The Devil's star

18

Tuesday. The Pentagram.

Nikolai Loeb pressed down gently on the keys. The notes from the piano sounded delicate and frail in the bare room. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-Flat Minor. Many pianists thought it was weird and lacked elegance, but to Nikolai’s ears no-one had ever written more beautiful music. It made him feel homesick just to play the few bars he knew by heart, and it was always these notes that his fingers automatically searched for when he sat down at the untuned piano in the assembly room in Gamle Aker church hall.

He looked out of the open window. The birds were singing in the cemetery. It reminded him of summers in Leningrad and his father, who had taken him to the old battlefields outside the towns where his grandfather and all of Nikolai’s uncles lay in long-forgotten mass graves.

‘Listen,’ his father had said. ‘How beautiful and how futile their singing.’

Nikolai became aware of someone clearing his throat and twisted round.

A tall man in a T-shirt and jeans was standing in the doorway. He had a bandage round one hand. The first thing Nikolai thought was that it was one of those drug addicts who turned up from time to time.

‘Can I help you?’ Nikolai called out. The severe acoustics in the room made his voice sound less friendly than he had intended.

The man stepped in over the threshold.

‘I hope so,’ he said. ‘I’ve come to make amends.’

‘I’m so pleased,’ Nikolai said. ‘But I’m afraid I can’t receive confessions here. There’s a list in the hall with a timetable. And you’ll have to go to our chapel in Inkognitogata.’

The man came over to him. Nikolai concluded from the dark circles under his bloodshot eyes that the man had not slept for a while.

‘I want to make amends for destroying the star on the door.’

It took Nikolai a few seconds to take in what the man was referring to.

‘Oh, now I’m with you. That’s not really anything to do with me. Except that I can see that the star is loose and is hanging upside down.’ He smiled. ‘A little inappropriate in a religious house, to put it mildly.’

‘So you don’t work here?’

Nikolai shook his head.

‘We have to borrow these rooms on occasion. I’m from the church of the Holy Apostolic Princess Olga.’

Harry raised his eyebrows.

‘The Russian Orthodox Church,’ Nikolai added. ‘I am a pastor and chief administrator. You need to go to the church office and see if you can find someone to help you there.’

‘Mm. Thank you.’

The man didn’t make a move to leave.

‘Tchaikovsky, wasn’t it? First Piano Concerto?’

‘Correct,’ Nikolai said with surprise in his voice. Norwegians were not exactly what you might call a cultured people. On top of that, this one was wearing a T-shirt and looked like a down-and-out.

‘My mother used to play it to me,’ the man said. ‘She said it was difficult.’

‘You have a good mother. Who played pieces she thought were too difficult for you.’

‘Yes, she was good. Saintly.’

There was something about the man’s lopsided smile that confused Nikolai. It was a self-contradictory smile. Open and closed, friendly and cynical, laughing and pained. But he was probably reading too much into things, as usual.

‘Thank you for your help,’ the man said, moving towards the door.

‘Not at all.’

Nikolai turned his attention to the piano and focused his concentration. He pressed down a key gently enough for it to touch, but make no sound – he could feel the felt lying against the piano string – and it was then he became aware that he had not heard the door shut. He turned round and saw the man standing there, his hand on the door handle, staring at the star in the smashed window.

‘Something wrong?’

The man looked up.

‘No. I was just wondering what you meant when you said it was inappropriate that the star was hanging upside down.’

Nikolai released a laugh which rebounded off the walls.

‘It’s the upside-down pentagram, isn’t it.’

From the expression on the man’s face it was clear to Nikolai that he didn’t understand.

‘The pentagram is an old religious symbol, not just for Christianity. As you can see, it is a five-pointed star made up of a continuous line that intersects itself a number of times: it has been found carved into headstones dating back several thousand years. However, when it hangs upside down with one point downwards and two points upwards, it’s something completely different. It’s one of the most important symbols in demonology.’

‘Demonology?’

The man asked questions in a calm yet firm voice, like someone who was used to getting answers, Nikolai thought.

‘The study of evil. The term originates from the time when people thought that evil emanated from the existence of demons.’

‘Hm. And now the demons have been abolished?’

Nikolai swivelled round on his piano stool. Had he misjudged the man? He seemed to be a bit too sharp for a drug addict or a down-and-out.

‘I’m a policeman,’ the man said, as if answering his thoughts. ‘We tend to ask questions.’

‘Alright, but why are you asking about this in particular?’

The man shrugged his shoulders.

‘I don’t know. I’ve seen this symbol just recently, but I can’t put my finger on where. I’m not sure if it’s significant or not. Which demon uses this symbol?’

‘Tchort,’ Nikolai said, gently pressing down three keys. Dissonance. ‘Also called Satan.’

In the afternoon Olaug Sivertsen opened the French doors to the balcony facing Bjorvika, sat down on a chair and watched the red train glide past her house. It was quite an ordinary house, a detached redbrick building dating back to 1891; what was so extraordinary was its location. Villa Valle – named after the man who designed it – stood on its own beside the railway track just outside Oslo Central Station, inside railway domain. The nearest neighbours were some low sheds and workshops belonging to Norwegian Railways. Villa Valle was built to accommodate the station master, his family and servants and was designed with extra thick walls so that the station master and his wife would not be awakened every time a train passed. In addition, the station master had asked the builder – who had got the job because it was well known that he used a special mortar to make the walls extra solid – to strengthen it even further. In the event that a train came off the rails and hit the house, the station master wanted the train driver to take the brunt of the collision and not him and his family. So far no train had crashed into the elegant station master’s house that stood in such strange isolation, like a castle in the air above a wilderness of black gravel in which the rails gleamed and wriggled like snakes in the sun.

Olaug closed her eyes and basked in the warmth of the sun.

As a young woman she hadn’t liked the heat. Her skin went red and itched and she had longed for the cool, damp summers of northwest Norway. Now she was old – almost 80 – she preferred the hot to cold, light to darkness, company to solitude, sound to silence.

It hadn’t been like that when, in 1941 and at 16 years of age, she had left Averoya and gone to Oslo on those same rails and begun work as a maidservant for Gruppenfuhrer Ernst Schwabe and his wife Randi in Villa Valle. He was a tall, good-looking man, and she came from an aristocratic family. Olaug was terrified in the first few days. However, they treated her well and showed her respect, and soon Olaug realised that she had nothing to fear so long as she did her job with the thoroughness and punctuality that Germans are, not unjustifiably, famous for.

Ernst Schwabe was responsible for the WLTA, the Wehrmacht’s Landtransportabteilung, their transport division, and he himself chose the house by the railway station. His wife, Randi, probably also worked in the WLTA, but Olaug never saw her in uniform. Olaug’s room faced south, overlooking the garden and the tracks. During the first weeks the clattering of the long trains, the shrill whistles and all the other noises of a town kept her awake at night, but gradually she became used to it. When she went home on her first holiday the year after, she lay in bed in the house she had grown up in, listening to the silence and the nothingness and longed for the sounds of life and living people.

Living people, there had been many of them in Villa Valle during the war. The Schwabes were very active socially, and both Germans and Norwegians were present at social engagements. If only people knew which heads of Norwegian society had been here, eating, drinking and smoking with the Wehrmacht as their hosts. One of the first things she was told to do after the war was to burn the seating cards she had been hoarding. She did what she was told and never said a word to anyone. Of course, she had felt an occasional urge to disobey when photographs of the selfsame persons appeared in the press, which went on about living under the yoke of the German occupation. However, she kept her mouth shut for one reason only: when peace came, they threatened to take away her young son and he was all she had ever had or valued in the world. The fear was still well entrenched within her.

Olaug screwed up her eyes in the weak sun. It was flagging now, not so unremarkable since it had been shining all day and had done its best to kill her flowers in the window boxes. Olaug smiled. My goodness, she had been so young, no-one had ever been so young. Did she yearn to be young again? Maybe not, but she yearned for company, life, people milling around. She had never understood what they meant when they said that old people were lonely, but now…

It was not so much being alone as not being there for someone. She had become so deeply sad from waking up in the morning knowing that she could stay in bed all day and it would not make any difference to anybody.

That was why she had taken in a lodger, a cheerful young girl from Trondelag.

It was odd to think that Ina, who was only a few years older than she had been when she moved to Oslo, was now staying in the same room as she had. She probably lay awake at night thinking about how she longed to be far from the din of town life, back in the silence of somewhere small in North Trondelag.

Olaug may have been wrong, though. Ina had a gentleman friend. She hadn’t seen him, let alone met him, but from her bedroom she had heard his footsteps up the back staircase, the entrance to Ina’s room. It was not possible to forbid Ina from receiving men in her room, unlike when Olaug had been a maid, not that she wanted to, anyway. Her only hope was that no-one would come and take Ina away. She had become a close friend, even like a daughter, the daughter she had never had.

However, Olaug was aware that in a relationship between an old lady and a young girl such as Ina it would always be the young girl who offered friendship and the old lady who received it. Consequently, she took care not to be obtrusive. Ina was always friendly, but Olaug thought that may have had something to do with the low rent.

It had become a sort of fixed ritual: Olaug made some tea and knocked on Ina’s door carrying a tray of biscuits at around 7.00 in the evening. Olaug preferred them to be there. It was strange, but this room was still the room where she felt most at home. They chatted about everything under the sun. Ina was especially interested in the war and what had gone on in Villa Valle. And Olaug told her. About how much Ernst and Randi had loved each other, about how they would sit for hours in the living room just talking and tenderly touching, brushing away a lock of hair, resting a head on a shoulder. Olaug told her how sometimes she secretly observed them from behind the kitchen door. She described Ernst Schwabe’s erect figure, his thick black hair and his high, open forehead, how the expression of his eyes could alternate between joking and seriousness, anger and laughter, self-assurance in the larger things of life and boyish confusion in smaller, trivial things. Mostly, though, she watched Randi Schwabe with her shiny red hair, her slim white neck and bright eyes with a pale blue iris surrounded by a circle of dark blue. They were the most beautiful eyes Olaug had ever seen.

Seeing them like this, Olaug thought the two were made for each other, that they were soulmates and nothing would ever be able to tear them apart. Yet, she told Ina, the happy atmosphere at parties in Villa Ville could disintegrate into furious rows as soon as the guests had gone home.

It was following one such row, after Olaug had gone to bed, that Ernst Schwabe knocked on her door and entered her bedroom. Without switching on the light, he sat down on the edge of her bed and told her that his wife had left the house in a rage and had gone to a hotel for the night. Olaug could smell from his breath that he had been drinking, but she was young and didn’t know what you do when a man 20 years her senior, a man she respected, admired and was even a little in love with, asked her to take off her nightdress so that he could see her naked.

He didn’t touch her the first night, he just looked at her, caressed her cheek, told her she was beautiful, more beautiful than she would ever be able to understand, and then he got up. As he was leaving he appeared to be on the verge of tears.

Olaug stood up and closed the balcony doors. It was almost 7.00. She took a peek at the door at the top of the back steps and saw a pair of smart men’s shoes on the doormat outside Ina’s door. So she had a visitor. Olaug sat down on the bed and listened.

At 8.00 the door opened. She could hear someone putting on their shoes and going down the steps, but there was another sound, a scuffling, scratching sound, like a dog’s paws. She went into the kitchen and put on some hot water for tea.

When she knocked on Ina’s door a few minutes later, she was surprised to find that Ina didn’t answer, especially since she could hear the sound of soft music coming from her room.

She knocked again, but still there was no answer.

‘Ina?’

Olaug pushed the door and it swung open. The first thing she noticed was how stuffy the air was. The window was closed and the curtains were drawn so it was almost completely black inside.

‘Ina?’

No-one answered. Perhaps she was asleep. Olaug went in and had a look behind the door where the bed was. Empty. Strange. Her old eyes were used to the darkness now, and she spotted Ina. She was sitting in the rocking chair by the window and it did look as if she was sleeping. Her eyes were closed and her head hung to the side. Olaug still couldn’t make out where the low hum of music was coming from.

She went over to the chair.

‘Ina?’

Her lodger didn’t react now, either. Olaug held the tray with one hand and gently placed her other hand against the young girl’s cheek.

There was a soft thud as the teapot met the carpet. Followed immediately by two teacups, a silver sugar bowl with the German imperial eagle on, a plate and six Maryland cookies.

At the same moment that Olaug’s – or, to be more precise, the Schwabe family’s – teacups hit the floor, Stale Aune raised his cup – or, to be more precise, Oslo Police Department’s.

Bjarne Moller studied the plump psychologist’s distended little finger and wondered to himself how much was playacting and how much was just a distended little finger.

Moller had called a meeting in his office and in addition to Aune he had asked those leading the investigation – Tom Waaler, Harry Hole and Beate Lonn – to attend.

They all looked jaded, largely perhaps because the hope that had sprung into life with the discovery of the bogus courier was beginning to fade.

Tom Waaler had just gone through the results of the appeal for information they had put out over TV and radio. Twenty-four calls they had received, 13 of which were from their regulars who always rang in whether they had seen something or not. Of the other eleven calls, seven turned out to be genuine couriers on genuine jobs. Four callers told them what they already knew: that there had been a courier near Carl Berners plass on Monday at around 5 p.m. What was new was that he had been seen cycling down Trondheimsveien. The only interesting call came from a taxi driver who had seen a cyclist wearing a helmet, glasses, and a yellow and black shirt outside the Art and Technical School on his way up Ullevalsveien at around the time when Camilla Loen was killed. None of the courier services had taken on jobs anywhere near the Ullevalsveien area at that time of day. Then someone from Forstemann Courier Services had called in to say that he had nipped up Ullevalsveien on his way to the terrace restaurant in St Hanshaugen for a beer.

‘In other words, our inquiries have led nowhere.’ Moller said.

‘Still early days,’ Waaler said.

Moller nodded, but his expression indicated that he was not encouraged. Apart from Aune, everyone in the room knew that the first responses were the important ones. People forget quickly.

‘What do they say in the understaffed Institute of Forensic Medicine?’ Moller asked. ‘Have they found anything that can help identify our man?’

‘’Fraid not,’ Waaler said. ‘They’ve put the other autopsies to one side and prioritised ours, but so far nothing. No semen, no blood, no hair, nothing. The only physical clue the murderer has left is bullet holes.’

‘Interesting,’ Aune said.

Somewhat dejectedly, Moller asked what was so interesting.

‘It’s interesting because it suggests that he didn’t attack the victims sexually,’ Aune said. ‘And that’s very unusual for serial killers.’

‘Perhaps this is not about sex,’ Moller said.

Aune shook his head. ‘It’s always sexually motivated. Always.’

‘Perhaps he’s like Peter Sellers in Being There,’ Harry said. ‘“I like to watch.”’

The others stared at him in total incomprehension.

‘I mean, perhaps he doesn’t have to touch them to get sexual satisfaction.’

Harry avoided Waaler’s gaze.

‘Perhaps the killing and the sight of the body are enough.’

‘That could be right,’ Aune said. ‘What usually happens is that the murderer wants an orgasmic release, but he may have ejaculated without leaving his seed at the scene of the crime. Or he might have had enough self-control to wait until he was in safety.’

It went quiet for a few seconds. Harry knew they were all thinking the same as he was. What had the killer done with the woman who had disappeared, Lisbeth Barli?

‘What about the weapons we found at the crime scene?’

‘We’ve checked them,’ Beate said. ‘The tests show that they are ninety-nine point nine per cent certain to be the murder weapons.’

‘That’s good enough,’ Moller said. ‘Any idea where the weapons came from?’

Beate shook her head. ‘As before, the serial numbers have been filed off. The marks are the same as those we see on most of the weapons we confiscate.’

‘Hm,’ Moller said. ‘So, the great gun-running fraternity myth again. Surely the security service guys, POT, will get their hands on them soon, won’t they?’

‘Interpol has been working on the case for more than four years without anything to show for their efforts,’ Waaler said.

Harry rocked back on his chair and stole a furtive glance at Waaler. While doing that, to his consternation, he felt something he had never felt for Waaler before: admiration. The same kind of admiration you feel for beasts of prey that have perfected what they do to survive.

Moller sighed. ‘I know. We’re three-nil down and our opponent still hasn’t given us a sight of the ball. Does no-one have any bright ideas?’

‘I’m not exactly sure if it’s an idea…’

‘Come on, Harry.’

‘It’s more like a gut feeling about the crime scenes. They’ve all got something in common, but I can’t put my finger on what it is yet. The first shooting was in an attic flat in Ullevalsveien. The second about a kilometre north-west, in Sannergata. And the third about the same distance again from there, this time towards the east, in an office block by Carl Berners plass. He moves, but I have the feeling that there is a logic behind it.’

‘How’s that?’ Beate asked.

‘His territory,’ Harry said. ‘The psychologist can probably explain.’

Moller turned to Aune, who was just taking a gulp of tea.

‘Any comment, Aune?’

Aune grimaced. ‘Well, it’s not exactly Earl Grey.’

‘I didn’t mean the tea.’

Aune sighed.

‘It was a joke, Moller. I know what you’re getting at though, Harry. The killer has strong preferences with respect to the geographical location of the crime. Here, in rough terms, we can distinguish between three types.’

Aune counted on his fingers:

‘There is the stationary killer who entices or forces victims into his home and kills them. There is the territorial killer who operates in a restricted area, like Jack the Ripper who only killed in the red-light district, but their territory could easily be a whole town. Finally, there is the nomadic killer who is probably the one with most killings on his conscience. Ottis Toole and Henry Lee Lucas went from state to state in the US and killed more than three hundred people between them.’

‘Right,’ Moller said. ‘Though I can’t quite see the logic you were talking about, Harry.’

Harry shrugged his shoulders.

‘As I was saying, boss, just a gut feeling.’

‘There is one thing they’ve got in common,’ Beate said.

As if operated by remote control, the others turned to face her. Her cheeks immediately flushed and she seemed to regret saying anything. However, she ignored it and went on:

‘He intrudes where women feel at their most secure. Into their home. Into a street in broad daylight. Into the Ladies at work.’

‘Well done, Beate,’ Harry said, and received a quick flash of gratitude.

‘Well observed, young lady,’ Aune chimed in. ‘Since we’re talking about patterns of movement, I’d like to add one more thing. Killers of the sociopath variety are often very self-assured, just as it seems to be in this case. A characteristic feature of theirs is that they follow the investigation closely and tend to take every opportunity to be physically close to whatever is going on. They may interpret the investigation as a game between themselves and the police. Many have expressed pleasure at seeing the police in confusion.’

‘Which means that somewhere out there someone is sitting and lapping it up right now,’ Moller said, clapping his hands together. ‘That’s all for today.’

‘Just one more little thing,’ Harry said. ‘The diamonds that the murderer has placed on the victims…’

‘Yes?’

‘They’ve got five points. Almost like a pentagram.’

‘Almost? As far as I know, it’s exactly like a pentagram.’

‘A pentagram is drawn with one unbroken line which intersects itself.’

‘Aha!’ Aune exclaimed. ‘That pentagram. Drawn using the golden section. Very interesting shape. By the way, did you know that there is a theory that in Viking times the Celts were going to convert Norway to Christianity, so they drew a holy pentagram which they placed over southern Norway and used it to determine the location of towns and churches?’

‘What’s that got to do with diamonds?’ Beate asked.

‘It’s not the diamonds,’ Harry said. ‘It’s the shape, the pentagram. I know I’ve seen it somewhere, at one of the crime scenes, I just can’t remember which and where. This may sound like rubbish, but I think it’s important.’

‘So,’ Moller said, supporting his chin on his hands. ‘You can remember something you can’t quite remember, but you think it’s important?’

Harry rubbed his face hard with both hands.

‘When you go to the scene of a crime, you’re concentrating so hard that the most peripheral things your brain takes in are much more than you can work through. They simply remain there until something happens, until something new crops up, one piece of the jigsaw fits another, but then you can’t remember where you got the first piece from. Your gut feeling tells you that it’s important, though. How does that sound?’

‘Like a psychosis,’ Aune said, yawning.

The other three looked at him.

‘Can you not at least smile when I’m being funny?’ he said. ‘Harry, it sounds like an absolutely normal working brain. Nothing to be frightened of.’

‘I think there are four brains here that have done enough for one day,’ Moller said and got up.

At that moment the telephone in front of him rang.

‘Moller here… Just a minute.’

He passed the telephone over to Waaler, who took it and placed it against his ear.

‘Yes?’

There was a scraping of chairs, but Waaler motioned with his hand that they should wait.

‘Great,’ he said, hanging up.

The others turned to him with renewed interest.

‘A witness has called in. She saw a cyclist coming out of an apartment block in Ullevalsveien near Our Saviour’s Cemetery on the Friday afternoon when Camilla Loen was killed. She remembered it because she thought it was so peculiar that he was wearing a white cloth round his mouth. The courier who nipped off for a beer in St Hanshaugen wasn’t wearing one.’

‘And?’

‘She didn’t know which number it was in Ullevalsveien, but Skarre drove her past. She pointed out the building and it was Camilla Loen’s.’

Moller slammed his hand down hard on the surface of the table.

‘At last!’

Olaug was sitting on the bed with her hand around her throat and feeling her pulse slowly return to normal.

‘How you frightened me,’ she whispered in a voice which was hoarse and unrecognisable now.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Ina said, taking the last Maryland cookie. ‘I didn’t hear you come in.’

‘It’s me who should apologise,’ Olaug said. ‘Bursting in like that. I didn’t see that you were wearing those…’

‘Headphones,’ Ina laughed. ‘I probably had the music on pretty loud. Cole Porter.’

‘You know I’m not so up to date with modern music.’

‘Cole Porter is an old jazz musician. He’s dead, in fact.’

‘Dear me, someone as young as you shouldn’t be listening to dead people.’

Ina laughed again. When she had felt something touch her cheek she had automatically struck out with her hand and had hit the tray with the teaset on. There was still a fine layer of white sugar on the carpet.

‘Someone played me his records.’

‘That’s such a secretive smile,’ Olaug said. ‘Was it your gentleman friend?’

She regretted her question the moment she asked it. Ina would think she was spying on her.

‘Perhaps,’ Ina said, her eyes a-twinkle.

‘He’s older than you then, is he?’ Olaug wanted to intimate indirectly that she hadn’t gone out of her way to catch a glimpse of him. ‘Since he likes old music, I mean.’

She could hear that was the wrong thing to say, too. Now she was asking questions and probing like an old tittle-tattle. In a flash of panic, she saw Ina mentally looking for somewhere else to live already.

‘A bit older, yes.’

Ina’s playful smile confused Olaug.

‘Much like you and Herr Schwabe perhaps.’

Olaug laughed happily along with Ina, mostly out of relief.

‘Just imagine. He was sitting exactly where you’re sitting now,’ Ina said out of the blue.

Olaug ran her hand across the blanket on the bed.

‘Yes, just imagine.’

‘When he was crying that evening was it because he couldn’t have you?’

Olaug was still stroking the blanket. The rough wool felt good under her hand.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I didn’t dare ask. Instead I made up my own answers, the ones I liked best, dreams I could cosset at night. That was probably why I was so much in love as I was.’

‘Did you ever go out together?’

‘Yes. He took me once in his car to Bygdoy. We went swimming. That is, I went swimming while he sat and watched. He called me his very own nymph.’

‘Did his wife find out that her husband was the father when you became pregnant?’

Olaug gave Ina a lingering look. Then she shook her head.

‘They left the country in May of 1945. I never saw them again. It was only in July that I discovered I was pregnant.’

Olaug slapped the blanket with her hand.

‘But you must be sick and tired of my old stories, my dear. Let’s talk about you. Who is your gentleman friend?’

‘He’s a fine man.’

Ina still had the dreamy expression on her face that she usually wore when Olaug was telling her about her first and last lover, Ernst Schwabe.

‘He’s given me something,’ Ina said, opening a drawer in the desk and holding up a little packet tied with a golden ribbon.

‘He said I couldn’t open it until we got engaged.’

Olaug smiled and stroked Ina’s cheek. She was happy for her.

‘Are you fond of him?’

‘He’s different from all the others. He’s not so… he’s old-fashioned. He wants us to wait. With… you know what.’

Olaug nodded. ‘It sounds like he’s serious.’

‘Yes.’ A little sigh escaped her.

‘You’ll have to make sure he’s the man for you before you let him go any further,’ Olaug said.

‘I know,’ Ina said. ‘That’s what’s so difficult. He’s just been here, and before he left, I told him I needed time to think. He said he understood, I am so much younger than him.’

Olaug was going to ask if he had a dog, but caught herself in time. She had done enough prying and probing. She ran her hand across the blanket for the last time and stood up.

‘I’m going to go back and put on some more tea, my dear.’

It was a revelation. Not a miracle, just a revelation.

It was half an hour since the others had left and Harry had just finished reading the interview transcripts of the two women who lived together across from Lisbeth Barli. He turned off the reading lamp on the desk, blinked in the dark and suddenly it came to him. Perhaps because he had turned off the light as you do when you go to bed. Or perhaps because he had stopped thinking for a moment. Whatever the reason, it was as if someone had thrust a clear, sharp photograph in his face.

He went into the office where the keys for the crime scenes were kept and found the one he was looking for. Then he drove to Sofies gate, collected his torch and walked to Ullevalsveien. It was almost midnight. The first floor was locked and the launderette was closed. In the shop selling headstones there was a spotlight in the window lighting up ‘Rest in Peace’.

Harry let himself into Camilla Loen’s flat.

None of the furniture or anything else had been removed, but still his footsteps echoed. It was as if the demise of the owner had lent the flat a physical void it hadn’t had before. At the same time he had the feeling that he wasn’t alone. Harry believed in the existence of the soul. Not that he was particularly religious as such, but it was one thing which always struck him when he saw a dead body: the body was bereft of something, something that wasn’t to do with the processes of physical change that bodies undergo. Bodies looked like the empty shells of insects in a spider’s web – the creature had gone, the light had gone, there was not the illusory afterglow that long-since burned-out stars have. The body was missing its soul and it was this absence of the soul that made Harry believe.

He didn’t put on the light; the light of the moon through the skylights was enough. He went straight into the bedroom where he switched on his torch and shone it at the load-bearing beam beside the bed. A sharp intake of breath. It wasn’t a heart round a triangle as he had first thought.

Harry sat down on the bed and ran the tips of his fingers over the grooves in the beam. The cuts in the brown, aged wood were so clear that they had to be fresh. And it was clear it had to be one cut. One long cut consisting of straight lines which doubled back and intersected each other. A pentagram.

Harry shone the torch on the floor. There were a fine layer of dust and a couple of hefty dustballs on the wood. Camilla Loen obviously had not done the cleaning before she departed. But there, by one of the legs at the top of the bed, he saw what he had been looking for. Wood shavings.

Harry lay back on the bed. The mattress was soft and giving. He stared up at the slanting ceiling while trying to think. If it really was the killer who had carved the star in the beam above the bed, what did it mean?

‘Rest in peace,’ Harry mumbled, closing his eyes.

He was too tired to think clearly. There was another question churning around in his brain. Why hadn’t he actually noticed the pentagram? Why hadn’t he put the two things together, the star and the diamonds? Or had he? Perhaps he had been too quick, perhaps his subconscious had connected the pentagram with something else, something he had seen at one of the killings, but he hadn’t managed to draw out.

He tried to establish a mental picture of the crime scenes.

Lisbeth in Sannergata. Barbara in Carl Berners plass. And Camilla here in the shower, in the room next door. She was almost naked. Wet skin. He had felt it. The hot water had made it seem as if she had been dead for less time than she really had. He had felt her skin. Beate watched him. He couldn’t stop touching her. It was like running your fingers over warm, smooth rubber. He looked up and saw that they were alone, and it was only then that he felt the warm stream of water from the shower. His eyes wandered down again; he saw her staring up at him with an odd gleam in her eyes. He gave a start and withdrew his hands; her stare faded away like on a television screen when the set has been switched off. Odd, he thought, and put a hand against her cheek. He waited while the hot water from the shower soaked through his clothes. The gleam came slowly back. He placed his other hand on her stomach. Her eyes became alive and he could feel her body stir beneath his fingers. He knew that it was touch that brought her back to life, that without touch she would disappear, die. He rested his forehead against her forehead. The water ran down the inside of his clothing, soaked his skin and lay like a warm filter between them. It was then that he noticed that her eyes were not blue, but brown. And her lips were no longer pale, but red and full of life. Rakel. He put his lips against hers. He recoiled when he discovered that they were ice cold.

She stared at him. Her mouth moved.

‘What are you doing?’

Harry’s heart stopped beating, partly because the echo of the words still hung in the room so that he knew it could not have been a dream, and partly because the voice did not belong to a woman, but mostly because there was someone standing in front of the bed, leaning over him.

His heart began to race again and he flung himself round in an attempt to grope for the torch that was still switched on. It fell on the floor with a soft thud and rolled around in a circle as the beam of light and the shadow of the figure ran across the walls.

Then the ceiling lights came on.

Harry was blinded and his first reflex action was to hold up his arms in front of his face. A second came and went. Nothing happened. No shots, no blows. Harry lowered his arms.

He recognised the man standing in front of him.

‘What on earth are you up to?’ the man asked.

He was wearing a pink dressing gown, but otherwise did not look as if he had just got up. The side parting in his hair was immaculate.

It was Anders Nygard.

‘I was woken up by the noise,’ Nygard said, pushing a cup of filter coffee in front of Harry. ‘My first thought was that someone had realised that it was vacant upstairs and had broken in. So I went up to check.’

‘Understandable,’ said Harry. ‘Though I thought I had locked the door after me.’

‘I’ve got the caretaker’s key. Just in case.’

Harry heard the shuffle of feet and turned round.

Vibeke Knutsen, wearing a dressing gown, appeared in the doorway with a sleepy face and red hair sticking out in all directions. Without makeup and in the harsh light of the kitchen she looked older than the version Harry had seen before. She gave a start when she discovered he was there.

‘What’s going on?’ she mumbled, her eyes darting between Harry and her partner.

‘I was checking a few things out in Camilla’s flat,’ Harry quickly interposed when he saw her forebodings. ‘I was sitting on the bed and resting my eyes for a couple of seconds and then I nodded off. Nygard, here, heard noises and woke me up. It’s been a long day.’

Without being absolutely sure why, Harry yawned demonstratively.

Vibeke peered at her partner.

‘What are you wearing?’

Anders Nygard looked at the pink dressing gown as if he had only just realised he was wearing it.

‘Wow, I must look like a regular drag queen.’

He sniggered.

‘It’s a present I bought you, love. It was still in my suitcase and it was all I could find in my haste. Here you are.’

He loosened the belt, tore the gown off and threw it to Vibeke. She was taken aback but caught it.

‘Thank you,’ she said, bewildered.

‘It’s a surprise to see you up, by the way,’ he purred. ‘Didn’t you take your sleeping pill?’

Vibeke cast an embarrassed glance over to Harry.

‘Goodnight,’ she mumbled and left.

Anders went to the coffee machine and put back the jug of coffee. His back and upper arms were pale, almost white, but his lower arms were brown, exactly the way lorry drivers’ arms are in the summer. The same sharp division was apparent on his knees.

‘Normally she sleeps like a log all night,’ he said.

‘But you don’t?’

‘How’s that?’

‘Well, since you know that she sleeps like a log.’

‘That’s what she says.’

‘And so someone only has to walk across the floor above you and you’re awake?’

Anders looked at Harry. He nodded.

‘You’re right, Inspector. I don’t sleep. It’s not so easy after all that has happened. You lie awake thinking and come up with all sorts of possible theories.’

Harry took a sip of his coffee. ‘Any you want to share with the rest of us?’

Anders shrugged his shoulders.

‘I don’t know that much about mass murderers. If that’s what it really is.’

‘It’s not. It’s a serial killer. Big difference.’

‘Right, but haven’t you noticed that the victims have something in common?’

‘They’re young women. Anything else?’

‘They’re promiscuous, or they were.’

‘Oh?’

‘You can read about it in the papers. What you read about these women’s pasts speaks for itself.’

‘Lisbeth Barli was a married woman and, as far as I know, faithful.’

‘After she was married, yes, but before that she was in a band travelling all over the country playing at dances. You’re not so naive, are you, Inspector?’

‘Mm. What do you conclude from this similarity then?’

‘This kind of murderer who acts as an arbiter over life and death has elevated himself into the position of God. And, in our Bible, in Hebrews, chapter 13, verse 4, it says that God will judge whosoever commits fornication.’

Harry nodded and raised his wrist to check the time.

‘I’ll make a note of that.’

Nygard fidgeted with his cup.

‘Did you find what you were looking for?’

‘You could say that. I found a pentagram. I suppose that since you deal with the interiors of churches you’ll know what that is.’

‘You mean a five-pointed star?’

‘Yes, drawn with one continuous line. Do you have any idea what a sign like that might symbolise?’

Harry’s head was bent over the table, but he was furtively studying Nygard’s face.

‘Quite a lot,’ Nygard said. ‘Five is the most important figure in black magic. Did it have one or two points sticking upwards?’

‘One.’

‘So it’s not the sign of evil then. The sign you’re describing might symbolise both vitality and passion. Where did you find it?’

‘On a beam above her bed.’

‘Oh, I see,’ Nygard said. ‘That’s a simple one then.’

‘Oh?’

‘It’s what we call a mare cross, or a devil’s star.’

‘A mare cross?’

‘A pagan symbol. They used to carve it over beds or doorways to keep away the mare.’

‘The mare?’

‘The mare, yes. As in nightmare. A female demon who sits on the chest of a sleeping person and rides him so that he has bad dreams. The pagans thought she was a spirit. Not that strange since “mare” is derived from the Indo-Germanic “mer”.’

‘Have to confess that my Indo-Germanic is not up to much.’

‘It means “death”.’ Nygard stared down into his cup of coffee. ‘Or to be more precise, “murder”.’

There was a message on Harry’s answerphone when he arrived home. It was from Rakel. She wondered if Harry could possibly stay with Oleg in the swimming pool in Frogner the following day as she had an appointment at the dentist’s from three till five. Oleg had asked, she said.

Harry sat and played the recording over and over again to see if he could hear any breathing, like the call he had received a few days previously, but without any success.

He undressed and got into bed naked. The night before he had taken the duvet out of the cover and slept with only the cover over him. He kicked it around for a while, slept, got his foot caught in the opening, panicked and woke up to the splitting sound of the cotton material. The darkness outside had already taken on a grey hue. He threw what remained of the duvet cover onto the floor and lay facing the wall.

And then she came. She sat astride him. She pushed the bridle into his mouth and pulled. His head spun round. She leaned down over him and blew her hot breath into his ear. A fire-breathing dragon. A wordless message, a hiss, on the telephone answerphone. She whipped his flanks, his haunches, and the pain was sweet, and soon, she said, she would be the only woman he would be able to love, so he may as well learn that from the outset.

She didn’t let go until the sun shone over the highest roof tiles.