Roar gave a weary grunt, but Dan-Levi had no intention of stopping yet.
– In another song, ‘The Hell of the New Age’, he describes how he journeys to hell and releases billions of criminals, killers, child abusers and blasphemers and instead fills up the place with priests, lawyers, teachers and psychologists, all those who spread lies about the world we live in. And that is just the lyric we actually hear. Remember, the songs could be filled with hidden messages, sung so fast that we only pick them up subconsciously.
Roar thought this over. – Strong stuff, Dan-Levi, but I doubt whether the Old Testament and a few punk rock lyrics from the 1980s would stand up as evidence in the Oslo district courthouse.
He let Dan-Levi carry on for a while on the subject of biblical motives for murder. It seemed to lower his stress levels a bit. His friend was a good storyteller, and in Roar’s opinion he would have gone a lot further in life as a preacher or a courtroom lawyer than as a journalist.
– Say hello to Sara, he said before he finally ended the call. He felt a quick jolt of surprise afterwards; it was a long time since he had sent a greeting to his teenage love.
The meeting room was full when Roar let himself in some forty minutes late. He had to stand with his back against the wall next to the door. In addition to Viken, the five other main investigators were there, and several people from the forensics department. Even section leader Sigge Helgarsson had decided to attend. Roar consoled himself with the thought that he had hardly ever been late for a meeting before and so could expect to be cut some slack. As his father used to say: ‘Once is nothing, twice is a habit.’
Viken was holding forth on the subject of psychological profiling. Apparently these theories stemmed from a period he had spent working in England, and on several occasions he had given Roar examples of how knowledge of a perpetrator’s psychology could prove decisive in solving complex murder cases. Not many others in the department shared his interest, Roar had realised. Viken was in frequent touch with some retired psychologist in Manchester, supposedly a leading expert in the field, though neither his bosses nor his colleagues seemed particularly impressed by the fact.
– The psychological profile of Mailin Bjerke’s killer is strikingly similar to that in the Ylva Richter case, the detective chief inspector was saying.
He stood up, picked up a felt marker pen and made some notes on the board. – It appears that Ylva Richter was killed by someone who already knew her. Someone of about her own age, with a roughly similar background. He probably didn’t plan the murder but approached her in the first instance for some other reason, perhaps hoping for sexual contact. Things got out of control, possibly because he was rejected.
– What about the eyes?
– Punishment. Sadistic aggression. There may also be a symbolic element involved.
He glanced around the room, ignoring the new arrival. – The perpetrator will have undergone certain changes after the murder. If he was local, then he probably moved away, at least for a while. New surroundings, job, school. As for his background, it is not unlikely that he has himself been the victim of serious violence or sexual assault.
– And therein lies the motive? asked Sigge Helgarsson.
The section leader was just a few years older than Roar, a pale, thin Icelander who looked as if he suffered from chronic lack of sleep. According to Viken, he was having trouble combining the duties of leadership with family life.
The detective chief inspector nodded slowly a couple of times as though he had been waiting for the question and was glad someone had finally asked it. – The motive behind a murder such as this is always complex. Let’s recapitulate: Mailin Bjerke hides away a printout concerning the Ylva Richter case. Immediately afterwards, she is murdered. Jim Harris might have seen something that had to do with the abduction or the murder. Berger goes public in VG and implies that he knows what happened to Mailin. Before he can reveal what this is, he too has gone to the great beyond. Naturally we can’t rule out the possibility that these events are unconnected, but there is a much greater possibility that what we’re dealing with here is a person who has killed four times, possibly even more than that.
Roar struggled to control an impulse to interrupt. He had long wanted to be in a position like this, be the one who came up with the decisive bit of information, the kind of thing that could turn a case around and lead to a breakthrough. I’ve spoken to Jennifer Plåterud… He could imagine Viken’s reaction when he gave the source of his information, and for once it was enough to quell his ambition to be the smartest kid in the class. But he couldn’t resist the temptation to at least say something.
– We do know that Mailin Bjerke had certain information about Berger, that she’d talked about revealing this live on Taboo.
Everyone turned to look at him. Viken said: – Before you arrived, we managed to discuss the possibility that Berger took his own life, or that he took an accidental overdose. We’ve also looked at the possibility that he felt threatened by something Mailin Bjerke knew about him. In other words, that a man who made a living out of having a bad reputation might suddenly get cold feet because one more corpse was added to the pile. But if you have something interesting to add to the point, Horvath, then we’re dying to hear it.
If not, then please shut up, Roar concluded in his thoughts, regretting profoundly that he hadn’t put a sock in it. He’d had less than four hours’ sleep and knew that his critical faculties were suffering. But with the eyes of the whole gathering on him he decided to go ahead anyway and say something.
– Elijah Frelsøi, aka Berger, was named after the prophet Elijah, he began, and realised immediately that he had started down a ski jump that was way too steep. – The guy was completely obsessed by prophesies… and he apparently believed we should worship false gods, like Baalzebub for example, also known as the lord of the flies.
Roar felt like a ski-jumper who had made his effort too early and got caught in a crosswind and what’s more had forgotten to fasten his boots on. Attempting to land feet first, he reeled off something about the prophet Elijah killing the four hundred false prophets, and how these four hundred, in Berger’s version of the story, came back and tore out the prophet’s eyes. He also made a quick reference to the gospel of Matthew, or was it Mark: if thy eye offend thee, tear it out. Dan-Levi’s exegesis might possibly have had a speck of interest in it, but in Roar’s version that speck was impossible to find. He stood there knowing where the ring found in Berger’s car came from, about the DNA match and Berger’s possible attempt to tell the dead woman’s sister that he knew what had happened. Very shortly the whole gathering would know this too, but not from him. He held three aces, or at least two aces and a jack, and all he could show was a two of clubs, and no one, least of all himself, had any idea what they could do with it.
– Thank you, Horvath, Viken said, interrupting. – All that’s missing here is that the descendants of Jesus Christ turn up in Oslo pursued by a six-foot-six albino contract killer. As it happens, not unlike Berger.
The laughter that ensued was the best thing Roar could have hoped for. The kind of laughter that dissolved the tension when things got a bit too fraught in a difficult case. And Viken seemed more than happy to have had just such an opportunity handed to him on a platter. Even Flatland’s stony face cracked up. A couple of minutes later, when the meeting ended, the bony, angular technician gave Roar a nudge in the ribs on the way out.