The Devil's star

17

Tuesday. Profiles.

Harry watched the second hand on the wall clock over Tom Waaler’s head.

They’d had to bring in extra chairs to accommodate everyone in the large conference room in the green zone on the sixth floor. There was almost an atmosphere of solemnity in the room: no chatting, no drinking of coffee, no reading of newspapers, just people scribbling on notepads, the silent waiting for the clock to advance to 8.00. Harry counted 17 heads, and that meant that only one person was missing. Tom Waaler stood at the front with his arms crossed, staring at his Rolex wristwatch.

The second hand on the wall clock moved, stopped and, quivering, stood to attention.

‘Let’s start,’ Tom Waaler said.

There was a rustle of movement as everyone, with one accord, sat up in their chairs.

‘I’ll be leading this investigation, assisted by Harry Hole.’

Heads round the table turned in surprise towards Harry, who sat at the back of the room.

‘First of all, I’d like to thank those of you who uncomplainingly cut short your holidays,’ Waaler continued. ‘I’m afraid you’ll be asked to sacrifice more than your holidays in the days to come, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to get round to you all to thank you personally, so let’s just say that this “thank you” is for the whole month. OK?’

There were smiles and nods round the table. As one smiles and nods to a future divisional commander, Harry thought.

‘This is a special day in many ways.’

Waaler switched on the overhead projector. The front page of Dagbladet appeared on the screen behind him. SERIAL KILLER ON THE LOOSE? No pictures, just this screaming headline in block capitals. It’s rare now for a news desk with any respect for the profession to use question marks on a front page, and what very few people knew – and no-one in Room K615 – was that the decision to add the question mark had been taken only minutes before the paper went to press after the acting editor rang his superior – on holiday in Tvedestrand – for advice.

‘We haven’t had a serial killer in Norway – as far as we know at least – since Arnfinn Nesset went berserk in the ’80s,’ Waaler said. ‘Serial killers are rare, so rare that this is going to attract attention beyond the borders of Norway. We’re already the subject of a lot of interest, folks.’

Tom Waaler’s subsequent pause for effect was unnecessary. All those present had already been made aware of the significance of the case when they were briefed on the phone by Moller the previous evening.

‘OK,’ Waaler said. ‘If we’re really up against a serial killer now, we have a number of advantages on our side. Firstly, in our midst we have someone who has investigated and caught a serial killer. I assume you all know about Inspector Harry Hole’s star turn in Sydney. Harry?’

Harry saw the faces turn towards him and cleared his throat. He could feel his voice threatening to desert him and he cleared his throat again.

‘I’m not so sure that the job I did in Sydney was a model investigation.’ He attempted a wry smile. ‘As you perhaps remember, I ended up shooting the man.’

No laughter, not even so much as the suspicion of a smile. Harry was no future divisional commander.

‘We can imagine worse outcomes than that, Harry,’ Waaler said, looking at his Rolex again. ‘Many of you know the psychologist Stale Aune, to whom we have turned for expert advice on several cases. He’s agreed to come and give us a short presentation on the phenomenon of serial killing. For some of you this is nothing new, but going over some old ground won’t do any harm. He should be here at -’

All heads went up as the door swung open. The man who entered was panting loudly. Above the rotund stomach bursting out of a tweed jacket was a floppy orange necktie and glasses so small that you wondered whether it was possible to see through them at all. Beneath a shiny pate was a forehead glistening with sweat and beneath that a pair of dark, possibly dyed, but at any rate neatly tended eyebrows.

‘Talk of the devil…’ Waaler said.

‘And here he is!’ Stale Aune completed, pulling out a handkerchief from his breast pocket and drying his forehead. ‘And devilishly hot it is too!’

He went up to the end of the table and dropped his worn, brown leather bag onto the floor with a bang.

‘Good morning, lady and gentlemen. Nice to see so many young people awake at this time of day. Some of you I have met before, others of you have been spared.’

Harry smiled. He was one of those who had definitely not been spared. Harry first went to see Aune about his drinking problems many years ago. Aune was no expert on drug abuse, but Harry had to admit a relationship had developed between them that bordered on a friendship.

‘Notepads out, sluggards!’

Aune hung his jacket over a chair.

‘You look as if you’re at a funeral, and that’s probably true in some respects, but I want to see a few smiles before I leave here. That’s an order. And hang onto my coattails. I’m going to whistle through this.’

Aune grabbed a marker from the ledge under the flip chart and began to write at breakneck speed while speaking:

‘There is every reason to believe that serial killers have existed for as long as there have been men on earth to kill. However, many consider the so-called “Autumn of Terror” in 1888 the first serial killer case of modern times. It’s the first documented case of a serial killer with a purely sexual motive. The murderer killed five women before vanishing into thin air. He was given the epithet “Jack the Ripper”, but he took his real identity with him to the grave. Our most famous national contribution to the list is not Arnfinn Nesset, who, as you will all remember, poisoned twenty patients or so in the ’80s, but Belle Gunness who was that rare thing: a female serial killer. She left for America and married a weed of a man in 1902 and settled down on a farm outside La Porte in the state of Indiana. I say a weed of a man because he weighed seventy kilos and she weighed 120.’

Aune pulled lightly at the braces on his trousers.

‘If you ask me, her weight was just right.’

Ripples of laughter.

‘This pleasantly plump lady killed her husband, some children and an unknown number of suitors whom she lured to the farm through lonely heart advertisements in the Chicago press. Their bodies were discovered one day in 1908 when the farm burned down under mysterious circumstances. Among them was the burned and unusually voluminous torso of a woman with her head chopped off. The woman was presumably placed there by Belle to dupe investigators into believing it was her. The police received several reports from witnesses who said they had seen Belle in various places throughout America, but she was never found. And that is my point, dear friends. Unfortunately the cases of Jack and Belle are quite typical of serial killers.’

Aune finished writing with a round smack of his marker against the flip chart.

‘They do not get caught.’

The assembly looked at him in silence.

‘So,’ Aune said, ‘the concept of the serial murderer is just as controversial as everything else I’m going to tell you now. This is because psychology is a science that is still in its infancy and because psychologists are quarrelsome by nature. I’ll tell you what we know about serial killers – it’s much the same as what we don’t know. By the way, “serial killer” is a term which many competent psychologists consider meaningless since it is used to describe a set of mental illnesses that other psychologists claim do not exist. Is that clear? Well, some of you are smiling anyway, and that’s good.’

Aune tapped his index finger against the first point he had written up on the flip chart.

‘The typical serial killer is a white man between 24 and 40 years of age. As a rule he acts alone, but he can work with others, in a pair, for example. Brutality against the victim is an indication that he is acting alone. The victims can be anyone, though generally they fall into the same ethnic group as the killer, and in exceptional cases they may be known to him.

‘Usually he finds the first victim in an area he knows well. In the public imagination there are always special rituals connected with the murders. This is not true, but when rituals do occur, it is often in connection with a serial killing.’

Aune pointed to the next point where he had written