The Final Murder (44 page)

Adam opened his mouth to protest.

‘Not illegal,’ ran through his mind. ‘I’m just asking you to stretch the limits a bit. To look through your fingers. Take a chance, that’s all. In the name of justice.’

‘Yes,’ he said instead. ‘I guess I am.’

‘There are no grounds for compulsory disclosure. Absolutely

none whatsoever. Or for disclosure at all, for that matter.’

‘Without an order, I won’t have a chance of checking her account,’

Adam said. He could feel the heat from the whisky burning his cheeks. ‘And without checking her account, I haven’t got a hope in hell of finding out where she was when the murders took place.’

‘Couldn’t you just ask her?’

Bjorn peered at him over the top of his glasses.

‘Ask her… hah!’

‘If you can check her account, I mean. Not about where she

was. From your description of her, it wouldn’t surprise me if she said yes. Your story is about a woman who wants to be seen. Who wants you to get a glimpse of her, out of reach, but still… there.

Present. Like a fairy in the woods. If you’ve seen one, you’ll swear on your life that they exist. But you can never prove it.’

The wood crackled on the fire. Every now and then the flames flared up with blue tongues. The hint of burnt resin mingled with the smell of the malt whisky - tar and burnt bark. Bjorn reached for a wooden box on the shelf and opened the lid.

‘Take one,’ he said, and Adam felt his eyes go moist.

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’

They prepared their cigars in silence. Adam struck a match and had to hold back a sigh of sleepy pleasure.

‘You should know that Wencke Bencke,’ he said, and blew a

^ smoke ring up towards the ceiling, ‘has thought of everything.

I don’t know whether we could get anything from her account

statements. Probably not. Judging by what she’s managed so far, she will have thought about that. She’s sharp and she knows her stuff. It would be unbelievable if she hadn’t covered all her tracks, even the electronic ones. But if she hasn’t…’

He put the cigar in his mouth. The dry, fine tobacco stuck to his lips. The smoke was mild and almost felt cool against his palate.

‘If, contrary to expectation, she has overlooked such an important thing, it will only be because she hasn’t overlooked it.’

He laughed and looked at the short, fat cigar.

‘Then it would be part of the game. She is so sure, so utterly convinced that we will never find anything to nail her with, that she feels safe. She knows that we can’t get access without her permission.

Or get an order on the basis of reasonable doubt. We have

neither. And she knows it.’

Bjorn pushed the ashtray over to him.

‘I have to have that order,’ Adam said and knocked his cigar on the edge of the ashtray. ‘I know that it’s a lot to ask. But you have to understand that…’

The wind had changed. It was a westerly now. The rain had

been replaced by sleet. A flash of lightening illuminated the garden. The naked trees were visible for a moment, sharp with flat shadows, like an unsuccessful photograph. The thunder followed a few seconds later.

‘Thunder and lightning at this time of year,’ muttered Bjorn. ‘A bit early, isn’t it? And when it’s so cold?’

‘You’re a judge,’ Adam said and puffed on his cigar. ‘You’ve been in the judicial system for… how long?’

‘Eighteen years. Plus two as an associate lawyer. That’s twenty years.’

‘Twenty years. And have you ever, in all those years, come face to face with … evil? I don’t mean situational madness, a kind of materially determined opportunism. I don’t mean wretchedness, character disorders or egoism. I mean pure, genuine evil. Have you ever come across it?’

‘Does it exist?’

‘Yes.’

They drank in silence. The smoke lay like a comfortable,

scented blanket under the ceiling.

‘Do you have anyone who can submit a request?’ Bjorn aske<

‘What do we have young, easily manipulated lawyers for …’

They smiled, without looking at each other.

‘Make sure it gets to the courts on Wednesday,’ Bjorn Bus

said. ‘Not before and not after. Then there’s a certain chance that it will end up on my desk. But I’m not promising anything.’

‘Thank you,’ Adam said, and made a move to get up.

‘Can’t you stay for a while?’ Bjorn asked. ‘Sit down. We’ve got whisky in our glasses and this box is full.’

He tapped the wooden lid with his fingers. Adam leant back in the chair. He put his feet on the pouffe in between them.

‘If you insist,’ he said, and shut his eyes. ‘If you dare to have me here.’

‘It’s pouring with rain,’ Bjorn Busk replied. ‘The house won’t burn down tonight.’

There was some satisfaction in the fact that they were frightened.

She had seen their fear, even though she no longer bothered to check that often. Every evening about seven, they carried the youngest child out into the car and drove a couple of kilometres to Johanne’s childhood home. The strange one, who always carried a fire engine around with her that she should have grown out of years ago, was staying with her father. She often came to visit them in Haugesvei, but as far as Wencke Bencke could make out she never slept there.

Not that it really mattered.

Things had changed.

Everything.

It was Sunday the 21st of March and she was pottering about in the flat, tidying. She had been busy recently. Not only was she working hard on her manuscript, but the interviews and TV

appearances took time. She had barely been home in the last

couple of days, except to change clothes. And they were now

strewn over chairs in the sitting room and the bedroom floor.

Old friends had suddenly reappeared. Not that they were any

more interesting, but they had at least changed their attitude, which basically meant very little. She couldn’t be bothered with everyone who came back to knock on her door, enthused by all the attention Wencke Bencke was now getting.

The most important thing was that she was being taken seriously at last. She was an expert. Not in fiction, but in fact. She was no longer the epitome of commercialism and an easy read, the trademark of culture in decline. Now she was in the opposition, a sceptic, someone who was critical of the authorities and an eloquent debater.

She was barely recognizable. Even to herself.

She stopped in the bathroom. Looked at herself in the mirror.

She looked older. That must be the weight loss. She no longer just had crow’s feet when she smiled; the wrinkles now followed her cheekbones as if the skin on her face was slightly too heavy.

It didn’t matter. Age instilled her analyses with authority, gave substance to all the comments she was now asked to give and gave happily. No longer just about the serial killings, but also the disappearance in Vestlandet, a nasty rape case in Trondheim and a

sensational bank robbery in Stavanger. Wencke Bencke was the expert that everyone wanted to hear.

And it was Fiona Helle’s murder that had started it all.

Wencke Bencke opened the drawer of new make-up. She

wasn’t used to it. She tried to put mascara on her short lashes.

She missed.

The thought of Fiona Helle always made her hands shaky. She

tried to breathe normally and turned on the tap. Cold water running over her wrists helped to clear her head.

She hadn’t really felt any pleasure when she read about the

murder, what now seemed like a lifetime ago. At the time, her feeling was closer to rage, a liberating rage, against the victim. She remembered the evening remarkably well. It was a Wednesday

evening in January. The smell of asphalt hung in the air, as the road above the house had been repaired. She was restless, but couldn’t do anything other than move from chair to chair in front of the panorama window with a view of the bay and Cap Ferrat.

The appalling Internet connection had nearly prevented her

from surfing the day’s papers in Norway. When she finally did log on, she stayed up all night.

Something happened.

Whereas previously she had been irritated, and on occasion provoked, this time she was overwhelmed by rage.

Fiona Helle sold other people’s lives for her own fame and

fortune. The show was an affront to her, Wencke Bencke, with all its life lies and biology. It was her that Fiona Helle spat on every time she entertained the viewers with vulnerable people’s

dreams in her one-hour, lightweight programme; the dreams that were once Wencke Bencke’s dreams, though she had never dared to admit it.

‘I must learn how to do this,’ Wencke Bencke thought as she

pulled the mascara brush from the sticky black contents of the silver cylinder. ‘I’m not old yet. I still have a lot to do and I’m changing. I’m no longer just an observer, I am being observed. I must learn to look good.’

Ten years ago, when her true history had come to light on an ageing document, she was already paralysed. She was on the verge of becoming invisible. She didn’t belong anywhere. No one

wanted to know her. She wrote books that everyone read, but no one admitted to it. Her father was a parasite, he wanted money, money, money. Her false mother barely spoke to her and couldn’t understand what she called ‘Wencke’s horrible scribblings’.

Her real mother, the woman who gave birth to her in pain and then died, would have been proud of her. She would have loved her, in spite of her heavy body, her unattractive face and increasingly closed nature.

Her mother would have kept all her novels in the bookshelves in the sitting room, and maybe had a scrapbook with clippings.

She couldn’t face finding out more. Wencke Bencke knew

nothing about the woman who had died twenty minutes after her daughter was born. Instead, she started to catalogue other people’s lives. She became a better author.

And grew more and more invisible.

She didn’t care about the world, just as the world obviously did not care about her.

But that was then. Not now.

It was a waste of time trying to put on make-up. Her hands felt too big; she wasn’t used to the tiny brush in the eye-shadow compact.

The lipstick was too brazen, too red.

It smelt of asphalt, she remembered, that evening in

Villefranche. Wet, soft tar mixed with the brine of the sea and rain She went to bed at dawn, but couldn’t sleep. Somewhere in her head was a thought that kept evading her. It took a week before she grasped it. All these years, she had thought, all these years of futile work that had given her nothing but money and dissatisfaction.

Then there it was, right in front of her, a shining new opportunity.

All the preparations were made. She could just begin. Fiona Helle’s tongue had been cut out and beautifully wrapped. Wencke Bencke smiled coldly when she read that; she laughed furiously and

remembered another case, from another world, six years ago. She remembered a man with intense eyes, extreme energy and fascinating stories, remembered how she had moved closer and closer to

the front with every lecture, with questions and observant comments.

He gave her a fleeting smile and then bent down over an

elegant brunette, quoting Longfellow, and winked. Wencke

Bencke gave him a book with a respectful dedication in the front.

He left it behind on the desk. In the evenings she followed him; he went to the pub where he was boisterous and told stories, surrounded by women who took it in turns to take him home.

She was already too old then. She was invisible and he bragged about Johanne Vik.

All this came back to her and she realized what she should do.

She would no longer wait for something that would never happen.

She would be the one who made it happen.

And she had succeeded.

And now she had to learn to put make-up on, to display her

new self. She just had to stop thinking about the past so much, getting so emotional. Forget Fiona Helle!

Wencke Bencke closed the drawer in the bathroom and went

into the bedroom. She picked up clothes on the way. Her

wardrobe was steadily expanding. She shopped regularly, nearly every week; she was no longer afraid of asking shop assistants for advice.

More than a hundred people’s lives were stored in the filing cabinet by the wall. She stroked the ice-cold handle. Put her finger on the lock. Leant against the solid weight of steel.

People’s good and bad habits, rhythms, desires and needs had been noted, analysed and catalogued. Wencke Bencke knew

them better than they knew themselves; she was clinically neutral, the cold observer. She knew enough about over a hundred

people to be able to disguise them lightly and then kill them with pen and paper. She knew their lives inside out. When she woke up that sunny January morning in Villefranche and decided to make fiction real, she had plenty to choose from.

She knew, both then and now, that she should select randomly.

Arbitrary victims were the safest. But the temptation was too great. Vibeke Heinerback had always irritated her, though she never really knew why. The most important thing was that she could be taken for a racist. Everything had to fit. Johanne Vik had to have a chance of understanding. If not after the first murder, then later.

And Rudolf Fjord would tumble in any case.

He was pathetic.

Wencke Bencke opened the metal cabinet. Found a file. Read.

She smiled at how good her memory was, how easy it was to recall all she had seen and written down.

Rudolf Fjord was despicable. He wouldn’t survive if the police turned a searchlight on his life. If he didn’t fall on one count, there were plenty of others that would nail him. His file was almost as extensive as Johanne Vik’s. For a while she considered choosing him as her first victim. But then she decided against it. That would be too easy. Rudolf Fjord could sail his own sea.

She was right. He couldn’t ride a storm.

Wencke Bencke closed the file. She pulled out another, much