Where Monsters Dwell (31 page)

He looked around again. It would take too much time to sift through all this junk for clues, if there were any. As he stood there thinking, his cell phone rang. Vlado Taneski again, the reporter. With a mixture of irritation, professional pride, and uncertainty regarding how long he’d be able to hold out in the siege against the warriors of free speech, he pressed the
END
button. Then his cell rang again. It was Brattberg. This time he took the call.

“Where are you?” she wanted to know.

“I’m outside Siri Holm’s apartment,” he lied, and gave her a brief report on his visits to Kittelsen and Jens Dahle.

“That is an interesting development,” Brattberg said. “But what are you doing at Siri Holm’s place? You know we’re still looking for Vatten, right?”

He paused to think. Then he told her about the conservator, Silvia Freud.

“That doesn’t sound like a very strong lead. She had an appointment with somebody at the Prinsen Hotel. So what?”

“I suppose it’s kind of a long shot,” he had to admit.

“A very long shot. But there’s one thing that makes me not want to discount it entirely. Grongstad just gave me a printout of everyone who used a card key at the library that Saturday. It was Gunn Brita Dahle and Vatten, and also a student who was manning the counter until the library closed, and who did not have access to the office wing. But also this conservator, Silvia Freud. She left the office long before the estimated time of the murder. We also know that Siri Holm was there. But she was probably let in and out with Gunn Brita Dahle’s card key. Most likely she also left the scene before the murder. If there were any other people inside, then they must have used a key. For someone who doesn’t want to leave evidence behind, that’s actually a possibility. Several system keys are in circulation, and I don’t think that Hornemann has a complete list of who uses them.”

“But this does connect Silvia Freud more closely to the murder than we thought.”

“As I said: Both she and Siri Holm left the library early, while the video surveillance system was still on. We have footage from the book vault. I don’t know how you’re going to link either of them to what happened.”

“Me neither. But I’ve got a hunch.”

“Now listen to me, Singsaker. I have great respect for your hunches. I know they’ve been helpful before. But you’ve been through a lot, and this has been a brutal way to start back on the job. I want you to go home and lie down for a few hours. This evening you can drive out to Værnes and pick up our friend from the States. That’s the only assignment you have for tonight. The rest of us will keep looking for Vatten. He’s the one at the center of it all. If this Siri Holm is missing, and if she has something to do with the case, that still doesn’t rule out Vatten. Grongstad’s people, by the way, also found an empty bottle of Spanish red wine in a trash can outside the library, and guess what?”

“Fingerprints?”

“Not just anybody’s.”

“Vatten?”

“And Gunn Brita Dahle.”

“But what about the semen samples. Do we know any more about them?”

“Singsaker, it’s September. It’s a little early to start waiting for the fat guy with the big white beard and red suit. You know the way they work at Forensics in Oslo,” Brattberg said.

“Kittelsen told me that the semen apparently landed where it did long before the murder occurred,” he said.

“I know. I’ve got the report right here. But now that we found the wine bottle, we know that Vatten lied to us.”

“Well, it’s not illegal to drink wine. And we don’t know when the bottle was tossed in the trash can. But of course you’re right, everything does point to Vatten,” he said, wondering why he instinctively came to Vatten’s defense.

“So let us handle things now. I want you to rest up for tomorrow. We’ll send a car to your apartment this afternoon to pick up the knife point. We need to take a look at it as soon as possible,” she concluded.

After Brattberg hung up, he thought going home and taking a nap wasn’t such a bad idea. Instead, he went into Siri’s kitchen. To his surprise he discovered that one of the cupboards was used as a well-stocked liquor cabinet. He perused the bottles. Most of them were unopened liter bottles, apparently bought in the tax-free shop or abroad, or maybe received as gifts. At the back of the cupboard stood a bottle of aquavit. Not Rød Aalborg from Denmark, of course, but domestic Linje. The bottle had been opened and was half full. He pulled out the cork and put the bottle to his lips. The first swallow hit the spot. The next four failed to have quite the same effect. Brattberg was right, he thought, as he replaced the bottle in the cupboard. I could use a rest.

With a leisurely gait he crossed the living room floor, glancing at the sofa where they had made love so passionately. Then he looked at the dog, who was the only one who knew about it. In the bedroom he saw that the only thing on her bed was the tae kwon do outfit. He lay down, breathing in the scent of her. She smelled like eggnog, raspberries, and a hint of mature cheese. Then he fell asleep and slept like an overworked cop who’d had brain surgery, with just the right amount of aquavit in his blood.

*   *   *

The female passport officer gave her a big smile.

“How are you?”

“I’m fine,” Felicia Stone lied. It was more than twenty hours since she’d left Richmond via Atlanta, and ever since changing planes she’d been sitting in the same damned seat in front of the emergency exit. For safety reasons the seat could barely be reclined, and her lumbar region had almost collapsed before they reached London. Nothing had improved on the connecting flight to Oslo.

“How long is the flight to Trondheim?” she asked impatiently, as the passport officer tried to get the scanner to read the code in her passport. Couldn’t she just look at the picture? Felicia thought. It’s not that hard to see that it’s me, is it? Finally the computer beeped, and the officer got the information she needed on her monitor.

“The flight is only forty-five minutes,” she said. “But I hear there’s a good deal of turbulence because of the wind and the unusually warm weather in the Trondheim region.”

Felicia groaned.

“I thought I’d at least escaped the heat,” she said, taking her passport and heading off to search for the domestic terminal.

*   *   *

At eight o’clock, the phone rang. Singsaker had been in a dark corner of dreamland for five hours. At one point he had found himself lying on a dissection table in an anatomical theater. He had been unable to move, as if he were anesthetized, but he was still conscious. It was Dr. Kittelsen who was in charge of the dissection. He slowly flayed him. Then he tried to sell the skin to the highest bidder. The dream ended when Singsaker bought the skin himself and wrapped it around his shoulders like a cape. When he woke up he was far from rested.

“Singsaker,” he coughed into the phone he’d fished out of his pocket without getting up from the bed.

The officer introduced himself, saying a name he didn’t catch.

“We’re outside your place and need to pick up a piece of evidence. It’s going to the crime lab.”

Singsaker sat up slowly and looked around. Outside it was getting dark. Shadows filled the room, but he quickly saw that he was not at home.

“I’m out shopping right now. Tell them I’ll bring the object in myself a little later,” he replied, and ended the call. He felt sick. Nausea was not good. He hated nausea almost as much as sweating. He gingerly moved his feet off the bed and set them down on a throw rug. He sat there swaying on the edge of the bed. Finally he fixed his eyes on the nightstand. He saw a stack of mysteries. On top of it was a wireless phone, and next to it a yellow note was stuck to the spine of the book on top. It took a few seconds for his eyes to focus on what was written neatly on the note. And it took a little longer for his brain to understand what the words actually meant.

“Egon at the Prinsen Hotel. 10 o’clock. Bring the book,” it said.

He grabbed the note and stood up. The deadbolt couldn’t be opened from the inside without a key, so he took the ladder back down the way he’d come. From the tenth rung he hopped down onto the lawn. Now there were two kids sitting on the trampoline, a boy and a girl. They were staring at him as if he’d fallen off the roof. He waved to them and calmly went around the corner of the building.

*   *   *

Odd Singsaker called Hornemann at home.

“I need Silvia Freud’s phone number,” he said.

“I can send her business card to your cell,” Hornemann replied politely.

“Do you know what time she left work today?” he asked.

“No, but it must have been early. I didn’t see her this afternoon.”

“I have one more question,” Singsaker said before he hung up. “The copy that Freud made of the
Johannes Book
. It’s very good, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is.”

“How can you tell it’s not the real thing?”

“It’s easy if you examine it properly with a loupe, fluorescent light, things like that, but even then you’d need to know a lot about it.”

“But if you just looked at the book with the naked eye?”

“You’d have to be very sharp to be able to see any difference from the original.”

“How many people at the library would notice that difference without a closer examination?”

“Not many. Probably nobody but Silvia herself, I should think.”

“And if someone were to examine a book to see whether it was genuine, who would do that?”

“That would also be Silvia.”

“Are the books in the book vault ever loaned out?”

“Some of them are occasionally loaned to researchers. But they are monitored closely.”

“I see. What about the
Johannes Book
?”

“It has been sent for inspection to a select few historians. Otherwise the plan was for future borrowers to read Silvia’s copy. The genuine book would be kept in the book vault, untouched, indefinitely. It’s simply too valuable.”

“So it would be almost as if it didn’t exist at all?”

“In a way. But the book could be preserved much longer that way.”

Singsaker thanked Hornemann for the information and ended the call.

Immediately after that he received the business card on his phone and called Silvia Freud. It sounded like she used the same cell phone company as Siri Holm: “You have reached the voice mailbox of…” He looked at the digital business card Hornemann had sent him. It also listed a home address. Silvia Freud lived in Solsiden. Conveniently on the way to police headquarters.

Silvia Freud’s apartment building was across the bridge from the shopping district. When he saw the location of her doorbell, he figured that she must live on the second floor, probably squeezed in between two buildings and without the top floor’s expensive view of the warehouses on Brattøra, with a glimpse of Munkholmen out in the fjord.

After ringing five times and waiting thirty seconds between them, he realized that she either wasn’t home or wasn’t going to open the door. He ambled back toward the dock and sat down on a bench facing a row of bars and restaurants. Even though the sun had set, it was still warm. The bars were full of people, and the reflections of the lights and street lamps danced on the puddles that covered the old wharf.

He looked at the photo he had taken that morning. The time stamp on it said 9:53
A.M.
Siri Holm must have arrived at Egon’s just after he left. And he had no doubt that she’d gone to meet Silvia Freud and the unknown man. But why?

There was one more big question, of course: Did this have anything to do with the murder of Gunn Brita Dahle?

*   *   *

From Solsiden he walked the short distance across to the police station and stuck his nose in his office but saw no one he absolutely had to talk to. Then he checked out a cruiser. He was supposed to be at Værnes at eleven.

When Brattberg called him from Byåsen at ten thirty, he was able to tell her with a certain amount of satisfaction that he’d already passed the electronic checkpoint at Ranheim. She asked him what he’d done with the piece of the knife blade, and he told her it was lying on the desk in his office.

“Great. I’ll send Grongstad up to get it right away,” she said.

“Jeez, is he working at this time of day?”

“You know Grongstad,” she said with a laugh. “Fresh evidence has almost the same effect on him as coca leaves on an Inca messenger.”

“Or an Energizer battery on a toy rabbit,” he said, laughing too. He instantly realized that this was “fatigue humor,” the kind of jokes people laughed at only when they were overworked or had gone to an after party they should have skipped.

PART IV

The Mask of Sanity

Nature is an infinite sphere in which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.

—
P
ASCAL, 1670

27

The last straw was
the final leg of her flight to Trondheim, when Felicia Stone had to sit beside a mother with a baby obviously in need of a diaper change. The turbulence made it difficult to leave one’s seat for almost the entire flight. During the approach she tried to look out the window and see the city of Trondheim, but she saw nothing but dark mountains in the night. Hardly a single light or any other sign of human habitation. She had seen a landscape like this before, during the year she’d lived in Alaska.

Now she stood in the arrival hall of a small airport with no air-conditioning, even though the temperature at eleven o’clock at night was not much cooler than back home in Richmond.

She didn’t have a description of the police officer who was supposed to meet her, but she picked him out immediately. Was it the fatigued face, the sweat rings under the sleeves of his shirt, or the way he clung to his cell phone with his right hand, like a gunslinger just before a shoot-out?

Singsaker spotted her just as quickly, even though the deep but odd female voice he’d heard on the phone didn’t really fit with her slight figure. Felicia Stone was a woman in her thirties with dark, shoulder-length hair and a pale complexion. She wore no makeup, which instantly struck him as a bit un-American. Her eyes were big and brown. He took an immediate liking to her.