Harry Hole Mysteries 3-Book Bundle (50 page)

It was chance that set the ball rolling.

He saw him on TV. The policeman. Harry Hole. Hole was being interviewed because he had hunted down a serial killer in Australia. And Mathias was reminded of Gert Rafto’s advice: ‘Not on my beat.’ He also recalled, however, the satisfaction of having taken the life of the hunter. The feeling of supremacy. The feeling of power. Nothing later had quite compared with the murder of the police officer. And this Herostratically
famous Hole appeared to have something of Rafto about him, some of the same offhandedness and anger.

Nonetheless, he might have forgotten all about Harry Hole had it not been for one of the gynaecologists at Marienlyst Clinic mentioning in the canteen the next day that he had heard this, to all outward appearances, solid detective off the TV was an alkie and a nutcase. Gabriella, a paediatrician, added that she had the son of Hole’s girlfriend as a patient. Oleg, a nice boy.

‘He’ll be an alkie then, as well,’ said the gynaecologist. ‘It’s in the bloody genes, you know.’

‘Hole’s not the father,’ Gabriella countered. ‘But what’s interesting is that the man who’s registered as the father, some professor or other in Moscow, is also an alcoholic.’

‘Hey, I didn’t hear that!’ shouted Idar Vetlesen over the laughter. ‘Don’t forget client confidentiality, folks!’

Lunch carried on, but Mathias was unable to forget what Gabriella had said. Or, rather, the way she had expressed herself: ‘the man who’s registered as the father’.

Accordingly, after lunch, Mathias followed the paediatrician to her office, went in behind her and closed the door.

‘May I ask you something, Gabriella?’

‘Oh, hello,’ she said, and a flush of anticipation spread up her cheeks. Mathias knew she liked him, he supposed she thought he was handsome, friendly, funny and a good listener. She had even, indirectly, asked him out on a couple of occasions, but he had declined.

‘As you may know I’m allowed to use some of the clinic’s blood samples for my research,’ he said. ‘And in fact I found something interesting in the sample of the boy you were talking about. The son of Hole’s girlfriend.’

‘My understanding is that their relationship is now a thing of the past.’

‘You don’t say? There was something in the blood sample, so I was wondering if there was anything in the family …’

Mathias thought he could discern a certain disappointment in her
face. As for himself, he was far from disappointed by what she had to tell him.

‘Thank you,’ he said, standing up and exiting. He could feel his heart pumping eager, life-giving blood, his feet propelling him forward without consuming any energy, his pleasure making him glow like a cutting loop. For he knew this was the beginning. The beginning of the end.

Holmenkollen Residents’ Association was having its summer party on a burning hot August day. On the lawn in front of the association pavilion the adults were sitting on camping chairs under umbrellas and drinking white wine while the children ran between tables or played football on the gravel pitch. Although she was wearing enormous sunglasses that concealed her face, Mathias recognised her from the photograph he had downloaded from her employer’s website. She was standing on her own, and he went over to her and asked with a wry smile if he might stand beside her and pretend he knew her. He knew how to do this sort of thing now. He was not the Mathias No-Nips of old.

She lowered her glasses, scrutinised him quizzically and he established that the photograph had lied after all. She was much more beautiful. So beautiful that for a moment he thought plan A had a weakness: it was not a foregone conclusion that she would want him; a woman like Rakel – single mother or not – had alternatives. Plan B had, to be sure, the same result as A, but would not be anywhere near as satisfying.

‘Socially timid,’ he said, raising a plastic beaker in an embarrassed gesture of greeting. ‘I was invited here by a chum living nearby, and he hasn’t showed up. And everyone else looks as if they know each other here. I promise to decamp the second he appears.’

She laughed. He liked her laugh. And knew that the critical first three seconds had gone in his favour.

‘I just saw a boy score a fantastic goal on the gravel pitch down there,’ Mathias said. ‘I wouldn’t mind betting you’re related to him.’

‘Oh? That might have been Oleg, my son.’

She succeeded in hiding it, but Mathias knew from countless sessions with patients that no woman can resist praise of her child.

‘Nice party,’ he said. ‘Nice neighbours.’

‘You like parties with other people’s neighbours?’

‘I think my friends are worried I’m spending too much time on my own,’ he said. ‘So they try to cheer me up. With their successful neighbours, for example.’ He took a sip from the plastic glass. ‘And with the very sweet house wine. What’s your name?’

‘Rakel. Fauke.’

‘Hello, Rakel. Mathias.’

He shook her hand. Small, warm.

‘You haven’t got anything to drink,’ he said. ‘Allow me. House sweet?’

On his return, and after passing her the glass, he took out his pager and looked at it with a concerned expression.

‘Do you know what, Rakel? I’d love to stay and get to know you better, but A&E is short-staffed and needs an extra man sharpish. So I’ll put on my Superman outfit and make my way into town.’

‘Shame,’ she said.

‘You think so? It’s only for a few hours. Are you going to be here long?’

‘I don’t know. It depends on Oleg.’

‘Right. We’ll see then. Anyway, it was nice to meet you.’

Again he shook her hand. Then left, knowing he had won the first round.

He drove to his flat in Torshov and read an interesting article about water channels in the brain. When he returned at eight she was sitting under one of the umbrellas, wearing a big white hat. She smiled as he sat down beside her.

‘Saved any lives?’ she asked.

‘Mostly scrapes and grazes,’ Mathias said. ‘An appendicitis. The high point was a boy who’d got a Lemonade bottle stuck up his nose. I told
his mother he was probably too young to sniff Coke. Sad to say, people in that type of situation don’t have much of a sense of humour …’

She laughed. That refined trilled laugh which almost made him wish the whole thing was for real.

Mathias had already observed the thickening of his skin in various areas, but in the autumn of 2004 he noticed the first signs that the disease was entering the next phase. The phase he did not want to be a part of. The tightening of his face. His plan had been that Eli Kvale would be the victim of the year, then the whores, Birte Becker and Sylvia Ottersen, in the years that followed. The interesting bit would be to see whether the police would pick up on the connections between the latter two victims and the lecher Arve Støp. But, as it was, his plans would have to be pushed forward. He had always promised himself that he would call it a day once the pains came, he wouldn’t wait. And now they were here. He decided to take all three of them. As well as the grand finale: Rakel and the policeman.

Hitherto he had worked under cover, and now it was time to exhibit his life’s work. To do that he would have to leave clear clues, show them the connections, give them the bigger picture.

He started with Birte. They agreed to talk about Jonas’s complaint at her house after her husband had gone to Bergen in the evening. Mathias arrived at the appointed time and she took his coat in the porch and turned to put it in the cupboard. It was rare for him to improvise, but a pink scarf was hanging on one peg and he grabbed it as if by instinct. He wound it twice before going up behind her and placing it around her neck. He lifted the little woman up and positioned her in front of the mirror so that he could see her eyes. They were bulging, she was like a fish that had been hauled up from the deep.

After depositing her in the car he went into the garden to the snowman he had made the night before. He pressed the mobile phone into its chest, filled the cavity and knotted the scarf around its neck. It was past
midnight by the time he arrived at the garage of the Anatomy Department, injected fixative into Birte’s body, stamped the metal tags, tied them on and put her on an unoccupied ledge in one of the tanks.

Then it was Sylvia’s turn. He rang her, rattled off the usual spiel and they arranged to meet in the forest behind Holmenkollen ski jump, a place he had used on previous occasions. But this time there were people nearby and he wouldn’t take the risk. He explained to her that Idar Vetlesen, unlike himself, was not exactly a specialist in Fahr’s syndrome, and they would have to meet again. She suggested he rang her the following evening when she would be at home on her own.

The next evening he drove out, found her in the barn and set about her on the spot.

But it had almost gone wrong.

The crazy woman had swung her hatchet at him, hit him in the side, cut open his jacket and shirt and severed an artery with the result that his blood had gushed out all over the barn floor. B negative blood. Two people in a hundred’s blood. So after he had killed her in the forest and left her head on top of the snowman he returned, slaughtered a chicken and sprayed its blood over the floor to cover up his own blood.

It was a stressful twenty-four hours, but the strange thing was that he felt no pain that night. And over the subsequent days he followed the case in the newspapers, quietly triumphant. The Snowman. That was the name they had given him. A name that would be remembered. He would never have guessed that a few printed words in a newspaper could afford such a feeling of power and influence. He almost regretted having operated clandestinely for so many years. And it was so easy! There he was going round thinking that what Gert Rafto said was true, that a good detective would always find the murderer. But he had met Harry Hole and had seen the frustration in the policeman’s frazzled face. It was the face of someone who comprehended nothing.

But then, while Mathias was preparing his final moves, it came like
a bolt from the blue. Idar Vetlesen. He rang to say that Hole had visited him asking questions about Arve Støp and pressing him for the connection. And Idar himself wondered what was going on; after all, it was unlikely that the selection of the victims was arbitrary. And, apart from himself and Støp, Mathias was the only person who knew about the paternities since Mathias, as usual, had helped him with the diagnosis.

Idar was rattled, of course, but fortunately Mathias managed to calm him down. He told Idar not to say a word to anyone and to meet him in a safe place where no one could see them.

Mathias was on the point of laughing as he said it; it was practically word for word what he told his female victims. He supposed it must have been the tension.

Idar proposed the curling club. Mathias rang off and pondered his options.

It struck him that he could make it seem as if Idar was the Snowman and at the same time procure himself some downtime.

The next hour he spent elaborating the details of Idar’s suicide. And even though he appreciated his friend in many ways it was an oddly stimulating, indeed inspiring, process. As the planning of the great project had been. The last snowman. She would have to sit – as he had done on the first day of snow so many years ago – on the snowman’s shoulders, feel the cold through her thighs and watch through the window, watch the treachery, the man who would be her death: Harry Hole. He closed his eyes and visualised the noose over her head. It glinted and glowed. Like a fake halo.

H
ARRY GOT INTO THE CAR IN THE GARAGE AT THE
A
NATOMY
Department. Closed the doors and his eyes, and tried to think clearly. The first thing to do was find out where Mathias was.

He had deleted Mathias from his mobile phone and called directory enquiries who gave him the number and the address. He tapped in 1881, noticed while he was waiting that his breathing was accelerated and excited, and tried to calm down.

‘Hi, Harry.’ Mathias’s voice was low, but sounded pleasantly surprised as usual.

‘Sorry to bother you,’ Harry said.

‘Not at all, Harry.’

‘Ah, OK. Where are you now?’

‘I’m at home. I’m on my way down to see Rakel and Oleg.’

‘Great. I was wondering if you could deliver the something to Oleg for me.’

A pause arose. Harry clenched his jaws, making his teeth crack.

‘Of course,’ Mathias said. ‘But Oleg’s at home now, so you can –’

‘Rakel,’ Harry interrupted. ‘We … I don’t feel like meeting her today. Could I pop round to yours for a moment?’

Another pause. Harry pressed the receiver against his ear and listened
hard, as if to pick up what his interlocutor was thinking. But all he could hear was breathing and fragile background music, minimalist Japanese glockenspiel or something like that. He visualised Mathias in an austere, equally minimalist flat. Not that big maybe, but tidy, that was obvious, nothing left to chance. And now he had put on a neutral, light blue shirt and a fresh bandage on the wound in his side. Because, when he had been standing on the steps in front of Harry, he hadn’t held his crossed arms so high to hide his missing nipples. It had been to hide the hatchet wound.

‘Of course,’ Mathias said.

Harry was unable to decide whether his voice sounded natural. The background music had stopped.

‘Thank you,’ Harry said. ‘I’ll be quick, but promise me that you’ll wait.’

‘I promise,’ Mathias said. ‘But Harry …’

‘Yes?’ Harry took a deep breath.

‘Do you know what my address is?’

‘Rakel told me.’

Harry cursed inside. Why hadn’t he said he got it from directory enquiries? There was nothing suspicious about that.

‘Did she?’ Mathias asked.

‘Yes.’

‘OK,’ Mathias said. ‘Come right in. The door’s unlocked.’

Harry rang off and stared at the telephone. He could find no rational explanation for his foreboding that time was short and that he had to run for his life before darkness fell. So he resolved that he was imagining things. That it didn’t help, this type of fear, the terror that comes with the onset of night, when you can’t see your grandmother’s farm.