Bjorn Holm reported back on the forensic investigations at Kadok. No semen was found, nor any other physical evidence of the perpetrator. The room he had used was indeed completely burned out, and the computer had been reduced to a lump of metal, leaving no chance of recovering any data.
‘He’s probably been online using those unsecured networks in the area. Nydalen’s full of them.’
‘He must have left some electronic trails,’?rdal said, but it sounded more like a refrain he had heard than something he could expatiate on beyond ‘must have’ speculation.
‘Of course, we could apply to access some of the hundreds of networks up there and search for whatever it is we don’t know,’ Holm said. ‘But I have no idea how many weeks it could take. Or whether we would find anything.’
‘Leave it to me,’ Harry said. He had already got up and was on his way to the door while keying in a number. ‘I know someone.’
He left the door ajar, and while he was waiting for an answer he heard one of the detectives say that no one they had spoken to had seen anyone come or go at Kadok, but that was not so surprising since it was hidden behind trees and bushes and, anyway, it was so dark now, in the winter months.
Harry got an answer. ‘Katrine Bratt’s secretary.’
‘Hello?’
‘Froken Bratt is at lunch right now.’
‘Sorry, Katrine, but eating will have to wait. Listen…’
Katrine listened as Harry explained what he wanted.
‘Prince Charming had pictures on the wall that had probably been printed off Internet news sites. With the search engine you could get onto the networks in the area, check the server logs and find out who has been on the news pages which covered the murders. Loads of people must have been-’
‘Not as much as he was,’ Katrine said. ‘I’ll just ask for a list sorted according the number of downloads.’
‘Mm. You’ve learned this quickly.’
‘It’s in the name. Katrine Bratt. Bratt, steep. Steep learning curve. Get it?’
Harry went back to the others.
They were playing the message that Harry had received from Leike’s mobile phone. It had been sent to NTNU, the technical university in Trondheim, for voice analysis. They had achieved useful results with sound recordings of bank robberies, in fact better than with CCTV, as the voice – even if you try to distort it – is very difficult to disguise. But Bjorn Holm had been told that a bad recording of an indeterminate sound, coughing or laughter, was worthless and could not be used to make a voice profile.
‘Damn,’ said Bellman, banging the table with his hand. ‘With a voice profile, a foothold, we could have started eliminating possible suspects from the case.’
‘Which possible suspects?’ mumbled?rdal.
‘The base station signal tells us that whoever used Leike’s phone was near the centre of Ustaoset when he rang,’ Holm said. ‘The signal faded straight afterwards – the operators’ network only has coverage around the centre of Ustaoset. But the fact that the signal faded strengthens the theory that it was Prince Charming who had the phone.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Even when the phone’s not being used the base station will pick up signals every other hour. The fact that it didn’t receive any signals shows that the phone, before or after the call, was in the deserted mountain region around Ustaoset. Where perhaps it was carried during the avalanche and torture and so on.’
No reaction. Harry knew that the euphoria from earlier had evaporated. He went to his chair.
‘There’s one possible way we could get a foothold as Bellman suggested,’ he said softly, knowing that he no longer had to work to gain attention. ‘Cast your minds back to Leike’s house and the break-in. Let’s assume our killer broke into Leike’s place to ring Elias Skog from there. And let’s assume that our white-clad crime scene officers were doing such a thorough job, as it appeared when I arrived and inadvertently… bumped into Holm…’ Bjorn Holm tilted his head and sent Harry a spare-methe-jokes look. ‘… Shouldn’t we already have fingerprints from Holmenveien that might well be… Prince Charming’s?’
The sun lit up the room again. The others exchanged glances. Ashamed almost. So simple. So obvious. And none of them had thought of it…
‘It’s been a long meeting with lots of new information,’ Bellman said. ‘Our brains are clearly beginning to get a bit sluggish. But what do you think about this, Holm?’
Bjorn Holm slapped his forehead. ‘Course we’ve got all the fingerprints. We did the investigation thinking Leike was the killer and his house a possible crime scene. We were hoping to find fingerprints that would match some of the victims’.’
‘Have you got many that were not identified?’ Bellman asked.
‘That’s the point,’ said Bjorn Holm, smiling. ‘Leike had two Polish women who did the cleaning once a week. They’d been there six days before and done a thorough job. So we only found prints for Leike himself, Lene Galtung, the two Polish women and an unknown person whose prints definitely did not match those of the victims. We stopped looking for matches after Leike came up with his alibi and was released. But I don’t remember off the top of my head where we found the unknown prints.’
‘But I do,’ Beate Lonn said. ‘I was given the report with sketches and photographs. The prints from X1’s left hand were found on top of the pompous and very ugly desk. Like so.’ She stood up and leaned on her left hand. ‘If I’m not much mistaken, it’s where the landline is. Like so.’ She used her right hand to make the international sign for a telephone, thumb to her ear and little finger to her mouth.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Bellman said with a broad smile and a sweeping arm gesture, ‘I’ll be damned if we don’t have a genuine lead. Carry on searching for a match to X1, Holm. But promise me it isn’t the husband of one of the Polish women who joined them to make a few free calls home, alright?’
On the way out, the Pelican sidled up to Harry. She tossed one of her new dreads. ‘You might be better than I thought, Harry. But when you advance your theories, it wouldn’t hurt to intersperse the occasional “I think” here and there.’ She smiled and nudged him in the hip.
Harry appreciated the smile; the nudge in the hip on the other hand… His phone vibrated in his pocket. He took it out. Not Rikshospital.
‘He calls himself Nashville,’ said Katrine Bratt.
‘Like the American town?’
‘Yep. He’s been on the websites of all the big newspapers, read the whole caboodle about the murders. The bad news is that’s all I’ve got for you. Nashville’s only been active on the Net for a couple of months, you see, and he’s searched exclusively for things related to the murders. It almost seems as if Nashville has been waiting to be investigated.’
‘Sounds like our man, alright,’ Harry said.
‘Well,’ Katrine said, ‘you’ll have to search for men with cowboy hats.’
‘What?’
‘Nashville. Mecca of country music and all that.’
Pause.
‘Hello? Harry?’
‘I’m here. Right. Thanks, Katrine.’
‘Kisses?’
‘All over.’
‘No, thank you.’
They rang off.
Harry had been allocated an office with a view of Bryn and was observing some of the more unlovely details of the area when there was a knock at the door.
Beate Lonn was standing in the doorway.
‘Hm, how does it feel to be in bed with the enemy?’
Harry shrugged. ‘The enemy’s name is Prince Charming.’
‘Good. Just wanted to say we’ve run the fingerprints on the desk against the database and he’s not on it.’
‘I didn’t expect him to be.’
