Medusa (17 page)

There wasn’t much the chief could tell the press about the investigation, which made the packaging all the more important. They’d been good from the very beginning and so far no newspaper had commented that for such a dramatic case they seemed to have very little to go on. Was that right? They had backing all the way up the system. Top priority when it came to resources; Finckenhagen could pick and choose as she pleased. So far anyway. They had already received so many tips they had someone doing a rough sorting. And Jennifer Plåterud, the best pathologist Viken had worked with, was calling him daily, hardly able to hide her excitement at all the finds she was making on Cecilie Davidsen. She had been more deeply scratched than the first victim, not just on the back but also on her upper body and face. The same marks as of a hypodermic syringe appeared on her arms and legs. And there were no signs of sexual assault on her either.

The telephone rang. It was headquarters. A colleague from somewhere up in Hedmark wanted to get in touch with Viken. He took a note of the number and made the call. The man who answered introduced himself as Kjell Roar Storaker, sheriff in Åsnes county. Yes, Viken knew where that was, very close to the Swedish border.

– Sorry for ringing so late, it’s probably not that important.

– Don’t worry about it, Viken reassured him, without shifting his gaze from the TV screen.

– It’s about these murders … this bear business.

Viken didn’t think it was a very good idea to refer to it as the bear business, but he couldn’t come up with anything better himself.

– We’re getting so many strange calls, you know what people are like.

Viken knew only too well. They’d set up a dedicated phone line for the case. As a joke, he’d suggested they hire a psychiatrist too, since so many of the calls came from people who were clearly in need of that kind of help.

– We sort through them as best we can, the sheriff assured him. – We save you from the worst of it.

– Let’s have it, Storaker.

– We received a letter yesterday. Anonymous. The writer says that he, or she, has reason to believe that people from up here might have caught a bear, driven it down to Oslomarka and released it.

Viken turned off the TV.

– Based on what?

– Hard to say. You know, there’s a lot of talk of bears up here. Tempers can get heated very quickly. People in the countryside get angry when they feel they’re being steamrollered by politicians and so-called environmentalists, the types who tell them they’ve just got to live with predators while they’re miles away from it themselves …

– Do you see any reason to take the letter seriously? Viken interrupted him.

– Hm, there’s a name mentioned, a woman who keeps sheep, along with her husband. We’ve had a look, and he has said things to the papers in a way that … Well, we don’t think this is important. That some kind of activist group has been set up, we can’t really see that.

– Fax it down here, we’ll have a closer look at it.

Viken reached for the twelve-string guitar on its stand next to the sofa. Began playing a riff. The case was completely different from anything else he’d ever been involved in. Confusion had descended on the city. Even the journalists seemed to have given up their usual hunt for those responsible, in other words, for scapegoats. So far. The riff he was playing began more and more to resemble the opening of ‘Paint It Black’. They had been conducting interviews until late in the evening all week. There was a real danger of the wood drowning in trees. Viken was good at sifting stuff. There were a handful of witness statements that were especially interesting. The retired dentist who had found Paulsen turned out to have good powers of observation. The same could not be said of the two junkies who discovered Davidsen in Frogner Park. They couldn’t agree about the vehicle they had seen pulling out of the car park. Was it big or small? Two different answers. Light or dark? A shouting match. Viken recalled what the woman said she’d been doing down the slope by the water. He grimaced at his foot, strummed two chords, the last one in A flat major, and put the guitar away.

He went out to the kitchen to brew more coffee. Knew that he would be sitting up until late. While he waited for enough drops to drip down through the filter paper to make another cup, he called Norbakk. With no apology for the late hour, he related the conversation he had had with the sheriff up in Åsnes.

– You know what it’s like in places like that, Arve; d’you think there might be something in it?

He had expected the sergeant to burst out laughing, but he didn’t.

– I know a lot of sheep farmers who are desperate, he answered. – Åsnes, did you say? Maybe not such a bad idea to take a trip up there.

– Well then that’s settled, Viken said. He already knew who would get the job.

– While we’re on it, Arve: that doctor we interviewed today, there was something about him.

– What do you mean?

– Nothing definite. A gut feeling. We’ll have him in again in a few days’ time.

As Viken was about to end the call, Norbakk said: – By the way, I’ve found something that might be interesting.

– Out with it then, the chief inspector urged him. He had absolutely no objection to discussing the case with his younger colleague, even if it was well past midnight.

– Those tracks around the victims were definitely made by a bear’s paws. But we can’t work out how a bear would be wandering around there. He paused.

– Don’t keep me on tenterhooks, Viken complained.

– I did a search of stolen property and looked for animal-related things. On the fifth of October, that’s to say, two days before Paulsen was found, there was a break-in at a gunsmith’s in Lillestrøm. Only a few minor things were taken. But the thief did take a stuffed she-bear that was on a stand just inside the entrance.

– Give over, Arve, Viken protested. – You think we’re looking for a killer who drives around with a stuffed bear in the boot of his car?

He heard Norbakk laughing.

– You don’t need a whole bear to make a few tracks.

Viken’s jaw worked as he thought this over.

– Good to know someone’s doing his job, he said finally. – The bear prints are probably some sort of signature.

– Or they contain a message of some kind, Norbakk suggested. – The person who has done this is maybe trying to tell us something.

A
FTER HAVING BEEN
directed to Nytorpet Farm and established that there was no one home, Nina Jebsen again rang the Åsnes sheriff. He was very helpful and within a couple of minutes had called back with more information. He couldn’t get hold of the farm owner, but his wife worked at a home for the mentally handicapped in Reinkollen. Nina groaned inwardly. As though she was supposed to know where
that
was. At the morning briefing, when Viken mentioned the tip that had come in from Åsnes, she hadn’t been able to resist a few comments about the bear guerrillas and terrorism among the Hedmark farmers. Viken had responded with a wicked grin before telling her that she was going up there. An exercise in punishment, she’d thought, and swore to keep her mouth shut the next time.

For a girl from Bergen, the landscape in the east of the country could be summed up in one word: forest. And here in the border regions it seemed even thicker than elsewhere. She struggled against a sensation of being locked up inside it. No wonder people got depressed living in places like this, she sighed, without really knowing for sure whether there was any more depression here in the forest depths than there was over in the west. But where she came from, things changed all the time: the light, the smells, the moods, and your own moods with them. She even found herself missing the Bergen rain as she sped on between the rows of spruce with no view of the horizon in any direction.

The sheriff had given her detailed directions how to get to Reinkollen, but somewhere or other she’d lost the way. She blamed it on her lack of the genes necessary for negotiating a jungle like this. At a village called Åmoen, she pulled in to an Esso station to ask for help. A man who looked to be in his mid-twenties stood lounging in the doorway to a back room. His head was shaven, with a tattoo that appeared to show two crossed swords standing out against the white of his skull. He glanced at her as she approached the counter, then turned and continued to stare at what was presumably a TV screen in the other room. After drumming her fingers and coughing a few times, she lost patience.

– Closed for the day? she said in a voice that startled the young man. He sloped over and scowled at her. Once she had explained her business, he picked up a map book, tossed it on to the counter, flipped through it and pointed.

– You drove past it three kilometres back, here. You can’t miss the sign. Even the mongos and halfwits that live up there can find the way.

She stared at him in disbelief. Had to pull herself together as best she was able, but still couldn’t resist.

– I see not
all
the halfwits live up there, she murmured.

On her way out she heard him mention a part of her anatomy he almost certainly wished he had himself.

The woman who opened the door to the home was grey haired and slightly built, with a scraggy turkey neck. She had a stoop, and her gaze flickered between Nina and the patrol car parked outside.

– What … what is it?

– Does Åse Berit Nytorpet work here?

The woman’s jowls wobbled as she gave a slight nod. Nina showed her police ID.

– Nothing’s wrong, she added as she saw the frightened look. – I’d just like to ask a few questions.

She was led into the main room. A person of indeterminate age sat in a wheelchair by a table. She was nothing but skin and bone, and her eyes rolled back and forth. A faint sound like a meowing came from her throat.

A tall, stoutly built woman in a knitted cardigan and skirt and wearing shaggy felt slippers stood up.

– Åse Berit Nytorpet?

– That’s me, yes.

Nina again introduced herself.

– I’m here in connection with a case we hope you might be able to help us with.

The woman looked to be in her sixties. She wrinkled her brow and didn’t seem much friendlier than the woman who’d let her in.

– Is there somewhere we can talk in private? It won’t take long.

Åse Berit Nytorpet glanced over towards her companion.

– We can sit out in the kitchen, she decided. – Signy, will you see to Oswald? He could probably do with a little walk to the living room.

The stooping figure with the scrawny neck still looked terrified, and Nina repeated that it was just a few questions, a routine matter.

Out in the kitchen Åse Berit Nytorpet poured a cup of coffee and without a word put it down on the table in front of Nina, who said thank you as politely as she could and continued.

– We’re working on a case you may have heard of. The two women found dead in Oslo?

Åse Berit Nytorpet’s mouth tightened.

– I know we live out in the country, but we do manage to follow
some
of what’s going on.

– Of course. I didn’t mean it like that.

Nina sipped the coffee. Boiled, black as pitch.

– Good coffee, she said. – Any chance of a drop of milk in it?

She sloshed some of the brew into the sink to make room for the milk.

– There are rumours around here that someone may have captured a bear and released it in the Oslomarka.

Åse Berit Nytorpet opened her eyes wide.

– Have you come all the way out here to ask
me
about that?

– Why would I come just to ask you?

– Haven’t the foggiest.

– Well, we received a tip suggesting that you know something about such a plan.

Åse Berit Nytorp got up from her chair.

– I don’t believe you.

– It’s the truth, all the same.

She remained standing, scowling at the policewoman.

– That I’m supposed to have something to do with it? Who in the blazes has said that?

– We receive tips. We’re not always able to say where they come from. We have noticed that your husband made certain statements to the newspaper.

Nina took out a sheet of paper and unfolded it, a printout from
Glamdålen
’s web edition. Åse Berit Nytorpet took a quick look at it.

– My God, that was years ago … You don’t actually believe my old man goes about the place trapping bears and sending them off to Oslo?

– I don’t believe anything. But we have to look at every possibility, the likely as well as the unlikely. He does express the view here that
someone might just release a bear down there. Maybe it’ll take something like that before they realise the seriousness of the position.

Åse Berit Nytorpet interrupted her: – Have you any idea how much work goes into looking after the sheep? It’s our life. Her eyes had darkened. – What do you think it’s like to walk out across the pastures in the morning and find dead animals all over the place? No wonder people get upset.

Nina could understand that.

– When you’ve just arrived back home with a wagonload of dead sheep, you might well say things on the spur of the moment, know what I mean?

Nina agreed that it wasn’t a crime for a person to voice their anger.

– Could I have a word with your husband? He wasn’t up at the house.

Åse Berit Nytorpet tossed her head irritably.

– He’s with my cousin, Roger Åheim.

– Where?

– At a cabin up past Rena. Won’t be back down until this evening.

Nina was careful to preserve her polite tone. She didn’t want to provoke the woman any more than was absolutely necessary.

– I’m going to give you a few dates and times, and I want you to think carefully before telling me where your husband was on those dates. As far as you’re able.

When she came back into the main room, the other woman – Signy – was standing in the doorway to one of the rooms. Abruptly she backed out. Behind her a huge creature came into view. For a moment Nina Jebsen was unsure whether or not the situation was dangerous. The giant strode into the room and stood there glaring from one to the other. Then he took a step in her direction. She jumped. He raised his fist, pounded himself on the chest.