He looked up. ‘Thank you to Detective Anders Wyller for letting me borrow these objects so that I could illustrate my point. Because this is more than three “hows”. It is also a “why”. But how is it a “why”?’
Scattered, knowing laughter.
‘Because all the tools are old. Unnecessarily old, one might say. The vampirist has gone to the trouble of obtaining copies of artefacts from specific time periods. And that underlines what I say in my dissertation about the importance of ritual, and the fact that drinking blood can be traced back to a time when there were gods who needed to be worshipped and placated, and the currency for that was blood.’
He pointed at the revolver. ‘This marks a link to America, two hundred years ago, when there were Native American tribes that drank their enemies’ blood in the belief that they would absorb their power.’ He pointed at the handcuffs. ‘This is a link to the Middle Ages, when witches and sorcerers had to be caught, exorcised and ritually burned.’ He pointed at the teeth. ‘And these are a link to the ancient world, when sacrifices and human bloodletting were a common way of appeasing the gods. Just as I with my answers today …’ He gestured towards the chair and two opponents. ‘… hope to appease these gods.’
The laughter was more relaxed this time.
‘Thank you.’
The applause was, as far as Hallstein Smith could judge, thunderous.
Ståle Aune stood up, adjusted his spotted bow tie, stuck his stomach out and marched up to the podium.
‘Dear candidate, you have based your doctoral dissertation on case studies, and what I am wondering is how you were able to draw the conclusion you did given that your main example – Valentin Gjertsen – didn’t support your conclusions. That is, until Lenny Hell’s role was uncovered.’
Hallstein Smith cleared his throat. ‘Within psychology, there is more scope for interpretation than in most other sciences, and naturally it was tempting to interpret Valentin Gjertsen’s behaviour within the frame of the typical vampirist I had already described. But, as a researcher, I have to be honest. Until a few days ago, Valentin Gjertsen didn’t entirely fit my theory. And even if it is the case that the map and the terrain are never identical in psychology, I have to admit that that was frustrating. It is hard to take any pleasure from the tragedy of Lenny Hell. But if nothing else, his case reinforces the theory of this dissertation, and therefore provides an even clearer illustration and more precise understanding of the vampirist. Hopefully this can help prevent future tragedies by enabling the vampirist to be caught earlier.’ Hallstein cleared his throat. ‘I must thank the adjudication committee, who had already devoted so much time to studying my original dissertation, for permitting me to incorporate the changes made possible by the discovery of Hell’s role in the case, and which therefore made everything fall into place …’
When the chair discreetly signalled to the first opponent that his time was up, Hallstein felt that only five minutes had passed, not forty-five. It had gone like a dream!
And when the chair went up to the podium to say that there would now be an interval in which questions could be submitted ex auditorio, Hallstein could hardly wait to show them this fantastic piece of work which, in all its grimness, was still about the greatest and most beautiful thing of alclass="underline" the human mind.
Hallstein used the break to mingle in the vestibule, to talk to people who weren’t invited to the dinner. He saw Harry Hole standing with a dark-haired woman, and made his way over to them.
‘Harry!’ he said, shaking the policeman’s hand, which was as hard and cold as marble. ‘This must be Rakel.’
‘It is,’ Harry said.
Hallstein shook her hand as he saw Harry look at his watch, then over at the door.
‘Are we expecting someone?’
‘Yes,’ Harry said. ‘And here he is at last.’
Hallstein saw two people coming through the door at the other end of the room. A tall, dark young man, and a man in his fifties with fair hair and thin, rectangular, frameless glasses. It struck him that the young man looked like Rakel, but there was also something familiar about the other man.
‘Where have I seen that man in the glasses?’ Hallstein wondered.
‘I don’t know. He’s a haematologist, John D. Steffens.’
‘And what’s he doing here?’
Hallstein saw Harry take a deep breath. ‘He’s here to put an end to this story. He just doesn’t know it yet.’
At that moment the chair rang a bell and announced in a booming voice that it was time to go back into the auditorium.
John D. Steffens was making his way between two rows of seats with Oleg Fauke behind him. Steffens glanced around the room, trying to locate Harry Hole. And felt his heart stop when he caught sight of the fair-haired young man in the back row. At the same moment Anders caught sight of him, and Steffens saw the fear in the young man’s face. Steffens turned to Oleg to say he had forgotten a meeting and had to leave.
‘I know,’ Oleg said, and showed no sign of moving out of the way. Steffens noted that the boy was almost as tall as his pseudo-father, Hole. ‘But we’re going to let this run its course now, Steffens.’
The boy gently put his hand on Steffens’s shoulder, but it still felt to the senior consultant that he was being pushed onto the chair behind him. Steffens sat and felt his pulse slow down. Dignity. Yes, dignity. Oleg Fauke knew. Which meant that Harry knew. And hadn’t given him any chance to escape. And it was obvious from Anders’s reaction that he hadn’t known about this either. They had been fooled. Fooled into being here together. What now?
Katrine Bratt sat down between Harry and Bjørn just as the chair began to speak up at the podium.
‘The candidate has received a question ex auditorio. Harry Hole, please go ahead.’
Katrine looked at Harry in surprise as he stood up. ‘Thank you.’
She could see the looks of surprise on other people’s faces too, some of them with a smile on their lips, as if they were expecting a joke. Even Hallstein Smith seemed amused as he took over at the podium.
‘Congratulations,’ Harry said. ‘You’re very close to achieving your goal, and I must also thank you for your contribution to solving the vampirist case.’
‘I should be thanking you,’ Smith said with a small bow.
‘Yes, maybe,’ Harry said. ‘Because of course we found the person who was pulling the strings and directing Valentin. And, as Aune pointed out, your entire dissertation is based upon that. So you were lucky there.’
‘I was.’
‘But there are a couple of other things I think we’d all like answers to.’
‘I’ll do my best, Harry.’
‘I remember when I saw the recording of Valentin entering your barn. He knew exactly where he was going, but he didn’t know about the scales inside the door. He marched in, unconcerned, convinced he had firm ground under his feet. And he almost lost his balance. Why does that happen?’
‘We take some things for granted,’ Smith said. ‘In psychology we call it rationalising, which basically means that we simplify things. Without rationalisation, the world would be unmanageable, our brains would become overloaded by all the uncertainties we have to deal with.’
‘That would also explain why we go down a flight of cellar steps without concern, without thinking that we might hit our heads on a water pipe.’
‘Exactly.’
‘But after we’ve done it once, we remember – or at least most of us do – the next time. That’s why Katrine Bratt takes care when she walks across those scales in your barn on only her second visit. So it’s no mystery that we found blood and skin on that water pipe in Hell’s cellar belonging to you and me, but not from Lenny Hell. He must have learned to duck as long ago as … well, when he was a child. Otherwise we would have found Hell’s DNA, because DNA can often be traced years after it ends up on something like that water pipe.’