Five

The visit to Victoria Heinerback’s apartment had not made Adam any less judgmental, but he now didn’t know what to expect from the memorial service. He parked some distance from the house. The cars sat bumper-to-bumper along the narrow road, making it almost impassable.

The former party leader had generously offered his house for the occasion. His colossal villa by the water, only a few hundred yards from the old airport at Fornebu, was no longer plagued by pollution and noise following the long-awaited relocation of the main airport. The once beleaguered, uninhabitable timber house, with its scores of bay windows, large terraces, and two Ionic pillars framing the front door, had risen like a phoenix from the ashes, though the garden that sloped down to the fjord was still no more than clay and loose stones, ashen and snow white.

The number of mourners dressed in dark clothes was impressive.

Adam Stubo shook hands with a woman at the door and, just in case, mumbled his condolences. He had no idea who she was. He almost stumbled on an umbrella stand further down the hall. At least fifteen people were waiting to hang up their coats. Then he felt someone tug his sleeve, and before he could turn around, a young man with a thin neck and badly tied tie had taken his coat from him and given him a gentle push toward one of several public rooms.

Before Adam knew it, he was standing with a half-full glass in his hand. As he was walking, he looked around in desperation for somewhere to put it down.

“It’s non-alcoholic,” whispered a voice.

He recognized the woman immediately.

“Thank you,” he said, bewildered, and squeezed in to the side so he wouldn’t block the door. “You’re here too.”

“Yes,” said the woman in a friendly, quiet voice that could be heard above the humming of the crowd. “Most of us are. This is more than politics. It’s a tragedy that’s touched us all.”

She was wearing a tight black suit that contrasted with her short blonde hair and made her look paler than she did on TV. Adam looked down self-consciously and noticed that the funereal mood had not prevented the Socialist Left leader from choosing a skirt that was so short, it would have been more appropriate for someone ten years younger. But her legs were well toned, and he realized he should look up.

“Were you a friend of Victoria’s?” asked the woman.

“No.” He cleared his throat and held out his hand. She took it. “Adam Stubo,” he said. “NCIS. Pleased to meet you.”

Her eyes were blue and alert, and he registered a hint of curiosity in the way she tilted her head as she passed her glass from one hand to the other. Then she stopped herself with a quick nod.

“I just hope you get to the bottom of this,” she said before turning into the room, where the newly retired party leader, Kristian Mundal, had positioned himself by a rostrum, presumably borrowed from a nearby hotel.

“Dear friends”—he coughed to get everyone’s attention—“I would like to welcome you all warmly on behalf of Kari and myself. We felt that it was not only right but also very important to mark this sad occasion.” He coughed again, but this time more. “Sorry,” he apologized and continued. “It has been only two days since we heard the terrible news that Victoria had been so brutally taken from us. She . . .”

Adam could have sworn there were tears in the older man’s eyes. Real tears, he thought, astonished. In public. Real, salt tears were wetting the weathered face of a man who for three decades had proved to be the toughest, most cunning, and most resilient politician in Norway.

“It is no secret that Victoria was”—the man stopped and took a deep breath before continuing—“I don’t want say ‘like a daughter to me.’ I have four daughters, and Victoria was not one of them. But she was someone who meant a lot to me. Politically, of course, as we worked together for many years, despite her young age, but also personally. To the extent that it’s possible in politics . . .”

He stopped again. The silence was intense. No one touched their glasses. No one scraped their feet or chair on the dark cherrywood floor. People hardly dared to breathe. Adam glanced around the room without moving his head. Over by one of the other rooms, squeezed between a couple of imposing armchairs and two men that Adam didn’t recognize, was the chairman of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, with his hands inappropriately deep in his pockets. His brow furrowed in expectation, he stared out the window, as if he hoped that Victoria Heinerback would surprise them all by waving from the deck of a small boat approaching the jetty just below the house. One of the Labor Party’s youngest members of parliament was standing, weeping openly and silently, beside an arrangement of white lilies in a huge Chinese vase. She sat on the Standing Committee for Finance and Economic Affairs and therefore knew Victoria Heinerback better than most, Adam assumed. The minister of finance was standing next to the rostrum, with his head bent. He discreetly adjusted his glasses. The Storting’s president was holding a woman by the hand. Adam looked down and concluded that the villa in Tveistveien must be one of Europe’s least-guarded terrorist targets right now. He shuddered. On his way out here, he had only seen one marked police car, just outside the house.

“. . . and to the extent that politics is a friendly place,” concluded the elderly man. “And it can be. I am glad that . . .”

Adam nodded lightly to the blonde with the good legs, who gave a brief, sad smile back. He slowly withdrew from the room, while the man in front continued his speech.

“Excuse me,” he whispered to irritated faces as he made his way toward his goal. “Excuse me, I just . . .”

At last he was out in the hall. It was empty. He carefully closed the double doors and sighed.

Perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea to come. He had had a reason for coming, thinking that the memorial service would give him a better picture of Victoria Heinerback. She was obviously not the person he had taken her to be. She was more. Even though he never for a moment imagined that the pictures of public figures drawn with broad strokes in the press were in any way genuine, real, or exhaustive, his visit to the scene of the crime two days ago had made a deeper impression on him than he was prepared to admit. Earlier on, while he was rummaging around looking for a clean, white shirt, he had hoped that the people close to Victoria Heinerback might give more of themselves and say more about her at this impulsive memorial service, held so soon after the young woman’s death. But even now, twenty minutes into the service, he realized that he should have known better. This was a day for praise. For good thoughts and happy memories, a shared grief across party lines.

Adam stood with his back to the reception rooms and wondered where he would find his coat. The former party leader’s speech, with frequent pauses and a cough here and there, filtered through the wood of the solid doors as a muffled murmur.

Then he heard another voice to his left, through a door that was ajar to what might be the kitchen. It was the sibilant, urgent whisper of a woman who sounded like she actually wanted to shout but felt that it might be inappropriate, given the occasion. Adam was about to make his presence known when he heard a man’s voice, deep and aggressive, say, “Don’t you worry about that.”

There was the sound of a glass being banged down on a table, followed by what was obviously a sniff from the woman. Then she said something. Adam could only make out a few individual words that meant nothing to him. He took a couple of cautious steps toward the half-open door.

“Be careful,” he heard the woman say. “You had better watch it now, Rudolf.”

She came out into the hall so suddenly that Adam had to step back.

“Jesus,” he said and smiled. “You really scared me. Adam Stubo.”

The woman let a man out after her, closed the door with care, took Adam’s hand, and returned his smile. She was smaller than he’d imagined, almost strikingly petite. She had a slim waist, something she emphasized with a tight, fitted black skirt that stopped just below the knee. The gray silk blouse had ruffles at the neck and down the front. She reminded him of a miniature Margaret Thatcher. Her nose was big and hooked, and her chin was pointed. Her eyes were worthy of the iron lady. Icy blue and sharp, though her face was relaxed and welcoming.

“Kari Mundal,” she said quietly. “Pleasure. You are very welcome here, despite the occasion. Perhaps you’ve already met Rudolf Fjord?”

The man was twice her height and half as old. He was obviously less practiced at hiding his feelings. His hand was sweaty when he held it out, and his eyes darted here and there for a few moments before he finally managed to pull himself together and smile. At the same time he nodded and nearly bowed, as if he realized that his handshake was not particularly impressive.

“Were you looking for something?” Kari Mundal asked. “The bathroom? Just down there.” She pointed. “When the service is over,” she added, “there will be a bite to eat. Of course, we hadn’t expected so many people. But a little something is better than nothing. Victoria was such . . .” She smoothed her hair.

Kari Mundal was as close as you could get to the model of a good, old-fashioned housewife; she had stayed at home with her four daughters and three sons, and her husband was the first to admit that his stamina on the political front was entirely due to his loyal wife.

“Everyone should have a Kari at home,” he often said in interviews, blissfully unaffected by the complaints of a younger generation of women. “A Kari at home is better than ten in the workplace.”

Kari Mundal had looked after the house and children and ironed his shirts for more than forty years. She was happy to appear in magazines and on Saturday night TV, and since her husband had retired from politics, she had become a sort of national mascot, a politically incorrect, friendly, and sharp little granny.

“Were you looking for the bahroom?” she asked and pointed again.

“Yes,” Adam replied. “Sorry to have to miss some of your husband’s speech—”

“When you have to go, you have to go,” interrupted Kari Mundal. “Rudolf, shall we go in?”

Rudolf Fjord bowed again, stiff and obviously ill at ease. He followed behind the older woman, who opened the door to the reception room. It closed silently behind them.

Adam was alone.

The voice on the other side of the door sounded as if it was conducting a church service now. Adam wondered whether the gathering would soon start to sing. Victoria Heinerback’s body would not be released for a funeral for a long time, so in a sense there was nothing odd about holding a memorial service, but it struck him for the first time since he arrived that there was something vaguely distasteful about holding it here, in a private house. It was a sudden, but obviously well planned, event.

When he looked into the room where Rudolf Fjord and Kari Mundal had been having their whispered contretemps, his suspicion was confirmed. The kitchen was massive, as if it had been planned with occasions like this in mind. Silver platters of sandwiches, finger food, and elegant hors d’oeuvres stood lined up on the countertops and table, between bowls full of colorful salads. Cases of mineral water were stacked against the wall. On the windowsill, which was at least half a yard deep and two yards long, the hostess had lined up bottles of red and white wine. Some had already been opened.

Adam carefully lifted the plastic wrap on one of the trays and stuffed three bits of chicken into his mouth.

Then he left the kitchen again.

He noticed a wardrobe at the end of the hall. As he chewed while trying to find his coat among all the other coats, jackets, hats, and scarves, it struck him that Mrs. Mundal had not even asked who he was and why he was there. It wasn’t likely that she knew him from before. Adam had only ever had one interview in the national media. The following day, he had promised himself and his superiors that it would never happen again.

He eventually found his coat. He went out.

An argument, he mused as the raw sea air hit him.

Arguing on a day like today. Little Mrs. Mundal and Rudolf Fjord, second in charge of the party and, according to the papers, Victoria Heinerback’s obvious successor as party leader. The disagreement was obviously important enough to make them miss Kristian Mundal’s speech in the main room.

A gust of wind made his coattails flap against his legs. Adam looked up at the sky and then ran with heavy steps over the gravel.

Of course it didn’t have to mean anything.

When he got to the car, he heard the helicopters. There were two of them, one over a hill to the east, the other low over the water a few hundred yards from the shore. He also now saw that the small boat down by the jetty was a police boat. He counted five uniformed men along the road, all armed.

The gathering indoors was safe.

To the extent that anyone was, he thought as he got into the car.

He spat out some parsley and had to drive in reverse for fifty yards before he was able to turn.

The physical pain was not the worst thing. She was used to it. Her body had been ravaged by multiple sclerosis for more than twenty years now. Even though she was only sixty-seven, she knew that she was nearing the end. Nothing worked anymore. Her bedsores leaked and were painful. Yvonne Knutsen’s body was a shell around what could barely be called a life. She lay flat in a bed in a bland room in an institution that she had never liked. Grief drained what remained of her life force.

Bernt was wonderful. He came every day with little Fiorella and stayed with her for a long time, even though Yvonne was constantly falling asleep. Her medicine was stronger now.

She wanted to die. But God refused to come and get her.

The worst thing about just lying like this was time. Time multiplied when you weren’t able to do anything. It went in circles, in loops, in great big arcs, before returning back to where it started. She didn’t want this anymore. Her time on this earth should be over, it should have been over long ago, and her grief made the fact that her body was clinging onto life even more unbearable.

Fiona had been a good daughter. Naturally they had argued, like every mother and daughter. Their relationship had been cool now and then, but was it reasonable to expect anything else? It never took more than a few weeks before everything was the same as before. Fiona was kind. Yvonne’s friends had always said so, in the days when she could still make and serve coffee, or even a meal on a good day.

“You’re lucky, Yvonne.”

Fiona had never let her down.

They shared a secret, the two of them.

Just as time warped beyond recognition when it had no meaning, so secrets could grow to be so enormous that they were invisible. At the beginning, it had been like a thorn between them. But since there was no turning back, they had managed to agree with surprising ease: We’ll forget this.

Yvonne Knutsen could still hear her own voice back then, firm and maternal with an edge of determined protection: “We will forget this.”

And they had forgotten.

Now Fiona was dead, and loneliness gave the secret new life. It haunted her, particularly at night, when she thought she could see a shadow by the window, a silent figure seeking revenge who had now found reason to plague her, now when she had no one to help her forget.

If only God would let her follow Fiona.

“Dear God,” she whispered into the room.

But her heart went on beating stubbornly in her emaciated chest.

Daylight was disappearing fast. It was four o’clock in the afternoon on Monday, February 9. A thirty-seven-year-old man was about to climb a crane without permission. It was yellow and over twenty yards high, towering above a confusion of construction materials and machinery. He was only a few yards from the ground, and he could already feel the cold wind blasting through his clothes. His gloves were too thin. His friend had warned him. The metal felt like ice. But he had not dared to choose anything warmer. It was better, after all, to have more control over your fingers.

He wasn’t going fast enough. His friend was already halfway up. But he was younger and well trained.

Vegard Krogh tried to be positive.

He didn’t really have the energy for this sort of thing anymore. He was reluctantly approaching forty and had never received the recognition and publicity he deserved. He thought his writing was accessible, and his literary sarcasm was clever and good. The critics all agreed, but Vegard Krogh’s work was seldom given more than a passing comment in the local paper from his hometown. Vegard Krogh had a distinct voice, a critic once said, an original and ironic pen. He was described as a talent. But since then he had not only gotten older, he had also become an author of some note. He knew it: he had important things to tell. His talent had blossomed, he should be established by now, a force to be reckoned with. A review of his third novel from a national newspaper hung on the corkboard at home. Not particularly impressive, just two columns, worn and yellow after several years in the kitchen, but the phrase “strong, vital and at times technically brilliant” was written there.

The readers, however, had totally let him down.

Don’t think. Climb.

He should have worn overalls. There was a gap between the waistband of his pants and his sweater. The cold cut into his back like icicles. He tried to stuff his woolen vest into his pants with one hand. It helped for a few seconds.

He would just have to manage. He didn’t know where he got the energy. Without thinking about the cold, without worrying about his increasing distance from the ground, without thinking about how dangerous the project was that he was now determined to carry through, he simply concentrated on lifting one leg after the other. Lifting one hand up a step while the other clung to the metal. Again and again. Keeping pace. Iron will.

He was up.

The wind was so strong that he could feel the crane swaying. He looked down. Closed his eyes.

“Don’t look down,” his friend shouted. “Don’t look down yet, Vegard! Look at me!”

His eyelids were stuck to his irises.

He wanted to look but didn’t dare. A violent wave of nausea washed over him.

“You’ve done this before,” he heard his friend’s voice saying, much closer now. “It’ll be fine, just wait.”

A hand gripped his lower arm. A firm grip.

“It’s exactly the same as this summer,” the voice said. “The only difference is the weather.”

And the fact that it was illegal, thought Vegard Krogh as he tried not to look back.

His job at the left-leaning paper Klassekampen had been a dead end. He had stayed there too long. Maybe because he was, after all, allowed to write what he wanted. Klassekampen was important. It took sides. Papers should take sides, politically and on principle. And Vegard Krogh was allowed to rant as much as he liked. As long as his aggression was targeted in the right direction, as the editor put it. As Klassekampen and the young Vegard Krogh had more or less the same views on Norwegian cultural life, the paper fully supported his vitriolic, well- written reviews, angry analyses, and highly libelous remarks. He carried on for several years, until he was exhausted and finally had to admit that practically no one read Klassekampen.

He was never actually sued.

When he got the job working in the culture department of TV2, everything looked set to improve. For a brief year he achieved a sort of cult status among the angry young men who voiced their views about the state of the nation and what direction Norway should take. Vegard Krogh was one of them; even if he was a bit old, he was one of them. He had first gained notoriety as a stunt reporter for Young and Urban and was given his own irate ten-minute slot on Absolute Entertainment every Thursday.

Then after one too many lawsuits, which never made it to the courtroom thanks to the jolly and apologetic executive director, he lost the slot. TV2 was not as open as Klassekampen to what they ignorantly called “shit” in an internal review. Vegard Krogh was actually glad, when he thought about it. TV2 was a totally commercial channel, just like the worst American ones.

Finally he dared to look down.

“Can you see it?” his friend shouted. “On the orange target?”

Vegard Krogh looked down. The wind had blown his anorak up into a balloon, a great big bubble that made it difficult to see.

“Okay, let’s go,” he spluttered.

“We have to go further out on to the arm,” his friend shouted and let go of him. “Can you do it?”

He finally managed to get to where he was supposed to be. He tried to relax. Ignore the cold. Forget the height. Fixed his eyes on the book down there, an almost invisible rectangle on a large orange target. Tears streamed down his face. He blamed the wind and tried to muster his own inner strength. The camera had been positioned to the left on a pile of foundation blocks. The photographer had pulled a hood over his head. Vegard Krogh raised his arm as a signal. A bright light blinded him, and it took him a few seconds to fix his eyes on the target.

The harness was properly buckled. His friend checked one last time.

“There,” he said loudly. “You can jump.”

“Are you sure the bungee rope will hold?” Vegard Krogh shouted back, even though he didn’t need to.

“To the last ounce,” shouted his friend. “I weighed you three times before choosing the bungee rope, for God’s sake! And I measured this crane only yesterday! Jump! I’m fucking freezing!”

Vegard Krogh shot a glance at the photographer one last time. His hood, with its wolfskin trim, covered half the camera. The lens was focused on the two of them up there. He could hear sirens in the distance. They were getting closer.

Vegard Krogh took aim at the book. It was his latest collection of essays, an almost invisible speck on a round orange disk.

He jumped.

The fall was too slow.

He had time to think. He thought about the fact that he would soon be forty. He thought that his wife didn’t appear to be very fertile. They had been trying to have children for three years now, without any results other than the monthly disappointment, which they didn’t talk about anymore. He thought about the fact that they still lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Grønland and that they never managed to save anything more than a pittance.

When he was halfway through the fall, he stopped thinking.

It was happening too fast.

Far too fast, thought the photographer, his lens following the man’s descent toward the ground.

The book grew in front of Vegard’s eyes. He couldn’t blink, couldn’t see anything other than the white cover that just kept growing. He stretched his arms down and out, he was plummeting toward the ground and at last thought: this is happening too fast.

The wind pulled off his hat, and his fair hair, which was stuck to his sweaty forehead, brushed the orange target at the same moment that Vegard Krogh realized it was over. With great care, as if he had all the time in the world, he picked up his book and pressed it to his heart; his forehead brushed the ground, his bangs kissed the wood of the target.

The bungee rope recoiled. The movement rippled through his body, a powerful jolt from the soles of his feet, an oppressive pulse through his calves to his legs. It felt like his spine was being stretched by the tension.

He laughed.

He roared as he bounced up and down, from side to side. The laughter caught in his throat when the police car turned into the construction site and the photographer tried to pack away all his equipment as he ran toward the hole in the fence that protected the area.

Vegard Krogh had never felt so alive. As long as the film was okay, this would be perfect. The jump had been just as he had wanted, just like the book, just like Vegard Krogh believed he had always been: daring, dangerous, and provocative, bordering on what was permissible.

He didn’t die that Monday in the middle of February. On the contrary, he felt immortal as he hung there, upside down below a bright yellow crane, above an orange target, in the sharp blue light of the police car that howled toward him on the ground. Vegard Krogh swung between two bright colors that gray, windy afternoon, clutching the first copy of his new book: Bungee Jump.

Vegard Krogh’s death was postponed by one week and three days, but he didn’t know that himself, of course.

No matter how hard she tried, Johanne could not get herself to like Sigmund Berli. The man was disgusting. He openly picked his nose, he farted constantly without even apologizing, he cleaned his ears and bit his nails in front of everyone. Right now he was sitting there tearing a dirty napkin to shreds without even thinking that the pieces would be caught on a draft and blown to the floor.

“He’s a good guy,” Adam usually said, exasperated by Johanne’s cool attitude. “Just doesn’t have many manners. Sigmund was the only one who actually spoke to me after Elisabeth and Trine died.”

She couldn’t argue with the last statement. The terrible death of his first wife and daughter had nearly finished him off. He was about to drop out of working life and disappear into a serious and destructive depression when Sigmund, with a combination of sudden authority and touching care, had managed to pull him back to a form of normalcy, but one that didn’t truly take shape until he met Johanne two years later and started over again.

“You can’t measure a bit of snot on someone’s pants against true loyalty,” Adam said. Consequently, the man was now sitting on a bar stool in Johanne’s kitchen, having just enjoyed three helpings of Stange chicken and arugula salad.

“You make great food,” he said and smiled broadly.

He was looking at Adam.

“Thank you,” Johanne said.

“I made the dressing,” laughed Adam. “The dressing is the most important part. But you’re right. Johanne is the cook in this house. I’m just . . . a gourmet. I take care of the details. Everything that makes an ordinary meal more—”

He laughed when she hit him with the kitchen towel.

“Can’t take being teased,” he said and pulled her to him. “But good at heart.” He kissed her and didn’t want to let go.

“That argument in the kitchen,” Sigmund started, self- consciously folding the napkin before pushing it away from him, not knowing what he should do with the torn remains. “It could’ve been about anything.”

“Yes,” Adam said and let go of Johanne. “But I still think we should make a note that there might be something to it. Not only were Kari Mundal and Rudolf Fjord at loggerheads, but the argument was so important that they also missed Kristian Mundal’s well-prepared speech. It’s not like Kari to miss an opportunity to praise and support her husband. And Rudolf Fjord was pretty worked up.”

“Politics,” Johanne said, “is no Sunday school, as you know. If all angry disagreements on the political sidelines were grounds for suspecting murder, you’d have your work cut out for you.”

“Yes, but—” Adam pulled another bar stool up to the island unit and made himself comfortable with his legs apart and his arms leaning on the counter—“there was just something about the whole situation,” he said quietly. “Something . . .” Then he shook his head. “It has been noted,” he said lightly. “But we’ll leave it at that. We’ve got plenty else to do. At least at the moment.”

“At the moment we’ve got next to nothing,” Sigmund sulked. “In either of the cases. Nada.”

“You’re exaggerating a bit,” Adam said. “We do have some leads.”

“Some,” muttered Sigmund.

“But nothing that fits together,” Adam continued. “Nothing that leads anywhere. I agree with you there. We established almost immediately that there weren’t any links between the two women, other than the obvious. And we’ve been over it a thousand times. The brutality of the murder. The gender of the victims. The fact that they were both in the public eye. Where they lived.”

He gave a long yawn and continued, “But it’s doubtful that we’re looking for a killer who’s got something against Lørenskog. Victoria and Fiona didn’t know each other, had no mutual friends or acquaintances other than what is normal in such a small country. They weren’t involved in any of the same work. They lived very different lives. One was single and loved parties, and the other had a family and a young child. To me, it seems—”

“That we’re looking at two separate cases, all the same,” Johanne said. She was holding the kettle under the faucet. “But both murderers must have been strong. Victoria was killed outside her house and lifted into the bedroom. Fiona was overpowered.”

“Do you often talk like that?” Sigmund asked.

“Like what?”

“Finishing off each other’s sentences. Like my sister’s twins.”

“We are of course spiritual twins,” said Johanne, who smiled when Sigmund didn’t pick up on the irony. “Think the same, feel the same. Coffee?”

“Yes please. But if”—he put his hand in front of his mouth and tried to muffle a deep burp—“if this really is two cases, is it possible that the second killer, the one who killed Victoria Heinerback, wanted to make it look like the work of a serial killer?”

“Hardly, when there’s only been two murders,” Adam said. “That’s almost pathetic. But first we have to agree that it isn’t the work of one killer.”

“But that’s obviously not possible,” Johanne said. “Not yet. But I agree, even though there are many similarities, the type of similarities is not such that . . . well, the murders don’t exactly look like a series.”

“I wondered,” Sigmund started and then blushed like a boy with his head full of sex. He scratched his thigh and cocked his head awkwardly. At that moment Johanne thought he was sweet. She poured the boiling water into the French press, filled a pitcher with milk, and put out a bowl of brown sugar.

“I just wondered”—Sigmund tried again—“about how the whole profiling . . .”

He couldn’t decide whether to use the Norwegian or English pronunciation and pinched his nose between his thumb and forefinger.

“Just say it in Norwegian,” Johanne said. “It sounds like some sort of detective film when you say it in English. Don’t you think?”

He filled his cup with too much coffee and had to put his lips to the rim and sip the boiling hot liquid before he dared to lift it up.

“Ow. Ow.” He rubbed his upper lip and snuffled on, “We know quite a bit ourselves. A lot, in fact. But as you’ve actually trained with the FBI and all that, with that top guy, well, I thought—”

“Milk?” interrupted Adam and filled up Sigmund’s cup with milk without waiting for an answer. “Sugar? Here.”

“Profiling can mean many things,” said Johanne and handed Sigmund a towel. “Any murder will generally involve elements that point to some of the killer’s characteristics. In that sense, profiling is used in all investigations. It’s just that you don’t use that term.”

As he aimlessly wiped the surface in front of him, the milky coffee going everywhere, Sigmund said, “You mean, when we find a man in his own filthy home with a knife in his groin and the guy who called the police is standing in the corner sloshed and sniveling, then we make a profile? A ‘killer who’s drunk and argued with a close relative and the knife just happened to be there but he didn’t mean to kill him and is really sorry now and would have called for help later’ type profile?”

Johanne burst out laughing and wiped away the remains of the coffee with paper towels. “I couldn’t have put it better myself,” she said. “And the profile you just gave is so usual and easily constructed that it takes no more than thirty seconds to establish that the drunk in the corner is guilty. But you and Adam don’t deal with many cases like that. The NCIS deals with much worse cases.”

“But Johanne,” Sigmund said, eager now. “I assume that you analyze each case by picking it to pieces—”

“You analyze the modus operandi,” Johanne said helpfully. “Take it to pieces, as you put it, look at all the elements of the crime. Then we make deductions based on the various factors and the overall impression. When we’re analyzing, we give a lot of importance to the victim’s background and behavior prior to the crime, both from his point of view and an external point of view, as well as the actual killing. It’s a massive amount of work. And”—the steam from her cup clouded her glasses—“it would be hard to find a science that is more uncertain, more difficult, or less reliable than profiling.”

“What you’re describing is basically the same as tactical investigation,” Sigmund said with a cynical frown.

“It’s very similar.” Johanne nodded and added, “The main difference is that tactical investigation, much more than profiling, deals with . . . how should I put it . . . undisputed fact. Profilers are often psychologists. A tactical investigator’s purpose is to find the killer, whereas a profiler’s job is to build up a psychological picture of the killer. So in a way, profiling is just a tool in the tactical investigation.”

“So if you were going to say something about Fiona Helle’s murder alone,” said Sigmund, whose cheeks were flushed with excitement, “Forgetting Victoria Heinerback for the moment, what would you say?”

Johanne looked at Sigmund over the rim of her cup.

“I’m not quite sure,” she said slowly. “The whole thing seems very . . . un-Norwegian. I don’t like the expression, as it’s no longer possible to protect ourselves from gruesome murders like these. But all the same”—she took a deep breath and then drank some coffee—“I would say,” she started after a few moments, “that it’s possible to see the outlines of two very different profiles. Starting with the similarities: Fiona Helle’s murder was well planned. It was obviously premeditated, so we’re looking for someone who’s capable of planning someone else’s death in detail. The little paper basket can have had no other function than to hold the severed tongue. It was a perfect fit. We can more or less dismiss the idea that someone might think about cutting their victim’s tongue out without killing them. The time of the killing was also right. Tuesday evening. Everyone knew that Fiona Helle was on her own on Tuesday evenings. And in several interviews she boasted that Lørenskog was ‘a peaceful oasis away from stresses of the city.’” With two fingers, she drew quote marks in the air.

“Quite a statement,” Adam said.

“And it was very stupid of her to tell the whole world that she didn’t need to lock her door in the little cul-de-sac where she lived, as everyone looked out for their neighbors, and no one was nasty.”

Sigmund snorted and added, “The Romerike boys got in touch with her to warn her about saying things like that, afterwards. But she still left the door open. She said something about ‘not giving in to evil.’ Jesus . . .” He mumbled something incomprehensible into his cup of coffee.

“In any case,” Johanne said and pulled over a pad of paper that Adam had found in Kristiane’s red toy chest. “The murder was premeditated. So we’ve already come quite a long way.” She leaned her elbows on the counter. “There are also grounds for drawing another relatively given conclusion. I would say that the killing shows signs of intense hatred. The fact that it was premeditated, the killer’s determined, criminal intention, and the method . . .”

There was a short silence. Johanne wrinkled her brow slightly and turned her left ear toward the hall.

“It was nothing,” Adam said. “Nothing.”

“To strangle someone, tie her up, cut out her tongue . . .” Johanne was talking quietly now, tense, still listening. “Hate,” she concluded. “But then the problems start. The drama of it, the split tongue, the origami . . . the whole thing, in fact . . .”

Her red pencil was drawing slow circles on the paper.

“It could be a cover. An act. Camouflage. The symbolism is so blatantly obvious, so—”

“Childish?” suggested Sigmund.

“Exactly. So simple, in any case, that it could almost appear to be a cover-up. The intention was possibly to confuse people. And then we’re talking about an unusually cunning person who must have hated Fiona Helle intensely. And then we’re no further forward than—”

“Back where we started,” Adam said with resignation. “But what if the symbolism was sincere?”

“Goodness . . . Didn’t the Native Americans use it literally? “White man speak with forked tongue”? If we assume that the killer mutilated her body to tell the world something, it must be that Fiona Helle was not what she pretended to be. She was a liar. A traitor. According to him, that is. The murderer. Which in this rather flimsy and therefore totally unusable profile would verge on . . . utter madness.”

“Shame”—Sigmund said, yawning loudly—“that we can’t find any problems in her life. No major conflicts. A bit of jealousy here and there; she was a successful lady. A dispute with the tax authorities a couple of years ago. And one with a neighbor about a spruce that blocked the light from Fiona’s study. Of no consequence. The tree was chopped down, by the way. Without the case going to court.”

“Strange that there isn’t anything,” Johanne started and then stopped. “Now?”

Her anxiety was obvious when she looked at Adam.

“It’s nothing,” he said again. “Relax. She’s asleep.”

Johanne had agreed that Ragnhild should sleep in her bedroom, at least when they had guests.

“It’s strange,” she repeated hesitantly, “that you can’t find anything, nothing that even resembles dirt in Fiona Helle’s life. Very strange indeed. After all, she was forty-two. You must’ve missed something.”

“Look yourself, then,” Sigmund said, obviously offended. “We’ve had fifteen men on the job for several weeks now and have come up with a big fat nothing. Maybe the woman really was a paragon of virtue.”

“There is no paragon of virtue.”

“But what about the profile then?”

“Which profile?”

“The one you were going to make,” Sigmund said.

“I can’t make a profile of the person who killed Fiona Helle,” Johanne said and then drank the rest of her coffee in one gulp. “Not of any consequence, at least. No one can. But I can give you a tip. Look for the lies in her life. Find the lie. Then you may not even need a profile. You’ll have the man.”

“Or woman,” said Adam with a faint smile.

Johanne didn’t even bother to answer. Instead she tiptoed out to the bedroom.

“Is she always so stressed?” Sigmund whispered.

“Yes.”

“That would drive me nuts.”

“You hardly see your family.”

“Shut up. I’m at home more than most people I know.”

“Which doesn’t say much.”

“You’re just whipped.”

“You fool,” Adam smiled. “More coffee?”

“No thanks. But some of that.” He pointed toward the other end of the table, where a bottle glinted yellow and brown in the light of the candle on the windowsill.

“Aren’t you driving?”

“The wife’s got the car. Parents’ night at school or something like that.”

“See what I mean.” Adam got down two oversized cognac glasses and poured some in. “Cheers,” he said.

“Not a lot to raise our glasses to,” said Sigmund and took a drink.

Jack’s claws clacked over the parquet. The animal stopped in the middle of the floor, where he stretched and gave a long yawn.

“Looks like he’s laughing,” mumbled Sigmund.

“I think he is,” Adam replied. “At us, maybe. Our worries. All he thinks about is food.”

The dog wagged his tail and padded out to the kitchen. He whined a bit by the garbage can. He sniffed around on the floor and greedily licked up the bits of grease and breadcrumbs.

“Your food’s in the dish,” Adam said. “Woof!”

Jack yapped and growled at the cabinet door.

“Don’t wind him up. Stop it, Jack!” Johanne had come back with an awake Ragnhild in her arms.

“I knew I heard something,” she said without trying to disguise the triumph in her voice. “She’s wet. You can change her. Jack, go and lie down!”

“Daddy’s little daisy,” Adam babbled and gently took his daughter. “Baby daisy’s wet.”

“Completely ga-ga,” Sigmund said.

“It’s called being a good father.”

Johanne smiled and followed Adam with her eyes as he disappeared into the bathroom. Jack followed with his tail between his legs. He stopped by the partition to the living room and sent Johanne another pleading look.

“Lie down,” she said and the dog disappeared.

Muffled music could be heard from the first floor. Half the sound got lost in the floor insulation. The thumping of the bass was all that reached them, and Johanne wrinkled her nose before putting on the dishwasher.

“It’s really noisy here,” Sigmund observed without showing any sign of moving. “Do you mind?”

He pointed at the bottle of cognac.

“No, no. Not at all. Help yourself.”

The music got steadily louder.

“Must be Selma,” muttered Johanne. “Teenager. At home alone, I bet.”

Sigmund smiled and poked his nose into the glass. He was relaxed here, he found himself thinking, to his surprise. There was something about the atmosphere here, the tone, the light, the furniture. There was something about Johanne. People at work whispered about her being so stern. They were wrong, Sigmund thought as he dipped his sore lip into the alcohol. The burn stung in a nice way, and he took a sip.

Johanne wasn’t stern. She was strong, he thought, even though she was obviously overanxious about the baby. Not so surprising, really, when you thought about her strange older daughter, odd little thing who looked like she was three years younger than she actually was. Adam had taken her to work a few times, and she could frighten the life out of anyone. One minute she behaved like a three-year-old, and then the next minute she said something that could have come out of a college student’s mouth. Evidently there was something wrong with her brain. They just didn’t know what.

Sigmund had always liked Adam. He enjoyed the older man’s company. But they seldom spent time together outside of work. Sigmund had, of course, done as much as he could after the accident, when Adam’s daughter fell down on top of her mother while trying to clean the gutters, killing them both. He remembered the low sun through the trees and the two bodies in the garden. Adam hadn’t said anything, hadn’t cried, hadn’t spoken. He just stood there with his crying grandson in his arms, as if he was holding onto life itself and was in danger of crushing it.

“Do you still have Amund over here on the weekends?” he asked suddenly.

“In principle, we have him every other weekend,” Johanne said, taken aback by the question. “But now, with the baby and all that, well . . . originally the arrangement was to help give Adam’s son-in-law a break.”

“No,” said Sigmund.

“Sorry?” She turned toward him.

“That wasn’t why it started,” he said calmly. “I talked to Bjarne a lot at the time, I did. The son-in-law, that is.”

“I know Adam’s son-in-law’s name.”

“Of course. But . . . well, that arrangement was really to help Adam. To give him something to live for. We were really worried, you know. Extremely worried, Bjarne and I. It’s good to see . . .” He downed the rest of the cognac in one go and cheerfully looked around. “You’ve got a good home,” he said with unexpected formality in his voice; his eyes were moist.

Johanne shook her head and chuckled. She stood with her hands on her hips, cocked her head, and followed his hands with her eyes. He poured a generous amount into his glass before putting back the cork with a dramatic thump.

“There, that’s enough for today. Here’s to you, Johanne. I have to say you’re a great lady. I wish I could come home every day to the wife and know that she was interested in what I did at work. Knew something about it. Like you. You’re a great girl. Cheers.”

“And you’re a strange one, Sigmund.”

“No, just a bit tipsy. Hi!” He raised his glass to Adam, who lifted his arms in triumph and clapped his hands above his head.

“One baby, one nine-year-old, and one canine sleeping like logs. Dry and happy, all of them.”

He plopped down on the bar stool.

“Are you celebrating, Sigmund? On a Monday?”

“Yes, there hasn’t been much of that recently,” Sigmund answered. He had started to hiccup. “But Johanne . . .”

“Yes?”

“If you were going to imagine the worst possible . . . the most difficult serial killer . . . To catch, I mean. If you were to draw a profile of the perfect serial killer, what would it be?”

“Don’t you two have enough with the criminals who actually exist?” she said and leaned over the counter.

“Go on,” Adam smiled. “Tell us. Tell what he’d be like.”

The candle on the windowsill was about to burn out. There was a violent hissing. Bits of soot floated around in front of the reflection in the dark glass. Johanne got out a new candle, pushed it down into the candlestick, and lit the wick. She stood for a few seconds, studying the flame.

“It would be a woman,” she said slowly. “Simply because we always imagine it to be a man. We find it difficult to imagine evil incarnate in the shape of a woman, strangely enough. History has definitively shown that women can be evil.”

“A woman,” Adam said and nodded. “What else?”

Johanne turned toward them and counted quickly on her fingers, “Knowledgeable, of course, and insightful, intelligent, cunning, and unscrupulous. At least, that’s what they normally are. But the worst, the worst thing would be . . .”

Suddenly she looked like she was thinking about something else, as if trying to catch a thought that had just passed through her head. The two men sipped their cognac. A gang of boys could be heard shouting out on the street. A light was turned off in the neighbors’ house. The darkness outside the kitchen window became denser, the reflections sharper.

“It’s just as if”—she started and straightened her glasses with her forefinger—“it’s as if . . . this case gives me a feeling of . . . déjà vu. But I just can’t think . . .” She studied the candle flame again. It danced in the draft from the window they couldn’t afford to replace. A fleeting smile passed over her face. “Forget it. Probably just nothing.”

“Go on,” Sigmund said. “So far you’ve just given us the obvious list. What else would make it impossible for us to catch this lady of yours? Aren’t they always basically insane?”

“Not insane.” Johanne gave a convinced shake of the head. “Disturbed, perhaps. Twisted. I would guess that she suffers from some kind of personality disorder. But she’s definitely not insane. Murderers are rarely not accountable, or insane, in a legal sense. But what would make it really difficult . . . what would make it almost impossible to catch her, if she wasn’t caught the first time, that is—”

“Which this superwoman wouldn’t allow to happen,” Adam interjected and rubbed his neck.

“Precisely,” said Johanne and fell silent.

The boys out on the street had moved on. Lights were being turned off all the way down Haugesvei. It was finally quiet in the apartment downstairs. One of the damned cats was howling in the garden again, but then it disappeared. Johanne realized that she was enjoying the peace, the safety of the house. For the first time since they had moved in, she really felt at home. She stroked the surface of the counter in surprise. Her finger ran over a dent. Kristiane had played with a knife in an unobserved moment. Johanne’s eyes traveled over the living room to the west. The baseboards were covered in Jack’s eager claw marks, the parquet was damaged by the runners on Ragnhild’s crib. A red felt-tip drawing of a skyscraper rose up crookedly from the floor to the windowsill.

She sniffed. It smelled a bit stuffy, of food, clean babies, and dirty dogs. She bent down to pick up a colorful baby’s toy from the corner by the dishwasher and noticed that Kristiane had written her name along the bottom in strange, crooked letters.

The house was well lived in now, Johanne thought. It was home.

“The worst thing,” she said as she played with a smiling lion with teething rings and multicolored ribbons around its head, “the worst thing would be a murderer with no motive.”

She took a deep breath, put down the toy, and took off her glasses. She tried to wipe away the grease from food and children’s fingers with a corner of her shirt. Then she turned her short-sighted gaze on Sigmund and repeated, “the most difficult murderer to catch would be one who killed without a motive. A qualified, intelligent killer who isn’t out to get even with his victim at all. All modern tactical investigations are based on the assumption that there is a motive for the crime. Even the most seriously mentally disturbed serial killer can be caught, as the most absurd and apparently random selection of victims will have some kind of hidden pattern, connections. When there is nothing, no reason, no connection, no logic—no matter how twisted that sounds—we’re just stuck. A murderer like that could keep playing with us . . . forever.”

The candle on the windowsill flickered violently and then went out. Johanne put her glasses on and closed the window properly.

“But I’ve never heard of any monsters like that,” she added lightly. “I have to go to bed. Any more questions before I go?”

There were no questions.

Rudolf Fjord was cleaning the bathroom.

It was three o’clock on Tuesday morning. The lanky man was down on all fours, scrubbing the grout between the floor tiles with a toothbrush and ammonia. The smell ripped at his nose. He coughed, scrubbed, swore, and rinsed it with water that was too hot for his bare hands. He was almost there. The tiles from the sink to the toilet bowl were now framed by light, pale gray grouting against steel blue ceramic. Strange that a bathroom could get so dirty in less than six months. He wanted to do the walls as well, he thought, and wiped his nose on his sleeve. He should empty the cabinets, wash the drawers. And give the inside of the toilet tank a going over. It was still hours until he had to go to work.

He couldn’t sleep.

Maybe he could empty the bookshelves, vacuum the books, one by one. That would certainly get the time to pass.

The relief he had felt when Victoria died, the physical, jubilant relief on Saturday morning, had lasted for exactly twelve minutes. Then he had realized that, paradoxically, Victoria Heinerback was better insurance in life than in death, and he was literally overwhelmed. He had tried to get up from the sofa, but his legs had given way. Sweat poured off him, but it felt cold. His thoughts were racing. Eventually he managed to get into the shower and then put together a suitable outfit for the emergency meeting of the Steering Committee.

They had looked at him.

Scowled.

Rudolf Fjord picked up the toothbrush.

The brush was flat and gray. Unusable. He staggered to his feet and rummaged around at random in the garbage can, looking for another one. Couldn’t find one. The lump in his throat grew. He pulled open a drawer in the bathroom cabinet, cut himself badly as he tried to get a new brush out of the stiff plastic packaging. The stench of ammonia was unbearable now. He couldn’t find a bandage.

They had really scowled.

“Good party comrades,” Victoria had smiled, somewhat stiff, when inquisitive journalists had tried to delve deeper into their relationship. “We work very well together, Rudolf and I.”

He tried to breathe deeply.

Straightened his back. Lifted his chest, tightened his stomach, as he had on the beach, last summer, that fantastic summer when the weather was great and nothing had been settled. When he was still certain he would be the next party leader as soon as the old man decided it was time for a change.

He simply couldn’t breathe.

Red stars danced in front of his eyes. He was about to faint. With his hands against the wall, he stumbled out of the bathroom. It was better in the hall. He gagged without throwing up, staggered into the living room, toward the doors to the balcony. They were locked. He tried to stay calm; there was something wrong with the hinges, he just had to lift it, like this. The blood drew funny patterns on the door frame. The door opened.

The ice-cold air brought him around.

He opened his mouth and breathed in.

They had looked at him in an odd way.

Strange, they had no doubt thought. Strange that Rudolf Fjord was the one who was most obviously affected by Victoria Heinerback’s brutal murder.

Kari Mundal was the worst.

People really had no idea what she was like. Everyone thought she was a funny, tiny, sharp housewife.

She was certainly sharp.

At best, nothing will happen, Rudolf Fjord thought to himself and gulped in the clean air. He was calmer now and buttoned his shirt with shaking hands. The blood had already started to clot. He carefully sucked his finger.

He realized that he had to dilute the ammonia.

At best, absolutely nothing would happen.