‘Not obsessed?’ Skarre called. ‘He’s up to a victim a day now! While we’re sitting here he’s probably out on the hunt again. Wouldn’t you say, Professor?’ He pronounced the title without trying to conceal his sarcasm.
Aune threw his short arms out. ‘Once again, I don’t know. We don’t know. No one knows.’
‘Valentin Gjertsen,’ Mikael Bellman said. ‘Are we completely sure about that, Bratt? If so, give me ten minutes to think it over. Yes, I can see that it’s urgent.’
Bellman ended the call and put his mobile down on the glass table. Isabelle had just told him it was made of mouth-blown glass from ClassiCon, more than fifty thousand kroner. That she would rather have a few quality pieces than fill her new apartment with rubbish. From where he was sitting he could see an artificial beach and the ferries gliding back and forth across the Oslo Fjord. Strong winds lashed the almost violet water further out.
‘Well?’ Isabelle asked from the bed behind him.
‘The lead detective wants to know if she should agree to take part in The Sunday Magazine this evening. The subject is the vampirist murders, obviously. We know who the perpetrator is, but not where he is.’
‘Simple,’ Isabelle Skøyen said. ‘If you already had the guy, you should do it yourself. But seeing as it’s only a partial success, you should send a representative. Remind her to say “we” rather than “I”. And it wouldn’t do any harm if she were to suggest that the perpetrator may have managed to get across the border.’
‘The border? Why?’
Isabelle Skøyen sighed. ‘Don’t pretend to be more stupid than you are, darling, that’s just irritating.’
Bellman went over to the door to the veranda. He stood there, looking down at the Sunday tourists streaming towards Tjuvholmen. Some to visit the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Contemporary Art, some to look at the hyper-modern architecture and drink overpriced cappuccino. And some to dream about one of the laughably expensive apartments that hadn’t yet been sold. He had heard that the museum had exhibited a Mercedes with a big, brown human turd in place of the Mercedes star on the bonnet. OK, so for some people solid excrement was a status symbol. Others needed the most expensive apartment, the latest car or the biggest yacht to feel good. And then you had people – like Isabelle and he himself – who wanted absolutely everything: power, but without any suffocating obligations. Admiration and respect, but enough anonymity to be able to move freely. Family, to provide a stable framework and help their genes survive, but also free access to sex outside the four walls of the home. The apartment and the car. And solid shit.
‘So,’ Mikael Bellman said. ‘You’re thinking that if Valentin Gjertsen goes missing for a while, the public will automatically think that he’s left the country, instead of the Oslo Police being unable to catch him. But if we do catch him, we’ve been smart. And if he commits another murder, anything we’ve said will be forgotten anyway.’
He turned towards her. He had no idea why she had chosen to put her big double bed in the living room when she had a perfectly adequate bedroom. Particularly as it was possible for the neighbours to see in. Although he had a suspicion that that was why. Isabelle Skøyen was a big woman. Her long, powerful limbs were spread out under the gold-coloured silk sheet that lay draped over her sensuous body. The sight alone made him feel ready to go again.
‘Just one word, and you’ve sown the idea of him leaving the country,’ she said. ‘In psychology it’s called anchoring. It’s simple, and it always works. Because people are simple.’ Her eyes roamed down his body and she smiled. ‘Especially men.’
She shoved the silk sheet onto the floor.
He looked at her. Sometimes he thought he preferred just looking at her body to touching it, while the opposite was true of his wife. Which was odd, because Ulla’s body, purely objectively, was more beautiful than Isabelle’s. But Isabelle’s violent, raging desires turned him on far more than Ulla’s tenderness and quiet, sob-racked orgasms.
‘Wank,’ she commanded, spreading her legs so that her knees resembled the half-furled wings of a bird of prey, and touched two of her long fingers to her genitals.
He did as she said. Closed his eyes. And heard the glass table buzz. Damn, he’d forgotten Katrine Bratt. He grabbed the vibrating phone and pressed answer.
‘Yes?’
The female voice at the other end said something, but Mikael couldn’t hear anything because one of the ferries blew its horn at the same time.
‘The answer’s yes,’ he shouted impatiently. ‘You’re to go on The Sunday Magazine. I’m busy at the moment, but I’ll call you with instructions later.’
‘It’s me.’
Mikael Bellman stiffened. ‘Darling, is that you? I thought it was Katrine Bratt.’
‘Where are you?’
‘Where? At work, of course.’
And in the far too long pause that followed, he realised that she had obviously also heard the sound of the ferry, and that that was why she had asked. He breathed hard through his mouth as he looked down at his drooping erection.
‘Dinner won’t be ready before half past five,’ she said.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘What—?’
‘Steak,’ she said, and hung up.
Harry and Anders Wyller got out of the car in front of Jøssingveien 33. Harry lit a cigarette and looked up at the red-brick building surrounded by a tall fence. They had driven from Police HQ in sunshine and shimmering autumn colours, but on the way up here the clouds had gathered and were now skimming the hills like a cement-coloured ceiling, draining the colour from the landscape.
‘So this is Ila Prison,’ Wyller said.
Harry nodded and sucked hard on the cigarette.
‘Why is he called the Fiancé?’
‘Because he got his rape victims pregnant and made them promise to give birth to the baby.’
‘Or else …?’
‘Or else he’d come back and perform a Caesarean section himself.’ Harry took one last drag, rubbed the cigarette out against the packet and tucked the butt inside. ‘Let’s get this done.’
‘The regulations don’t allow us to keep him tied up, but we’ll be watching you on the surveillance camera,’ said the guard who had buzzed them in and led them to the end of the long corridor, lined with grey-painted steel doors on both sides. ‘One of our rules is never to get within one metre of him.’
‘Christ,’ Wyller said. ‘Does he attack you?’
‘No,’ the guard said, inserting a key into the lock of the last door. ‘Svein Finne hasn’t had a single black mark against his name in the twenty years he’s been here.’
‘But?’
The prison guard shrugged and turned the key. ‘I think you’ll see what I mean.’
He opened the door, stepped aside and Wyller and Harry walked into the cell.
The man on the bed was sitting in shadow.
‘Finne,’ Harry said.
‘Hole.’ The voice from the shadow sounded like crushed rock.
Harry gestured towards the only chair in the room. ‘OK if I sit down?’
‘If you think you’ve got time for that. I heard you’ve got your hands full.’
Harry sat down. Wyller stood behind him, just inside the door.