‘Oh, I did. Bellman was there.’
‘So I saw. What did he want?’
‘He tried to blackmail me into investigating this latest murder.’
‘And what did you say?’
‘No.’
Aune nodded. ‘Good. It eats away at your soul, having as much close contact with evil as you and I have had. It may not look like it to other people, but it’s already destroyed parts of us. And it’s high time our nearest and dearest got the same attention that the sociopaths have had. Our shift is over, Harry.’
‘Are you saying you’re throwing in the towel?’
‘Yes.’
‘Hm. I see what you’re saying in general terms, but are you sure there isn’t something more specific?’
Aune shrugged. ‘Only that I’ve worked too much and spent too little time at home. And when I work on a murder case, I’m not at home even when I am there. Well, you know all about that, Harry. And Aurora, she’s …’ Aune filled his cheeks with air and blew it out. ‘Her teachers say it’s a bit better now. Children sometimes shut themselves off at that age. And they try things out. The fact that they have a scar on their wrist doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re engaged in systematic self-harm, it could just be natural curiosity. But it’s always upsetting when a father realises he can no longer get through to his child. Maybe all the more upsetting when he’s supposed to be a hotshot psychologist.’
‘She’s fifteen now, isn’t she?’
‘And this could all be over and forgotten by the time she turns sixteen. Phases, phases, that’s what that age is all about. But you can’t put off caring for your loved ones until after the next case, or your next day at work, you have to do it now. Wouldn’t you say, Harry?’
Harry rubbed his unshaven top lip with his thumb and forefinger as he nodded slowly. ‘Mm. Of course.’
‘Well, I’ll be off,’ Aune said, reaching for his briefcase and picking up a pile of photographs. ‘These are the pictures from the crime scene that Katrine sent. Like I said, they’re no use to me.’
‘Why would I want them?’ Harry wondered, looking down at a woman’s body on a bloodstained bed.
‘For one of your classes, maybe. I heard you mention the devil’s star case, so you obviously use real murder cases, and real documents.’
‘In that instance it works as a template,’ Harry said, trying to tear his eyes away from the woman’s picture. There was something familiar about it. Like an echo. Had he seen her before? ‘What’s the victim’s name?’
‘Elise Hermansen.’
The name didn’t ring any bells. Harry looked at the next picture. ‘These wounds on her neck, what are they?’
‘You really haven’t read a thing about the case? It’s on all the front pages, it’s hardly surprising that Bellman’s trying to pressgang you. Iron teeth, Harry.’
‘Iron teeth? A satanist?’
‘If you read VG, you’ll see that they refer to my colleague Hallstein Smith’s tweet about it being the work of a vampirist.’
‘A vampirist? A vampire, then?’
‘If only,’ Aune said, taking a page torn out of VG from his case. ‘A vampire does at least have some basis in zoology and fiction. According to Smith and a few other psychologists around the world, a vampirist is someone who takes pleasure from drinking blood. Read this …’
Harry read the tweet Aune held up in front of him. He stopped at the last sentence. The vampirist will strike again.
‘Mm. Just because there are only a few of them doesn’t mean that they’re not right.’
‘Are you mad? I’m all for going against the flow, and I like ambitious people like Smith. He made a big mistake when he was a student and landed himself with his nickname, “the Monkey”, and I’m afraid that means he still doesn’t have much credibility among other psychologists. But he was actually a very promising psychologist until he got into this business with vampirism. His articles weren’t bad either, but obviously he couldn’t get them published in any peer-reviewed journals. Now he’s got something printed at last. In VG.’
‘So why don’t you believe in vampirism?’ Harry said. ‘You yourself have said that if you can think of any form of deviancy, there’ll be someone out there who’s got it.’
‘Oh yes, it’s all out there. Or will be. Our sexuality is all about what we’re capable of thinking and feeling. And that’s pretty much unlimited. Dendrophilia means being sexually excited by trees. Kakorrhaphiophilia means finding failure sexually arousing. But before you can define something as a -philia or an -ism, it has to have reached a degree of prevalence, and have a certain number of common denominators. Smith and his group of mythomaniac psychologists have invented their own -ism. They’re wrong, there isn’t a group of so-called vampirists who follow any predictable pattern of behaviour for them or anyone else to analyse.’ Aune buttoned up his coat and walked towards the door. ‘Whereas the fact that you suffer from a fear of intimacy, and are incapable of giving your best friend a hug before he leaves, is decent material for a psychological theory. Give Rakel my love, and tell her I’ll magic those headaches away. Harry?’
‘What? Yes, of course. I’ll tell her. Hope things work out OK with Aurora.’
Harry was left staring into space after Aune had gone. The previous evening he had walked into the living room while Rakel was watching a film. He had glanced at the screen and asked if it was a James Gray film. It was a perfectly neutral picture of a street with no actors in it, without any specific cars or camera angles, two seconds of a film Harry had never seen. OK, a picture can never be completely neutral, but Harry still had no idea what made him think of that particular director. Apart from the fact that he had watched a James Gray film a few months ago. That could be all it was, an automatic and trivial connection. A film he had seen, then a two-second clip that contained one or two details that swirled through his brain so quickly that he couldn’t identify what the points of recognition were.
Harry took out his mobile phone.
Hesitated. Then he pulled up Katrine Bratt’s number. It had been over six months since the last time they were in touch, when she had sent him a text on his birthday. He had replied with ‘thanks’, no capital letter or full stop. He knew she knew that didn’t mean he didn’t care, just that he didn’t care about long text messages.
His call went unanswered.
When he rang her internal number at Crime Squad, Magnus Skarre picked up. ‘So, Harry Hole himself.’ The sarcasm was so heavy that Harry was left in no doubt. Harry hadn’t had many fans at Crime Squad, and Skarre certainly hadn’t been one of them. ‘No, I haven’t seen Bratt today. Which is pretty odd for a new lead detective, because we’ve got a hell of a lot to do here.’
‘Hm. Can you tell her I—?’
‘Better to call back, Hole, we’ve got enough to think about.’
Harry hung up. Drummed his fingers on the desk and looked at the pile of essays at one end of it. And at the sheaf of photographs at the other. He thought about Bellman’s analogy about predators. A lion? OK, why not? He’d read that lions that hunt alone have a success rate of only fifteen per cent or so. And that when lions kill large prey, they don’t have the strength to rip their throats open, so they have to suffocate them. They clamp their jaws around the animal’s neck and squeeze the windpipe. And that can take time. If it’s a big animal, a water buffalo for instance, the lion sometimes has to hang there, tormenting itself and the water buffalo for hours, yet still has to let go in the end. And that’s one way of looking at a murder investigation. Hard work and no reward. He had promised Rakel that he wouldn’t go back. Had promised himself.