Harry Hole Mysteries 3-Book Bundle (23 page)

‘Not Gert then?’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Müller-Nilsen said.

‘You said Iron Rafto. You didn’t call him just Gert then?’

Müller-Nilsen sent Harry a dubious look, ventured a chuckle, but signed off with a wry smile. ‘No, I don’t think that would ever have occurred to us.’

‘OK. Thanks for your help.’

On his way out Harry heard Müller-Nilsen call, and he turned. The POB was standing in his office doorway at the end of the corridor and the words cast a brief vibrating echo between the walls.

‘I don’t think Rafto would have liked it, either.’

Outside Police HQ, Harry stood looking at the people bent double as they forced their way through the wind and rain. The sensation would not go. The sensation that something or someone was there, nearby, on the inside, visible, if he could only see things the right way, in the right light.

Katrine picked Harry up at the wharf as arranged.

‘I borrowed this off a friend,’ she said as she steered the twenty-one-foot so-called skerry jeep out of the narrow harbour mouth. As they rounded the Nordnes peninsula, a noise made Harry spin, and he caught
sight of a totem pole. The wooden faces were screaming hoarsely at him with open mouths. A cold gust of wind swept across the boat.

‘That’s the seals in the Aquarium,’ Katrine said.

Harry pulled his coat tighter around him.

Finnøy was a tiny island. Apart from heather, there was no vegetation on the rain-lashed chunk of land, but it did have a quay where Katrine expertly moored the boat. The residential area consisted of sixty wooden cabins in all, of doll’s-house proportions, and reminded Harry of the miners’ shacks he had seen in Soweto.

Katrine led Harry down the gravel path between the cabins and then walked up to one of them. It stood out because the paint on the walls was peeling. One of the windows was cracked. Katrine stretched up on tiptoes, grabbed the bulkhead light over the door and unscrewed it. A scraping sound came from inside as she rotated the dome and dead insects fluttered out. Plus a key, which she caught in mid-air.

‘The ex-wife liked me,’ Katrine said, inserting the key in the door.

There was a smell of mould and damp wood inside. Harry stared into the semi-darkness, heard the flick of a switch and the light came on.

‘She’s got electricity then, even if she doesn’t use the cabin,’ he said.

‘Communal,’ Katrine said, taking a slow look round. ‘The police pay.’

The cabin was twenty-five metres square and consisted of a sitting room-cum-kitchen-cum-bedroom. Empty beer bottles covered the worktop and sitting-room table. There was nothing hanging on the walls, there were no ornaments on the windowsills or books on the shelves.

‘There’s a cellar, too,’ Katrine said, pointing to a trapdoor in the floor. ‘This is your area. What do we do now?’

‘We search,’ Harry said.

‘What for?’

‘That’s the last of our thoughts.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it’s easy to miss something important if you’re searching for something else. Clear your mind. You’ll know what you’re searching for when you see it.’

‘OK,’ Katrine said with exaggerated slowness.

‘You start up here,’ Harry said, going to the trapdoor and pulling at the inset iron ring. A narrow staircase led down into the gloom. He hoped she didn’t see his hesitation.

Dry cobwebs from long-dead spiders stuck to his face as he descended into the damp murk which smelt of soil and rotten boards. The whole of the cellar was underground. He found a switch by the end of the staircase and pressed it, but nothing happened. The only light was the red eye at the top of a freezer by the side wall. He flicked on his pocket torch, and the cone of light fell on a storeroom door.

The hinges screamed as he opened it. It was a carpenter’s cubbyhole full of tools. For a man with ambitions to do something meaningful, Harry thought. Besides catching murderers.

But the tools didn’t look as if they had been used much, so maybe Rafto had realised that in the end he was no good at anything else, he wasn’t the kind to make things, he was the kind to clear up afterwards. A sudden noise made Harry whirl round. And he breathed out with relief when he saw that the freezer thermostat had activated the fan. Harry went into a second storeroom. A rug had been spread over everything. He pulled it off, and the smell of damp and mildew hit him. The torch beam revealed a rotting parasol, a plastic table, a pile of freezer drawers, discoloured plastic chairs and a croquet set. There was nothing else in the cellar. He heard Katrine rummaging around upstairs and was on the point of closing the storeroom door. But one of the drawers had slipped down into the doorway when he removed the rug. He was about to nudge it back with his foot when he stopped and looked at it. In the light from his torch he could see the raised lettering on the side. Electrolux. He walked over to the wall where the fan on the freezer was still humming. It was an Electrolux. He grabbed the handle and pulled, but the door didn’t budge. Beneath the handle he noticed a lock and realised that the freezer was simply locked. He went into the tool store to fetch the crowbar. As he returned, Katrine came down the stairs.

‘Nothing up top,’ she said. ‘I think we should just go. What are you doing?’

‘Breaking and entering,’ Harry said, with the tip of the crowbar inserted in the freezer door just above the lock. He put all his weight against the other end. It didn’t give. He readjusted his grip, put one foot against the staircase and pushed.

‘Bloody –’

With a dry snap the door swung open and Harry fell headlong. He heard the torch hit the brick floor and felt the cold hit him, like the breath of a glacier. He was fumbling for the torch behind him when he heard Katrine. It was a sound that chilled to the marrow, a deep-throated scream that passed into hysterical sobs sounding like laughter. Then it went quiet for a couple of seconds as she drew breath, before it started again, the same scream, long and drawn out, like the methodical, ritual song of pain of a woman giving birth. But by then Harry had seen everything and knew why. She was screaming because after twelve years the freezer was still functioning perfectly and its internal light revealed something crammed inside, its arms to the fore, its knees bent and the head forced against one side. The body was covered with white ice crystals, as if a layer of white fungus had been feeding on it; and the distorted form was the visual representation of Katrine’s screams. But that was not what had made Harry’s stomach turn. Moments after the freezer broke open the body fell forward and the forehead hit the edge of the door, causing ice crystals to fall from the face and shower the cellar floor. That was how Harry could tell it was Gert Rafto grinning at them. However, the grin was not formed by the mouth, which was sewn up with coarse, hemp-like thread zigzagging in and out of the lips. The grin traversed the chin and arced up to the cheeks and was drawn with a line of black nails that could only have been hammered in. What caught Harry’s attention was the nose. He forced down the rising bile out of sheer defiance. The nasal bone and cartilage would have been removed first. The cold had sucked all the colour from the carrot. The snowman was complete.

I
T WAS EIGHT O’CLOCK IN THE EVENING, YET PEOPLE WALKING
down Grønlandsleiret could see that lights were burning on the whole of the sixth floor of Police HQ.

In K1, Holm, Skarre, Espen Lepsvik, Gunnar Hagen and the Chief Superintendent sat in front of Harry. Six and a half hours had passed since they had found Gert Rafto on Finnøy, and four since Harry had rung from Bergen to call a meeting before he was driven to the airport.

Harry had reported back on the discovery of the body, and even the Chief Superintendent had quailed in his chair when Harry showed the crime scene photos that Bergen Police had emailed over.

‘The autopsy report isn’t ready yet,’ Harry said. ‘But the cause of death is fairly obvious. A firearm in the mouth and a bullet through the palate and out of the back of the head. That happened at the crime scene; the Bergen boys found the bullet in the storeroom wall.’

‘Blood and cerebral matter?’ Skarre asked.

‘No,’ Harry said.

‘Not after so many years,’ Lepsvik said. ‘Rats, insects …’

‘There might have been residual traces,’ Harry said. ‘But I spoke to the pathologist and we were agreed. Rafto probably helped so that it wouldn’t be so messy.’

‘Eh?’ Skarre said.

‘Ugh,’ Lepsvik said with feeling.

Reality seemed to dawn on Skarre and his face crumpled in horror. ‘Oh, bloody hell …’

‘Sorry,’ Hagen said. ‘Can anyone explain to me what you’re talking about?’

‘This is something we occasionally experience with suicides,’ Harry said. ‘The poor soul sucks the air out of the barrel before shooting himself. The vacuum causes there to be less …’ He searched for the word. ‘… soiling. What happened here is probably that Rafto was ordered to suck out the air.’

Lepsvik shook his head. ‘And a policeman like Rafto must have known exactly why.’

Hagen paled. ‘But how … how on earth do you make a man suck …?’

‘Perhaps he was given a choice,’ Harry suggested. ‘There are worse ways of dying than shooting yourself through the mouth.’ A stunned silence fell over them. And Harry let it fill the void for a few seconds before going on.

‘So far we’ve never found the bodies. Rafto was also hidden, but he would have been found quickly enough, had it not been for relatives shunning the cabin. This leads me to believe that Rafto was not part of the killer’s project.’

‘And you believe this is a serial killer?’ There was no defiance in the Chief Superintendent’s tone, just a wish to have this confirmed.

Harry nodded.

‘If Rafto is not part of this so-called project, what could the motive be?’

‘We don’t know, but when a detective is killed it’s natural to think that he’s come to represent a threat for the killer.’

Espen Lepsvik coughed. ‘Sometimes, the way bodies are treated can tell us something about the motive. In this case, for example, the nose has been replaced with a carrot. In other words, he’s thumbing his nose at us.’

‘Making fun of us?’ Hagen asked.

‘Perhaps he’s telling us not to stick our noses in?’ Holm suggested tentatively.

‘Exactly!’ Hagen exclaimed. ‘A warning to others to keep their distance.’

The Chief Superintendent lowered his head and looked at Harry from the corner of his eye. ‘What about the stitched-up mouth?’

‘A message: keep your mouth shut,’ Skarre crowed.

‘Right!’ Hagen exclaimed. ‘If Rafto was a rotten apple he and the killer were probably in cahoots in some way, and Rafto was threatening to expose him.’

They all looked at Harry who had not responded to any of the suggestions.

‘Well?’ growled the Chief Superintendent.

‘You may well be right of course,’ Harry said. ‘But I believe the only message he wanted to send was that the Snowman had been there. And he likes making snowmen. Full stop.’

The detectives exchanged quick glances, but no one objected.

‘We have another problem,’ Harry said. ‘Bergen Police have released a statement saying that a person has been found dead on Finnøy, that’s all. And I’ve asked them to withhold further details for the moment time being so that we have a couple of days to hunt for clues without the Snowman knowing the body has been found. Unfortunately two days is not altogether realistic. No police station is
that
watertight.’

‘The press have got Rafto’s name for release early tomorrow,’ said Espen Lepsvik. ‘I know the people on
Bergens Tidende
and
Bergensavisen.
’

‘Wrong,’ they heard behind them. ‘It’ll be on the TV2 late news tonight. Not just the name but details of the crime scene and the link with the Snowman.’

They turned round. In the doorway stood Katrine Bratt. She was still pale, though not as ashen as when Harry had watched her drive the boat from Finnøy, leaving him to wait for the police.

‘So you know the TV2 people, do you?’ asked Espen Lepsvik with a crooked grin.

‘No,’ Katrine said, sitting down. ‘I know Bergen Police Station.’

‘Where have you been, Bratt?’ Hagen was asking. ‘You’ve been gone for several hours.’

Katrine glanced at Harry, who sent her an imperceptible nod and cleared his throat. ‘Katrine’s been doing a couple of jobs I gave her.’

‘Must have been important. Let’s hear, Bratt.’

‘We don’t need to go into it now,’ Harry said.

‘I’m just curious,’ Hagen teased.

Mr bloody Armchair General, Harry thought. Mr Punctuality, Mr Debrief, can’t you leave her alone, can’t you see the girl’s still in shock? You blanched yourself when you saw the pictures. She ran home, did a bunk from everything. So what? She’s back now. Give her a pat on the back rather than humiliate her in front of her colleagues. This went through Harry’s mind, in loud, clear tones, as he tried to catch Hagen’s eye and make him understand.

‘Well, Bratt?’ Hagen said.

‘I’ve been checking a few things,’ Katrine said, raising her chin.

‘I see. Such as …?’

‘Such as Idar Vetlesen studying medicine when Laila Aasen was murdered and Onny Hetland and Rafto went missing.’

‘Is that relevant?’ asked the Chief Superintendent.

‘It’s relevant,’ Katrine said. ‘Because he studied at Bergen University.’

K1 went quiet.

‘A medical student?’ The Chief looked at Harry.

‘Why not?’ Harry said. ‘He took up plastic surgery later, and he says he likes shaping faces.’

‘I checked the places where he trained as a houseman and later worked,’ Katrine said. ‘They don’t coincide with the disappearances of the women we believe the Snowman has killed. But as a young doctor you quite often travel. Conferences, short temporary posts.

‘Damn shame Krohn won’t let us talk to the guy,’ Skarre said.

‘Forget it,’ Harry said. ‘We’ll arrest Vetlesen.’

‘What for?’ Hagen said. ‘For studying in Bergen?’

‘For trying to buy sex from minors.’

‘On what basis?’ asked the Chief Superintendent.