‘Can you skip the lecture, Harry?’
‘Seeds. We found two seeds. Nothing special about that. So it was only today, when I realised who the killer might be, that I asked the laboratory to examine the seeds closer. And do you know what they found?’
‘No idea.’
‘There was a complete fennel seed.’
‘So what?’
‘I had a chat with the chef at the Theatre Café. You were right when you told me that it was the only place in Norway where they make fennel bread with complete seeds. It goes so well with –’
‘Herring,’ Wilhelm said. ‘You know I eat there. What are you getting at?’
‘Earlier you said that the Wednesday Lisbeth disappeared you had herring for breakfast at the Theatre Café as usual. Somewhere between nine and ten o’clock in the morning. What I’m wondering is how the seed got from your stomach to under Lisbeth’s nail.’
Harry waited to be sure that Wilhelm was taking everything in.
‘You said that Lisbeth had left the flat at about five o’clock. So, around eight hours after you ate herring for breakfast. Suppose that the last thing you did before she went out was to make love and she penetrated you with her finger. However efficiently your intestines worked they would not have been able to shift the fennel seed to your rectum within eight hours. It’s a medical impossibility.’
Harry noticed a slight twitch in Wilhelm’s open-mouthed face as he enunciated the word ‘impossibility’.
‘The earliest the fennel seed could have reached the rectum is at nine o’clock. So you must have had Lisbeth’s finger inside you at some point in the evening, the night or the following day. All after you had reported her missing. Do you understand what I’m saying, Wilhelm?’
Wilhelm stared at Harry. That is, he was staring in Harry’s direction, but his eyes were fixed on a point a lot further away.
‘That’s what we call forensic evidence,’ Harry said.
‘I understand.’ Wilhelm nodded slowly. ‘Forensic evidence.’
‘Yes.’
‘A specific, irrefutable fact?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Judges and juries love that sort of thing, don’t they. It’s better than a confession, isn’t it, Harry.’
The policeman nodded.
‘A farce, Harry. I thought it was all a farce. People rushing on stage and then off again. I made sure we stayed on the terrace so that the neighbours over the way would see us before I asked Lisbeth to come into the bedroom with me where I took a gun out of the toolbox and she stared – yes, just like in a farce – with widening eyes at the long barrel with the silencer.’
Wilhelm took his hand out from underneath the duvet. Harry stared at the gun with the black lump round the barrel, which was now pointed at him.
‘Sit down, Harry.’
Harry felt the chisel sticking into his side as he dropped down onto the chair again.
‘She misunderstood me in the most amusing way. It would have been such poetic justice. To have her riding on my hand as I ejaculated hot lead into where she’d let him come.’
Wilhelm got up from the bed, which rippled and gurgled behind him.
‘But the essence of farce is speed, speed, so I was forced to arrange a hasty departure.’
He stood up naked in front of Harry and raised the gun.
‘I placed the mouth of the gun against her forehead. She frowned in surprise as she always did when she thought the world was unjust or simply confusing. Like the evening I told her about Bernard Shaw’s
Pygmalion
on which
My Fair Lady
is based. In it, Eliza Doolittle does not marry Professor Higgins, the man who trained her and transformed her from a market girl into a well-mannered young woman. Instead she runs off with young Freddy. Lisbeth was furious and said that Eliza owed that much to the professor, and that Freddy was a dull person of no consequence. Do you know what, Harry? I started crying.’
‘You’re crazy,’ Harry whispered.
‘Apparently,’ Wilhelm said gravely. ‘What I’ve done is monstrous. There’s none of the control you find in people motivated by hatred. I’m just a simple man who has followed the dictates of his heart. And it dictates love, the love that is given to us by God and makes us God’s instrument. Weren’t the prophets and Jesus thought to be crazy, too, perhaps? Of course we’re crazy, Harry. Crazy, and yet the sanest on this earth. When people say that what I’ve done is insane, that my heart must be crippled inside, then I say: Whose heart is more crippled, the heart that cannot stop loving or the one that is loved but cannot return that love?’
A long silence ensued. Harry cleared his throat.
‘And so you shot her?’
Wilhelm nodded slowly.
‘There was a little lump in her forehead,’ he said with surprise in his voice. ‘And a little black hole. Just as when you hammer a nail into sheet metal.’
‘And then you concealed her. In the only place even a police dog would not find her.’
‘It was hot in the flat.’ Wilhelm had fixed his gaze somewhere above Harry’s head. ‘A fly was buzzing by the window, and I took all my clothes off so that I wouldn’t get any blood on them. Everything was carefully laid out in the toolbox. I used the pincers to cut off the middle finger of her left hand. Then I undressed her, took out the silicon foam spray and quickly sealed the bullet hole, the wound on her finger and all the other orifices of her body. I had let some water out of the bed earlier in the day so that it was only half full. I hardly spilled a drop as I stuffed her in through the hole I’d cut in the mattress. Then I sealed it again with glue, rubber and a heat gun. It went a lot better than the first time.’
‘And she’s been there ever since? Buried in her own waterbed?’
‘No, no,’ Wilhelm said, staring thoughtfully at the point above Harry’s head. ‘I didn’t bury her. On the contrary, I put her back in a womb. That was the start of her rebirth.’
Harry knew that he ought to be frightened. That it would be dangerous not to be frightened now, that his mouth should be dry and he should feel his heart thumping. He ought not to be feeling this exhaustion creeping up on him.
‘And you shoved the severed finger up your anus,’ Harry said.
‘Hm,’ Wilhelm said. ‘The perfect hiding place. As I said, I thought you would use dogs.’
‘There are other places that don’t give off a smell, but perhaps that gave you a perverse thrill? What did you do with Camilla Loen’s finger, by the way? The one you cut off before you killed her.’
‘Camilla, yes . . .’ Wilhelm nodded with a smile as if it were a happy memory Harry had revived. ‘That will have to remain a secret between her and me, Harry.’
Wilhelm released the safety catch. Harry swallowed.
‘Give me the gun, Wilhelm. It’s all over. There’s no point.’
‘Of course there’s a point.’
‘And what might that be?’
‘The same as always, Harry. The performance has to have a decent ending. You don’t think that the audience will be fobbed off with me going quietly, do you? We need a grand finale, Harry. A happy ending. If there isn’t a happy ending, I make one. That’s my . . .’
‘Motto in life,’ Harry whispered.
Wilhelm smiled and put the gun to Harry’s temple. ‘I was going to say, my motto in death.’
Harry closed his eyes. All he wanted was to sleep. To be carried down to a gently flowing river. And over to the other side.
Rakel twitched and thrust open her eyes.
She had been dreaming about Harry. They had been aboard a boat.
The bedroom was in the dark. Had she heard something? Had something happened?
She listened to the rain drumming reassuringly onto the roof. For safety’s sake she checked that her mobile phone, which lay on the bedside table, was switched on. In case he phoned.
She closed her eyes. Flowed gently onwards.
Harry had lost track of time. When he opened his eyes he had the impression the light was different in the empty room, and he had no idea whether a second or a minute had passed.
The bed was empty. Wilhelm was gone.
The sounds of water returned. The rain. The shower.
Harry struggled to his feet and stared at the blue mattress. He felt as if something was crawling inside his clothes. In the light from the bedside table he could see the contours of a human body inside the waterbed. The face had floated up and formed a mould like a plaster cast.
He left the bedroom. The door to the terrace was wide open. He glanced over the railing and down into the yard. He trod wet footprints on the white staircase as he walked down to the lower floor. He opened the bathroom door. The silhouette of a woman’s body was outlined against the window behind the grey shower curtain. Harry drew it to the side. Toya Harang’s neck was bent towards the stream of water, her chin almost touching her chest. A black stocking was tied round her neck and the top of the shower tap. Her eyes were closed and drops of water hung from the long, black lashes. Her mouth was half open and filled with a yellow mass, like hardened foam. The same material filled her nostrils, ears and the small hole in her temple.
He turned off the shower before he left.
There was no-one around on the stairs.
Harry put one foot carefully in front of the other. He felt numb, as if his body were turning to stone.
Bjarne Møller.
He had to ring Bjarne Møller.
Harry went through the entrance hall and into the yard. The rain settled on his head, but he didn’t feel it. Soon he would be totally paralysed. The rotary dryer was not screeching any longer. He avoided looking at it. He caught sight of a yellow packet on the tarmac and went over to it. He opened it, pulled out a cigarette and shoved it into his mouth. He tried to light it with his lighter but discovered that the end of the cigarette was wet. Water must have got into the packet.
Ring Bjarne Møller. Get them to come here. Go with Møller over to the students’ house. Question Sven Sivertsen there. Record his testimony against Tom Waaler immediately. Listen to Møller giving the order for Inspector Waaler’s arrest. Then go home. Home to Rakel.
He could see the rotary dryer in his peripheral vision.
He swore, tore the cigarette in half, put the filter between his lips and lit it at the second attempt. Why was he so stressed? There was nothing left to do. It was finished, over.
He turned towards the rotary dryer.
It stooped a little to one side, but the post set in the tarmac had obviously taken the brunt of it. Only one of the strings that Wilhelm Barli was hanging on had broken. His arms hung to both sides, his wet hair clung to his face and his eyes were wrenched upwards, as if in prayer. It struck Harry that it was a strangely beautiful sight. With his naked body partly shrouded by the wet sheet he resembled a figurehead set up on the bows of a galleon. Wilhelm had got what he wanted. A grand finale.
Harry picked up his mobile phone and pressed in his PIN code. His fingers would hardly obey him. They would soon be stone. He keyed in Bjarne Møller’s number. He was about to press the call button when the telephone gave a warning shriek. The display showed that there was a message on his answerphone. So what? It wasn’t Harry’s phone. He hesitated. Instinct told him that he should phone Møller first. He closed his eyes. And pressed.
A woman announced that he had one message. There was a bleep followed by a few seconds’ silence. Then a voice whispered:
‘Hi, Harry. It’s me.’
It was Tom Waaler.
‘You turned your phone off, Harry. That wasn’t wise. Because I have to talk to you, you know.’
Tom’s mouth was so close to the receiver that Harry felt he was standing right next to him.
‘Apologies for having to whisper, but we don’t want to wake him, do we. Can you guess where I am? I think perhaps you can. Perhaps you ought to have anticipated it even.’
Harry sucked on his cigarette without realising that it had gone out.
‘It’s a bit dark in here, but there’s a picture of a football team over the bed. Let’s see. Tottenham Hotspur? There’s a little machine on his bedside table. GameBoy. Listen now. I’m holding the phone over his bed.’
He heard the calm, regular breathing of a little boy sleeping soundly in a black timber-clad house in Holmenkollveien.
‘We have our eyes and ears everywhere, Harry, so don’t try to phone or talk to anyone. Just do exactly as I say. Ring this number and talk to me. Do anything else and the boy is dead. Do you understand?’
Harry’s heart began pumping blood round his paralysed body and slowly the numbness was replaced by almost unbearable pain.
42
Monday. The Devil’s Star.
The windscreen wipers whispered and the tyres hissed.
The Escort aquaplaned through the crossing. Harry drove as fast as he dared, but the rain was coming down like stair-rods onto the tarmac in front of him and he knew that the remaining tread on the tyres was only really of a cosmetic nature.
He accelerated and took the next crossing on amber. Fortunately there were no cars on the streets. He snatched a glance at his watch.
Twelve minutes left. It was eight minutes since he had been standing in the central yard in Sannergata, mobile in hand, and dialling the number he was forced to dial. Eight minutes since the voice had whispered in his ear:
‘At last.’
Harry said all he wanted to, but couldn’t stop himself adding: ‘If you lay a hand on him, I’ll kill you.’
‘Well, well. Where are you and Sivertsen?’
‘No idea,’ Harry had said staring at the rotary dryer. ‘What do you want?’
‘I just want to meet you. Find out why you want to break the deal we made. Find out if you’re unhappy about something that we can put right. It’s not too late, Harry. I’m willing to stick my neck right out to get you in the team.’
‘OK,’ Harry said. ‘Let’s meet. I’ll come to you.’
Tom Waaler gave a low laugh.
‘I want to meet Sven Sivertsen as well. And I think it’s a better idea if I come to you. So give me the address. Now.’