Anything new?’ Harry asked when Aune had gone.
‘Yes and no,’ Katrine said. ‘The Forensic Medical Institute has confirmed that there’s a hundred per cent match between the DNA found on the handcuffs and Gjertsen. Only one psychologist and two sexologists have contacted us after Smith’s plea to check their patient records, but the names they gave us have already been dismissed from the investigation. And, as expected, we’ve received several hundred calls from people reporting anything from scary neighbours and dogs with bite marks on them, to vampires, werewolves, gnomes and trolls. But also a few that are worth checking out. By the way, Rakel has been calling, trying to get hold of you.’
