Katrine saw the woman in the home-made, drab-coloured dress look at her husband with dark eyes in a blank face, as if she were suffering shock after a grenade explosion.
‘Isn’t that so, May?’
The woman’s mouth opened and closed. Then she nodded slowly.
‘You see, Harry?’ Smith tilted his head and looked at Harry with an expression of sad sympathy. ‘You see how easy it is to blow holes in your theory?’
‘Well,’ Harry said. ‘I respect your wife’s loyalty, but I’m afraid the DNA evidence is indisputable. The analysis from the Forensic Medical Institute not only proves that the organic matter matches your DNA profile, but also that it’s more than two months old, so couldn’t possibly have ended up there on Sunday.’
Katrine started in her chair and looked at Bjørn. He shook his head almost imperceptibly.
‘As a result, Smith, it isn’t a theory that you were in Hell’s cellar sometime last autumn. It is a fact. Just as it’s a fact that you had the Ruger revolver in your possession, and that it was in your office when you shot the unarmed Valentin Gjertsen. Besides, we also have stylometrical analysis.’
Katrine looked at the battered yellow folder Harry had pulled out of the inside pocket of his jacket. ‘A computer program that compares word choices, sentence structure, textual style and punctuation to identify the author. It was stylometry that gave fresh life to the debate about which of his plays Shakespeare actually wrote. The success rate for identifying the correct author is between eighty and ninety per cent. In other words, not high enough for it to count as evidence. But the success rate for ruling out a particular author, such as Shakespeare, is 99.9 per cent. Our IT expert, Tord Gren, used the program to compare the emails that were sent to Valentin with thousands of Lenny Hell’s earlier emails to other people. The conclusion is …’ Harry passed the file to Katrine. ‘… that Lenny Hell didn’t write the instructions which Valentin Gjertsen received by email.’
Smith looked at Harry. His fringe had fallen forward over his sweating brow.
‘We’ll discuss this further in a police interview,’ Harry said. ‘But this is a disputation. And you still have the chance to give the adjudication committee an explanation that will stop them refusing to award your doctorate. Isn’t that right, Aune?’
Ståle Aune cleared his throat. ‘That’s right. Ideally, science is blind to the morality of the age, and this wouldn’t be the first doctorate to have been achieved by morally questionable or even directly illegal methods. What we on the adjudication committee need to know before we can approve the dissertation is whether or not there was anyone actually steering Valentin. If that isn’t the case, I can’t see how this thesis can be accepted by the adjudication committee.’
‘Thank you,’ Harry said. ‘So what do you say, Smith? Would you like to explain this to the adjudication committee here and now, before we arrest you?’
Hallstein Smith looked at Harry. His panting was the only sound that could be heard, as if he were the only person in the auditorium who was still breathing. A lone flashbulb went off.
A livid disputation chairman leaned towards Ståle and whispered in a hiss:
‘Holy Jeremiah, Aune, what’s going on here?’
‘Do you know what a monkey trap is?’ Ståle Aune asked, then settled back in his chair and folded his arms.
Hallstein Smith’s head jerked, as if he’d been given an electric shock. He laughed as he raised his arm and pointed at the ceiling. ‘What have I got to lose, Harry?’
Harry didn’t answer.
‘Yes, Valentin was steered. By me. Of course I wrote those emails. But the most important thing isn’t who was behind them, the scientific point is that Valentin was a genuine vampirist, as my research demonstrates, and nothing you’ve said invalidates my results. And if I had to adjust the circumstances to recreate laboratory conditions, that’s no more than researchers have always done. Is it?’ He looked around the audience. ‘But when it comes down to it, I’m not choosing what he does, he is. And six human lives isn’t an unreasonable price to pay for what this –’ Smith tapped his printed and bound thesis with his forefinger – ‘can save humanity from in future, in terms of murder and suffering. The signs and profiles are all laid out here. Valentin Gjertsen was the one who drank their blood, who killed them, not me. I just made it easier for him. When you just for once have the good fortune to encounter a real vampirist, you have a duty to make the most of it, you can’t let short-sighted moralistic attitudes stop you. You have to look at the bigger picture, consider what’s best for humanity. Just ask Oppenheimer, ask Mao, ask the thousands of lab rats with cancer.’
‘So you killed Lenny Hell and shot Marte Ruud for our sakes?’ Harry said.
‘Yes, yes! Sacrifices on the altar of research!’
‘The way you’re sacrificing yourself and your own humanity? To benefit humanity?’
‘Exactly, yes!’
‘So they didn’t die in order that you, Hallstein Smith, could be vindicated? So that the monkey could sit on the throne, get his name in the history books? Because that’s what’s been driving you all along, isn’t it?’
‘I have shown you what a vampirist is, and what one is capable of! Don’t I deserve to be thanked for that?’
‘Well,’ Harry said, ‘first and foremost, you’ve demonstrated what a humiliated man is capable of.’
Hallstein Smith’s head jerked again. His mouth opened and closed. But nothing more came out.
‘We’ve heard enough.’ The chair stood up. ‘This disputation is at an end. And can I ask any police officers present to arrest—?’
Hallstein Smith moved surprisingly quickly. With two rapid steps he reached the table and snatched up the revolver, then took a long stride towards the audience and aimed the revolver at the forehead of the nearest person.
‘Get up!’ he snarled. ‘And the rest of you remain seated!’
Katrine saw a blonde woman stand up. Smith turned her round so that she was standing in front of him like a shield. It was Ulla Bellman. Her mouth was open and she was looking in mute despair at a man in the front row. Katrine could only see the back of Mikael Bellman’s head and had no idea what his face was expressing, only that he was sitting there as if frozen to the spot. There was a whimpering sound. It came from May Smith. She was leaning sideways slightly in her chair.
‘Let go of her.’
Katrine turned towards the gruff voice. It was Truls Berntsen. He had stood up from his chair in the back row and was walking down the steps.
‘Stop, Berntsen,’ Smith screamed. ‘Or I’ll shoot her and then you!’
But Truls Berntsen didn’t stop. In profile his jaw looked even heavier than usual, but his new muscles were also visible under his thick sweater. He reached the front, turned and walked along the front row, straight towards Smith and Ulla Bellman.
‘One step closer—’
‘Shoot me first, Smith, otherwise you won’t have time.’
‘As you wish.’
Berntsen snorted. ‘You fucking civilian, you wouldn’t d—’
Katrine felt sudden pressure against her ears, as if she were sitting in a plane that was rapidly losing altitude. It took a moment for her to realise that it was the blast from the heavy revolver.