Harry Hole Mysteries 3-Book Bundle (36 page)

Fuck! Harry closed his eyes and deliberated.

‘But you still have the test results? About whether individuals are fathers or not, I mean.’

‘Yes, indeed,’ Gerda said.

‘And what do they tell you?’

‘I can’t give you an answer off the cuff. I’ll have to go into each one and that’ll take more time.’

‘OK. But have you saved the DNA profiles of those you have tested?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the test is as comprehensive as in criminal cases?’

‘More comprehensive. To establish paternity beyond doubt we require more markers since half of the genes are from the mother.’

‘So what you’re saying is that I can collect a swab from a specific person, send it here and have you check it for any similarities with those you’ve checked from Marienlyst Clinic?’

‘The answer is yes,’ Gerda said with an intonation that suggested she would appreciate an explanation.

‘Good,’ Harry said. ‘My colleagues will send you some swabs from a number of people who are husbands and children of women who have gone missing in recent years. To check whether they’ve been submitted before. I’ll make sure this is authorised to receive top priority.’

A light seemed to be switched on in Gerda’s eyes. ‘Now I know where I’ve seen you! On
Bosse
. Is this about …?’

Even though there were only two of them there, she lowered her voice as if the name they had given the monster was a curse, an obscenity, an incantation that was not to be uttered aloud.

Harry called Katrine and asked her to meet him at Java café in St Hanshaugen. He parked in front of an old block of flats with a sign on the entrance threatening that parked cars would be towed away, although the entrance was barely the width of a lawnmower.
Ullevålsveien was full of people hurrying up and down doing their essential Saturday shopping. An ice-cold northerly wind swept down from St Hanshaugen on its way to Vår Frelsers cemetery to blow black hats off a bowed funeral procession.

Harry paid for a double espresso and a cortado, both in takeaway paper cups, and sat on one of the chairs on the pavement. On the pond on the other side of the road a lone white swan drifted round quietly with a neck formed like a question mark. Harry watched it and was reminded of the name of the fox trap. The wind blew goose pimples onto the surface of the water.

‘Is the cortado still hot?’

Katrine was standing in front of him with outstretched hand.

Harry passed her the paper cup, and they walked to his car.

‘Great that you could work on a Saturday morning,’ he said.

‘Great that you could work on a Saturday morning,’ she said.

‘I’m single,’ he said. ‘Saturday morning has no value for people like us. You, on the other hand, should have a life.’

An elderly man stood glaring at their car as they arrived.

‘I’ve ordered a breakdown truck,’ he said.

‘Yes, I hear they’re popular,’ Harry said, unlocking the door. ‘The only problem is finding somewhere to park them.’

They got in and a wrinkled knuckle rapped on the glass. Harry rolled down the window.

‘Truck’s on its way,’ the old man said. ‘You’ve got to stay here and wait.’

‘Have I?’ Harry said, holding up his ID.

The man ignored the card and glowered at his watch.

‘Your space’s too narrow to qualify as an entrance,’ Harry said. ‘I’m sending over a man from the traffic department to unscrew your illegal sign. I’m afraid there’ll be a big fat fine, too.’

‘What?’

‘We’re police.’

The old man snatched the ID card, looked suspiciously at Harry, at the card and back at Harry.

‘That’s fine this time. You can go,’ the man mumbled with a sour expression and gave back the card.

‘It’s not fine,’ Harry said. ‘I’m calling the traffic department now.’

The old man stared with fury in his eyes.

Harry twisted the key in the ignition, let the engine roar, then turned to the old man again. ‘And you are to stay here.’

They could see his open-mouthed expression in the rear-view mirror as they drove off.

Katrine laughed. ‘You are
bad
! That was an old man.’

Harry shot her a sidelong glance. Her facial expression was strange, as if it hurt her to laugh. Paradoxically, the episode at Fenris Bar had made her more relaxed with him. Perhaps that was a thing attractive women had, a rejection demanded their respect, made them trust you more.

Harry smiled. He wondered how she would have reacted if she had known that this morning he had woken with an erection and fragments of a dream in which he had fucked her while she was sitting on the sink with her legs wide apart in the Fenris Bar toilet. Screwed her so hard the pipes creaked, water slopped in the toilet bowls and the neon tubes buzzed and flickered as he felt the freezing porcelain on his bollocks every time he thrust. The mirror behind her had vibrated so much his features had blurred as they banged hips, backs and thighs against taps, hand dryers and soap holders. Only when they had stopped did he see that it wasn’t his but someone else’s face in the mirror.

‘What are you thinking about?’ she asked.

‘Reproduction,’ Harry said.

‘Oh?’

Harry passed her a packet which she opened. At the top was a piece of paper with the heading
Instructions for DNA Swabbing Kit.

‘Somehow this is all tied up with paternity,’ Harry said. ‘I just don’t know how or why yet.’

‘And we’re off to …?’ Katrine asked, lifting a small pack of cotton buds.

‘Sollihøgda,’ Harry said. ‘To get a swab from the twins.’

In the fields surrounding the farm the snow was in retreat. Wet and grey, it squatted on the countryside it still occupied.

Rolf Ottersen received them on the doorstep and offered them coffee. As they removed their outer clothing Harry told them what he wanted. Rolf Ottersen didn’t ask why, just nodded.

The twins were in the living room knitting.

‘What’s it going to be?’ Katrine asked.

‘Scarf,’ the twins said in unison. ‘Auntie’s teaching us.’

They motioned to Ane Pedersen, who was sitting in the rocking chair knitting and smiling a ‘nice to see you again’ to Katrine.

‘I just want a bit of spit and mucus from them,’ Katrine said brightly, raising a cotton bud. ‘Open wide.’

The twins giggled and put down their knitting.

Harry followed Rolf Ottersen to the kitchen where a large kettle had boiled and there was a smell of hot coffee.

‘So you were wrong,’ Rolf said. ‘About the doctor.’

‘Maybe,’ Harry said. ‘Or maybe he has something to do with the case after all. Is it OK if I take a look at the barn again?’

Rolf Ottersen made a gesture inviting Harry to help himself.

‘But Ane has tidied up in there,’ he said. ‘There’s not a lot to see.’

It was indeed tidy. Harry recalled the chicken blood lying on the floor, thick and dark, as Holm took samples, but now it had been scrubbed. The floorboards were pink where the blood had seeped into the wood. Harry stood by the chopping block and looked at the door. Tried to imagine Sylvia standing there and slaughtering chickens as the Snowman came in. Had she been surprised? She had killed two chickens. No, three. Why did he think it was two? Two plus one. Why plus one? He closed his eyes.

Two of the chickens had been lying on the chopping block, their blood pouring out onto the sawdust. That was how chickens should be slaughtered. But the third had been lying some distance away and had soiled the floorboards. Amateur. And the blood had clotted where the third chicken’s throat had been cut. Just like on Sylvia’s throat. He recalled how Holm had explained this. And knew the thought wasn’t
new, it had been lying there with all the other half-thought, half-chewed, half-dreamed ideas. The third chicken had been killed in the same way, with an electric cutting loop.

He went to the place where the floorboards had absorbed the blood and crouched down.

If the Snowman had killed the last chicken why had he used the loop and not the hatchet? Simple. Because the hatchet had disappeared in the depths of the forest somewhere. So this must have happened after the murder. He had come all the way back here and slaughtered a chicken. But why? A kind of voodoo ritual? A sudden inspiration? Rubbish, this killing machine stuck to the plan, followed the pattern.

There was a reason.

Why?

‘Why?’ Katrine asked.

Harry hadn’t heard her come in. She stood in the doorway of the barn, the light from the solitary bulb falling on her face, and she was holding up two plastic bags containing cotton buds. Harry shuddered to see her standing like that again, in a doorway with her hands pointing in his direction. Just like at Becker’s. But there was something else, another realisation, too.

‘As I said,’ Harry mumbled, studying the pink residue, ‘I think this is about family relationships. About covering things up.’

‘Who?’ she asked and moved towards him. The heels of her boots clicked on the wooden floor. ‘Who have you got in mind?’

She crouched down beside him. Her masculine perfume wafted past him, rising from her warm skin into the cold air.

‘I haven’t a clue.’

‘This is not systematic processing; this is an idea you’ve had. You’ve got a theory,’ she stated simply and ran her right index finger through the sawdust.

Harry held back. ‘It’s not even a theory.’

‘Come on, out with it.’

Harry took a deep breath. ‘Arve Støp.’

‘What about him?’

‘According to Arve Støp, he went to Idar Vetlesen for medical help with his tennis elbow. But, according to Borghild, Vetlesen didn’t hold any records for Støp. I’ve been asking myself why that might be.’

Katrine shrugged. ‘Perhaps it was more than an elbow. Perhaps Støp was afraid it might be documented that he was having beauty treatment.’

‘If Idar Vetlesen had agreed not to keep records for all the patients who were afraid of that, he wouldn’t have had a single name in his files. So I thought it had to be something else, something that really couldn’t bear close scrutiny.’

‘Like what?’

‘Støp was lying on
Bosse
. He said there was no madness or hereditary illness in his family.’

‘And there is?’

‘Let’s assume there is, as a theory.’

‘The theory that’s not even a theory?’

Harry nodded. ‘Idar Vetlesen was Norway’s most secret expert on Fahr’s syndrome. Not even Borghild, his own assistant, knew about it. So how on earth did Sylvia Ottersen and Birte Becker find their way to him?’

‘How?’

‘Let’s assume Vetlesen’s specialty was not hereditary illness but discretion. After all, he said himself that’s what his business was founded on. And that was why a patient and friend went to him and said he had Fahr’s syndrome, a diagnosis which he had been given somewhere else, by a real specialist. But this specialist did not have Vetlesen’s expertise in discretion, and this was something which had to be kept secret. The patient insisted, perhaps paid extra for it. Because this person could really pay.’

‘Arve Støp?’

‘Yes.’

‘But he’s already been diagnosed by someone and that might leak out.’

‘This is not what Støp is primarily afraid of. He’s afraid that it could
come to light that he goes there with his offspring. Whom he wants checked to see if they have the inherited illness. And this has to be treated with the utmost confidentiality because no one knows they’re his children. In fact there are some people who believe them to be their own. As indeed Filip Becker thought he was Jonas’s father. And …’ Harry nodded towards the farmhouse.

‘Rolf Ottersen?’ Katrine whispered, breathless. ‘The twins? Do you think …?’ She lifted the plastic bags. ‘That they have Arve Støp’s genes?’

‘Possibly.’

Katrine looked at him. ‘The missing women … the other children …’

‘If the DNA test shows that Støp is the father of Jonas and the twins, we’ll do tests on the children of the other missing women on Monday.’

‘You mean … that Arve Støp has been bonking his way round Norway? Impregnating a variety of women and then killing them years after they’ve given birth?’

Harry rolled his shoulders.

‘Why?’ she asked.

‘If I’m right we’re talking about madness, of course, and this is pure speculation. There’s often a pretty clear logic behind madness. Have you heard about Berhaus seals?’

Katrine shook her head.

‘The father of the species is cold and rational,’ Harry said. ‘After the female has given birth to their young and it has survived the first critical phase, the father tries to kill the mother. Because he knows she won’t want to breed with him again. And he doesn’t want other young seals to compete with his own offspring.’

Katrine seemed to be having trouble absorbing this.

‘It’s madness, yes,’ she said. ‘But I don’t know what’s more insane: thinking like a seal or thinking that someone’s thinking like a seal.’

‘As I said …’ Harry stood up with an audible creak of his knees, ‘it’s not even a theory.’

‘You’re lying,’ she said, peering up at him. ‘You’re already certain that Arve Støp’s the father.’

Harry responded with a crooked smile.

‘You’re as crazy as I am,’ she said.

Harry subjected her to a searching gaze. ‘Let’s get going. The Forensic Institute is waiting for your cotton buds.’

‘On a Saturday?’ Katrine ran her hand over the sawdust, smoothing over her doodles and stood up. ‘Haven’t they got a life?’

After delivering the plastic bags to the institute and receiving a promise that they would get back to him that evening or early the following morning, Harry drove Katrine home to Seilduksgata.

‘No lights on in the windows,’ Harry said. ‘On your ownsome?’

‘Good-looking girl like me?’ she smiled, grasping the door handle. ‘Never on my own.’

‘Mm. Why didn’t you want me to tell your colleagues at the Bergen Police Station that you were there?’

‘What?’

‘Thought they would be amused to hear you were working on a big murder case in the capital.’

She shrugged and opened the door. ‘Bergensians don’t think of Oslo as a capital. Goodnight.’

‘Goodnight.’

Harry drove to Sannergata.