Killing Moon

20 Wednesday

‘Well, it ought to be clear,’ Aune said, laying his copy of the police report on the duvet. ‘This is all textbook. It’s a sexually motivated murder carried out by a killer who will most likely do it again if he’s not stopped.’

The three people around the bed nodded, still absorbed in their own copies.

Harry finished first and looked up, squinting in the harsh light of the morning sun outside.

Then Øystein finished and let his sunglasses slide down from his forehead in front of his eyes again.

‘Come on, Berntsen,’ he said. ‘You must’ve read it before.’

Truls grunted in response and put down the printout. ‘What do we do if it’s a needle in a haystack?’ he asked. ‘Shut up shop and leave the rest to Bratt and Larsen?’

‘Not quite yet,’ Harry said. ‘This doesn’t really change anything, we assumed Bertine had been killed in a similar manner to Susanne.’

‘But we have to be honest and say it doesn’t back up your gut feeling about a rational murderer with a rational motive,’ Aune said. ‘You don’t have to decapitate the victim or steal their brain to mislead the police into believing it’s a sexually motivated murder with random victims. There are ways of mutilating which require less work and would leave pretty much the same impression of a murderer without any connection to the victims.’

‘Mm.’

‘Don’t mm me, Harry. Listen. The killer must have spent a long time at the scene of the crime, and thus have run a much higher risk than he needed to if his aim was mere misdirection. The brains are trophies, and now we see the classic sign of him learning by cutting off the entire head of the victim and taking it with him instead of sawing and sewing it back up while he’s at the crime scene. Harry, this walks, talks, smells and looks like a ritual killing with a whole range of sexual undertones and overtones, and that’s what it is.’

Harry nodded slowly. Turned to Øystein, who emitted a ‘Hey!’ as Harry snatched the sunglasses off him and put them on himself.

‘I didn’t want to say anything,’ Harry said, ‘but you nicked these from me. I left them in the office at the Jealousy Bar after that power-pop night when you refused to play R.E.M.’

‘What? We were supposed to play classic power pop. As for the shades, finders keepers.’

‘When they’re in a drawer?’

‘Children...’ Aune said.

Øystein made a grab for the sunglasses, but Harry was too quick and pulled his head back.

‘Relax, you’ll get them afterwards, Øystein. Come on, tell us that news you said you had instead.’

Øystein sighed. ‘OK. I talked to a colleague who sells cocaine—’

‘Taxi drivers are selling cocaine?’ Aune enquired with surprise.

Aune and Øystein looked at one another.

‘Is there something you haven’t told me?’ Aune said, shifting his gaze to Harry.

‘Yes,’ Harry said. ‘Go on, Øystein.’

‘Yeah, so he put me on to Røed’s regular dealer. A guy we call Al. And he was actually at that party. But he said he was upstaged by a guy who had such primo blanco that he just had to pack his stuff away. I asked who he was, but Al didn’t know him, he was wearing a face mask and sunglasses. The weird thing, Al said, was that even though the guy had the best, purest blow he had ever snorted in Oslo, the guy behaved like an amateur.’

‘How so?’

‘It’s something you notice straight away. The pros are relaxed because they know what they’re doing, while at the same time they’re constantly scanning their surroundings like antelopes at a watering hole. They know which pocket they have the stuff in should the cops show up and they need to get rid of it in two seconds. Al said this guy was jumpy, only looked at the person he was talking to and had to rummage through his pockets to find the bags. But the most amateurish was that he hadn’t diluted the product more, if he’d done it at all. And that he gave out free samples.’

‘To everyone?’

‘No, no. I mean, this was a fancy party. You know, people from nice backgrounds. Some of them do coke, but not in front of the neighbours. They went with Røed into his apartment, the guy with the face mask, two girls, plus Al. The guy arranged a few lines on the glass table in the living room, which apparently also looked like something he’d picked up on YouTube and said Røed had to test it. But Røed being, like, all gentlemanly, said the others had to have a taste first. Then Al made to do just that, I mean, he wanted to test this stuff out. But the guy grabbed hold of Al’s arm and yanked him away from the table, scratched his arm so bad it bled, like, he totally panicked. Al had to calm the guy down. The guy said it was only for Røed, but Røed said that at his place people had to behave themselves and that the girls went first, otherwise he could get the hell out. And then the guy backed down.’

‘Did Al know the girls?’

‘No. And yes, I asked if they were the two girls who were missing, but he hadn’t even heard about them.’

‘Really?’ Aune said. ‘It’s been front-page news for weeks.’

‘Yeah, but people in the junkie community live in — how would you say it? — an alternative world. These guys don’t know who the Prime Minster of Norway is, put it like that. But, believe me, they know the price per gram in every Norwegian city of every bloody drug Our Lord has blessed this planet with. So, I showed Al pictures of the girls, and he thought he recognised them, Susanne at least, who he thinks he sold some E and coke to before, but he wasn’t sure. Anyway, the girls each did a line, and then it was Røed’s turn. But then his wife walked in, starts roaring about how he’s promised to quit. Røed doesn’t give a shit, already has the straw in his nose, takes a breath, probably planning on snorting every line left in one go and then...’ Øystein began to chortle. ‘Then...’ He bent forward, unable to stop laughing, wiping away tears.

‘And then?’ Aune said impatiently.

‘Then the idiot sneezes! Blows all the cocaine off the table, just tears and snot all over the glass. He looks in desperation at the guy in the face mask and asks for some fresh lines, right? But the guy doesn’t have any more, that was the lot, and he’s also desperate, and goes down on his knees to try and salvage what he can. But the balcony door is open, and there’s a draught, and now the powder is here, there and everywhere. Can you believe that shit?’

Øystein put his head back and roared with laughter. Truls laughed his grunted laugh. Even Harry broke into a smile.

‘So Al goes into the kitchen with Røed, where the wife can’t see them, opens his bag, and Røed gets a few lines of blanco from there. Because, yeah, I forgot to say, the stuff the guy with the face mask had, it wasn’t blanco, it was green cocaine.’

‘Green?’

‘Yeah,’ Øystein said. ‘That’s why Al was so keen to test it. I’ve heard it can show up on the street in the States, but no one’s ever seen it in Oslo. On the street the purest blanco you get is max forty-five per cent, but they say green’s a lot higher. Apparently it’s to do with residue from the colour of the coca leaves.’

Harry turned to Truls. ‘Green cocaine, huh?’

‘Don’t look at me,’ Truls said, ‘I haven’t a clue how it wound up there.’

‘Fucking hell, was it you?’ Øystein asked. ‘Incognito in a face mask and sungla—’

‘Shut up! You’re the bloody pusher, not me.’

‘Why not?’ Øystein said. ‘It’s genius! You skim, then step on it with something, the same way we used to fill our dads’ vodka bottles in the drinks cabinet with water. And then you sell direct so you cut out the—’

‘I don’t skim!’ Truls’s forehead had turned dark red, his eyes were bulging. ‘And I don’t cut. I don’t even know what levamisole is, for fuck’s sake!’

‘Oh?’ Øystein said, looking like he was enjoying himself. ‘Then how do you know it was mixed with levamisole?’

‘Because it said so in the report, and the reports are on BL!’ Truls bellowed.

‘Excuse me.’

They all turned to the door, where two nurses were standing.

‘We think it’s nice that Ståle gets so many visitors, but we can’t allow him and Jibran to be disturbed by—’

‘Apologies, Kari,’ Aune said. ‘Things can get a little heated when inheritance settlements are being discussed, you know. Don’t you think, Jibran?’

Jibran looked up and removed his headphones. ‘What?’

‘Are we disturbing you?’

‘Not at all.’

Aune smiled to the older nurse.

‘Well, in that case...’ she said, her lips pursed, as she looked reprovingly at Truls, Øystein and Harry before closing the door behind her.

Katrine looked down at the bodies of Susanne and Bertine. As always, it struck her how forsaken corpses looked when laid out like this, how it could make you believe in the existence of a soul. Something she definitely didn’t believe in, but — which was after all the incentive behind all religions and mysticism — hoped for. The two women were naked, their skin shades of white, blue, and also black, due mainly to blood and bodily fluids having sunk to the lowest-lying parts of the body. Decomposition had set in, and Bertine’s lack of a head reinforced the feeling they were looking at statues, lifeless objects given form by something living. There were seven living people in the autopsy room: Katrine and the pathologist, Skarre from Crime Squad, Sung-min Larsen, a female detective from Kripos, Alexandra Sturdza and another post-mortem technician.

‘We haven’t found any signs of violence or a struggle prior to death,’ the pathologist said. ‘Causes of death. Susanne received a cut across the throat, severing her carotid artery. Bertine was probably strangled. I say probably because many of the indications we would have found if we had her head are absent. But the marks on the lower part of her neck indicate asphyxiation with a strap or cord resulting in hypoxia. There were no traces of any substances in their blood or urine to suggest they were drugged. Congealed spit and mucus was found on one of the victim’s nipples.’

She pointed to the body of Susanne.

‘It has, as far as I know, already been analysed...’

‘Yes,’ Alexandra said.

‘Beyond that, we haven’t found DNA material on the victims. As there is a suspicion of rape, we’ve paid particular attention to looking for traces of that. There are no marks from fingers holding tightly on the arms, legs or throat, no bite marks or suction marks. No wounds or bruising to the wrists or ankles. One victim has no head, so we can’t say anything about her auricle.’

‘Pardon?’ the female detective from Kripos said.

‘The outer ear,’ Alexandra said. ‘Wounding is common there with victims of violence.’

‘Or possible petechiae,’ the pathologist said, pointing at Susanne’s head. ‘The first victim didn’t exhibit it.’

‘Small, discoloured spots around the eyes or the palate,’ Alexandra explained.

‘Neither victim has visible injury to their labia minora,’ the pathologist continued.

‘The inner pudenda,’ Alexandra translated.

‘Nor were there any scratch marks from fingernails on the neck or grazing to the knees, hips or back. Otherwise, there are microscopic marks in Bertine’s vagina, but they’re of an order that may just have well occurred due to consensual sex. In short, there is no physical evidence on either of them pointing to rape.’

‘Which isn’t to say that rape can’t have taken place,’ Alexandra added.

The look the pathologist gave Alexandra made Katrine suspect she might be having words with her younger colleague about role understanding after they had left.

‘So, no injuries,’ Katrine said. ‘And no semen. What then makes you so sure they both had intercourse?’

‘Prophylactic,’ said the other post-mortem technician, Helge something-or-other, a sweet guy who hadn’t said anything so far, and who Katrine had instinctively understood was at the bottom of the pecking order out of the three.

‘A condom?’ Skarre said.

‘Yes,’ Helge replied. ‘When we don’t find semen, we look for signs of a condom. Primarily traces of nonoxynol-9, the substance in the lubricant, but evidently this was a type without lubricant. Instead, we found traces from the fine powder on the condom which prevents the latex from sticking to itself. The composition of the powder is unique to every manufacturer. The powder on this brand — Bodyful — was the same for Susanne and Bertine.’

‘Is that a common powder?’ Sung-min asked.

‘Neither common nor uncommon,’ Helge said. ‘Of course, it’s entirely possible they didn’t have intercourse with the same man, but...’

‘I see,’ Sung-min said. ‘Thanks.’

‘Based on these findings, is there any way to tell when intercourse occurred?’ Katrine asked.

‘No,’ the pathologist said firmly. ‘Everything we’ve told you, minus the details about the condom powder, you can find in the report we placed in the case file on BL96 just before you arrived. OK?’

The ensuing pause was interrupted by Helge, his voice more cautious now.

‘We might not be able to say exactly when, but—’ he cast a quick glance at the pathologist, as if seeking permission, before continuing — ‘it seems safe to assume that in both cases intercourse occurred not long before they died. Possibly after.’

‘Go on.’

‘Had they been alive for some time after intercourse, their bodily functions would have disposed of traces of the condoms. A living body would do that over the course of a few days, perhaps three. But semen and condom powder would last longer in a dead body. It...’ He swallowed, gave a small smile. ‘Yeah, that was all.’

‘Any more questions?’ the pathologist asked. She waited a couple of seconds before clapping her hands together. ‘Well. Like the title of the movie: If more bodies turn up, just give us a call.’

Only Skarre laughed. Katrine wasn’t sure if it was because he was the only one of them old enough to remember the movie, or if morbid humour worked best when there weren’t corpses present.

She felt her phone vibrate and looked at the display.