He had tried to find a lighter, more modern tunic in Welhavens gate, but they didn’t have any for Russian Orthodox priests, they said. The prayer over, he placed the book beside the cross on the table between them. The man standing in front of him would soon clear his throat. They always cleared their throats before confessing, as if their sins were encapsulated in mucus and saliva. Nikolai had a vague sensation that he had seen the man before, but he could not remember where. And the name meant nothing to him. The man had seemed a little taken aback when he realised that the confession would be face to face and that he would even have to give his name. To tell the truth, Nikolai had had a feeling that the man had not given his real name, either. He may have come from a different congregation. Occasionally they came here with their secrets because this was a small anonymous church where they didn’t know anyone. Nikolai had often pardoned the sins of members of the established Church of Norway. If they asked for it, they got it; the mercy of the Lord was infinite.
The man cleared his throat. Nikolai closed his eyes and promised himself that he would cleanse his body with a bath and his ears with Tchaikovsky as soon as he arrived home.
‘It is said that lust – exactly like water – will find the lowest level, Father. If there is an opening, a crack or a flaw in your character, lust will find it.’
‘We are all sinners, my son. Have you any sins to confess?’
‘Yes. I have been unfaithful to the woman I love. I have been together with a wanton woman. Even though I do not love her, I have not been able to resist going back to her.’
Nikolai suppressed a yawn. ‘Continue.’
‘I… she became an obsession.’
‘Became, you say. Does that mean that you have stopped meeting her?’
‘They died.’
It was not just what he said; there was also something in his voice that startled Nikolai.
‘They?’
‘She was pregnant. I believe.’
‘I am sorry to hear of your loss, my son. Does your wife know this?’
‘No-one knows anything.’
‘What did she die of?’
‘A bullet through the head, Father.’
The sweat on Nikolai Loeb’s skin suddenly went ice cold. He swallowed.
‘Are there any other sins you would like to confess, my son.’
‘Yes. There is a person. A policeman. I have seen the woman I love go to him. I have thoughts about…’
‘Yes?’
‘Sinning. That is all, Father. Can you read the prayer of absolution now?’
A silence fell over the church.
‘I…’ Nikolai began.
‘I have to go now, Father. Would you be so kind?’
Nikolai closed his eyes again. Then he began to read and did not open his eyes until he came to ‘I absolve you of your sins in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost’.
He crossed himself over the man’s bowed head.
‘Thank you,’ the man whispered. He turned and scurried out of the church.
Nikolai did not move from the spot and listened to the echo of the words still hanging between the walls. He thought he could remember where he had seen him now. In Gamle Aker assembly house. He had brought a new Star of Bethlehem to replace the ruined one.
As a priest Nikolai was bound by his oath of secrecy and he had no intention of breaking it as a result of what he had heard. Yet there was something about the man’s voice, the way he had said he had thoughts about… about what?
Nikolai gazed out of the window. Where were the clouds? It was so sultry now that something had to happen soon. Rain. First of all though, thunder and lightning.
He closed the door, knelt in front of the small altar and prayed. He prayed with an intensity that he had not felt for many years. For guidance and strength. And for forgiveness.
At 2.00 Bjorn Holm stood in the doorway to Beate’s office and told her they had something she should have a look at.
She got up and followed him into the photo lab, where he pointed to a photograph that was still hanging on a piece of cord to dry.
‘That’s from last Monday,’ Bjorn said. ‘Taken at about half past five, so roughly half an hour after Barbara Svendsen was shot in Carl Berners plass. You can easily cycle to Frogner Park in that time.’
The picture showed a girl smiling in front of the Fountain. Beside her you could see part of a sculpture. Beate knew which one it was. One of the ‘tree groups’, the carving of a girl diving. She had always stood in front of the sculpture when she and her mother and father had driven to Oslo to go for a Sunday walk in Frogner Park. Her father had explained that Gustav Vigeland had intended the diving girl to symbolise the young girl’s fear of adult life and becoming a mother.
However, today it was not the girl Beate was looking at. It was the back of a man on the margin of the picture. He was standing in front of a green litter bin. In his hand he was holding a brown polythene bag. He was wearing a tight yellow top and black cycling pants. On his head he wore a black helmet, sunglasses and there was a cloth over his mouth.
‘The courier,’ Beate whispered.
‘Maybe,’ Bjorn Holm said. ‘Unfortunately, he is still masked.’
‘Maybe.’ It sounded like an echo. Beate stretched out her hand without taking her eyes off the photo. ‘The magnifying glass.’
Holm found it on the table between the bags of chemical reagents and passed it to her.
She squeezed one eye shut as she moved the magnifying glass across the photograph.
Bjorn Holm watched his boss. Of course he had heard the stories about Beate Lonn when she was working on bank robbery cases. About how she had sat for days on end in the ‘House of Pain’ – the hermetically sealed video room – playing the videos of the robbery, frame by frame, while she checked every detail of build, body language, contours of faces behind the masks. In the end she discovered the identity of the bank robber because she had seen him in another recording, from some post office robbery 15 years before, when she had still been pre-pubescent, a recording that had been stored on the hard disk containing a million faces and every bank robbery committed in Norway since video surveillance began. Some people had maintained it was down to Beate’s unusual fusiform gyrus – the part of the brain that recognises faces – and that it must have been a talent she was born with. That was why Bjorn Holm didn’t look at the photo, just at Beate Lonn’s eyes scrutinising the picture in front of her, examining it in minute detail in a way that would be impossible to learn.
That was how he noticed that it was not the face of the man she was studying through the magnifying glass.
‘The knee,’ she said. ‘Can you see it?’
Bjorn went closer.
‘What about it?’ he said.
‘On the left knee. Looks like a plaster.’
‘You mean we should keep an eye open for people with plasters on their left knee?’
‘Very funny, Holm. Before we can find out who it is in the photo we have to find out if he could be the Courier Killer.’
‘And how do we do that?’
‘We visit the only man we know of who has seen the Courier Killer close up. Make a copy of the photo while I fetch the car.’
Sven Sivertsen stared at Harry, thunderstruck. Harry had just explained his theory to him, his impossible theory.
‘I really had no idea,’ Sivertsen whispered. ‘I never saw any of the pictures of the victims in the papers. They mentioned names when they questioned me, but none of them meant a thing.’
‘For the moment it’s simply a theory,’ Harry said. ‘We don’t know it’s the Courier Killer. We need concrete proof.’
