And could be at peace. Until the next time.
The burning hot lighter was already scorching Harry’s fingers. On the table were the straws from McDonald’s.
A minute later he had taken the first drag.
The effect was immediate. The pains, even those he didn’t know he had, vanished. The associations, the images, appeared. He would be able to sleep tonight.
Bjørn Holm couldn’t sleep.
He had tried reading Escott’s Hank Williams: The Biography, about the country legend’s short life and long death, listening to a bootleg Lucinda Williams CD of a concert in Austin and counting Texas longhorns, but to no avail.
A dilemma. That’s exactly what it was. A problem without a proper solution. Forensics Officer Holm hated that type of problem.
He huddled up on the slightly too short sofa bed that had been among the goods he’d brought from Skreia, along with his vinyl collection of Elvis, the Sex Pistols, Jason & the Scorchers, three hand-sewn suits from Nashville, an American Bible and a dining-room suite that had survived three generations of Holms. But he couldn’t concentrate.
The dilemma was that he had made an interesting discovery while examining the rope with which Marit Olsen had been hung – or to be more precise, beheaded. It wasn’t a clue that would necessarily produce anything, but nonetheless the dilemma remained the same: would it be right to pass the information on to Kripos or to Harry? Bjørn Holm had identified the tiny shells on the rope during the time he was still working for Kripos. When he was talking to a freshwater biologist at the Biological Institute, Oslo University. But then Beate Lønn had transferred him to Harry’s unit before the report had been written and, sitting down at the computer tomorrow to write it, he would in fact be reporting to Harry.
OK, technically perhaps it wasn’t a dilemma, the information belonged to Kripos. Giving it to anyone else would be regarded as a dereliction of duty. And what did he owe Harry Hole actually? He had never given him anything but aggro. He was quirky and inconsiderate at work. Positively dangerous when on the booze. But on the level when sober. You could rely on him turning up and there would be no messing and no ‘you owe me’. An irksome enemy, but a good friend. A good man. A bloody good man. A bit like Hank, in fact.
Bjørn Holm groaned and rolled over to face the wall.
Stine woke with a start.
In the dark she heard a grinding sound. She rolled onto her side. The ceiling was dimly lit; the light came from the floor beside the bed. What was the time? Three o’clock in the morning? She stretched and grabbed her mobile phone.
‘Yes?’ she said with a voice that made her seem more sleepy than she was.
‘After the delta I was sick of snakes and mozzies, and me and the motorbike headed north along the Burmese coast to Arakan.’
She recognised the voice straight away.
‘To the island of Sai Chung,’ he said. ‘There’s an active mud volcano I heard was about to explode. And on the third night I was there, it erupted. I thought there would just be mud, but, you know, it spewed good old-fashioned lava as well. Thick lava that flowed so slowly through the town that we could blithely walk away from it.’
‘It’s the middle of the night,’ she yawned.
‘Yet still it wouldn’t stop. Apparently they call it cold lava when it’s so sticky, but it consumed everything in its path. Trees with fresh green leaves were like Christmas trees for four seconds until they were turned to ashes and were gone. The Burmese tried to escape in cars loaded with the chattels they had snatched, but they had spent too much time packing. The lava was moving that fast after all! When they emerged with the TV set, the lava was already up to their walls. They threw themselves inside their cars, but the heat punctured the tyres. Then the petrol caught fire and they clambered out like human torches. Do you remember my name?’
‘Listen, Elias—’
‘I said you would remember.’
‘I have to sleep. I’ve got classes tomorrow.’
‘I am such an eruption, Stine. I’m cold lava. I move slowly, but I’m unstoppable. I’m coming to where you are.’
She tried to remember if she had told him her name. And automatically directed her gaze to the window. It was open. Outside, the wind soughed, peaceful, reassuring.
His voice was low, a whisper. ‘I saw a dog entangled in barbed wire, trying to flee. It was in the path of the lava. But then the stream veered left, it would pass right by. A merciful God, I supposed. But the lava brushed against it. Half the dog simply vanished, evaporated. Before the rest burned up. So it was ashes, too. Everything turns to ashes.’
‘Yuk, I’m ringing off.’
‘Look outside. Look, I’m already up against the house.’
‘Stop it!’
‘Relax, I’m only teasing.’ His loud laughter pealed in her ears.
Stine shuddered. He must have been drunk. Or he was mad. Or both.
‘Sleep tight, Stine. See you soon.’
He broke the connection. Stine stared at the phone. Then she switched it off and threw it to the foot of her bed. Cursed because she already knew. She would get no more sleep that night.
17
Fibres
IT WAS 6.58. HARRY HOLE, KAJA SOLNESS AND BJøRN HOLM were walking through the culvert, a three-hundred-metre-long subterranean corridor connecting Police HQ and Oslo District Prison. Now and then it was used to transport prisoners to Police HQ for questioning, sometimes for sports training sessions in the winter and in the bad old days for extremely unofficial beatings of particularly intractable prisoners.
Water from the ceiling dripped onto the concrete with wet kisses that echoed down the dimly lit corridor.
‘Here,’ Harry said as they reached the end.
‘HERE?’ asked Bjørn Holm.
They had to bend their heads to pass under the stairs leading to the prison cells. Harry turned the key in the lock and opened the iron door. The musty smell of heated dank air hit him.
He pressed the light switch. Cold, blue light from neon tubes enveloped a square concrete room with grey-blue lino on the floor and nothing on the walls.
The room had no windows, no radiators, none of the facilities you expect in a space supposed to function as an office for three people.
Apart from desks with chairs and a computer each. On the floor there was a coffee machine stained brown and a water cooler.
‘The boilers heating the whole prison are in the adjacent room,’ Harry said. ‘That’s why it’s so hot in here.’
‘Basically not very homely,’ Kaja said, sitting at one of the desks.
‘Right, bit reminiscent of hell,’ Holm said, pulling off his suede jacket and undoing one shirt button. ‘Is there mobile coverage here?’
‘Just about,’ Harry said. ‘And an Internet connection. We have everything we need.’
‘Apart from coffee cups,’ Holm said.
Harry shook his head. From his jacket pocket he produced three white cups, and he placed one on each of the three desks. Then he pulled a bag of coffee from his inside pocket and went over to the machine.
‘You’ve taken them from the canteen,’ Bjørn said, raising the cup Harry had put down in front of him. ‘Hank Williams?’
‘Written with a felt pen, so be careful,’ Harry said, tearing open the coffee pouch with his teeth.
‘John Fante?’ Kaja read on her cup. ‘What have you got?’
‘For the time being, nothing,’ Harry said.
‘And why not?’
‘Because it will be the name of our main suspect of the moment.’
Neither of the other two said anything. The coffee machine slurped up the water.
‘I want three names on the table by the time this is ready,’ Harry said.
They were well down their second cup of coffee and into the sixth theory when Harry interrupted the session.
‘OK, that was the warm-up, just to get the grey matter working.’
Kaja had just launched the idea that the
murders were sexually motivated and that the killer was an ex-con with a record for similar crimes who knew that the police had his DNA and therefore did not spill his seed on the ground, but masturbated into a bag or some such receptacle before leaving the scene. Accordingly, she said, they should start going through criminal records and talking to staff in the Sexual Offences Unit.
‘But don’t you believe we’re onto something?’ she said.
‘I don’t believe anything,’ Harry answered. ‘I’m trying to keep my brain clear and receptive.’
‘But you must believe something?’
‘Yes, I do. I believe the three murders have been carried out by the same person or persons. And I believe it’s possible to find a connection which in turn might lead us to a motive which in turn – if we’re very, very lucky – will lead us to the guilty party or parties.’
‘Very, very lucky. You make it sound as if the odds are not good.’
‘Well.’ Harry leaned back on his chair with his hands behind his head. ‘Several metres of specialist books have been written about what characterises serial killers. In films, the police call in a psychologist who, after reading a couple of reports, gives them a profile which invariably fits. People believe that Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is a general description. But in reality serial killers are, sad to say, as different from each other as everyone else. There is only one thing which distinguishes them from other criminals.’
‘And that is?’
‘They don’t get caught.’
Bjørn Holm laughed, realised it was inappropriate, and shut up.
‘That’s not true, is it?’ Kaja said. ‘What about …?’
‘You’re thinking of the cases where a pattern emerged and they caught the person. But don’t forget all the unsolved murders we still think are one-offs, where a connection was never found. Thousands.’
Kaja glanced at Bjørn who was nodding meaningfully.
‘You believe in connections?’ she said.
‘Yep,’ Harry said. ‘And we have to find one without going down the path of interviewing people, which might give us away.’
‘So?’
‘When we predicted potential threats in the Security Service we did nothing but look for possible connections, without talking to a living soul. We had a NATO-built search engine long before anyone had heard of Yahoo or Google. With it we could sneak in anywhere and scan practically everything with any connection to the Net. That’s what we have to do here as well.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘And that’s why in one and a half hours I’ll be sitting on a plane to Bergen. And in three hours I’ll be talking to an unemployed colleague who I hope can help us. So let’s finish up here, shall we? Kaja and I have talked a fair bit, Bjørn. What have you got?’
Bjørn Holm jerked in his chair as if roused from sleep.
‘Me? Er … not much, I’m afraid.’
Harry rubbed his jaw carefully. ‘You’ve got something.’
‘Nope. Neither forensics nor the detectives on the case have got so much as a lump of fly shit. Not in the Marit Olsen case, nor in either of the other two.’
‘Two months,’ Harry said. ‘Come on.’
‘I can give you a summary,’ said Bjørn Holm. ‘For two months we have analysed, X-rayed and stared ourselves stupid at photos, blood samples, strands of hair, nails, all sorts. We’ve gone through twenty-four theories of how and why he’s stabbed twenty-four holes in the mouths of the first two victims in such a way that all the wounds point inwards to the same central point. With no result. Marit Olsen also had wounds to the mouth, but they were inflicted with a knife and were sloppy, brutal. In short: nada!
‘What about those small stones in the cellar where Borgny was found?’
‘Analysed. Lots of iron and magnesium, bit of aluminium and silica. So-called basalt rock. Porous and black. Any the wiser?’
‘Both Borgny and Charlotte had iron and coltan on the insides of their molars. What does that tell us?’
‘That they were killed with the same goddam instrument, but that doesn’t get us any closer to what it was.’
Silence.
Harry coughed. ‘OK, Bjørn, out with it.’
‘Out with what?’
‘What you’ve been brooding about ever since we got here.’
The forensics officer scratched his sideburns while eyeballing Harry. Coughed once. Twice. Glanced at Kaja as if to solicit help there. Opened his mouth, closed it.
‘Fine,’ Harry said. ‘Let’s move on to—’
‘The rope.’
The other two stared at Bjørn.
‘I found shells on it.’
‘Oh yes?’ Harry said.
‘But no salt.’
They were still staring at him.
‘That’s pretty unusual,’ Bjørn went on. ‘Shells. In fresh water.’
‘So?’
‘So I checked it out with a freshwater biologist. This particular mollusc is called a Jutland mussel, it’s the smallest of the pool mussels and has been observed in only two lakes in Norway.’
‘And the nominations are?’
‘Øyeren and Lyseren.’
‘Østfold,’ Kaja said. ‘Neighbouring lakes. Big ones.’
‘In a densely populated region,’ Harry said.
‘Sorry,’ Holm said.
‘Mm. Any marks on the rope that tell us where it might have been bought?’
‘No, that’s the point,’ Holm said. ‘There are no marks. And it doesn’t look like any rope I’ve seen before. The fibre is one hundred per cent organic, there’s no nylon or any other synthetic materials.’
‘Hemp,’ Harry said.
‘What?’ Holm said.
‘Hemp. Rope and hash are made from the same material. If you fancy a joint, you can just stroll down to the harbour and light up the mooring ropes of the Danish ferry.’
‘It’s not hemp,’ Bjørn Holm said over Kaja’s laughter. ‘The fibre’s made from the elm and the linden tree. Mostly elm.’
‘Home-made Norwegian rope,’ Kaja said. ‘They used to make rope on farms long ago.’
‘On farms?’ Harry queried.
Kaja nodded. ‘As a rule every village had at least one rope-maker. You just soaked the wood in water for a month, peeled off the outer bark and used the bast inside. Twined it into rope.’
Harry and Bjørn swivelled round to face Kaja.
‘What’s the matter?’ she asked hesitantly.
‘Well,’ Harry said, ‘is this general knowledge everyone ought to possess?’
‘Oh, I see,’ Kaja said. ‘My grandfather made rope.’
‘Aha. And for rope-making you need elm and linden?’
‘In principle you can use bast fibres from any kind of tree.’
‘And the composition?’
Kaja shrugged. ‘I’m no expert, but I think it’s unusual to use bast from several different trees for the same rope. I remember that Even, my big brother, said that Grandad used only linden because it absorbs very little water. So he didn’t need to tar his.’
‘Mm. What do you think, Bjørn?’
‘If the compositon is unusual, it will be easier to trace where it was made, of course.’
Harry stood up and began to pace back and forth. There was a heavy sigh every time his rubber soles relinquished the lino. ‘Then we can assume production was limited and sales were local. Do you think that sounds reasonable, Kaja?’
‘Guess so, yes.’
‘And we can also assume that the centres of production and consumption were in close proximity. These home-made ropes would hardly have travelled far.’
‘Still sounds reasonable, but …’
‘So let’s take that as our starting point. You two begin mapping out local rope-makers near lakes Øyeren and Lyseren.’
‘But no one makes ropes like that any more,’ Kaja protested.
‘Do the best you can,’ Harry said, looked at his watch, grabbed his coat from the back of the chair and walked to the door. ‘Fi
nd out where the rope was made. I presume Bellman knows nothing about these Jutland mussels. That right, Bjørn?’
Bjørn Holm forced a smile by way of answer.
‘Is it OK if I follow up the theory of a sexually motivated murder?’ Kaja asked. ‘I can talk to someone I know at Sexual Offences.’
‘Negative,’ Harry said. ‘The general order to keep your trap shut about what we’re doing applies in particular to our dear colleagues at Police HQ. There seems to be some seepage between HQ and Kripos, so the only person we speak to is Gunnar Hagen.’
Kaja had opened her mouth, but a glance from Bjørn was enough to make her close it again.
‘But what you can do’, Harry said, ‘is get hold of a volcano expert. And send him the test results of the small stones.’
Bjørn’s fair eyebrows rose a substantial way up his forehead.
‘Porous, black stone, basalt rock,’ Harry said. ‘I would reckon lava. I’ll be back from Bergen at fourish.’
‘Say hello to Baa-baargen Police HQ,’ Bjørn bleated and raised his coffee cup.
‘I won’t be going to the police station,’ Harry said.
‘Oh? Where then?’
‘Sandviken Hospital.’
‘Sand—’
The door slammed behind Harry. Kaja watched Bjørn Holm, who was staring at the closed door with a stunned expression on his face.
‘What’s he going to do there?’ she asked. ‘See a pathologist?’
Bjørn shook his head. ‘Sandviken Hospital is a mental hospital.’
‘Really? So he’s going to meet a psychologist with serial killings as a speciality, is he?’
‘I knew I should have said no,’ Bjørn whispered, still staring at the door. ‘He’s clean out of his mind.’
‘Who’s out of his mind?’
‘We’re working in a prison,’ Bjørn said. ‘We’re risking our jobs if the boss finds out what we’re up to, and the colleague in Bergen …’