The Final Murder (11 page)

would you say?’

Johanne looked at Sigmund over the rim of her cup.

‘I’m not quite sure,’ she said slowly. ‘The whole thing seems very… unNorwegian. I don’t like the expression, as it’s no longer possible to protect ourselves from gruesome murders like these.

But all the same…’

She took a deep breath and then drank some coffee.

‘I would say,’ she started after a few moments, ‘… that it’s possible to see the outlines of two very different profiles. Starting with the similarities: Fiona Helle’s murder was well planned. It was obviously premeditated, so we’re looking for someone who’s

capable of planning someone else’s death in detail. The little paper basket can have had no other function than to hold the severed tongue. It was a perfect fit. We can more or less dismiss the idea that someone might think about cutting their victim’s tongue out without killing them. The time of the killing was also right.

Tuesday evening. Everyone knew that Fiona Helle was on her own on Tuesday evenings. And in several interviews she boasted that L0renskog was “a peaceful oasis away from stresses of the city” …’

With two fingers, she drew quote marks in the air.

‘Quite a statement,’ Adam said.

‘And very stupid to tell the whole world that she didn’t need to lock her door in the little cul-de-sac where she lived, as everyone looked out for their neighbours and no one was nasty’

Sigmund snorted and added: ‘The Romerike boys got in touch

with her to warn her about saying things like that, afterwards. But she still left the door open. She said something about “not giving in to evil”. Jesus …’

He mumbled something incomprehensible into his cup of

coffee.

‘In any case,’ Johanne said, and pulled over a pad of paper that Adam had found in Kristiane’s red play chest. ‘The murder was premeditated. So we’ve already come quite a long way.’ She

leant her elbows on the counter. ‘There are also grounds for drawing another relatively given conclusion. I would say that the killing shows signs of intense hate. The fact that it was premeditated, the killer’s determined, criminal intention, and the

method …’

There was a short silence. Johanne wrinkled her brow, not

noticeably, and turned her left ear towards the hall.

‘It was nothing,’ Adam said. ‘Nothing.’

‘To strangle someone, tie her up, cut out her tongue …’

Johanne was talking quietly now, tense, still listening. ‘Hate,’ she concluded. ‘But then the problems start. The drama of it, the split tongue, the origami… the whole thing, in fact…’

Her red pencil was drawing slow circles on the paper.

‘It could be a cover. An act. Camouflage. The symbolism is so blatantly obvious, so …’

‘… Childish?’ suggested Sigmund.

‘Exactly. So simple, in any case, that it could almost appear to be a cover-up. The intention was possibly to confuse people. And then we’re talking about an unusually cunning person. Who must have hated Fiona Helle intensely. And then we’re no further forward than…’

‘Back where we started,’ Adam said with resignation. ‘But what if the symbolism was sincere?’

‘Goodness… Didn’t the Native Americans use it literally?

“White man speak with forked tongue”? If we assume that the

killer mutilated her body to tell the world something, it must be that Fiona Helle was not what she pretended to be. She was a liar.

A traitor. According to him, that is. The murderer. Which in this rather flimsy and therefore totally unusable profile would verge on … utter madness.’

‘Shame,’ Sigmund said, yawning loudly,’… that we can’t find any problems in her life. No major conflicts. A bit of jealousy here and there, she was a successful lady. A dispute with the tax authorities a couple of years ago. And one with a neighbour about a

spruce that blocked the light from Fiona’s study. Of no consequence.

The tree was chopped down, by the way. Without the e case going to court.’

‘Strange that there isn’t anything,’ Johanne started and then stopped. ‘Now?’

Her anxiety was obvious when she looked at Adam.

‘It’s nothing,’ he said again. ‘Relax. She’s asleep.’

Johanne had agreed that Ragnhild should sleep in her bedroom, at least when they had guests.

‘It’s strange,’ she repeated hesitantly, ‘that you can’t find anything, nothing that even resembles dirt in Fiona Helle’s life. Very strange indeed. After all, she was forty-two. You must’ve missed something.’

‘Look yourself, then,’ Sigmund said, obviously offended.

‘We’ve had fifteen men on the job for several weeks now and

come up with a big fat nothing. Maybe the woman really was a paragon of virtue.’

‘There is no paragon of virtue.’

‘But what about the profile then?’

‘Which profile?’

‘The one you were going to make,’ Sigmund said.

‘I can’t make a profile of the person who killed Fiona Helle,’

Johanne said, and drank the rest of her coffee in one gulp. ‘Not of any consequence, at least. No one can. But I can give you a tip.

Look for the lies in her life. Find the lie. Then you may not even need a profile. You’ll have the man.’

‘Or woman,’ said Adam with a faint smile.

Johanne didn’t even bother to answer. Instead she tiptoed out to the bedroom.

‘Is she always so nervy?’ Sigmund whispered.

‘Yes.’

‘Would drive me nuts.’

‘You hardly see your family’

‘Shut up. I’m at home more than most people I know’

‘Which doesn’t say much.’

‘Jessie’s blouse.’

‘Idiot,’ Adam smiled. ‘More coffee?’

‘No thanks. But some of that…’

He pointed towards the other end of the table, where a bottle glinted yellow and brown in the light of the candle on the windowsill.

‘Are you not driving?’

‘The wife’s got the car. Parents’ evening, or something like that’

‘See what I mean.’

Adam got down two outsized cognac glasses and poured some in.

‘Cheers,’ he said.

‘Not a lot to raise our glasses to,’ said Sigmund, and took a drink.

Jack’s claws clacked over the parquet. The animal stopped in the middle of the floor where he stretched and gave a long yawn.

‘Looks like he’s bloody laughing,’ mumbled Sigmund.

‘I think he is,’ Adam replied. ‘At us, maybe. Our worries. All he thinks about is food.’

The dog wagged his tail and padded out to the kitchen. He

whined a bit by the rubbish bin. He sniffed around on the floor and greedily licked the bits of grease and breadcrumbs.

‘Your food’s in the dish,’ Adam said. ‘Woof!’

Jack yapped and growled at the cupboard door.

‘Don’t wind him up. Stop it, Jack!’

Johanne had come back with an awake Ragnhild in her arms.

‘I knew I heard something,’ she said without trying to disguise the triumph in her voice. ‘She’s wet. You can change her. Jack, go and lie down!’

‘Daddy’s little daisy,’ Adam babbled and gently took his daughter.

‘Baby daisy’s wet.’

‘Completely ga-ga,’ Sigmund said.

‘It’s called being a good father.’

Johanne smiled and followed Adam with her eyes as he disappeared into the bathroom. Jack followed with his tail between his

legs. He stopped by the dividing wall to the sitting room and sent Johanne another pleading look.

‘Lie down,’ she said and the dog disappeared.

Muffled music could be heard from the ground floor. Half the soundscape got lost in the floor insulation. The thumping of the bass was all that reached them and Johanne wrinkled her nose before putting on the dishwasher.

‘It’s quite noisy here,’ Sigmund observed, without showing any sign of moving. ‘D’you mind?’

He pointed at the bottle of cognac.

‘No, no. Not at all. Help yourself.’

The music got steadily louder.

‘Must be Selma,’ muttered Johanne. ‘Teenager. At home alone, I should think.’

Sigmund smiled and poked his nose into the glass. He was

relaxed here, he found himself thinking, to his surprise. There was something about the atmosphere here, the tone, the light, the furniture. There was something about Johanne. People at work whispered about her being so stern. They were wrong, Sigmund thought, and dipped his sore lip into the alcohol. The burn stung in a nice way and he took a sip.

Johanne wasn’t stern. She was strong, he thought, even though she was obviously over-anxious about the baby. Not so surprising, really, when you thought about her strange oldest daughter, odd little thing who looked like she was three years younger than she actually was. Adam had taken her to work a few times and she would frighten the life out of anyone. One minute she behaved like a three-year-old and then the next minute she would say something that could well come out of a student’s mouth.

Evidently there was something wrong with her brain. They just didn’t know what.

Sigmund had always liked Adam. He enjoyed the older man’s

company. But they seldom spent time together out of work.

Sigmund had, of course, done as much as he could after the accident, when Adam’s daughter fell down on top of her mother while

trying to clean the gutters, killing them both. He remembered the low sun through the trees and the two bodies in the garden. Adam hadn’t said anything, hadn’t cried, hadn’t spoken. He just stood there with his crying grandson in his arms, as if he was holding on to life itself, and was in danger of crushing it.

‘Do you still have Amund here at the weekend?’ he asked suddenly.

‘In

principle, we have him every other weekend,’ Johanne said,

taken aback by the question. ‘But now, with the baby and all that, well… Originally the arrangement was to help give Adam’s sonin-law a break.’

‘No,’ said Sigmund.

‘Sorry?’

She turned towards him.

‘That wasn’t why it started,’ he said calmly. ‘I talked to Bjarne a lot at the time, I did. The son-in-law, that is.’

‘I know what Adam’s son-in-law is called.’

‘Of course. But … Well, that arrangement was really to help Adam. To give him something to live for. We were really worried, you know. Extremely worried, Bjarne and I. It’s good to see …’

He downed the rest of the cognac in one go and cheerfully

looked around.

‘You’ve got a good home,’ he said with unexpected formality in his voice; his eyes were moist.

Johanne shook her head and chuckled. She stood with her

hands on her hips, cocked her head and followed his hands with her eyes. He poured a generous amount into his glass before putting back the cork with a dramatic thump.

‘There, that’s enough for today. Here’s to you, Johanne. I have to say you’re a great lady. I wish I could come home every day to the wife and know that she was interested in what I did at work.

Knew something about it. Like you. You’re a great girl. Cheers.’

‘And you’re a strange one, Sigmund.’

‘No, just a bit tipsy. Hi!’

He raised his glass to Adam, who lifted his arms in triumph and clapped his hands above his head.

‘One baby, one nine-year-old and one canine sleeping like

stones. Dry and happy, all of them.’

He plumped down on the bar stool.

‘Are you celebrating, Sigmund? On a Monday?’

‘Yes, there hasn’t been much of that recently,’ Sigmund

answered. He had started to hiccup. ‘But Johanne …’

‘Yes?’

‘If you were going to imagine the worst possible … the most difficult serial killer … To catch, I mean. If you were to draw a profile of the perfect serial killer, what would it be?’

‘Don’t you two have enough with the criminals who actually

exist?’ she said, and leant over the counter.

‘Go on,’ Adam smiled. ‘Tell us. Tell what he’d be like.’

The candle on the windowsill was about to burn down. There

was a violent hissing. Bits of soot floated around in front of the reflection in the dark glass. Johanne got out a new candle, pushed it down into the candlestick and lit the wick. She stood for a few seconds, studying the flame.

‘It would be a woman,’ she said slowly. ‘Simply because we

always imagine it to be a man. We find it difficult to imagine evil incarnate in the shape of a woman. Strangely enough. History has definitively shown that women can be evil.’

‘A woman,’ Adam said and nodded. ‘What else?’

Johanne turned towards them and counted quickly on her fingers: ‘Knowledgeable, of course, and insightful, intelligent, cunning and unscrupulous. At least, that’s what they normally are. But the worst, the worst thing would be …’

Suddenly she looked like she was thinking about something

else, as if trying to catch a thought that had just passed through her head. The two men sipped their cognac. A gang of boys could be heard shouting out on the street. A light was switched off in the neighbours’ house. The darkness outside the kitchen window

became denser, the reflections sharper.

‘It’s just as if,’ she started and straightened her glasses with her forefinger. ‘It’s as if… This case gives me a feeling of… deja vu.

But I just can’t think …’ She studied the candle flame again. It danced in the draught from the window they couldn’t afford to replace. A fleeting smile passed over her face. ‘Forget it. Probably just rubbish.’

‘Carry on,’ Sigmund said. ‘So far you’ve just given us the obvious list. What else would make it impossible for us to catch this lady of yours? Aren’t they always basically mad?’

‘Not mad.’ Johanne gave a convinced shake of the head.

‘Disturbed, perhaps. Twisted. I would guess that she suffered from some kind of personality disorder. But she’s definitely not mad. Murderers are seldom not accountable, or insane, in a legal sense. But what would make it really difficult … What would make it almost impossible to catch her, if she wasn’t caught the first time, that is …’

‘Which this superwoman wouldn’t allow to happen,’ Adam

interjected, and rubbed his neck.

‘Precisely,’ said Johanne, and fell silent.

The boys out on the street had moved on. Lights were being