Where Monsters Dwell (34 page)

“No,” Nevins replied.

Singsaker saw no reason to believe that he was telling the truth.

Nevins looked down at the ground and submissively allowed Felicia Stone to lead him down the path. His Italian designer shoes squished through the mud.

Silvia Freud stood waiting for him with a crowbar as Singsaker opened the door and burst into the room. The blow struck him on the shoulder, and he dove to the floor as he felt pain shoot down one side of his body. He lay there waiting for the next blow. Instead she stepped over him and disappeared out the door he had just come in. With a hand on his bruised shoulder he turned to see where she was going. He caught a glimpse of her as she vanished up the road where Felicia Stone and Nevins had been walking just a minute earlier.

He leaped to his feet and tore off after her. The slush sprayed up around his shoes as he ran from the cabin toward the cars. When he reached the road his pants were covered with mud up to his knees. He got there just in time to see Silvia Freud jump into the green Nissan. Fifty yards farther away he saw Felicia Stone leading Nevins to the police car.

Then his phone rang. He grabbed it and looked at the display. It was Lars calling.

“What the hell kind of timing is this!” Singsaker yelled, blocking the call.

At the same moment Freud started her car and spun it around in reverse until the car was pointing toward Stone and Nevins. She stopped and gunned the engine in idle. It looked like she was fumbling to get the car in gear. For a moment he hoped she would kill the engine. Then she floored it. She raced toward Stone, but the American detective was alert. With a firm grip on Nevins’s neck she dragged him with her into the ditch just in time, as Silvia Freud raced past and zoomed up the road. Singsaker ran till he reached Stone. She was crawling out of the ditch along with the deathly pale American conservator.

“Take the car and follow her!” she shouted. “I’ll go with Nevins up to the farm.”

He gave her a thumbs-up and ran to the car. As he got in he saw the green Nissan vanish into a patch of woods in the distance.

*   *   *

“You know what I like best about the
Johannes Book
?” The two loathsome eyes were staring at Vatten.

“It’s the story about the curse,” he went on. “My theory is that Broder Lysholm Knudtzon somehow found out what the
Johannes Book
really was—the confessions of a murderer. Maybe it dawned on him that it was written on the victim’s own skin. I don’t know. The sanctimonious fool wanted to get rid of the book. The tale about the curse was just a pretext. It arose from a strange compulsion that people have to demonize all new ideas. But whether it’s nonsense or not, the curse fits in so well with what I’ve done that I wish I’d thought of it myself. But I’m not a curse. I’m someone who wants to see what he has seen.”

Vatten couldn’t understand what suddenly came over him. He laughed. A desperate and yet liberating laugh. It occurred to him that he’d only suffered this badly a few times before in his life. Sometime during that evening with Gunn Brita. Once in a bed long ago—he and Hedda. Their first attempt at making love. The only condom he’d brought had ripped the second time he tried to put it on. She suggested a blow job. “Do you want me to suck you until you come?” she’d said. His answer was to laugh recklessly. Strangely enough, they ended up together anyway. Then there was Edvard’s birth. And his father’s funeral. He had stood before the altar in Horten Church to make a speech. He’d intended to start with a funny story about the time his father had skinny-dipped at Vollane. He didn’t manage to get through the story, which ended with two old ladies and a Scotch terrier, before he burst out laughing. He was the only one in the church who laughed, emptying his thundering laughter into the silence. Hedda had finally rescued him and pulled him back to his seat. The pastor somehow managed to make his father’s funeral a dignified occasion. And everything was interpreted in the framework of grief, so that Vatten’s laughter was regarded as an expression of deep sorrow. That was true, but not entirely.

Now he was laughing like that again. For the last time. When his laughter subsided, it would all be over.

*   *   *

Chief Inspector Singsaker raced along the narrow, winding roads of
Ø
rland in the direction he thought Silvia Freud had gone, until suddenly Austrått Manor came into view. The Renaissance structure was beautifully situated among green meadows that stretched down toward the fjord, with a private marina where most of the boats had been taken in for the winter. Yet the only thing he noticed was a little green car parked in front of the main gate to the castle. He parked next to it.

The entrance to Austrått Manor was a huge, heavy portal made of dark wood, with a smaller door cut into it. The larger door was surrounded by a slate framework in which coats of arms were carved. When he got out of the car he noticed that the smaller door was ajar. He went over to it, pulled it open all the way, and entered the castle. There, in the middle of the courtyard, stood a distinguished middle-aged man with a well-trimmed beard wearing a suit that he certainly hadn’t bought at the Dressmann’s menswear store. It must have been tailor-made for the man sometime before he acquired that hint of a potbelly that made the suit bulge. Singsaker couldn’t take his eyes off the man’s bright red bow tie.

“That was some wild driving,” said the man, his indignation mixed with a humor that couldn’t quite be quelled.

“I’m from the police,” Singsaker said, patting his breast pocket without taking out his ID.

“Well, I must say,” said the man without entirely losing the gleam in his eye. “Is there a police manhunt under way?”

“Did you see a woman enter the property here?”

“I did,” said the man. “But the castle isn’t open today. I’m the caretaker here. The name’s Gunnar Winsnes. I was careless enough to leave some of the doors unlocked. I just went inside to see to a couple of practical matters.”

Singsaker looked at him and couldn’t make the adjective “practical” jibe with his appearance.

“Which way did she go?” he asked brusquely.

“She went into the main building. I’m afraid I unlocked that door, too.” He pointed up a staircase that led to another one and an entryway with pillars and a red door. “Impertinent woman. I tried to greet her politely.”

“She’s more than just impertinent, I’m afraid,” said Singsaker. “I’ll have to ask you to leave the area.”

Gunnar Winsnes gave him a shocked look.

“And what are you planning to do?”

“I’m going to do what the police do,” he said. “Arrest her.”

“Alone?” asked the caretaker.

“You see anyone else around?” he asked, then nodded toward the exit to show that he wanted the man to leave.

The caretaker slunk toward the main gate.

Damn, why didn’t I bring my service pistol? Singsaker thought, heading for the stairs. But who could have guessed that a brief interview with a farmer would end in a chase of a suspect?

When he reached the top of the stairs he stopped, breathing hard, and looked at the door uncertainly. He didn’t trust Nevins’s claim that Silvia Freud was unarmed, but she’d hit him with a crowbar. Would she have used it if she had something more effective on her? In any case, it showed that she was capable of inflicting injury. He pictured the crowbar striking him in the head, maybe right on his surgical scar, flinging his head back, his worries about the brain tumor losing all meaning, and then tumbling down the stairs he had just climbed.

He fumbled his cell phone from his pocket. Brattberg. I need to call her, he thought. She’d probably order backup sent out from the sheriff’s office in Brekstad within five minutes. Instead he just stood there studying a row of wooden statues that were carved into the castle wall right beneath him. Allegorical figures from a time when people spoke a different language. He had no idea what they were supposed to represent. Suddenly he felt dizzy. Shit, he thought, I don’t need this. Then he turned back toward the door and opened it.

*   *   *

“Do you know what gave you away?” Felicia Stone asked. She was trying not to gloat. She just wanted Nevins to say something, because although they could see the Krangsås farm, it was over half a mile away. And after Singsaker had driven off into the woods, the silence had become overwhelming.

Nevins didn’t answer.

“You said you didn’t know about Scandinavian book collections. Why did you lie about that? It’s always the unnecessary lies that give people away. Or maybe you wanted to get caught. You were the one who showed me the inscription with Knudtzon’s name, which is what led us to Norway. Have you been playing some kind of cat-and-mouse game with the police, Nevins?”

Nevins continued to walk in silence beside her, his hands still cuffed behind him. She had a tight grip on his arm, but she wasn’t afraid he would try to run. He was as much in unfamiliar territory as she was. They walked a long way before he suddenly decided to break his silence.

“There was one thing you said that almost made me put this whole idiotic purchase on ice.”

“Purchase, is that what you call it?”

“Yes, that’s my only involvement. I was at a conference here last spring, actually, it was an exchange program, because the university library in Trondheim had sent a delegate to our conference a few weeks before. It just happened to be that librarian who was killed here in Norway, just like Bond was in Richmond. But I didn’t have much to do with her. The fact of the matter is that I met Silvia Freud on my first visit to Norway, and she offered me this book. I let myself be tempted. I’ve always been an obsessive book collector, and I have plenty of money, so it seemed like a perfect opportunity. But you almost changed my mind.”

“How?”

“I knew in advance that I could never let the book be seen. That was part of the bargain. But there was something oddly convincing about what you told me in Richmond. About collecting being the same as hiding something from the rest of the world. Still, I couldn’t stop myself. Especially not after Bond discovered those palimpsests. I helped him more with interpreting the texts than I let on. Bond probably found out more than I did eventually, but I understood enough. I was sure that the palimpsests had something to do with the
Johannes Book,
and that it had a history that other books I knew about could not compete with. It was almost as though the book were alive, with its own secret life. I wanted to get to know it. Does that sound stupid?”

“Maybe not stupid, but perverse and self-centered.”

“When you decide to commit a crime, you open up a space inside yourself that wasn’t open before. A space not meant for anyone but yourself. Some people like having an internal space in which the rules are different from those in the rest of the world. Maybe I’m one of them. That’s why the thought of keeping the
Johannes Book
to myself was an idea I could live with.”

She was astonished by this sudden honesty. It was difficult not to feel a certain sympathy for him. Most likely he was a better man than his son. But just as much a lawbreaker.

“How odd that you would be the one to catch me,” he said. “A friend of Shaun’s.”

“Shaun and I went to school together,” said Felicia Stone, “but we weren’t friends.” She regretted her words the moment she said them. This was the start of a conversation, and she had no idea where it would end. The response she got from Nevins was astounding.

“There are two types of people,” he said, looking pensive. “Those who like Shaun and those who don’t. It’s been that way ever since he was a kid. At first I didn’t understand it. I thought that some people just didn’t get him. But as time went on, I found out why. There are actually at least two versions of Shaun Nevins. And one of them is not easy to like, not even for a father. And now an accusation has been lodged.”

“Accusation?”

“I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” said Nevins, “but there’s probably not much honor left in this family anyways. Sexual harassment. That’s what the charge is. A legal secretary at Shaun’s office made the most disgusting accusations. A father should always support his son, but I still can’t help thinking that her accusations are probably true. Does that make me a bad father?”

Felicia Stone had experienced this before. After a criminal has been exposed, after the person has admitted his crime, he might suddenly decide to bare his soul completely. And it struck her how similar everyone became when they’d been exposed, as Nevins was now. There was no difference between an educated, sophisticated man of letters and a cold-blooded killer or a pimp.

But it was different this time. All those years she had thought that Shaun Nevins had evaded punishment, and that she was the only one who knew what a devil he was behind that slick mask. It turned out that he hadn’t managed to conceal it very well after all. Shit stinks. Even his own father could smell it.

She looked up toward the Krangsås farm. They were approaching the gate to the courtyard.

“I have no idea what kind of father you’ve been, Nevins. But seeing your son for what he is doesn’t make you a bad father.”

“He’s getting divorced. He’ll get a suspended sentence, but he’ll lose his license to practice law for an indefinite period. I’m not proud of him, although I think I still like him. Strangely enough.”

“Maybe it can be a new start for both of you,” she said flatly. It felt as though a blood clot had loosened somewhere in her midsection. As if fresh blood had suddenly gained access to new regions in her stomach. Perhaps it was relief. The wish to do Nevins harm had abruptly vanished. Now the police in Norway were in charge. She was done with him.

*   *   *

Lady Inger von Austrått of Austrått Manor was engaged in a personal feud with the mighty archbishop of Nidaros, Olav Engelbrektsson, throughout much of the Reformation in Norway, up until the archbishop fled the country in 1537. But he did not go to the Netherlands empty-handed: He took with him a great deal of church property. On his way down Trondheim Fjord he also made a last raid on his archenemy, the iron lady of Austrått. He plundered the castle of valuable treasures. Today the only object from Lady Inger’s era that has been preserved at the castle is the chandelier that hangs in the entry hall of the main building. The chandelier is an exquisite piece of Renaissance craftsmanship, designed to resemble the voluminous sleeves typical of Renaissance attire.