Harry tapped at the computer and the image changed. A muffled groan ran through the group, and Katrine saw that even some of the most experienced detectives looked down at their laps.
‘I’m not showing this for fun, but so that you know what sort of individual we’re dealing with. He let the dentist live. Just like Penelope Rasch. And I don’t think that’s workplace negligence. I think Valentin Gjertsen is playing a game with us.’
Harry clicked again, and the same picture of Valentin appeared, this time taken from Interpol’s website. ‘Valentin escaped from Ila almost four years ago, in a quite spectacular fashion. He beat another prisoner, Judas Johansen, until he was unrecognisable, then had a copy of the demon’s face he has tattooed on his own chest tattooed onto the chest of the corpse, and hid the body in the library where he worked, so that Judas was reported missing when he didn’t report for inspection. On the night that Valentin himself escaped, he dressed the corpse in his own clothes and laid it on the floor of his cell. The prison guards who discovered the unrecognisable body, and naturally assumed that it was Valentin, weren’t particularly surprised. Like any inmate convicted of paedophilia, Valentin Gjertsen was hated by the other prisoners. No one thought to check fingerprints or conduct a DNA test on the body. And so for a long time we assumed that Valentin Gjertsen was history. Until he showed up again in connection with another murder. Obviously we don’t know exactly how many people he killed or assaulted, but it’s definitely more than he’s been suspected or found guilty of. We do know that his last victim before he disappeared for good was his former landlady, Irja Jacobsen.’ Another click. ‘This picture is from the commune where she had gone into hiding from Valentin. Unless I’m mistaken, it was you, Berntsen, who was first on the scene where we found her strangled beneath a pile of children’s surfboards, with, as you can see, pictures of sharks on them.’
A grunt of laughter from the back of the conference room. ‘Correct. The surfboards were stolen goods that the poor junkies hadn’t managed to sell.’
‘Irja Jacobsen was probably murdered because she could have passed information about Valentin to the police. That may explain why it’s been so hard to get anyone to say a word about where he might be. Anyone who knows him simply doesn’t dare talk.’ Harry cleared his throat. ‘Another reason why Valentin has been impossible to find is that he’s undergone several rounds of extensive plastic surgery since his escape. The person you see in this picture doesn’t look like the person we observed later in a grainy surveillance picture from a football match at Ullevål Stadium. And he intentionally let us see that surveillance picture. So, because we haven’t managed to find him, we suspect that he may have had further operations after that, probably abroad seeing as we’ve checked anything that moves in Scandinavia as far as plastic surgery is concerned. Our suspicion that his face has changed again is reinforced by the fact that Penelope Rasch doesn’t recognise Valentin from the pictures we’ve shown her. Unfortunately she isn’t able to give a good alternative description of him, and the Tinder profile picture of this so-called Vidar on her phone is unlikely to be him.’
‘Tord has also checked out this Vidar’s Facebook profile,’ Katrine said. ‘Not surprisingly, it’s fake, set up recently on a device that we haven’t managed to trace. Tord believes this suggests that he must have a reasonable level of IT skills.’
‘Or else he had help,’ Harry said. ‘But we do at least have one person who saw and spoke to Valentin Gjertsen, just before he disappeared off the radar three years ago. Ståle has retired from his job as a consultant to Crime Squad, but he’s agreed to come here today.’
Ståle Aune stood up, fastening a button on his tweed jacket.
‘For a short time I had the questionable pleasure of seeing a patient who called himself Paul Stavnes. He was unusual as a schizophrenic psychopath insofar as he was aware of his own illness, at least to a certain extent. He also succeeded in manipulating me so that I didn’t realise who he was or what he was doing. Until the day when he let his cover slip quite by chance, then tried to kill me before disappearing for good.’
‘Ståle’s description formed the basis for this photofit picture.’ Harry tapped the computer. ‘So this is also fairly old now, but at least it’s better than the surveillance picture from the football match.’
Katrine tilted her head. The drawing showed that his hair, nose and the shape of his eyes were different, and the shape of his face was more angular than in the photograph. But the look of contentment was still there. Presumed contentment. Like the way you think a crocodile is grinning.
‘How did he become a vampirist?’ a voice by the window asked.
‘To start with, I’m not convinced that there’s any such thing as vampirists,’ Aune said. ‘But of course there could be plenty of reasons why Valentin Gjertsen drinks blood, without me being able to give an answer here and now.’
A long silence followed.
Harry cleared his throat. ‘We haven’t seen any sign of biting or drinking blood in any previous case that can be linked to Gjertsen. And yes, perpetrators do usually stick to a specific pattern, revisiting the same fantasies again and again.’
‘How certain are we that this really is Valentin Gjertsen?’ Skarre asked. ‘And not just someone trying to make us think that it’s him?’
‘Eighty-nine per cent.’ This from Bjørn Holm.
Skarre laughed. ‘Exactly eighty-nine?’
‘Yes. We found strands of body hair on the handcuffs he used on Penelope Rasch, possibly from the back of his hand. With DNA analysis it doesn’t take too long to confirm a match with eighty-nine per cent probability. It’s the last ten per cent that takes time. We’ll get the final answer in two days. The handcuffs are a type that are available online, by the way, a replica of handcuffs from the Middle Ages. Hence the iron, rather than steel. Apparently popular with people who like to do up their love nests to make them look like medieval dungeons.’
A single grunt of laughter.
‘What about the iron teeth?’ one of the female detectives asked. ‘Where could he have got those from?’
‘That’s more difficult,’ Bjørn Holm said. ‘We haven’t found anyone who manufactures teeth like this, at least not out of iron. He must have commissioned them specially from a blacksmith. Or made them himself. It’s certainly something new – we haven’t seen anyone use a weapon like this before.’
‘New behaviour,’ Aune said, undoing his jacket to free his stomach. ‘Fundamental changes of behaviour hardly ever happen. Human beings are notorious, they insist on making the same mistakes over and over again, even after they’ve received new information. That’s my opinion, anyway, and it’s become so contentious among psychologists that it’s even been given its own name, Aune’s Thesis. When we see individuals change their behaviour, it usually relates to a change in their surroundings, something the individual is adapting to. While the individual’s underlying motivation for that behaviour remains the same. It’s by no means unique for a sex offender to discover new fantasies and pleasures, but that’s because his taste gradually develops, not because the individual undergoes a fundamental change. When I was a teenager my father said that when I was older I would start to appreciate Beethoven. At the time I hated Beethoven and was convinced he was wrong. Even at a young age, Valentin Gjertsen had a wide-ranging appetite when it came to sexuality. He raped both young and old women, possibly boys, no adult men that we know of, but that could be for practical reasons, seeing as they’re more likely to be able to defend themselves. Paedophilia, necrophilia, sadism, all this was on Valentin Gjertsen’s menu. The Oslo Police have been able to link him to more sexually motivated crimes than anyone apart from Svein Finne, “the Fiancé”. The fact that he’s now acquiring a taste for blood merely means that he scores highly on what we call “openness”, and is willing to try new experiences. I say “acquiring” because certain observations, such as the fact that he added lemon, suggest that Valentin Gjertsen is experimenting with blood rather than being obsessed with it.’