“What have we got?” Munch said when everyone was gathered in the incident room. “And don’t say nothing, because that’s impossible. Somebody out there must have seen something. I know that you’ve all been working around the clock, but from now on we need to work twice as hard. Who wants to start? Ludvig?”
Mia looked around the room. A sea of tired faces stared back at her. It was agony. Everyone had put in a ridiculous number of hours in the last few weeks, but still they had almost nothing to show for it. Curry had grown a beard. Gabriel Mørk’s face was deathly pale, and he had big bags under his eyes.
“We’ve cross-referenced most of the names from Høvikveien Nursing Home with the Hønefoss case. So far we haven’t found anything, but we still have a few names to check.”
“Keep on with that, there might be something there,” Munch said. “Anything else?”
“I carried out a background check on the church you mentioned,” Gabriel said.
Munch glanced quickly at Mia, who simply shrugged. They had let the church slip to the bottom of their list. Too slow off the mark. They’d been planning to go there when the girls’ bodies were found at Isegran Fort, and immediately after that they’d discovered the threat to Marion.
“What have you found?”
“It’s a bit odd,” Gabriel said. “They call themselves the Methuselah Church, but I found no companies or religious organizations registered under that name. They don’t have a website or anything, it seems—either they haven’t quite entered the digital age or they’ve decided not to join, I don’t know.”
“Is that all you have?”
“No, there’s an individual whose registered address is the same place.” Gabriel checked the information on his iPad. “A Lukas Walner. I did a quick search, but he didn’t show up anywhere else.”
“Okay,” Munch said, scratching his beard. “I’ve visited the church myself, and as far as I remember, there were at least two people there. An elderly man with white hair and a man with short blond hair, possibly in his mid-twenties. We have to dig deeper, and it’s important that we do it quickly. The killer caught us unawares, and we need to regain the initiative. My mother attends services there, so I’ll see what I can get out of her, okay?”
“I’ll get on it as soon as we’re finished here,” Gabriel replied.
“Good,” Munch said, looking out over his team again. “Anything else?”
“We’re keeping Benjamin Bache under surveillance, but so far there’s nothing to suggest that he has anything to do with this,” Kyrre said.
“Okay,” Munch said. “We have plenty of resources, so just keep up the surveillance until we’re quite sure. Anything else?”
“I’ve run a trace on the account Margrete_08,” Gabriel said. “It’s a Hotmail address created on”—the young man looked at the iPad in front of him—“March second, 2010. A few days before you got the first email from her, isn’t that right?”
Gabriel glanced up at Munch, who looked uncomfortable. Not only was his mother’s name mixed up in the investigation, but the killer had also been in contact with him privately. And Munch had allowed himself to be used. Mia knew him well enough to see what was going on behind his furrowed brow. He was trying to pull himself together to avoid giving the rest of the team the impression that he was letting it get to him.
“That’s correct,” Munch said.
“This email account was only ever used to send emails to you. It’s been accessed from three different IP addresses.”
“Norwegian, please.” Curry yawned.
“IP addresses. Internet protocol addresses. Each device connected to the Internet has its own address that tells you where it is. Country, region, broadband supplier.”
“Its exact location?” Munch said.
“Yes.” Gabriel nodded, looking down at his iPad again. “Like I said, it was accessed from three different addresses. All Burger King outlets in Karl Johan, Ullevål Stadium, and Oslo Central Station. Using a laptop. Impossible to trace, to be honest. I’ve pinged it, but there’s no reply, so I guess it’s not connected anymore. The user probably tossed it—that’s what I would have done.”
“You can get Internet at Burger King?” Curry said.
“We’ve received just under two thousand calls,” Anette said, ignoring her tired colleague. “Most of them regarding the police sketch of the woman from Skullerud. I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but so far we haven’t received anything useful. The police sketch is too vague. It could be anyone. As for the reward . . . well, you know how this goes. You wouldn’t believe how many people like the idea of having a million kroner and think their neighbor looks a bit suspicious.”
Munch combed his hand through his beard. “Offenders with a similar MO?”
Kyrre just shook his head.
“Damn it, come on, people! We must have something! Someone must have seen something! Heard something!”
Mia gave Munch a hard stare. Calm down. Although this was a tight-knit team, she knew there would always be some who were keen to further their careers. She imagined that Mikkelson had a hotline to several of them.
She cleared her throat and got up. Walked over to the board to divert attention from Munch.
“I’m not sure if everyone is aware of what we know so far, so let me go over it again. Not everything is proved—some things are just ideas in my head, hunches, and I need your help with them. Tell me what you think, believe, feel. No suggestion is too stupid, everything is useful, okay?”
Mia looked around the room. They were quiet now. Everyone’s eyes were on her.
“This is the story as I see it. In 2006 someone takes a baby from Hønefoss Hospital. There are two main reasons to take a baby. One is blackmail, but no demands have ever been made, so we’ll ignore that. The second is that somebody wants a baby. That’s what I believe. Somebody wants a baby. I’ve thought all along, or perhaps felt it rather, that the killer is female. A woman wants a baby. Let’s imagine the following scenario: This woman has access to the maternity ward. As we’ve seen, and saw back then, it’s frightening how much easier it is to steal a baby than you would think. Especially a baby with no parents. Right, so this woman steals a baby. There’s outrage, obviously, everyone starts looking for the baby—the media, us, everyone. No one can withstand that much pressure. The woman finds a scapegoat, Joachim Wicklund. Very conveniently, he goes and hangs himself. Very convenient for us. The autopsy report tells us nothing, because no postmortem was ever carried out. Wicklund hanged himself. He confessed. Case closed. Everyone can move on.”
She drew breath and drank some of her Farris. She hadn’t planned what to say. She was talking just as much to herself as to the rest of the team.
“It occurs to me now that if we had carried out a full postmortem, there’s a good chance we would’ve found a needle mark in Wicklund’s neck. Very convenient and clever, isn’t it? An overdose in the neck, right under the rope, very hard to spot unless there was suspicion of foul play. Well, that’s one theory. So we have a woman. With a baby. Who knows how to perform injections. Who has access to drugs.”
“A nurse?” Ludvig suggested.
“A definite possibility.” Mia nodded and went on. “But we found no suspects among the nurses at Hønefoss. So we have a woman who has stolen a baby. And everything is fine. The media is no longer writing about the kidnapping. We have given up. Then something goes wrong. Maybe the baby dies. Baby dies and she decides to come after us. It’s our fault that the baby died. We should have found her. We should have found the baby. And Munch is responsible. So she decides to come after Munch.”
She cleared her throat and took another sip of her mineral water. The room had gone very quiet now. Everyone knew that Mia was good at this. No one wanted to interrupt her now that she was in full flow.
“This woman is incredibly clever,” Mia continued. “But crazy. She thinks it’s acceptable to steal a child and has no problem with killing. It feels morally right for her, so this woman must have experienced something, something . . .”
She struggled to find the words.
“I don’t know what exactly, but it could have been any number of things. She’s logical and yet not seeing straight at the same time. Or at least she doesn’t see the world the way we do. She loved the baby, who is now dead. Perhaps. The baby was due to start school in the autumn. Now the baby is dead. I think that’s how she sees it. I’m traveling alone. The sign. The girls are going on a journey. Yes, it’s a journey. Mark 10:14, ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me.’ The girls are traveling to heaven.”
Mia was increasingly talking to herself. Her knotted thoughts began to unravel, all the things that had lain concealed in the shadows of her mind.
“This woman is incredibly caring. She loves children. She wants to protect them. She washes them and she gets them ready. It’s not going to hurt. Now, two things.”
Mia coughed slightly. She felt exhausted, but she had to go on.
“Two things. This was what confused me to begin with. The chaos, the symbols, I didn’t see at first, so many traps and hints, and yes . . . well, I didn’t see this initially, but I think we’re dealing with two separate issues. One is the girls. She doesn’t want the baby to be alone. That’s it, that’s it. It was her fault that the baby died. She was responsible. She wants to make amends. Find some friends for the baby. But that was our mistake. We should have stopped her. Damn, I’m losing my train of thought here.”
“Two things,” Curry prompted her gently.
“Yes, thank you. Two things. Number one: She kills the girls so that the baby, who is now six years old, won’t have to be alone. In heaven. Number two: She wants to get Munch. Sorry, it was obvious all along. But that’s why it was so muddled to begin with. That’s why we made such a mess of it. We need to look at everything from both of those angles even though she’s mixing two motives to confuse us. Number one: She kills the girls so that the girl she stole won’t have to be alone in heaven. Number two: She wants to get her own back on the police. Take revenge. Get Munch. Somehow she killed the baby, but she blames Munch. I think . . .”
Mia Krüger was completely exhausted now. She was barely able to talk.
“What do you think, Mia?” Munch said to support her.
“She wants to be caught,” Anette said.
“What do you mean?” Munch said.
“She wants to be caught,” Anette continued. “She shows us what she’s doing. Toni J. W. Smith. The girls at the fort. Calling the journalists. She wants to be caught, doesn’t she, Mia?”
Mia nodded. “I agree. Good thinking. She wants to be stopped. She’s almost reckless. She’s revealing more and more to us. Because she’s going up there, too. To heaven. To be with her baby again. She’s going to be . . .”
“Are you all right?”
Mia nodded again slowly.
“This is starting to make sense,” Munch said, turning to the team. “It’s damned brilliant. A woman. I believe it. I can see it. So which women have we already considered?”
“The woman with two different-colored eyes,” Ludvig said.
“Someone from the church?” Curry said.
“Staff at Høvikveien Nursing Home,” Gabriel said.
Mia looked at Ludvig Grønlie. “Anything? Any links? Veronica Bache’s cell phone?”
“I’m sorry, nothing yet, we’re still working on it,” Ludvig said.
“Oh, Christ, I’m slow!” Mia burst out.
“What is it?”
“Charlie. Charlie Brown.”
“Who?” Munch said.
“A friend. He runs a transvestite club in Tøyen. He told me about her. The woman with different-colored eyes. He’s seen her several times. God, I’m an idiot!”
“Bring him in,” Munch said. “We have to find this woman. Perhaps she’s the woman from the police sketch, the one our eyewitness saw in Skullerud. God knows it’s a long shot, but why not give it a go? We’ll let this Charlie meet every woman whose name has cropped up in the investigation, who would have been in a position to pay Veronica Bache’s cell-phone bills after her death, all staff at the nursing home, and anyone connected to this church. And if we get a hit, check with the old man and see if it’s the same woman.”
As Mia was heading out the door, Anette pulled her to one side.
“Are you sure about this?” Anette whispered.
“About what?”
“This whole setup? You don’t think Munch is too close? I mean, a threat has been made against his grandchild. His mother might be involved. Shouldn’t he step aside? Let someone else take charge?”
“Holger knows what he’s doing,” Mia said sharply.
“Let’s hope so,” Anette said.