Where Monsters Dwell (35 page)

When Chief Inspector Singsaker entered the main wing of Austrått Manor, the first thing he saw was a pair of sandals. They were gold and looked expensive. Could they be Prada? Silvia Freud was a well-dressed woman. When he looked up, he saw what was hanging above the sandals: trousers and a flowered blouse. Around her neck was a rope. The rope was fastened to the chandelier. Silvia Freud’s face was pale, like a well-made-up Renaissance maiden. She had stopped breathing several minutes before Singsaker came in the door. Normally he could tolerate the sight of a dead body. But there was something about this scene that made him feel sick. Maybe it was all the running. He turned and went outside on the steps. There he stopped and leaned over the elegant wrought-iron railing. The contents of his stomach remained in place. His breathing gradually slowed.

Then he went down to the castle courtyard and exited the building. Winsnes was standing outside smoking. Singsaker had never smoked, but he envied him that cigarette.

“Is the hunt over?” asked the caretaker.

“It’s over. But don’t go back into the main building before the police and an ambulance arrive. A woman hanged herself in there.”

Winsnes gasped. Then he nodded and took another drag on his smoke.

Singsaker called Brattberg and told her what had happened.

“I hear what you’re saying,” she said. “But there are a few things in your explanation that definitely concern me.”

“Such as?”

“First of all: What is this American doing with you out there? And second: What were you thinking when you took off by yourself to follow Silvia Freud? The last time I checked, we weren’t in America or on some TV cop show.”

“Multitasking,” he said. “I brought Felicia along to save time.”

“Felicia. So you’re on a first-name basis now, is that what you’re saying?” Brattberg’s voice was sharper than usual.

“She’s nice,” he said, feeling even more sheepish.

“She can be as nice as she wants. But in this country she’s a civilian. How could you leave Nevins in her custody? The way things look, he’s a key witness—if not a suspect.”

“I understand your reaction,” he said. “But I trust her. She’s a damned good police officer. She’s not going to let Nevins get away. What we need now is some people out here to Austrått Castle and a car at the Krangsås farm so that we can formally arrest Nevins.”

“And do we have any specific reason to arrest him?”

“What about public indecency? We found him with his pants around his knees,” said Singsaker, trying to lighten the mood.

The silence on the other end revealed that he hadn’t succeeded.

“Okay, we won’t arrest him, we’ll just bring him in for questioning, OK?” Singsaker said.

“I’ll make a few calls,” said Brattberg, and he could tell she’d started to calm down. “Call me if you come up with anything else. And by that I mean before you think up something dumb on your own.”

“Okay, boss,” he said.

“Trouble with the boss?” The museum caretaker had come over to him. His familiar tone was off-putting.

“Nothing that won’t pass,” said Singsaker.

“There’s a strange sound coming from the green car over there—the one she came in. Can you hear it?”

“What sound?”

At first he heard nothing but the rustling of the wind in the oak trees that surrounded the castle, along with some traffic noise in the distance. Out on the fjord someone had started up a boat. Then he heard it. A thudding noise. As if someone was banging on the inside of the trunk. He walked slowly toward the car as he tried to locate the sound. It was coming from the trunk. Good Lord, there’s somebody in there! he thought. When he got over to the car he opened the door on the driver’s side and saw that the key was in the ignition. He took it out, then went to open the trunk. The pounding got stronger as he put the key in the lock and turned it. The trunk popped open with a bang. A blond head appeared.

“Siri Holm,” he said, taking the gag from her mouth.

“Odd Singsaker,” she said. “Shouldn’t we be on a first-name basis?” She laughed. She sounded both relieved and a bit shaken. He helped her out of the cramped trunk. Her hands were tied, but not her feet.

“God, it’s good to see you,” she said, after he removed the rope from her hands. She wrapped her arms around his neck. He held her and cautiously stroked her back.

“How did you get here?” he asked.

“I’ve been such an idiot,” she said.

“I think you’ll have to explain in more detail,” he said. “But we’ll do that at the Krangsås farm.” He looked at Winsnes, who’d been watching the whole scene with interest from a distance. “A police car is on the way,” Singsaker called. “Hold the fort. Nobody goes in until they get here.”

“Easy enough. There’s no one here,” Winsnes said, throwing out his arms as he stared out over the wet, dark green, and mostly empty landscape that surrounded the castle.

*   *   *

When they got to the Krangsås farm, they met two policewomen who were about to drive off with Nevins. He was no longer handcuffed and seemed a little more confident.

“He’s agreed to cooperate,” said one of the police officers, a short woman with Persian features. “Trondheim told us to bring him to headquarters for questioning. But I think he’s already told the American detective what you need to know.” She pointed toward the steps of the Krangsås house, where Felicia stood, gazing at them impatiently.

“Keep an eye on him on the ferry,” said Singsaker.

“No ferry,” said the Persian one. “Strict orders from Trondheim. We’re driving the long way around the fjord.”

“So we don’t really trust him after all?”

“Apparently not,” she replied. Then she put a motherly hand over Nevins’s bald spot to get him into the back of the cruiser.

Singsaker and Siri Holm stood there and watched as the car drove out of the courtyard. Felicia Stone came over to them.

“They said he’ll probably be charged with receiving stolen property and accessory to grand larceny,” she said, pointing after the police car.

“Is that all?” he said.

“Most likely,” she said. “That might be enough. I’ve heard that the prisons in this country are more like resorts anyway.”

“You don’t seem very enthusiastic about Nevins.”

“It’s personal.”

There was no reason to press her. She’d handled Nevins by the book.

“This is Siri Holm,” he said, introducing Siri, who had been listening calmly the whole time. Now she shook hands with Felicia and said it was nice to meet her. She spoke English with a melodious and surprisingly correct American accent.

“Let’s go inside,” he said. “I assume you two know more about this whole situation than I do.”

*   *   *

They sat down in the Krangsås living room in front of a new serving of waffles—Felicia Stone, Siri Holm, and Odd Singsaker.

“Don’t people eat any real food out here in the country? I could really use a burger before we get going,” Felicia Stone whispered as Elin Krangsås went out to the kitchen for coffee. Singsaker chuckled, gave Siri Holm an embarrassed look. With a nod, he gave her the OK to start talking.

Siri began her story: “On that Saturday, the day of the murder, I went down to Silvia Freud’s office. Gunn Brita had mentioned that she was working. I went there mostly to say hello. I was new on the job and wanted to get to know everyone as quickly as possible. When I got there, she was working on the copy of the
Johannes Book
. She had the real book out and was working off it. I didn’t consider that unusual at the time. If anyone would have permission to work directly with the artifact, it would be the conservator. But there were some peculiar details. I had come into the office without knocking. I’m sure you’ve been down to the basement yourself, Odd. Lots of doors and no names on them. You go knock on all of them until you get an answer. So bam! I burst in and came across her working in her office. She reacted as though my sudden appearance had pushed her stress level to the max. It was something about the tone of her voice, a little too friendly. I didn’t really think much about it at the time. I just assumed she was the type who makes a little too much effort in social situations. It was only much later that I began to mull it over. I noticed that the
Johannes Book
was in the vault when we discovered the murder a few days later. So the question was, When did Silvia Freud put the book back?”

“It must have been early on Saturday when you saw her working on the book,” said Singsaker. “She could have put it back well before the murder.”

“That’s true. And that’s what I thought at first, too. But I asked Jon Vatten about it when we all gathered in Knudtzon Hall, before you came to get him. He told me that nobody had been inside the book vault after we spoke with each other on that Saturday. He was positive about that, because everyone who enters the vault had to be let in and accompanied by him and Gunn Brita. Besides, he didn’t think that the
Johannes Book
had been loaned out to Silvia. Not for at least a week.”

“How do you know that Vatten wasn’t lying?”

“I didn’t know for sure. I did have a feeling that he was holding something back. But why wouldn’t he tell me if he had helped the conservator return a book to the vault? And everything became much more interesting if he was telling the truth. Because that would mean that either Silvia Freud was sitting in her office copying a copy, or the book I had seen in the book vault when we discovered Gunn Brita was not the original.”

“But who would put a copy in the vault?” he asked.

“Isn’t it obvious? Silvia Freud. The plan was simple. In the book vault she puts a copy that is so good that nobody can tell at first glance that it’s not genuine. If anyone wanted to have the book checked more closely, she would most likely be assigned the task. The plan for the book was that it would stay in the vault and not be touched. She could arrange a theft of the real copy, that is, the one she was working on when I surprised her, which was supposed to be used in the exhibition. After the exhibition the copy could simply be lost, something that would probably not be investigated very thoroughly, since it was just a copy that could be replaced. If somebody long afterward discovered that the original in the book vault had been switched with a book that wasn’t the real thing, no one would know who had switched it, since it would have long since vanished. The police would have no fresh leads to follow; the book would have been sold to some narcissistic book collector with a private safe; and Silvia would have conveniently found another job with a more prestigious book collection on the Continent.”

“That might have worked, but don’t underestimate the police,” said Singsaker.

“I’m not,” said Siri Holm. “But the plan was so good that it could have succeeded. So good that two smart people like Silvia Freud and John Nevins were willing to risk it. No crime is without a certain risk, but the odds were on their side. At least, until the plan was turned upside down by a murder at the worst possible moment.”

“But that would mean that Silvia Freud has nothing to do with the murders. Is that what you think?”

“Yes, don’t you?”

“Yes, I suppose so,” he said.

“And Nevins isn’t the murderer either,” said Felicia Stone, who had been sitting and listening quietly until now. “He’s the narcissistic book collector who was going to buy the book. He’s already confessed to that. He first met Silvia Freud when he was in Trondheim at a book conference several months ago. Then, pretending that he was going to Frankfurt, he traveled back to Europe and took the train, which is far more anonymous than a plane, from Germany to Norway to finalize the deal. While he was here, the whole deal fell apart. First because of this murder, and then because you got mixed up in it.” She looked at Siri.

“You were the one who took the copy out of the book vault, weren’t you?” said Singsaker.

“I did. I sneaked into the vault. It wasn’t that difficult, since I had looked over Jon’s shoulder when he entered his code the first time we went in there. Jon Vatten is a good man but a poor security chief.”

He thought it was fairly cold-blooded of her to have remembered Vatten’s code when, just seconds later, they discovered a flayed corpse inside the vault. But he didn’t say anything. Siri Holm seemed to be a rare kind: one who could be simultaneously rational and emotional—and not be ashamed of it.

She went on: “It wasn’t hard to see that the book was a counterfeit. You could tell from the threads used to bind the book. Silvia had done a good job with almost everything, but she had done a rush job on sewing the binding. The thread was nylon and obviously not old. The plan was to confront her with what I knew. I arranged to meet her at the Egon bar at Prinsen Hotel. When I got there, things didn’t go according to plan.”

Singsaker sat there thinking of how close he’d been to running into Siri Holm at the Prinsen. Maybe he could have prevented the whole mess there and then.

“Nevins was with her,” she went on. “The two of them asked me to go out to the car with them, so we could speak in private. Fool that I was, I agreed. If we hadn’t been sitting in the back seat of the cramped Nissan, they never would have been able to overpower me.”

Singsaker thought back to the black belt on the tae kwon do outfit Siri had at home.

She went on with her story. “But a blow to the back of my head with something heavy was all it took. When I came to, I was in the trunk of the car, bound and gagged. First they drove a little way out of town. I got a glimpse of the surroundings when they opened the trunk in a deserted parking lot, removed the gag, and talked to me. I think we were somewhere near Trolla. They wanted me to put the copy back in the book vault. I refused, telling them that the plan was already blown, and that there was no going back. Apparently they realized I was right. They shoved me back in the trunk and drove out here. They only opened it twice after that, so I could go to the toilet and drink a little water. You can imagine what it was like to be squeezed into a fetal position for over twenty-four hours. When you caught up with them, they were probably planning some kind of escape. I have no idea what they were going to do with me. But I don’t think either of them is a killer.”