Now he wished he had prepared himself better.
Norway was unofficially in a state of emergency.
The news was broadcast only minutes after the actual event took place: yet another attempted abduction of a child. This time the police had a license plate number and a good description to go on. NRK-TV and TV2 cleared their program schedules. What was originally intended to be lots of short, special broadcasts quickly developed into one long one on both channels. At impressively short notice, both production teams managed to call in experts in most areas that might have any relevance to the case. Only a couple of them, a well-known child psychologist and a retired NCIS chief, were shuttled between the studios in Karl Johan 14 and Marienlyst. Otherwise both channels showed considerable creativity, at times too much. TV2 had a fifteen-minute interview with a funeral director. Thin, dressed in dark clothes and with as much emotion as he could muster, he explained the different reactions to grief of parents who lose their children under traumatic circumstances, padding it out with several thinly disguised anonymous examples. The viewers reacted with such disgust that the executive producer had to make a personal apology before the end of the evening.
A witness in Kjelsåsveien had noticed that the abductor’s arm was in a cast.
Riled by the lack of interest shown by the police-they had noted his name and address and said they would contact him in a day or two-he rang TV2’s crimewatch desk. The description he gave was so precise that one of the crime reporters linked it to a recent arrest in Asker and Bærum. The man wasn’t quite all there, he seemed to remember, leafing through his notes. A vigilante group had broken his arm, but the case had died, as he refused to talk to journalists. And in any case, the police were convinced that he had nothing to do with the abductions.
The child killer who was haunting Norway like a nightmare and had already taken three lives, perhaps four, had been arrested earlier! And then been released, without being charged, only a few hours later. Even worse was the fact that the man had gotten away this time, too. A quick-thinking driver with a cell phone had alerted the police immediately, but the murderer had vanished all the same. A scandal of enormous proportions.
The Chief of Police in Oslo refused to make any comment. In a terse press release, the Minister of Justice referred to the Chief of Police. The Chief of Police just sat in his office and said nothing.
TV2 had a scoop that NRK could not hope to repeat. The witness came on television. Although he didn’t get his fifteen minutes of fame, the interview lasted for at least two. And what’s more, he could expect ten thousand kroner in his bank account. As soon as possible, assured the crime reporters, once the camera was turned off.
The worst thing was not the hard-core porn magazines that lay everywhere in piles.
There wasn’t much that Adam Stubo hadn’t seen already. The magazines were printed in four colors on cheap paper. Adam knew that they were largely produced in third-world countries, where children could be bought for a penny and a song and the police turned a blind eye for a fistful of dollars. Nor was it the fact that some of the children staring at him with blank eyes from the obscene pictures were no more than two. Adam Stubo had seen a six-month-old rape victim with his own eyes and had no illusions left. The fact that the occupant had a computer was more surprising.
“I misjudged the man,” he muttered, and pulled on some rubber gloves.
The worst thing was, in fact, the walls.
Everything that had been written about the abductions had been meticulously cut out and pinned up, from the first, moderate reports of Emilie’s disappearance to a two-page essay by Jan Kjærstad in Aftenposten’s latest morning edition.
“Everything,” said Hermansen. “He’s kept everything.”
“And more,” said the youngest officer; he nodded over at the photographs of the children.
They were the same photographs that were pinned up in Adam’s office. He went over to the wall and studied the copies. They were in plastic covers, but he could see immediately that they weren’t cut out of a newspaper.
“Downloaded from the Internet,” said the youngest officer, without being asked.
“Can’t be a complete idiot then,” said Hermansen without looking at Adam.
“I’ve already admitted it,” said Adam gruffly.
The living room was basically a kind of office. An operations center for a one-man army. Adam walked slowly around the room. There was a sort of system to the madness. Even the porn magazines were ordered in a perverse chronology. He noted that the magazines nearest the window contained pictures of children aged around thirteen to fourteen. The further into the room you went, the younger the victims were. He picked up a magazine at random from the sideboard by the kitchen door. He looked at the picture and felt his throat tightening before forcing himself to put it back without ripping it to shreds. One of the officers from Asker and Bærum was talking quietly on a cell phone. When he finished the conversation, he shook his head.
“They haven’t even found the car, let alone the man. And when you look at what we’ve got in here…”
He opened his arms.
“… I don’t particularly feel like going into the bedroom.”
The six policemen stood in silence and looked around. No one said a word. There was a commotion outside the apartment block. They heard cars stopping. Shouts. Heels running on asphalt. Still no one said a word. The policeman who didn’t want to check the bedroom pressed his thumb and index finger to his eyes. He made a face that made the colleague who was standing nearest him pat him uncomfortably on the shoulder. It stank of old semen. It stank of masturbation and dirty clothes. It oozed obscenity and shame and secrecy. Adam looked at Emilie on the wall. She was still just as serious; the coltsfoot falling onto her forehead. She looked like she knew everything.
“It’s not him,” said Adam.
“What?”
The others turned to look at him. The youngest was open-mouthed and his eyes were wet.
“I made a mistake about the man’s mental capacity,” Adam admitted, and tried to clear his throat. “He can obviously use a computer. He manages to contact the people who distribute this filth…”
He stopped and tried to find a more appropriate word, a harsher word that conveyed more about the printed material that lay in piles and stacks all over the place. “… this filth,” he repeated in vain. “He knows what’s going on. And we are nearly one hundred percent certain that he is the one who attempted the abduction on Kjelsåsveien today. His car. The broken arm. The description fits on all points. But it’s not… this is not the man who abducted and killed the other children.”
“And you’ve reached that conclusion all by yourself?”
The expression on Sigmund Berli’s face showed that he no longer regarded Adam Stubo as his partner. He was defecting to the other side. To Bærum Police, who knew that they had solved the case. If only they could find the man who lived in this apartment, amongst all the paper clippings and pornography and dirty clothes. They knew who he was and he would be caught.
“The man has already let himself get caught once. By two amateurs! He nearly got caught again today. Our man, the man we’re looking for, the man who killed Kim and Glenn Hugo and Sarah…”
Adam’s eyes did not leave Emilie’s photograph.
“… and who perhaps is holding Emilie captive somewhere… he wouldn’t let himself get caught. Not like that. He doesn’t try to abduct children on an outing with lots of adults to watch them, in broad daylight in his own car and with a giant cast on his arm. No way. You know that, you know you do. We’re just so bent on catching the bastard that we…”