The Final Murder (23 page)

‘I was at Lina’s today,’ she said eventually. ‘Our computer is hopeless, and Lina’s got broadband. It only took me a few minutes to find out that these victims, these …’ She put down the clippers and squatted down in front of him. ‘These public figures really are public,’ she said, and put her elbows on his knees. ‘Truly. Vibeke Heinerback’s homepages have remained unchanged since her

murder, it’s

‘Her family have no doubt had other things to think about.’

‘I don’t mean to criticize,’ she interposed. ‘The point is that her brother-in-law’s stag night…’

‘Brother-in-law to be.’

‘Don’t interrupt. There was a bit about the stag night with a link to Trond’s homepages, where the reader had access to a

detailed programme! Anyone who wanted to could have found

out that Vibeke was likely to be at home alone that evening. Most people knew that she went to bed early, as she made such a fuss about it in all her interviews.’

‘I’m not quite sure what you’re getting at. My hair must look pretty strange.’

‘It’ll be fine.’

She stood behind him again and turned on the clippers.

‘Fiona Helle was also pretty generous with her private life. She had told the whole world that she was alone every Tuesday.

Vegard Krogh kept a blog, one of those incredibly self-centred things that the author thinks are interesting for the rest of the world. Yesterday he told his readers that he had to have supper with his mother because he owed her money. The revolting man really was a great…’

‘What are you doing?’ Adam turned round with a subdued cry.

‘I said not a crop!’

‘Ooops,’ Johanne said. ‘A bit short, maybe. Hang on a minute.’

She quickly took a few strokes with the machine from his neck up and over to his forehead.

‘There,’ she said with some doubt. ‘Now it’s even, at least.

Can’t we just say it’s a summer cut?’

‘In February? Let me see.’

She reluctantly passed him the mirror. His expression changed from disbelief to desperation.

‘I look like a loaf of bread,’ he wailed. ‘My head looks like a big loaf of white bread! I said you weren’t to cut it all off!’

‘I didn’t cut it all off/ she said. ‘You look great. And now we have to concentrate.’

‘IlooklikeKojak!’

‘Do you think they lie a lot?’ she asked, trying to sweep all the hair into a dustpan.

‘Who?’ he muttered.

‘Celebrities.’

‘Lie?’

‘Yes. When they’re interviewed.’

‘Well…’

‘I’ve heard some people admit it. Or boast about it, depending on how you look at it. I fully understand if that’s the case. They create a pretend life that we can all be part of and then keep the real one to themselves.’

‘You just said that they write everything about their lives on the Internet.’

‘Bits of it. The safe things. It makes the lie more effective, I presume. Don’t know. Maybe I’m talking rubbish.’

She emptied the hair into a plastic bag, tied it up and put it in the bin. Adam stayed sitting on the stool, with the towel round his neck. The mirror was lying on the floor, back up. There was a thin line of blood on his neck from a cut just behind his ear. Johanne moistened one of Ragnhild’s cloths and pressed it to the wound.

‘Sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I should have concentrated more.’

‘What do you mean when you say you don’t necessarily need to be lucky?’ Adam asked. ‘That this killer hasn’t just been lucky as hell?’

‘A murder in itself doesn’t need much planning,’ she said.

‘Unless you’re someone who will immediately be suspected, that is. If I want to kill someone who everyone knows I bear a grudge against, I would have to think about it. Make sure I have an alibi, for example. That’s the biggest challenge.’

‘A enormous one,’ Adam nodded in agreement. ‘That’s why so

few succeed.’

‘Exactly. But bank robbery … then we’re talking about planning!

Money is far better protected than people. A successful

armed robbery depends on prior knowledge and meticulously

planned logistics. Expertise. Modern weapons and other cutting edge equipment. But humans, we’re so …’

She put her hand on his head. The cropped hair felt lovely

against her palm.

‘. .. So vulnerable. A thin layer of skin. And inside we’re vulnerable too. A blow to the head, a knife in the right place. A push

down the stairs. In fact, it’s strange that it doesn’t happen more often.’

‘For a woman who I know has a good heart and who’s just had

a baby, you’re painting a bloody grim picture,’ he said, and got up.

‘D’you really think that?’

‘Yes. I said it just the other day. When Sigmund was here. The worst thing would be a murder without a motive. If we can’t catch him red-handed, or he doesn’t slip up, he gets away with it.’

‘I completely disagree with you,’ Adam said, spitting out some hair while trying to scratch his back. ‘A murder also needs to be planned. Prior knowledge.’

She looked over at the bottle of wine. About a third full. She got a glass and poured herself some.

‘Of course,’ she agreed. ‘You’re right. It takes some skill. But that’s all. You don’t need much equipment, for example. None of the three victims have been killed with a gun, which you

would have to get hold of, and also leaves interesting traces.

The most important thing is that you can pull out. Right up

until the last second. If something goes wrong, something unexpected happens or disturbs you, you can calmly walk away

without killing the person. Especially as you don’t need anyone else with you to commit murder. That’s a huge advantage. What one person knows, no one knows, what two people know, everyone knows.’

‘Your mother,’ Adam laughed, and plumped down into the sofa.

‘Mmm. Not everything she says is stupid.’

She followed suit and this time she sat next to him.

‘It frightens me to think about the possibility that this person knows what they’re doing. A… professional.’

‘Do they actually exist?’ Adam asked. ‘Professional killers? I mean here, in Norway, in this part of the world?’

She tilted her head and sent him a look as if he had asked

whether it was ever winter in Norway.

‘OK,’ he muttered. ‘They exist. But would they not have a

motive? A cause to fight for? Or some distorted reason, be it money or God’s will?’

For a moment their eyes met. Then she leant against him. He

held her tight.

‘What do you think about Mats Bohus?’ she asked in a quiet

voice.

‘We have to find him.’

‘But do you think he’s got anything to do with the murders?’

Adam sighed loudly. Johanne made herself more comfortable,

pulled her legs up onto the sofa and took a sip of her wine. He ran his fingers up her under arm.

‘It’s easy to imagine that he might have been involved in Fiona Helle’s murder,’ he said. ‘At least he has a motive. Possibly. We don’t really know enough about what happened when he contacted her. But what the hell would the guy have against Vibeke

Heinerback and Vegard Krogh?’

‘Nemo,’ said the nine-year-old in the doorway. The and Sulamit want to watch Nemo.’

‘Kristiane,’ Johanne smiled. ‘Come here. It’s night time,

poppet. We don’t watch films in the middle of the night.’

‘Yes we do,’ Kristiane said and climbed up onto the sofa, forcing herself in between them. ‘Leonard says that Sulamit isn’t a cat.’

She hugged the fire engine to her body and kissed the ladder, which was broken.

‘It’s up to you whether Sulamit is a cat or not,’ Adam told her.

‘Only me,’ Kristiane nodded.

‘But I do think that Leonard will think Sulamit is a fire engine.

Is that OK with you?’

‘No, cat.’

‘Cat for you, fire engine for Leonard.’

‘And cat for you,’ Kristiane said and held the sad, wheel-less toy up to Adam’s face. He kissed the bonnet.

‘Now you have to go back to bed,’ Johanne said.

‘With you,’ Kristiane replied.

‘In your own bed,’ Adam said. ‘Come along now.’

He lifted up the child and the fire engine and disappeared.

Johanne stayed in the sofa. Her joints ached with fatigue. She felt weaker than she had done for ages. It was as if all the energy had drained out of her; the greedy baby’s mouth sucked out what little she had left after the birth, every four hours, all day and all night; the little bundle made her anxious and weak. Of course she

should spend more time with Kristiane. But there wasn’t more time to be had.

Not even the nights were her own any more.

Mats Bohus could feasibly have killed his biological mother.

But could he have killed the other two?

She should really get some sleep.

She drank some more wine. She held it in her mouth, let it run over her tongue, tasted it, then swallowed.

If Mats Bohus wanted to camouflage his mother’s murder, he

had made a big mistake. He killed Fiona Helle first. The actual murder in a series of camouflage killings should never come first.

Elementary, she thought to herself. A beginner’s mistake. No skill.

The murderer was professional. Had insight.

Maybe not.

She had to sleep.

There was another case. Something similar. Somewhere in her

brain’s hard disk was a story that she couldn’t locate.

All was quiet. She was missing something without knowing

quite what.

Johanne fell asleep and was not disturbed by dreams.

Sigmund Berli emptied his fourth cup of bitter coffee in three hours.

Not only was it bitter, it was also cold. He wrinkled his nose. A bag of jelly babies lay on the desk beside his screen. He popped three in his mouth and chewed slowly. The missus wasn’t happy that he was putting on weight. She should try sitting here at four in the morning, in front of a bloody computer that didn’t want to tell him anything.

The woman should try staying awake for twenty-four hours and then try to find some meaning in the columns, names, numbers and flickering letters on a bright square screen that made his eyes water.

It was sometimes hard to find a wanted person. Even in a small country like Norway, there were plenty of hiding places. The Schengen Agreement meant that they now worked with police

forces in Europe, which helped when they were looking for someone.

But then the Agreement also made it easier to cross borders

and thus the number of hiding places had mushroomed. A wanted person could escape. But an ordinary Norwegian, a Mats Bohus, a pure-blooded Norwegian with no criminal record, with a permanent address and personal identity number - they should be able

to trace him in a couple of hours.

They’d been looking for nearly twenty-four hours.

Gone. The man had simply vanished.

When they finally managed to confirm that he had been last

seen at his flat in Louisesgate on the 20th of January, the whole NCIS went into action. Adam was probably the only person who was allowed to go home. New baby and all that.

A stab of envy. A wisp of desire; Sigmund saw Johanne’s face reflected on the screen. He filled his mouth with three red jelly babies. The sugar crunched on his teeth. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He grabbed his cup, even though he knew it was empty.

Foreigners, all these bloody foreigners, they just came and

went, in and out of Norway, as they pleased, as if they just came here for a dump. They played with the police. If only people knew. Some people were starting to realize. Luckily. Foreigners.

But Mats Bohus?

Fiona Helle had been murdered on the 20th of January. And

since then no one had seen him. Where the hell was he?

‘Hallelujah, Sigmund!’

Lars Kirkeland was standing in the doorway with his shirt tails out and red eyes. He had a stupid grin on his face and thumped the doorframe with his fist.

‘We found the guy!’

Sigmund burst out laughing and clapped his hands a couple of times before stuffing the rest of the jelly babies in his mouth.

‘Mmmm,’ he said and chewed furiously. ‘We have to phone

Adam.’

She should have chosen another hotel. The SAS hotel, for example, with its Arne Jacobsen design and discreet, cosmopolitan

staff. Almost everything you needed was there under one roof, so she wouldn’t have needed to go out. Copenhagen was a Norwegian town, far too Norwegian, haunted by beer-drinking

men in stupid hats and women with carrier bags and cheap sunglasses.

Like shoals offish they streamed backwards and forwards

over Radhusplassen, driven by instinct, between Tivoli and

Str0get, always Tivoli and Str0get, as if Copenhagen consisted entirely of a big park with a bar at one end and a dirty shopping street at the other.

She stayed in her room. Even now in February, with an ice-cold wind blowing in from 0resund, Copenhagen was full of

Norwegians. They shopped and drank and flocked together in the brown cafes, ate frikadeller, and couldn’t wait for their next visit, in spring, when they could enjoy their beer outside and Tivoli would be open for the season once again.

She wanted to go home.

Home. To her astonishment, she realized that Villefranche was home. She had never liked the Riviera. Never. But that was

before.

Everything was new now.

She had been reborn, she thought to herself, and smiled at the cliche. Her fingers stroked her stomach. It was more toned now, certainly flatter. She was lying naked on the bed, on top of the duvet. The heavy velvet curtains were open and only the thin, semi-transparent curtain hung between her and anyone who

might be outside. If anyone wanted to look in, if someone on the first or second floor on the other side of the street was looking in, if someone really wanted to see her, she was visible. There was a draught from the window. She stretched. She could feel the