The Final Murder (5 page)

‘That’s a fair point,’ Sigmund mumbled.

‘Both camps had valid points, but as usual the debate didn’t result in much. Except shouting and screaming and of course even better ratings for the programme. It has to be said in Fiona Helle’s defence that the vetting of people who eventually made it onto the programme was extremely rigorous. There were three psychologists in the production team and every participant had to go

through a kind of screening. Quite thorough preparations as far as I’m aware.’

‘But what about the ones who didn’t make it, then?’

‘Exactly. There are people out there who poured their lives into a letter to Fiona Helle. Many of them had never told their story to anyone before. It must’ve been very painful, then, to be rejected, as most people were. Especially as the production team didn’t have the capacity to answer them all. Some of the critics have also claimed …’

Adam fished a matt aluminium cigar case out of his breast

pocket. He opened it carefully, pulled the cigar out and ran it under his nose.

‘… That Fiona Helle became God,’ he sniffed. ‘A God who

answered the prayers of desperate people with silence.’

‘Very dramatic’

‘Or rather, melodramatic. Yes.’ He returned the cigar to its case with equal care. ‘But just a tiny little bit true, as Kristiane says when we catch her lying.’

Sigmund burst out laughing.

‘My boys just flatly deny it. Even if I catch them red-handed and the evidence is stacked against them. Tough little nuts.

Especially Snorre.’ He stroked his crown in a shy gesture. ‘The youngest one,’ he explained. ‘The one that looks like me.’

‘So there we have it,’ Adam said, and sighed. ‘An unknown

number of people who might have good grounds for being, at

least, disappointed’with Fiona Helle.’

‘Disappointed,’ Sigmund repeated. ‘That’s hardly…’

They both looked up at the picture of the victim.

‘No. That’s why I’ve started a small investigation of my own. I want to find out what happened to the people who actually got help from Fiona. All of them had their fifteen minutes of fame and met their biological mother in South Korea, or their father who disappeared in Argentina, their daughter who was put up for adoption in Dr0bak and God knows what else … All of them had their lives turned upside down during prime-time viewing.’

‘Is there nothing like that already?’

‘No, in fact, there isn’t.’

‘But hasn’t NRK followed up all those who

‘No.’

Sigmund sank back in the chair. He stared at the cigar case that was back in place in Adam’s breast pocket.

‘Haven’t you stopped?’ Sigmund asked in a tired voice.

‘What? Oh, you mean this. I only sniff them. Old habit. Don’t smoke any more. If I want to, I have to go out onto the veranda.

Especially if it’s a cigar. It takes time to smoke one of these.’

‘But Adam …’

‘Yes?’

‘D’you think that all the technical work is wasted?’

Adam gave a hoarse laugh and put his hand to his mouth as he coughed.

‘Consequence,’ he explained. ‘Consequence of all my damned

smoking.’ He grimaced, swallowed and then continued. ‘No, of course not. Technical investigations are never wasted. But as we don’t seem to have come up with any results, not so far, I think we should start at the other end. Instead of working outwards from the scene of the crime, we should start out there and work in. If we’re lucky, we may find a motive or two. A strong enough

motive, I mean.’

‘Are you leaving? This early?’

Adam had stood up and was already over by his coat, which

was hanging unwashed and creased on the coat stand by the

window.

‘Yes,’ he said seriously and pulled on his coat. ‘I’m a modern father. From now on I have to leave work every day at three

o’clock to spend quality time with my daughter. Every day’

‘What?’

‘Just joking, you idiot.’

Adam slapped his colleague on the shoulder and shouted as he disappeared down the corridor: ‘Have a good weekend, everyone!’

‘What the hell am I doing here?’ Sigmund muttered, and looked at the door that had just slammed shut behind Adam. ‘It’s not even my office.’

Then he looked at his watch. It was half past five already. He couldn’t understand where the day had gone.

The blonde woman in the Armani suit and trainers felt good as she got out of the taxi. It was still a good half-hour until midnight and she was practically sober. In a portrait interview for tomorrow’s VG newspaper, it said that Vibeke Heinerback had realized that she was grownup when she started to leave parties and

receptions early because she was thinking about her productivity the next day. Tomorrows productivity. It was her own turn of phrase. It said something about her, both personally and politically.

Her

trainers weren’t quite right, given her attire. But with a

broken toe the possibilities were limited, and fortunately the TV

producers hadn’t cut the part in the chat show where she commented on her own inelegance, flirtatiously saying that she was,

after all, only twenty-six. And that she’d broken her toe while playing with her nephew. Not quite true, but white lies were allowed every now and then, when it was nothing serious. The studio audience had laughed and warmed to her. Vibeke

Heinerback smiled to herself as she struggled to get her key in the front door.

It had been a good week.

Politically. Personally. In every way.

Despite the pain in her toe.

It was annoyingly dark. She looked up. The outside light was not working and she could just make out that the bulb had been broken. That made her a bit anxious and she looked over her

shoulder. The light by the gate was broken as well. She tried to keep all her weight on her good foot as she held her keys up to see if she’d got the wrong one.

She never did manage to find out.

The next morning, Vibeke Heinerback was found by her

boyfriend, who had wound his weary way home from his brother’s stag night, by bus and taxi.

She was sitting in bed. She was naked. Her hands were nailed to the wall above the head of the bed. Her legs were splayed and it looked as if someone had tried to stuff something up her vagina.

Vibeke Heinerback’s boyfriend didn’t see this detail at first. He tore her hands free, threw up violently all over the place and then pulled the body out onto the floor, as if it was the bed itself that had attacked her so brutally. It wasn’t until half an hour later that he came to his senses and called the police.

Then he discovered the green book that was still stuck

between Vibeke Heinerback’s thighs.

The ensuing investigation would establish that it was a leather bound copy of the Koran.

Four

The woman in seat 16A seemed to be nice. She was reading

the British papers and obviously in need of a coffee. The

steward found it difficult to guess where she was from. Most of the passengers were Swedish, though everyone was being disturbed by a noisy Danish family with small children in the

second-last row. He had also registered several Norwegians. It was by no means the high season, but lots of people were more than happy to get on a direct flight to Nice when the prices were so ridiculously low.

He should really stop working as a steward. His weight had

always been a problem and now his colleagues had begun to make comments. No matter how hard he tried or how little he ate, the bathroom scales threatened to tip over into three digits at any moment.

It was good to have people like the lady in 16A on flights like this.

She was darker than most Scandinavians. Her eyes were brown

and she had no reason to be happy about her weight either. She was big and heavy, but the first impression was one of strength.

Powerful, he thought after a while. She was an Amazonian

woman.

And she certainly liked her coffee.

What’s more, she had no children, thank goodness, and didn’t complain about anything.

The body was still warm.

The attendant at the Galleria multi-storey car park reckoned that it couldn’t be more than a couple of hours since the prostitute had said her goodbyes. Maybe he was wrong. He was no expert, he had to admit, though it was the second time in under three months that he’d had to call the police because some poor woman had chosen to inject what would be her last hit somewhere sheltered from the biting wind that whipped through winter streets of

Stockholm, forcing everyone to dress like polar explorers. As it was quite warm in the stairwell, it was difficult to say.

But she couldn’t have been lying there long.

If you can V see forwards and you can’
look back - then look up in life.p>

The words of wisdom were written in red marker on the wall.

The tart had obviously taken them literally. She was lying on her side, with her head on her right arm, legs bent, as if someone had put her in the recovery position so that death would come gently.

But she was looking up, with open eyes and an astonished, almost happy expression.

Peace, the attendant thought to himself, and took out his

mobile phone. The woman looked like she’d found peace. The

man was tired of having to chase the prostitutes out of the huge car park, but deep down he felt for them. Their tiresome existence reminded him of the joys of his own life. His job was boring and monotonous, but he had a good wife and the children seemed to be turning out OK. He could afford a beer or two on Friday night and prided himself on always paying his bills before they were due.

The reception for mobile phones was terrible down here.

He recognized her. She was one of the regulars. She seemed to live down here, at the bottom of the stairwell, in a space that was barely five square metres. The blue and red stripes on the wall were no doubt meant to conjure up movement and light. A bag lay flung in the corner, and three papers and a magazine had been stuck underneath a rolled-up sleeping bag just under the stairs. A bottle of mineral water had fallen down behind her back.

The attendant trudged up the stairs. His asthma was bothering him and he had to stop for a minute to draw breath. Finally he got to the top and opened a drab door out onto Brunkebergs Torg.

The woman’s colleagues were already at work. He spotted a

couple of them, shivering and emaciated; one of them got into a BMW which immediately accelerated towards Sergels Torg.

He eventually got hold of the police. They promised to be

there within half an hour.

‘Sure,’ he muttered and rang off. Last time he had been alone with the dead prostitute for over an hour.

He lit a cigarette. The other woman, in thin tights and mock fur coat, got an offer on the other side of the square.

The dead whore wasn’t that small. Quite the contrary, he

thought, and took a long draw on his cigarette. She was the

plumper type. There weren’t many of those. Prostitutes normally shrank over the years. They got smaller and skinnier for every shot they took, every pill they swallowed. Maybe this woman

remembered to eat, in between tricks and drugs.

He should go back down to keep an eye on her.

Instead he lit another cigarette and stood out there in the cold until the police finally came. They took a few seconds to confirm what the attendant already knew, that the woman was dead. An ambulance was called and the body was taken away.

Katinka Olsson was cremated three days later, and no one bothered to erect a stone to mark the remains of the late

thirty-something prostitute. The four children she had brought into the world before she was thirty would never know that their biological mother carried baby pictures of them in her otherwise empty wallet, faded photographs with worn, uneven edges;

Katinka Olsson’s only treasure.

She died of an overdose and no would ever ask after her. No

one grieved for Katinka Olsson and no one wondered why the

dead prostitute smelt fresh and clean and had on newly washed, if worn clothes.

No one.

Vibeke Heinerback’s home surprised him.

Standing in the middle of the relatively large sitting room, he got the impression of a far more interesting person than the media had ever managed to portray.

When he thought about it, he couldn’t remember having seen

any features about Vibeke Heinerback’s house. Adam Stubo had used the early hours of the morning to go through a large pile of interviews and other cuttings, sensational and glamorous tales of an apparently successful life.

When her boyfriend proposed to her, the couple travelled to

Paris with Hello!. The pictures of the two of them, embracing in front of the Eiffel Tower, under the Arc de Triomphe, outside well-known shops on the Champs-Elysees and on the streets of Montmartre, reminded him of advertisements from the seventies.

Vibeke and Trond were both bottle blondes and inoffensively well groomed. They had an aura of self confidence and matching

pastel-coloured psychedelic shirts. Only the wine glasses that were raised in a couple of the photographs broke the illusion.

They should have been Coca-Cola bottles.

When Vibeke Heinerback was elected as Norway’s youngest

party leader, members of the press had been invited to follow her to her room when she retired after the national conference. The papers and magazines were all in raptures about her evening bath.

Vibeke raised a glass of champagne to the readers from a sea of pink bubbles, with her smooth, beautifully shaped left leg hanging over the edge of the bath. According to the picture captions, she was absolutely exhausted.

The setting for the photographs was a hotel room.

Vibeke Heinerback was the ultimate example of young

Scandinavian success. She only managed to complete a couple of years at the Norwegian School of Management before politics