The Leopard (14 page)

‘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. ‘Find 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 . . .’

‘Yes?’

‘She is seriously out of her mind.’

‘You mean she’s … ?’

‘Sectioned out of her mind.’

18

The Patient

F
OR EVERY STEP THE TALL POLICEMAN TOOK
, K
JERSTI
Rødsmoen had to take two. Even so, she was left behind as they walked along the corridor of Sandviken Hospital. The rain was pouring down outside the high, narrow windows facing the fjord where the trees were so green you would have thought spring had arrived before winter.

The day before, Kjersti Rødsmoen had recognised the policeman’s voice at once. As though she had been waiting for him to ring. And to make the very request he did: to talk to the Patient. The Patient had come to be called the Patient to give her maximum anonymity after the strain of her most recent murder case as a detective had sent her right back to square one: the psychiatric ward. In fact, she had recovered with remarkable speed, had moved back home, but the press – which was still hysterically pursuing the Snowman case long after it had been cleared up – had not left her in peace. And one evening, a few months ago, the Patient had called Rødsmoen and asked if she could return.

‘So she’s in serviceable shape?’ the police officer asked. ‘On medication?’

‘Yes to the first,’ Kjersti Rødsmoen said. ‘The second is confidential.’ The truth was the Patient was so well that neither medicine nor hospitalisation was required any longer. Nevertheless Rødsmoen had wondered whether she should let him visit her; he had been on the Snowman case and could cause old issues to emerge. Kjersti Rødsmoen had, in her time as a psychologist, come to believe more and more in repression, in shutting things off, in oblivion. It was an unfashionable view within the profession. On the other hand, meeting a person who had been on that particular case might be a good test of how robust the Patient had become.

‘You’ve got half an hour,’ Rødsmoen said before opening the door to the common room. ‘And don’t forget that the mind is tender.’

The last time Harry had seen Katrine Bratt she had been unrecognisable. The attractive young woman with the dark hair and the glowing skin and eyes had gone, to be replaced by someone who reminded him of a dried flower: lifeless, frail, delicate, wan. He had had a feeling he might crush her hand if he squeezed too hard.

So it was a relief to see her now. She looked older, or perhaps she was just tired. But the gleam in her eyes returned as she smiled and got up.

‘Harry H,’ she said, giving him a hug. ‘How’s it going?’

‘Fair to middling,’ Harry said. ‘And you?’

‘Dreadful,’ she said. ‘But a lot better.’

She laughed, and Harry knew she was back. Or that enough of her was back.

‘What happened to your jaw? Does it hurt?’

‘Only when I speak and eat,’ Harry said. ‘And when I’m awake.’

‘Sounds familiar. You’re uglier than I remember, but I’m glad to see you anyway.’

‘Same to you.’

‘You mean same to me, except for the ugly bit?’

Harry smiled. ‘Naturally.’ He looked around. The other patients in the room were sitting and staring out of the window, at their laps or straight at the wall. But no one seemed interested in him or Katrine.

Harry told her what had happened since the last time they’d seen each other. About Rakel and Oleg, who had moved to an unnamed destination abroad. About Hong Kong. About his father’s illness. About the case he had taken on. She even laughed when he said she mustn’t tell anyone.

‘What about you?’ Harry asked.

‘They want me out of here really; they think I’m well and I’m taking up someone else’s place. But I like it here. The room service stinks, but it’s safe. I’ve got TV and can come and go as I want. In a month or two I’ll move back home maybe, who knows.’

‘Who knows?’

‘No one. The madness is intermittent. What do you want?’

‘What do you want me to want?’

She gave him a long, hard look before answering. ‘Apart from wanting you to have a burning desire to fuck me, I want you to have some use for me.’

‘And that’s exactly what I have.’

‘A desire to fuck me?’

‘Some use for you.’

‘Shit. Well, OK. What’s it about?’

‘Have you got a computer with Internet access here?’

‘We have a communal computer in the Hobbies Room, but it isn’t connected to the Net. They wouldn’t risk that. The only thing it’s used for is playing solitaire. But I’ve got my own computer in my room.’

‘Use the communal one.’ Harry put his hand in his pocket and tossed a dongle across the table. ‘This is a mobile office as they called it in the shop. You just plug it into—’

‘—one of the USB ports,’ Katrine said, taking the device and pocketing it. ‘Who pays the subscription?’

‘I do. That is, Hagen does.’

‘Yippee, there’s gonna be some surfing tonight. Any hot new porno sites I should know about?’

‘Probably.’ Harry pushed a file across the table. ‘Here are the reports. Three murders, three names. I want you to do the same as you did on the Snowman case. Find connections we’ve missed. Do you know about the case?’