The Final Murder (39 page)

the epitome of a paedophile monster, was married. Hitler inflicted terrible suffering on the Jews and sent six million to their death, but it’s said that he was very fond of his dog. And presumably he was even kind to it.’

‘Did he have a dog?’

She shrugged her shoulders.

‘Think so. But you get my point, at least.’

‘No.’

She got up slowly, still chewing on the stubborn caper. She

looked around the room and then went over to Kristiane’s toy box.

‘I am a person who has decided to kill,’ she said, and swallowed before stalling his objection: ‘Just forget why, for the moment.’

She picked up a red ball and held it out in front of her in her right hand, in a dramatic pose, like Hamlet and the skull. Adam chuckled.

‘Don’t laugh,’ she said, in a level voice. ‘This is my world. I know a lot about crime. It’s my subject. I know there’s a connection between the motive and how a case is solved. I know that I’m more likely to get away with murder if no one can find a connection between me and the victim. So, I spin the globe …’

She closed her eyes and blindly pressed her finger into the red rubber.

‘I have chosen a completely random victim,’ she said. ‘And I kill that person. Everything works out. No one suspects me. I get a taste for more.’

She looked up.

‘But in some way, I’ve changed. All our actions, everything that happens, affects us. I feel … successful. I want to do it again. I feel… alive.’

She froze. Adam opened his mouth.

‘Shh,’ she said sharply. ‘Shh!’

They could hear the children running from room to room

downstairs. Jack was barking angrily. Then they heard a muffled, cross, grownup voice, through the floor.

‘Maybe I should go down and get her,’ Adam said. ‘Sounds

like …’

‘Shh,’ she said again. She had a distant look in her eyes and she had frozen in a theatrical comedy pose, with one leg tantalizingly in front of the other. The ball was still in her right hand.

‘Alive,’ she repeated, as if she was tasting the word.

Suddenly, she grabbed the ball with both hands and threw it to the floor. It bounced against the fireplace and knocked over a plant that was standing on the floor, without Johanne seeming to bother.

‘Alive,’ she said for the third time. ‘These murders are a form of… extreme sport.’

‘What?’

Adam stared at Johanne. He tried to see beyond the unfamiliar, frightened expression, beyond her unfamiliar behaviour; he tried to see inside her mind. She stood as if in a trance.

‘Extreme sport,’ she repeated, without paying him any attention, ‘… a way of feeling alive. That’s how people describe it.

The adrenalin kick. The rush. The feeling of defying death and succeeding, time and again. Nearly dying is the most intense way of feeling alive. Actually feeling life. Understanding it better.

The rest of us just ask why? Why push yourself to get to the top of Mount Everest when the journey is, in every sense, paved with dead bodies? What would drive someone to throw themselves

from a high cliff in Mexico when the slightest misjudgement

could mean that the waves below hurled you straight back into the cliff face?’

‘Johanne,’ Adam tried, and put up his hand.

‘They say it gives them the feeling of being alive.’ She

answered her own questions.

She still didn’t look at him. Instead she got hold of Kristiane’s rag doll from the windowsill. She pulled to it to her by the leg and then hugged it, long and hard.

‘Johanne,’ he tried again.

‘I just don’t understand it,’ she whispered, ‘but that’s the explanation they give. That’s what they say when it’s all over and

they’re smiling at the camera, at their friends. Their stick their fingers up at life. And laugh. And then they go and do it all over again. And again. And again …’

This time he got up and went over to her. Pulled the doll from her hands and put his arms round her. He didn’t know if she was crying, so he kept still.

‘As if life isn’t valuable enough in itself,’ she mumbled into his chest. ‘As if human triviality is not bad enough. As if loving someone, having children, getting old, isn’t frightening enough.’

She pushed him away. He didn’t want to let go, but she was

determined and forced him to. But she did look him straight in the eye when she continued:

‘We can see it everywhere, Adam. More and more, new variations all the time. Jackass stunts for young people. They set

themselves alight, dive from a roof on a bike. People are bored. People are bored to death!’

She was nearly screaming and slapped him on the chest. Her

voice trembled. ‘Did you know that some people play a kind

of Russian roulette with HIV? Others heighten their orgasm

through strangulation? And sometimes they die before they

come. Die!’

She was laughing now, hysterically. She went over to the island unit and managed to perch on a stool. She covered her face with her hands.

‘Death is the only real news for people today,’ she said. ‘I can’t remember who said that, but it’s true. Death is extremely titillating, as it is the only thing we will never understand. It’s the only thing we know nothing about.’

‘So what you’re saying,’ Adam tried to bring her back to day to day reality, ‘is that we’re talking about a killer who’s … bored?’

‘Yes. His motive isn’t to do with who he kills, but rather that they are killed.’

‘Johanne …’

‘It has to be,’ she insisted. ‘Killing someone is the most

extreme of all extreme actions you can take. The murderer … It fits, Adam. It fits with the theory that he didn’t kill Fiona Helle.

He was just sitting there. Somewhere. Bored. Then Mats Bohus killed his mother, in a grotesque way, and Norway lost the plot.

The murder had all the right ingredients: a famous victim, the characteristics of ritual, strong symbolism. The reaction was deafening.

I can hardly imagine anything more stimulating, a more

exciting trigger than that murder. Especially as it had so many similarities to the first murder in another series, in another story about…’

‘Now listen to what you’re saying,’ Adam insisted. He had

raised his voice now. ‘If we summarize your profile, we’ve got the following. A: …’

With his right index finger, he pointed to his left thumb.

‘The murderer knows everything that’s worth knowing about

crime. B: at some point or another, he has heard Warren’s lecture about Proportional Retribution.’

‘Or heard about it,’ corrected Johanne.

‘Which means that he may not necessarily be Norwegian,’

Adam added, and pulled a face. ‘Third: killing for this person is a kind of hobby, a way to relieve a boring, humdrum life. He

chooses …’

‘… His victims on an apparently random bases,’ Johanne concluded.

Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were shiny. ‘At

least to begin with. He has only one criterion. The person has to be famous. He wants maximum effect. It’s the thrill he’s after.

He’s playing, Adam.’

‘And then we’re back to square one,’ he said, and rubbed his cheek in resignation. ‘Vegard Krogh was not famous.’

‘He was famous enough,’ she corrected him with great intensity.

‘There was enough commotion about his death, for goodness’

sake! Especially as he was number three in a series of celebrity murders. The murderer knew that. He knew that Vegard Krogh

was sufficiently well known and that was why he decided to

forgo … randomization!’

‘What?’

‘Only a computer can achieve a completely random selection,

Adam. We humans, we let ourselves be swayed, consciously or

unconsciously. Vegard Krogh was chosen because he …’

Once again the look in her eyes became distant and dark. She pulled at a tangle of hair and chewed it. The palaver downstairs had died down a while ago. The children had been sent out to play in the rain. Adam could hear them in the garden.

‘The murderer wanted him dead,’ she said slowly. ‘The motive was first and foremost… the game. The challenge of killing someone and getting away with it. But the murderer gave in to temptation this time. By choosing someone he wanted to get even with.’

‘Everyone wanted to get even with Vegard,’ Adam groaned.

‘And your profile doesn’t match any of the people we’ve come across, spoken to or in any way suspected in connection with this case. And do you have any idea how many people that is? Do you know how many statements we’ve taken?’

‘A lot, I should think.’

‘Several hundred! Nearly a thousand statements. And not one

of them, not a single witness, matches your description of …

What shall we do? Where is he, what needs to be…’

‘He won’t stop. Not yet. I guess we just have to wait.’

‘Wait for what?’

‘For…’

‘The world’s best mummy,’ shouted Kristiane.

She had her raincoat on and her boots were soaking. They

squelched as she ran over the floor and threw herself into her mother’s lap. Jack was in hot pursuit. He stopped in the middle of the floor, between the sitting room and open-plan kitchen, and shook himself. A shower of water sprayed around him. Sand and fine gravel pattered down on to the parquet.

‘The best dog in the world,’ Kristiane said. ‘The best Kristiane.

And Daddy. And Adam. And house. And…’

‘Afternoon, all! The door was open so I just came up. Is her bag ready?’

Isak laughed and patted the eager, happy dog.

‘I’ve been sailing,’ he said, ‘so I’m just as wet as Kristiane.

Great weather for sailing though! Cold as hell. Good wind. But then it started to rain. Shame. Come on then, princess! We’re going go-karting today! Won’t that be fun!’

He trailed his dirty shoes over the floor. Picked up the fire engine, gave a big smile and put it in his pocket.

‘Bye, Mummy! Bye, Adam!’

The girl danced after her father. Adam and Johanne sat in

silence and listened to them rummaging around in her room. He put his hand on her thigh when she wanted to go in and help. Five minutes later they heard Isak’s Audi TT accelerate powerfully down Haugesvei.

‘I bet he forgot her pyjamas and toothbrush,’ Johanne said, and tried to ignore Adam’s exasperated sigh when he answered:

‘He can buy a toothbrush at any petrol station, Johanne. And she can sleep in a T-shirt. Isak remembered Sulamit and that’s what’s most important. Don’t make such …’

She got up suddenly and went out to the bathroom.

‘I’m boring,’ she thought to herself, and started to load the washing machine. ‘I’m unexciting and unsophisticated. I know.

I’m responsible and very rarely spontaneous. I’m boring. But I certainly never get bored.’

The man sitting in the chair with a target pinned to his breast pocket with a safety pin was an unpopular star. His long hair was tied back in a ponytail. He had a widow’s peak that gave him a diabolic look. There was something primitive about the way his brows jutted out over his eyes; his eyebrows were joined, like a fat, hairy caterpillar crawling across his face. His nose was straight, narrow and sophisticated. His lips were full. An unbecoming

goatee sprouted on his chin below his mouth. His tongue was just visible between his eye-teeth, which had been filed into points.

The corners of his mouth turned down in an unattractive grimace.

Above his head, a zinc bucket was attached to the wall with a nail.

Havard Stefansen was a professional biathlete. His greatest

achievement as a senior to date was two individual silver medals in the world championships. He had won three world cup titles last season. And as he was only twenty-four, he was one of

Norway’s great hopes for the Winter Olympics in Turin in 2006.

As long as he could control himself, the national team coach had publicly warned him only six weeks ago.

During the course of his first two seasons in the senior national team, Havard Stefansen had been sent home from meets and

competitions four times. He was an arrogant winner and an

appalling loser. He usually openly slandered his competitors when he lost a race. He accused them of taking drugs. They cheated.

He treated foreigners and his own team mates with contempt.

Havard Stefansen was rude and egocentric and no one wanted to share a room with him. Which didn’t seem to bother him.

The public didn’t like him either, and he had never had personal sponsors. Boasting and menacing tattoos were not usual in

his chosen sport. When he raced, he was often met with boos or silence, and in some weird way he seemed to get a kick out of that. His speed increased and his shooting improved every month, yet he did nothing to change his terrible reputation.

Now it was too late.

It was the night of the 2nd of March and the bullseye on the target over his heart had been hit. His eyes were glassy. When Adam Stubo leant over the body, he thought he saw slight bruising on the eyelids, as if someone had forced them open.

‘He wasn’t killed in here,’ said an officer from the Oslo Police.

His ginger hair was poking out from under the paper cap. ‘That seems fairly clear. He was stabbed in the back with a knife. While he was asleep, we assume. No indications of a struggle, but the bed is full of blood. The tracks are obvious out here. It looks like his clothes were just thrown on. We think he was killed in his sleep and then dragged out here, dressed and arranged on the chair.

‘The bullet hole,’ Adam muttered. He felt queasy.

‘Lead pellet, sir,’ the other replied. ‘He was shot with an air rifle. This is some kind of indoor shooting range.’ He pointed to the target covering the top of the bucket. ‘For air guns only, of course. The pellets are caught in the bucket. Air rifles only make a “pff” sound, which explains why no one heard anything. If the guy was alive when he was shot, it would presumably have hurt like hell, but nothing more. That, on the other hand…’

The policeman, who had just introduced himself as Erik