IT WAS HALF PAST NINE AND THE SUN WAS SHINING ON A solitary car negotiating the roundabout on the Sjølyst overpass above the motorway. It turned up Bygdøyveien which led to the idyllic rural peninsula located a mere five minutes’ drive from the City Hall square. It was quiet, there was almost no traffic, no cows or horses in the Kongsgården estate; and the narrow pavements where people made pilgrimages to the beaches in summer were deserted.
Harry steered the car round the bends in the rolling terrain and listened to Katrine.
‘Snow,’ Katrine said.
‘Snow?’
‘I did as you said. I concentrated on the married women with children who had gone missing. And then I began to look at the dates. Most were in November and December. I isolated them and considered the geographical spread. Most were in Oslo; there were some in other parts of the country. Then it struck me, because of the letter you received. The bit about the snowman reappearing with the first snow. And the day we were in Hoffsveien was the first snow in Oslo.’
‘I had the Meteorological Institute check the relevant dates and places. And do you know what?’
Harry knew what. And that he should have known long ago.
‘The first snow,’ he said. ‘He kills them the day the first snow falls.’
‘Exactly.’
Harry smacked the wheel. ‘Christ, we had it spelt out for us. How many missing women are we talking about?’
‘Eleven. One a year.’
‘And two this year. He’s broken the pattern.’
‘There was a murder and two disappearances when the first snow fell in Bergen in 1992. I think we should start there.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Because the victim was a married woman with a child. And the woman who disappeared was her best friend. Thus we have one body, one crime scene and case files. As well as a suspect who vanished and has never been seen since.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘A policeman. Gert Rafto.’
Harry glanced over quickly. ‘Oh, that case, yes. Wasn’t he the one who nicked stuff from crime scenes?’
‘So it was rumoured. Witnesses had seen Rafto going into the flat of one of the women, Onny Hetland, a few hours before she disappeared. And extensive searches turned up nothing. He disappeared without trace.’
Harry stared at the road, at the leafless trees along Huk Aveny leading down to the sea and the museums for what Norwegians regarded as the nation’s greatest achievements: a voyage in a raft across the Pacific Ocean and a failed attempt to reach the North Pole.
‘And now you think it’s conceivable that he didn’t disappear after all?’ he said. ‘That he might reappear every year at the first sign of snow?’
Katrine hunched her shoulders. ‘I think it’s worth investing the time to find out what happened there.’
‘Mm. We’ll have to start by asking Bergen for assistance.’
‘I wouldn’t do that,’ she said quickly.
‘Oh?’
‘The Rafto case is still an extremely sensitive issue for the police in Bergen. The resources they put into that case were largely spent burying rather than investigating it. They were terrified of what they might unearth. And since the guy had disappeared all by himself …’ She drew a big X in the air.
‘I see. What do you suggest?’
‘That you and I go on a little trip to Bergen and do a bit of investigating on our own. After all, it’s part of an Oslo murder case now.’
Harry parked in front of the address, a four-storey brick building right down by the water surrounded by a mooring quay. He switched off the engine, but remained in his seat looking across Frognerkilen bay to Filipstad harbour.
‘How did the Rafto case get on to your list?’ he asked. ‘First of all, it’s further back than I asked you to check. Secondly, I believe it’s not a missing persons case but murder.’
He turned to look at Katrine. She met his gaze without blinking.
‘The Rafto case was pretty famous in Bergen,’ she said. ‘And there was a photo.’
‘A photo?’
‘Yes. All new trainees at Bergen Police Station are shown it. It was of the crime scene at the top of Ulriken Mountain and a kind of baptism of fire. I think most were so terrorised by the details in the foreground that they never looked at the background. Or maybe they had never been to the top of Ulriken. At any rate there was something there that didn’t make sense, a mound further back. When you magnify it, you can see quite clearly what it is.’
‘Oh?’
‘A snowman.’
‘Speaking of photos,’ Katrine said, taking an A4 envelope from her bag and throwing it into Harry’s lap.
The clinic was on the second floor, and the waiting room had been immaculately designed at horrendous expense with Italian furniture, a coffee table as low off the ground as a Ferrari, glass sculptures by Nico Widerberg and an original Roy Lichtenstein print showing a smoking gun.
Instead of the obligatory reception area with glass partition, a woman sat by a beautiful old desk in the middle of the room. She was wearing an open white coat over a blue business suit and a welcoming smile. A smile which did not stiffen appreciably when Harry introduced himself, stated the purpose of their visit and his assumption that she was Borghild.
‘Would you mind waiting for a moment?’ she said, pointing to the sofas with the practised elegance of a stewardess pointing to the emergency exits. Harry refused the offer of espresso, tea or water, and they took a seat.
Harry noticed that the magazines laid out were up to date; he opened a copy of Liberal and his attention was caught by the leader in which Arve Støp claimed that politicians’ willingness to appear on entertainment programmes to ‘flaunt themselves’ and assume the role of clown was the ultimate victory for government by the people – with the populus on the throne and the politician as the court jester.
Then the door marked Dr Idar Vetlesen opened and a woman strode quickly through the waiting room, said a brief ‘Bye’ to Borghild and was gone without so much as a glance left or right.
Katrine stared after her. ‘Wasn’t that the woman from TV2 news?’
At that moment Borghild announced that Vetlesen was ready to receive them, went to the door and held it open for them.
Idar Vetlesen’s office was Director General size with a view of Oslo fjord. Framed diplomas hung on the wall behind the desk.
‘Just a moment,’ Vetlesen said, typing without looking up from the computer screen. Then, with a triumphant expression, he pressed a final key, swivelled round in his chair and removed his glasses.
‘Facelift, Hole? Penis enlargement? Liposuction?’
‘Thank you for the offer,’ Harry said. ‘This is Police Officer Bratt. We’ve come once again to request your help with information about Ottersen and Becker.’
Idar Vetlesen sighed and began to clean his glasses with a handkerchief.
‘How can I explain this to you in a way that you can understand, Hole? Even for someone like me, who has a genuine, burning desire to help the police and basically couldn’t care less about principles, there are some things which are sacrosanct.’ He raised an index finger. ‘In all the years I’ve worked as a doctor I have never, ever –’ the finger wagged in time with his words – ‘broken my Hippocratic oath. And I do not intend to start now.’
A long silence ensued in which Vetlesen just looked at them, clearly satisfied with the effect he had created.
Harry cleared his throat.
‘Perhaps we can still fulfil your burning desire to help, Vetlesen. We’re investigating possible child prostitution at a so-called hotel in Oslo, known as Leon. Last night two of our officers were outside in a car taking photographs of people going in and out.’
Harry opened the brown A4 envelope he had been given by Katrine, leaned forward and placed the photographs before the doctor.
‘That’s you there, isn’t it?’
Vetlesen looked as though something had become lodged in his gullet; his eyes bulged and the veins in his neck stuck out.
‘I …’ he stuttered. ‘I … haven’t done anything wrong or illegal.’
‘No, not at all,’ Harry said. ‘We’re just considering summoning you as a witness. A witness who can say what’s going on there. It’s common knowledge that Hotel Leon is a centre for prostitutes and their clients;what’s new is that children have been seen there. And unlike other prostitution, child prostitution is, as you will know, illegal. Thought we should inform you before we go to the press with the whole business.’
Vetlesen stared at the photograph. Rubbing his face hard.
‘By the way, we just saw the TV2 news lady coming out,’ Harry said. ‘What’s her name again?’
Vetlesen didn’t answer. It was as if all his smooth youthfulness had been sucked out of him before their very eyes, as if his face had aged in the space of a second.
‘Ring us if you can find a loophole in the Hippocratic oath,’ Harry said.
Harry and Katrine were halfway to the door before Vetlesen stopped them.
‘They were here for an examination,’ he said. ‘That’s all.’
‘What kind of examination?’ Harry asked.
‘A disease.’
‘The same disease? Which one?’
‘It’s of no importance.’
‘OK,’ Harry said, walking to the door. ‘When you’re summoned as a witness you can take that view. It’s of no importance, either. After all, we haven’t found anything illegal.’
‘Wait!’
Harry turned. Vetlesen was supporting himself on his elbows with his face in his hands.
‘Fahr’s syndrome.’
‘Father syndrome?’
‘Fahr’s. F-a-h-r. A rare hereditary disease, a bit like Alzheimer’s. Motor skills deteriorate, especially in cognitive areas, and there is some spasticity of movement. Most develop the syndrome after the age of thirty, but it is possible to have it in childhood.’
‘Mm. And so Birte and Sylvia knew their children had this disease?’
‘They suspected it when they came here. Fahr’s syndrome is hard to diagnose, and Birte Becker and Sylvia Ottersen had been to several doctors although nothing conclusive was found in their children. I seem to remember that both of them had searched the Internet, typed in the symptoms and discovered Fahr, which matched alarmingly well.’
‘And so they contacted you? A plastic surgeon?’
‘I happen to be a Fahr specialist.’
‘Happen to be?’
‘There are around eighteen thousand doctors in Norway. Do you know how many known diseases there are in the world?’ Vetlesen motioned with his head to the wall of diplomas. ‘Fahr’s syndrome happened to be part of a course I went on in Switzerland about nerve channels. The little I learned was enough to make me a specialist in Norway.’
‘What can you tell us about Birte Becker and Sylvia Ottersen?’
Vetlesen hunched his shoulders. ‘They came here with their children once a year. I examined them, was unable to determine any deterioration of their conditions, and, apart from that, I know nothing of their lives. Or for that matter –’ he tossed back his fringe – ‘their deaths.’
‘Do you believe him?’ Harry asked as they drove past the deserted fields.
‘Not entirely,’ Katrine said.
‘Nor me,’ Harry said. ‘I think we should concentrate on this and drop Bergen for the time being.’
‘No,’ said Katrine.
‘No?’
‘There’s a link here somewhere.’
‘Which is?’
‘I don’t know. It sounds wild, but perhaps there’s a link between Rafto and Vetlesen. Perhaps that’s how Rafto’s managed to hide all these years.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘That he quite simply got himself a mask. An authentic mask. A facelift.’
‘From Vetlesen?’
‘It could explain the coincidence of having two victims with the same doctor. Rafto could have seen Birte and Sylvia at the clinic and decided they would be his victims.’
‘You’re jumping the gun,’ Harry said.
‘Jumping the gun?’
‘This kind of murder investigation is like doing a jigsaw puzzle. In the opening phase you collect the pieces, play with them, you’re patient. What you’re doing is trying to force the pieces into position. It’s too early.’
‘I’m just saying things out loud to someone. To see if they sound idiotic.’
‘They sound idiotic.’
‘This isn’t the way to Police HQ,’ she said.
Harry could hear a curious quiver in her voice and glanced across at her, but her face gave nothing away.
‘I’d like to check out some of the things Vetlesen told us with someone I know,’ he said. ‘And who knows Vetlesen.’
Mathias was wearing a white coat and regulation yellow washing-up gloves when he received Harry and Katrine in the garage beneath Preclinical, the usual name for the brown building in the part of Gaustad Hospital that faces the Ring 3 motorway.
He directed their car into what turned out to be his own unused parking space.
‘I try to cycle as often as I can,’ Mathias explained, using his swipe card to open the door leading from the garage into a basement corridor in the Anatomy Department. ‘This kind of access is practical for transporting bodies in and out. Would have liked to offer you coffee, but I’ve just finished with one group of students and the next will be here shortly.’
‘Sorry for the hassle. You must be tired today.’
Mathias sent him a quizzical look.
‘Rakel and I were talking on the phone. She said you had to work late last night,’ Harry added, cursing himself inside and hoping his face gave nothing away.
‘Rakel, yes.’ Mathias shook his head. ‘She was out late herself. Out with the girls and has had to take the day off work. But when I rang her she was in the midst of a big clean-up at home. Women, eh! What can you say?’
Harry put on a stiff smile and wondered if there was a standard response to that question.
A man in green hospital gear trundled a metal table towards the garage door.
‘Another delivery for Tromsø University?’ Mathias asked.
‘Say bye-bye to Kjeldsen,’ smiled the man in green. He had a cluster of small rings in one ear, a bit like a Masai woman’s neck rings, except that these rings gave his face an irritating asymmetry.
‘Kjeldsen?’ Mathias exclaimed, and stopped. ‘Is that true?’
‘Thirty years of service. Now it’s Tromsø’s turn to dissect him.’
Mathias lifted the blanket. Harry caught sight of the body. The skin over the cranium was taut, it smoothed out the old man’s wrinkles into a genderless face, as white as a plaster mask. Harry knew that this was because the body had been preserved, that is, the arteries had been pumped full of a mixture of formalin, glycerine and alcohol to ensure the body did not decompose from inside. A metal tag with an engraved three-digit number had been attached to one ear. Mathias stood watching the assistant trundle Kjeldsen towards the garage door. Then he seemed to wake up again.
‘Sorry. It’s just that Kjeldsen has been with us for so long. He was a professor at the Anatomy Department when it was down in the centre of town. A brilliant anatomist. With well-defined muscles. We’re going to miss him.’
‘We won’t hold you up for long,’ Harry said. ‘We were wondering if you could tell us something about Idar’s relationships with women patients. And their children.’
Mathias raised his head and looked with surprise at Harry, then Katrine, and back again.
‘Are you asking me what I think you’re asking me?’
Harry nodded.
Mathias led them through another locked door. They entered a room with eight metal tables and a blackboard at one end. The tables were equipped with lamps and sinks. On each of the tables lay something oblong wrapped in white hand towels. Judging by the shape and the size, Harry guessed that today’s theme was situated somewhere between hip and foot. There was a faint smell of bleaching powder, but not nearly as pronounced as Harry was used to from the autopsy room at the Institute of Forensic Medicine. Mathias sank down onto one of the chairs and Harry sat on the edge of the lecturer’s desk. Katrine walked over to a table and scrutinised three brains; it was impossible to say whether they were models or real.
Mathias had a long think before answering. ‘Personally, I’ve never noticed, or heard anyone suggest there was, anything between Idar and any of his patients.’
Something about the stress placed on patients brought Harry up short. ‘What about non-patients?’
‘I don’t know Idar well enough to comment. But I know him well enough to prefer not to comment.’ He flashed a tentative smile. ‘If that’s OK?’
‘Of course. There was something else I was wondering about. Fahr’s syndrome – do you know what it is?’
‘Superficially. A terrible disease. And unfortunately very much a hereditary –’
‘Do you know of any Norwegian specialists in the disease?’
Mathias reflected. ‘None that I can think of, off the top of my head.’
Harry scratched his neck. ‘OK, thanks for your help, Mathias.’
‘Not at all, a pleasure. If you want to know more about Fahr’s syndrome you can ring me tonight when I have a few books around me.’
Harry stood up. Walked over to Katrine, who had lifted the lid off one of the four large metal boxes by the wall, and peered over her shoulder. His tongue prickled and his whole body reacted. Not at the body parts immersed in the clear alcohol, looking like lumps of meat at the butcher’s. But at the smell of alcohol. Forty per cent.
‘They start off more or less whole,’ Mathias said. ‘Then we cut them up as and when we need individual body parts.’
Harry observed Katrine’s face. She seemed totally unaffected. The door opened behind them. The first students came in and began to put on blue coats and white latex gloves.
Mathias followed them back to the garage. At the door, Mathias caught Harry’s arm and held him back.
‘Just a tiny thing I should mention, Harry. Or shouldn’t mention. I’m not sure.’
‘Out with it,’ Harry said, thinking that this was it, Mathias knew about him and Rakel.
‘I have a slight moral dilemma here. It’s about Idar.’
‘Oh yes?’ Harry said, feeling disappointment rather than relief, to his surprise.
‘I’m sure it doesn’t mean anything, but it occurred to me that maybe it’s not up to me to decide. And that you can’t let loyalty take priority in such a terrible case. No matter what. Last year, when I was still working in A&E, a colleague, who also knows Idar, and I popped by Postkafeen to have breakfast after a night shift. It’s a café that opens at the crack of dawn and serves beer, so a lot of thirsty early birds gather there. And other poor souls.’
‘I know the place,’ Harry said.
‘ To our surprise we found Idar there. He was sitting at a table with a filthy young boy slurping soup. On seeing us, Idar jumped up from the table in shock and fobbed us off with some excuse or other. I didn’t think any more about it. That is, I believed I hadn’t thought any more about it. Until what you just said. And I remembered what I’d been thinking at the time. That maybe … well, you understand.’
‘I understand,’ Harry said. And, seeing his interlocutor’s tormented expression, added: ‘You did the right thing.’
‘Thank you.’ Mathias forced a smile. ‘But I feel like a Judas.’
Harry tried to find something sensible to say, but all he could do was proffer his hand and mumble a ‘thanks’. And shivered as he pressed Mathias’s cold washing-up glove.
Judas. The Judas kiss. As they drove down Slemdalsveien Harry thought about Rakel’s hungry tongue in his mouth, her gentle sigh and loud groan, the pains in his pelvis as it banged against Rakel’s, her cries of frustration when he stopped because he wanted it to last longer. For she wasn’t there to make it last longer. She was there to exorcise demons, to purify her body so that she could go home and purify her soul. And wash every floor in the house. The sooner the better.
‘Call the clinic,’ Harry said.
He heard Katrine’s quick fingers and tiny beeps. Then she passed him the mobile phone.
Borghild answered with a studied mixture of gentleness and efficiency.
‘This is Harry Hole speaking. Tell me, who should I see if I have Fahr’s syndrome?’
Silence.
‘It depends,’ answered Borghild hesitantly.
‘On what?’
‘On the syndrome your father has, I suppose.’
‘Right. Is Idar Vetlesen in?’
‘He’s gone for today.’
‘Already?’
‘They’ve got a curling match. Try again tomorrow.’
She radiated impatience. Harry assumed she was in the process of leaving for the day.
‘Bygdøy Curling Club?’
‘No, the private one. The one down from Gimle.’
‘Thanks. Have a good evening.’
Harry gave Katrine the phone back.
‘We’ll bring him in,’ he said.
‘Who?’
‘The specialist who has an assistant who’s never heard of the disease he specialises in.’
After asking the way, they found Villa Grande, a luxurious property that, during the Second World War, had belonged to a Norwegian whose name, unlike that of the raft sailor and the Arctic explorer, was also widely known outside Norway: Quisling, the traitor.
At the bottom of the slope to the south of the building there was a rectangular wooden house resembling an old military barracks. As soon as you entered the building you could feel the cold hit you. And inside the next door the temperature fell further.
There were four men on the ice. Their shouts bounced off the wooden walls, and none of them noticed Harry and Katrine come in. They were shouting at a shiny stone gliding down the rink. The twenty kilos of granite, the type known as ailsite, from the Scottish island of Ailsa Craig, stopped against the guard of three other stones on the front edge of two circles painted into the ice at the end of the sheet. The men slid around the rink balancing on one foot and kicking off with the other, discussing, supporting themselves on their brooms and preparing for the next stone.
‘Snob sport,’ Katrine whispered. ‘Look at them.’
Harry didn’t answer. He liked curling. The meditative element as you watched the stone’s slow passage, rotating in an apparently friction-free universe, like one of the spaceships in Kubrick’s odyssey, accompanied not by Strauss but by the stone’s quiet rumble and the furious sweeping of brooms.
The men had seen them now. And Harry recognised two of the faces from media circles. One was Arve Støp’s.
Idar Vetlesen skated towards him.
‘Joining us for a game, Hole?’
He shouted that from far away, as if it was meant for the other men, not Harry. And it was followed by seemingly jovial laughter. But the muscles outlined against the skin of his jaw betrayed the game he was playing. He stopped in front of them, and the breath coming from his mouth was white.
‘The game’s over,’ Harry said.
‘I don’t think so,’ Idar smiled.
Harry could already feel the cold from the ice creeping through the soles of his shoes and advancing up his legs.
‘We’d like you to come with us to Police HQ,’ Harry said. ‘Now.’
Idar Vetlesen’s smile evaporated. ‘Why?’
‘Because you’re lying to us. Among other things, you’re not a Fahr’s syndrome specialist.’
‘Says who?’ Idar asked, glancing at the other curling players to confirm that they were standing too far away to hear them.
‘Says your assistant. Since she’s clearly never even heard of the disease.’
‘Listen here,’ Idar said, and a new sound, the sound of despair, had crept into his voice. ‘You can’t just come here and take me away. Not here, not in front of …’
‘Your clients?’ Harry asked and peered over Idar’s shoulder. He could see Arve Støp sweeping ice off the bottom of a stone while studying Katrine.
‘I don’t know what you’re after,’ he heard Idar say. ‘I’m happy to cooperate with you, but not if you’re consciously setting out to humiliate and ruin me. These are my best friends.’
‘We’ll carry on then, Vetlesen …’ resounded a deep baritone voice. It was Arve Støp’s.
Harry eyed the unhappy surgeon. Wondered what he understood by ‘best’ friends. And thought that, if there was the tiniest chance of gaining anything by fulfilling Vetlesen’s wish, then it was worth their while.
‘OK,’ Harry said. ‘We’re off. But you have to be at Police HQ in Grønland in exactly one hour. If not, we’ll come looking for you with sirens and trumpet fanfares. And they’re easy to hear in Bygdøy, aren’t they.’
Vetlesen nodded and for a moment looked as though he would laugh from force of habit.
Oleg shut the door with a bang, kicked off his boots and ran upstairs. There was a fresh aroma of lemon and soap throughout the house. He stormed into his room and the mobile hanging from the ceiling chimed in alarm as he pulled off his jeans and put on his tracksuit bottoms. He ran out again, but as he grabbed the banister to take the stairs in two long strides, he heard his name from behind the open door of his mother’s bedroom.
He went in and found Rakel on her knees in front of the bed with a long-handled scrubbing brush.
‘I thought you did the cleaning at the weekend?’
‘Yes, but not well enough,’ his mother said, getting up and wiping a hand across her forehead. ‘Where are you going?’
‘ To the stadium. I’m going skating. Karsten’s waiting outside. Be back home for tea.’ He pushed off from the door and slid across the floor on stockinged feet, gravity low, the way Erik V, one of the skating veterans at Valle Hovin, had taught him.
‘Wait a minute, young man. Talking of skates …’
Oleg stopped. Oh no, he thought. She’s found the skates.
She stood in the doorway, tilted her head and clocked him. ‘What about homework?’
‘Haven’t got much,’ he said with a relieved smile. ‘I’ll do it after tea.’
He saw her hesitate and added quickly: ‘You look so nice in that dress, Mum.’
She lowered her eyes, at the old sky-blue dress with the white flowers. And even though she gave him an admonitory look, a smile was playing at the corners of her mouth. ‘Watch it, Oleg. Now you’re sounding like your father.’
‘Oh? I thought he only spoke Russian.’
He hadn’t meant anything with that comment, but something happened to his mother, a shock seemed to run through her.
He tiptoed. ‘Can I go now?’
‘Yes, you can go?’ Katrine Bratt’s voice lashed the fitness-room walls in the basement at Police HQ. ‘Did you really say that? That Idar Vetlesen could just go?’
Harry stared up at her face bent over the bench he was lying on. The dome-shaped ceiling light formed a shining yellow halo round her head. He was breathing heavily because an iron bar was lying across his chest. He had been about to perform a bench press of ninety-five kilos and had just lifted the bar off the stand when Katrine had marched in and ruined his attempt.
‘I had to,’ Harry said, managing to push the bar a bit higher so that it was on his breastbone. ‘He had his solicitor with him. Johan Krohn.’
‘So what?’
‘Well, Krohn started by asking what sort of methods we employed to blackmail his client. Then he said the buying and selling of sexual services in Norway is legal, and that our methods for forcing a respected doctor to break his Hippocratic oath would also be worth a headline.’
‘But bloody hell!’ Katrine shouted in a voice that was shaking with fury. ‘This is a murder case!’
Harry hadn’t seen her lose control before and answered in his gentlest voice.
‘Listen, we can’t link the murders to the illness or even make the connection seem a possibility. And Krohn knows that. And so I can’t hold him.’
‘No, but you can’t just … lie there … and do nothing!’
Harry could feel his breastbone aching and it struck him that she was absolutely right.
She put both hands to her face. ‘I … I … I’m sorry. I just thought … It’s been a strange day.’
‘Fine,’ Harry groaned. ‘Could you help me with this bar? I’m almost –’
‘The other end!’ she exclaimed, removing her hands from her face. ‘We’ll have to begin at the other end. In Bergen!’
‘No,’ Harry whispered with the last air he had left in his lungs. ‘Bergen’s not an end. Could you …?’
He looked up at her. Saw her dark eyes fill with tears.
‘It’s my period,’ she whispered. Then she smiled. It happened so fast that it was like another person standing above him, a person with an odd sheen to her eyes and a voice under complete control. ‘And you can just die.’
In amazement, he heard the sound of her footsteps fading away, heard his own skeleton crack and red dots begin to dance in front of his eyes. He cursed, wrapped his hands around the iron bar and, with a roar, pushed. The bar wouldn’t budge.
She was right; he could in fact die like that. He could choose. Funny, but true.
He wriggled, tipped the bar to one side until he heard the weights slide off and hit the floor with a deafening clang. Then the bar hit the floor on the other side. He sat up and watched the weights careering around the room.
Harry showered, dressed and went upstairs to the sixth floor. Fell into the swivel chair, already feeling the sweet ache of his muscles, which told him that he was going to be stiff in the morning.
There was a message on his voicemail from Bjørn Holm telling him to call back asap.
Holm picked up and there was the sound of heart-rending sobs accompanied by the slide tones of a pedal steel guitar.
‘What is it?’ Harry asked.
‘Dwight Yoakam,’ Holm said, turning down the music. ‘Sexy bastard, ain’t he?’
‘I mean, what’s the call about?’
‘We’ve got the results for the Snowman letter.’
‘And?’
‘Nothing special as far as the writing’s concerned. Standard laser printer.’
Harry waited. He knew Holm had something.
‘What’s special is the paper he used. No one at the lab here has seen this type before, that’s why it’s taken a bit of time. It’s made with mitsumata, Japanese papyrus-like bast fibres. You can probably tell mitsumata by the smell. They use the bark to make the paper by hand and this particular sheet is extremely exclusive. It’s called Kono.’
‘Kono?’
‘You have to go to specialist shops to buy it, the sort of place that sells fountain pens for ten thousand kroner, fine inks and leather-bound notebooks. You know …’
‘I don’t, in fact.’
‘Me neither,’ Holm conceded. ‘But anyway, there is one shop in Gamle Drammensveien which sells Kono writing paper. I spoke to them and was told they rarely sold such things now, so it was unlikely they would reorder. People don’t have a sense of quality the way they used to, he reckoned.’
‘Does that mean …?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid that means he couldn’t remember when he last sold any Kono paper.’
‘Mm. And this is the only dealer?’
‘Yes,’ Holm said. ‘There was one in Bergen, but they stopped selling a few years ago.’
Holm waited for an answer – or, to be more precise, questions – as Dwight Yoakam, at low volume, yodelled the love of his life into her grave. But none came.
‘Harry?’
‘Yes. I’m thinking.’
‘Excellent!’ said Holm.
It was this slow inland humour that could make Harry chuckle long afterwards, and even then without knowing why. But not at this moment. Harry cleared his throat.
‘I think it’s very odd that paper like this would be put into the hands of a murder investigator if you didn’t want it to be traced back to you. You don’t need to have seen many crime shows to know that we would check.’
‘Perhaps he didn’t know it was rare?’ Holm suggested. ‘Perhaps he hadn’t bought it?’
‘Of course that’s a possibility, but something tells me that the Snowman wouldn’t slip up like that.’
‘But he has done.’
‘I mean I don’t think it’s a slip,’ Harry said.
‘You mean …’
‘Yes, I think he wants us to trace him.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s classic. The narcissistic serial killer staging a game, with himself in the principal role as the invincible, the all-powerful conqueror who triumphs in the end.’
‘Triumphs over what?’
‘Well,’ Harry said, and said it for the first time aloud, ‘at the risk of sounding narcissistic myself, me.’
‘You? Why?’
‘I have no idea. Perhaps because he knows I’m the only policeman in Norway who has caught a serial killer, he sees me as a challenge. The letter would suggest that – he refers to Toowoomba. I don’t know, Holm. By the way, have you got the name of the shop in Bergen?’
‘Flab speaking!’
Or so it sounded. The word – flæsk – was articulated with Bergensian tones and gravity. That is, with a soft l, a long α with a dip in the middle and a faint s. Peter Flesch, who voluntarily pronounced his name like the word for flab, was out of breath, loud and obliging. He was happy to chat away; yes, he sold all types of antiques so long as they were small, but he had specialised in pipes, lighters, pens, leather briefcases and stationery. Some used; some new. Most of his customers were regulars with an average age in line with his own.
To Harry’s questions about Kono writing paper he answered, with regret in his voice, that he no longer had any such paper. Indeed, it was several years since he had stocked it.
‘This might be asking a bit too much,’ Harry said. ‘But since you have regular customers for the most part, is it possible that you might remember some of the ones who bought Kono paper?’
‘Some maybe. Møller. And old Kikkusæn from Møllaren. We don’t keep records, but the wife’s got a good memory.’
‘Perhaps you could write down the full names, rough age and the address of those you can remember and email them –’
Harry was interrupted by tut-tutting. ‘We don’t have email, son. Not going to get it, either. You’d better give me a fax number.’
Harry gave the Police HQ number. He hesitated. It was a sudden inspiration. But inspiration never came without a reason.
‘You wouldn’t by any chance have had a customer a few years back,’ Harry said, ‘by the name of Gert Rafto, would you?’
‘Iron Rafto?’ Peter Flesch laughed.
‘You’ve heard of him?’
‘The whole town knew who Rafto was. No, he wasn’t a customer here.’
POB Møller always used to say that in order to isolate what was possible, you had to eliminate everything that was impossible. And that was why a detective should not despair, but be glad whenever he could discount a clue that did not lead to the solution. Besides, it had just been an idea.
‘Well, thank you anyway,’ Harry said. ‘Have a good day.’
‘He wasn’t a customer,’ Flesch said. ‘I was.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes. He brought me bits and bobs. Silver lighters, gold pens. That sort of thing. Sometimes I bought them off him. Yes, that was before I realised where they came from …’
‘And where did they come from?’
‘Don’t you know? He stole them from crime scenes he worked on.’
‘But he never bought anything?’
‘Rafto didn’t have any need for the sort of thing that we had.’
‘But paper? Everyone needs paper, don’t they?’
‘Hm. Just a moment and I’ll have a word with the wife.’
A hand was placed over the receiver, but Harry could hear shouting, then a slightly lower conversation. Afterwards the hand was removed and Flesch trumpeted in elated Bergensian: ‘She thinks Rafto took the rest of the paper when we stopped selling it. For a broken silver penholder, she thinks. Helluva memory on the wife, you know.’
Harry put down the telephone knowing he was on his way to Bergen. Back to Bergen.
At nine o’clock that evening night lights were still burning on the first floor of Brynsalléen 6 in Oslo. From the outside, the six-storey building looked like any commercial complex, with its modern red brick and grey steel facade. And for that matter inside too, as most of the more than four hundred employees had jobs as engineers, IT specialists, social scientists, lab technicians, photographers and so on. But this was nevertheless ‘the national unit for the combating of organised and other serious crime’, generally referred to by its old name of Kriminalpolitisentralen, or in its abbreviated form, Kripos.
Espen Lepsvik had just dismissed his men after reviewing progress on the murder investigation. Only two people were left in the bare, harshly illuminated meeting room.
‘That was a bit thin,’ Harry Hole said.
‘Nice way of saying zilch,’ Espen Lepsvik said, massaging his eyelids with thumb and first finger. ‘Shall we go and have a beer while you tell me what you’ve unearthed?’
Harry told him while Espen Lepsvik drove them to the centre and Kafé Justisen, which was on the way home for both men. They sat at the table at the back of the busy licensed café frequented by everyone from beer-thirsty students to even thirstier solicitors and policemen.
‘I’m considering taking Katrine Bratt instead of Skarre to Bergen,’ Harry said, sipping from the bottle of carbonated water. ‘I checked her employment record before coming here. She’s pretty green, but her file says that she worked on two murder inquiries in Bergen that I seem to remember you were sent over to lead.’
‘Bratt, yes, I remember her.’ Espen Lepsvik, grinned and raised his index finger for another beer.’
‘Happy with her?’
‘Extremely happy. She’s … extremely … competent.’ Lepsvik winked at Harry, who saw that the other man already had that glassy look of a tired detective with three beers inside him. ‘And if both of us hadn’t been married, I think I’d have had a bloody crack at her.’
He drained his glass.
‘I was wondering more if you thought she was stable,’ Harry said.
‘Stable?’
‘Yes, there’s something about her … I don’t know quite how to explain it. Something intense.’
‘I know what you mean.’ Espen Lepsvik nodded slowly as his eyes tried to focus on Harry’s face. ‘Her record’s unblemished. But between you and me I heard one of the lads over there say something about her and her husband.’
Lepsvik searched for some encouragement in Harry’s face, found none, but continued anyway.
‘Something … you know … likes leather and rubber. S&M. Apparently went to that kind of club. Bit pervy.’
‘That’s not my concern,’ Harry said.
‘No, no, no, mine neither!’ Lepsvik exclaimed, raising his hands in defence. ‘It’s just a rumour. And do you know what?’ Lepsvik sniggered, leaning forward across the table so that Harry could smell his beery breath. ‘She can dominate me any day.’
Harry realised that there must have been something in his eyes because Lepsvik immediately seemed to regret his openness and beat a quick retreat to his side of the table. And carried on in a more businesslike tone.
‘She’s a professional. Clever. Intense and committed. Insisted with a bit too much vehemence that I should help her with a couple of cold cases, I remember. But not at all unstable, more the opposite. She’s more the closed, sullen type. But there are lots like that. Yes, in fact I think you two could be a perfect team.’
Harry smiled at the sarcasm and stood up. ‘Thanks for the tip, Lepsvik.’
‘What about a tip for me? Have you and she … got something going?’
‘My tip,’ Harry said, throwing a hundred-krone note on the table, ‘is that you leave your car here.’