Truls grunted a laugh.
‘Do you think you can find out who the guy at the party was?’ Harry asked.
Øystein shrugged. ‘I can try. There aren’t many Norwegians at the home-delivery end of the business.’
‘Good.’
Harry paused, closed his eyes before opening them again, as though he were keeping to a script and had mentally turned a page.
‘Since we’re going to stick with the hypothesis that the killer knew at least one of the victims, let’s take a look at what might actually support this idea. Susanne Andersen heads right across the city, from the lively west side of the city centre to a place where there’s no evidence to suggest she knows anyone, where as far as anyone is aware she hasn’t been before and where not much happens on a Tuesday night...’
‘Some nights fuck all happens,’ Øystein said. ‘I grew up nearby.’
‘So what was she doing there?’
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Øystein said. ‘She was meeting the guy who did her in.’
‘OK, then we’ll work based on that,’ Harry said.
‘Cool,’ Øystein said. ‘The country’s leading expert agrees with me.’
Harry gave a crooked smile and rubbed the back of his neck. He would soon need the one drink he had left today; he had dispatched the other two on the way from the Forensic Medical Institute when he and Øystein had made a pit stop at Schrøder’s.
‘While I’m at it,’ Øystein said, ‘I was wondering about something. The guy took Susanne for a walk in Østmarka, and that worked for him, yeah? The, like, perfect murder. Isn’t it bloody odd that he takes Bertine to Grefsenkollen? Never change a winning formula — wouldn’t that go for murderers too?’
‘It’s probably true of serial killers,’ Aune said. ‘Unless repeating the approach means increasing the risk of being discovered. And Susanne had already been reported missing around Skullerud, so there were police and search parties in the area.’
‘Yeah, but they went home as soon as it was dark,’ Øystein said. ‘No one could have known another girl would disappear. No, the guy wouldn’t have been taking much of a risk bringing her to Skullerud. And he obviously knew the area well.’
‘I don’t know,’ Aune said. ‘Perhaps it was simply that Bertine agreed to take a walk with him, but she insisted on Grefsenkollen?’
‘But it’s further from where she lives to Grefsenkollen than to Skullerud, and in the reports it says that nobody the police spoke with had any knowledge of Bertine ever being in Grefsenkollen.’
‘Maybe she had heard good things about Grefsenkollen,’ Aune said. ‘It offers views at least. As opposed to Østmarka, where it’s just forest and small hills.’
Øystein nodded thoughtfully. ‘OK. But there is one other thing I don’t get.’
He focused on Aune, since Harry seemed to have dropped out of the conversation and was sitting with his fingers to his forehead, staring at the wall.
‘Bertine could have walked only so far from the car, right? And they’ve been searching for two weeks now, so I don’t understand why the dogs can’t find her. Do you know how good dogs smell? I mean, what a good sense of smell they have? In one of the reports Truls got there’s a tip-off from a farmer in Wenggården in Østmarka. He got in touch with the police a week ago to say that his lame old bulldog was lying in the living room barking like it only does when there’s a carcass nearby. I know Østmarka, and that farm is at least six bloody kilometres away from where they found Susanne Andersen. If a dog can smell a corpse from that far away, why can’t they find Bertine—’
‘It can’t.’
All four men turned in the direction the voice was coming from.
Jibran Sethi lowered his book. ‘If it had been a bloodhound or an Alsatian, then yes. But a bulldog has a very poor sense of smell for a canine. They’re actually at the bottom of the list. That’s what happens when we breed dogs to fight bulls, and not to hunt as nature intended.’ The vet raised his book again. ‘Perverse, but that’s the sort of thing we do.’
‘Thanks, Jibran,’ Aune said.
The vet gave him a brief nod.
‘Maybe he’s buried Bertine,’ Truls said.
‘Or dumped her in one of the lakes up there,’ Øystein added.
Harry sat looking at the vet while the voices of the other three men sounded like they were fading out. Felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.
‘Harry!’
‘What?’
It was Aune. ‘We said: “What do you think?”’
‘I think... do you have the number of the farmer who sent in that tip-off, Øystein?’
‘No. But we have his name, and Wenggården, so it’s no problem to find it.’
‘Gabriel Weng.’
‘Good afternoon, Weng. This is Hansen, Oslo Police. Just a quick question regarding the information you called in with last week. You said your dog was barking, and that you thought there could be a carcass or a corpse nearby?’
‘Yes, sometimes dead animals can lie out here rotting in the woods. But I’d read about the girl who was missing, and Skullerud isn’t so far away, so when the dog started barking and howling in that particular way, I called you. But I never heard anything back.’
‘Apologies, it takes time to follow up on all the leads we have on a case like this.’
‘Yes, yes, you found the girl of course, poor thing.’
‘What I was wondering,’ Harry said, ‘is whether your dog is still making those sorts of noises.’
There was no reply but he could hear the farmer breathing.
‘Weng?’ Harry said.
‘Was it Hansen you said your name was?’
‘That’s right. Hans Hansen. Constable.’
Another pause.
‘Yeah.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yes, he’s still making those sorts of noises.’
‘OK, thank you, Weng.’
Sung-min Larsen stood looking at Kasparov, who had positioned himself at the wall of a building with his hind leg raised. Sung-min already had the plastic bag in hand so passers-by would understand he had no intention of leaving dog waste lying among the expensive apartment buildings in Nobels gate.
He was thinking. Not so much about the brain being removed as about the fact the scalp had been sewn back up. What did it mean that the person who had taken the brain had tried to conceal the fact? Trophy hunters didn’t usually care. And the killer must have realised it would be discovered, so why take the trouble? Was it to clean up after himself? A fastidious killer? It wasn’t as far-fetched as it might sound — the rest of the crime scene had been cleansed of the evidence you usually found. Apart from the saliva on Susanne’s breast. The killer had made a mistake there. Granted there were those on the investigative team who thought the spit had to have come from someone other than the killer, since Susanne’s upper body had been clothed when they found her. But if the killer was neat enough to sew the scalp back on, why not put all the clothes back on the body too?
His mobile rang. Sung-min looked in surprise at the display before he tapped Accept.
‘Harry Hole? It’s been a while.’
‘Yeah, time marches on.’