Katrine had spent enough time in the psychiatric ward in Bergen to know that as a rule even non-criminal deviants had no interest in society’s welfare, and no experience of any company other than their own and their demons, they just wanted to be left in peace. Which did not necessarily imply they wanted to leave others in peace.
She went through the security channels, showed her ID card and the permit she had received by email and was ushered into the reception room.
A prison officer waiting for her stood with legs apart, arms crossed and keys rattling. More swagger and feigned self-assurance because the visitor was police, the Brahmin caste in law and order, who receive special treatment from prison officers, security guards and even parking wardens.
Katrine behaved as she always did in such cases: she was politer and friendlier than her true nature craved.
‘Welcome to the sewer,’ the prison warder said, a phrase Katrine was fairly sure he didn’t use with his standard clientele, but which he had prepared carefully in advance, one that signalled the right mixture of black humour and realistic cynicism towards his job.
But the image was in a sense not inappropriate, Katrine thought, as they walked through the prison corridors. Or perhaps they ought to be called the bowels of the system. The place where the law’s digestive tracts broke down individuals found guilty into a stinking brown mass, which at some point would have to be released. All the doors were closed, the corridors empty.
‘Pervs unit,’ the warder said, unlocking an iron door at the end of the corridor.
‘So they have their own unit?’
‘Yes. If all the sex offenders are in one section there’s less chance of their neighbours doing them in.’
‘Doing them in?’ Katrine said, shamming surprise.
‘Yes, sex offenders are hated as much here as in the rest of society. If not more. And we have killers here with less self-control than you or me. So on a bad day. .’ He drew a key across his throat in a dramatic gesture.
‘They’re killed?’ Katrine exclaimed with horror in her voice, wondering for a moment if she had gone too far. But the warden didn’t appear to notice.
‘Well, maybe not killed. But they pay. There’s a constant stream of pervs with broken arms and legs. Saying they fell down the stairs or slipped in the shower. Can’t blow the whistle, can they?’ He locked the door behind them and breathed in. ‘Can you smell that? It’s sperm on hot radiators. Dries at once. The smell seems to eat into the metal and it’s impossible to get rid of. Reeks like burnt flesh, doesn’t it?’
‘Homunculus,’ Katrine said, inhaling. All she could smell was fresh paint on the walls.
‘Eh?’
‘In the 1600s people believed sperm contained tiny people, homunculi,’ she said. Seeing the officer’s glower, she guessed that had been a blunder, she should have pretended to be shocked.
‘So,’ she hastened to add, ‘Valentin was safely banged up here with others of his ilk?’
The warder shook his head. ‘Someone started a rumour that he’d raped the girls in Maridalen and Tryvann. And it’s different for inmates who’ve molested underage kids. Even a notorious rapist hates a child-fucker.’
Katrine recoiled, and this time it wasn’t put on. It was mainly because of the casual way in which he pronounced the word.
‘So Valentin got a going-over?’
‘You could certainly say that.’
‘And this rumour. Any idea who started it?’
‘Yes,’ the warder said, unlocking the next door. ‘You did.’
‘We did? The police?’
‘A policeman came here purporting to question cons about the two cases. But I was told he leaked more info than he got.’
Katrine nodded. She had heard about it, cases where the police were certain that an inmate was guilty of child abuse, but they couldn’t prove it and so they made sure he got his punishment in other ways. You just had to inform the right prisoner. The one with the most power. Or the least control.
‘And you accepted that?’
The warder shrugged. ‘What can we prison guards do?’ And added in a lower voice: ‘And perhaps in this particular case we weren’t so averse. .’
They passed a recreation room.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Valentin Gjertsen was a sick bastard. Evil through and through. The sort of person you wonder what our Lord put him on this earth for. We had a female officer here he-’
‘Oh, hello, there you are.’
The voice was soft, and Katrine turned automatically to the left. Two men were standing by a dartboard. She met the smiling gaze of the man who had spoken, a thin man probably in his late thirties. The last remaining strands of blond hair were combed back across a red scalp. Skin disease, Katrine thought. Or maybe there was a solarium here since they needed special help.
‘Thought you’d never get here.’ The man slowly pulled the darts from the board while holding her gaze. Took a dart, threw it into the flesh-red centre of the board, bullseye. Grinned as he wriggled the dart up and down, pushing it in deeper. Pulled it out. Made sucking noises with his lips. The other man didn’t laugh as Katrine had expected. Instead he watched his partner with a concerned expression.
The warder caught Katrine gently under the arm to pull her away, but she raised her arm to free herself, her brain whirring at full speed searching for a retort. It rejected the obvious one about darts and organ size.
‘Less Cillit Bang in your hair gel maybe?’
She strolled on, but was aware that if she hadn’t hit bullseye, she had been close. A red tinge spread across the man’s face; then he mounted an even broader smile and made a kind of salute.
‘Did Valentin have anyone he could talk to?’ Katrine asked as the warder opened the cell door.
‘Jonas Johansen.’
‘Is he the one they call Judas?’
‘Yep. Did time for raping a man. Not many of them around.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘He hopped it.’
‘How?’
‘We don’t know.’
‘You don’t know?’
‘Listen, there are a lot of bad people here, but we’re not a high-security unit. In this unit we have people with reduced sentences. There were lots of mitigating circumstances about Judas’s verdict. And Valentin was only in for attempted rape. Serial offenders are kept elsewhere. So we don’t waste resources guarding the ones we’ve got. We have a roll call every morning, and on the odd occasion there’s someone missing, everyone has to go back to their cells so that we can find out who it is. But if the number tallies, things rumble along in the usual groove. So that was how we found out that Johansen was gone, and we reported it to the police. I didn’t think much about it until afterwards when our hands were full with the other case.’
‘You mean. .?’
‘Yes, the murder of Valentin.’
‘So Judas wasn’t here when that happened?’
‘Right.’
‘Who could have killed him, do you think?’
‘I don’t know.’
Katrine nodded. The answer was a bit too pat, a bit too quick.
‘I promise this won’t go any further. I’m asking you who do you think killed Valentin?’
The warder sucked his teeth, scrutinising Katrine carefully. As though checking whether he had missed anything on first inspection.
‘There were lots of people here who hated and feared Valentin. Some might have realised it was him or them — he had a thirst for revenge. The man who killed him definitely had some thirst in him, too. Valentin was. . what shall I say?’ Katrine watched the officer’s Adam’s apple go up and down above his collar. ‘The body was smashed to jelly. I’ve never seen anything like it.’
‘Hit with a blunt instrument perhaps?’
‘I don’t know anything about that, but he was definitely beaten until he was unrecognisable. The face was mincemeat. Had it not been for the terrible tattoo on his chest I don’t know that we would have been able to identify him. I’m not overly sensitive, but I had hellish nightmares about it afterwards.’