There were not many family photos. Just earnest faces on two faded black-and-white images which must have been taken before the war and four pictures of a boy taken at different ages. In the teenage photograph he had spots, an early ’60s mod haircut, the teddy-bear eyes that had met them in the doorway and a smile which was exactly that – a smile. Not the pained face that Harry, with more than a little difficulty, had managed to pull in front of a camera at that age.
The elderly lady returned with a tray, sat down, poured coffee and passed round a plate of Maryland cookies. Harry waited until Beate had finished complimenting her on the coffee.
‘Have you read about the young women who have been recently murdered in Oslo, fru Sivertsen?’
She shook her head.
‘I caught the headlines. They were on the front page of Aftenposten. You couldn’t miss them. But I never read about that sort of thing.’
The wrinkles around her eyes pointed downwards when she smiled.
‘And I’m afraid I’m just an old froken, not a fru.’
‘I apologise. I thought…’ Harry glanced at the photos.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s my boy.’
It went quiet. The wind brought with it the distant barking of dogs and a metallic voice announcing that the train for Halden was about to depart from platform 17. It barely moved the curtains at the balcony doors.
‘Right.’ Harry raised his coffee cup, but decided he’d rather speak and put it down again. ‘We have reason to believe that the person who killed the girls is a serial killer and that one of his next two targets is -’
‘Wonderful biscuits, fru Sivertsen,’ Beate suddenly interrupted, with her mouth full. Harry looked at her, bewildered. From the balcony doors came the hissing sound of a train arriving at the station.
The old lady smiled, somewhat confused.
‘Oh, they’re just bought biscuits,’ she said.
‘Let me start again, fru Sivertsen,’ Harry said. ‘First of all, I would like to say that there is no reason for concern, that we have the situation completely under control. Next…’
‘Thanks,’ Harry said as they walked down Schweigaards gate past the sheds and the low factory buildings. They stood in sharp contrast to the detached house with the garden which was like a green oasis amid the black gravel.
Beate smiled without a blush.
‘Thought we should avoid the mental equivalent of a fractured thigh bone. We are allowed to beat around the bush a little, present things in a somewhat gentler way, as it were.’
‘Yes, I have heard that said.’
He lit a cigarette.
‘I’ve never been much good at talking to people. I’m better at listening. And perhaps…’
He broke off.
‘What?’ Beate asked.
‘Perhaps I’ve become a little insensitive. Perhaps I don’t care so much any more. Perhaps it’s time I… did something else. Are you OK to drive?’
He threw the keys over the car roof.
She caught them and looked down at them with a concerned frown.
At 8.00 the four detectives heading the investigation, plus Aune, were sitting together in the conference room again.
Harry reported back on the meeting in Ville Valle and said that Olaug Sivertsen had taken the news calmly. She was obviously frightened, but far from panic-stricken at the thought that she might be on a serial killer’s death list.
‘Beate suggested that she might move in with her son for a while,’ Harry said. ‘I think that would be a good idea -’
Waaler shook his head.
‘No?’ Harry said, surprised.
‘The killer may be keeping a lookout for future murder scenes. If unusual things begin to happen, we may scare him away.’
‘You mean that we should use an innocent old lady as… as… as…’ Beate tried to hide her anger, but managed to stutter out, with a red face, ‘bait?’
Waaler held Beate’s stare. And for once she held his. In the end the silence became so oppressive that Moller opened his mouth to say something, anything, any random selection of words, but Waaler beat him to it.
‘I just want to be sure that we catch the guy so that we can all sleep soundly at night. And as I understand it, it isn’t the old dear’s turn until next week.’
Moller laughed a loud, strained laugh. And it became even louder when he noticed that the tense atmosphere had not been smoothed over.
‘Anyway,’ Harry said. ‘She stays put. The son lives too far away, abroad somewhere.’
‘Good,’ Waaler said. ‘As for the students’ building, it’s pretty empty now because of the holiday, but all of the occupants we’ve talked to have been told in no uncertain terms that they have to stay in their rooms tomorrow. Other than that, they’ve been given minimal information. We told them all this was to do with a burglar we were trying to catch red-handed. We’re going to put in the surveillance equipment tonight while the killer’s asleep, we hope.’
‘And the Special Forces?’
Waaler smiled. ‘They’re happy.’
Harry gazed out of the window. He tried to remember what it was like to be happy.
Moller concluded the meeting and Harry noticed that the patches of sweat forming on both sides of Aune’s shirt were shaped like Somalia.
The three of them sat down again.
Moller produced four Carlsbergs from the kitchen fridge.
Aune nodded, with a happy expression on his face. Harry shook his head.
‘But why?’ Moller asked as he opened the bottles of beer. ‘Why is he voluntarily giving us the key to the code and thus to his next moves?’
‘He’s trying to tell us how we can catch him,’ Harry said, pushing up the window.
In flooded the sounds of city life on a summer’s night: the desperate life cycle of the mayfly, music from a cruising cabriolet, exaggerated laughter, high heels clicking frenetically against tarmac. People enjoying themselves.
Moller stared at Harry in disbelief and cast Aune a glance in the hope that he would receive confirmation that Harry had lost his senses.
The psychologist placed his fingertips together in front of his floppy bow tie.
‘Harry may be right,’ he said. ‘It’s not unusual for a serial killer to court and assist the police because he wants, deep down, to be stopped. There’s a psychologist called Sam Vaknin who maintains that serial killers want to be caught and punished to satisfy their sadistic superego. I incline more to the theory that they need help to stop the monster in them. I put their desire to be caught down to a degree of objective understanding of their illness.’
‘Do they know they’re insane?’
Aune nodded.
‘It must be hell,’ Moller said softly, raising his bottle of beer.
Moller went off to return a call to a journalist on Aftenposten who wanted to know whether the police supported the Children’s Council’s appeal for children to be kept indoors.
Harry and Aune stayed where they were, listening to the distant sounds of a party, the indistinct shouting and the Strokes, broken by a call to prayer which for some reason or other suddenly reverberated metallically and probably blasphemously, yet in a strangely beautiful way, from the same open window.
‘Just out of curiosity,’ Aune said, ‘what triggered it off? How did you know it was five?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I know a little about creative processes. What happened?’
Harry smiled.
