Where Monsters Dwell (24 page)

She had no idea what language the article was written in, although from the domain name she guessed it was from Norway. But maybe the photo wasn’t even taken in Scandinavia? The article could be a Norwegian report of something that had taken place in the States, for all she knew. She sat there and stared at the caption again. Most of the other names seemed foreign, but she couldn’t say if they were all Scandinavian. Then she noticed the words at the beginning of the caption. “
I Knudtzonsalen,
” it said. She opened a desk drawer and took out a piece of paper. It was the note that Nevins had written for her. Broder Lysholm Knudtzon, she read. Knudtzon.
Knudtzonsalen
.

She looked up the Web site of the university in Richmond, hoping to find somebody there who could translate from the Scandinavian languages. But before she could scroll down the whole list of faculty, she had a sudden brain wave. She closed the laptop, grabbed the phone, and dialed an internal number for the morgue basement.

“Knut Jensen,” said a voice from the depths of the building. Talk about luck. Just the guy she wanted.

“This is Felicia Stone upstairs. I have kind of an unusual question for you.”

“I’ve got an unusual job, so shoot,” replied Jensen.

“Do you happen to have Scandinavian ancestors, by any chance?”

“Jeez, is it that obvious? What gave me away? My name or my blue eyes?”

“Both,” she said with a laugh.

“Well, I confess. My father was born in Norway. He came here when he was fifteen with his parents. So what’s my punishment?”

“That depends. Did your father ever teach you Norwegian?”

“My dad insisted on us being American. We always spoke English at home.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Yeah, basically. But it didn’t stop my grandmother from speaking Norwegian to us. She taught me to read a little, so I’d be able to read the newspaper to her when she got old, she said. Relatives sent the
Bergens Tidende
newspaper to her every month. Grandma never ended up with bad eyesight, so I didn’t get much of a chance to read out loud. But I can stumble my way through simple Norwegian.”

“In that case, you’re sentenced to half an hour hard labor in my office right this minute,” she said with a laugh.

“Accused and convicted in the same phone call. Is this is a police state or what?” Knut Jensen quipped.

“No, but it
is
a police station,” she said, wondering if they were flirting.

“I’ll be right up,” he said.

*   *   *

Knut Jensen spent a long time studying the article.

“This is typical local news. The Web site is operated by a newspaper in Trondheim, the third-largest city in Norway. It’s really just a small town, but they do have a university. The photo here is from the university library. There was some sort of conference dealing with Norwegian manuscripts and transcriptions of documents from the Middle Ages. The article emphasizes that there are very few such manuscripts in the country, but that those that do exist are extremely interesting. The book by a certain Johannes the priest is said to be especially exciting.” Jensen looked up at Felicia Stone. “Does this really have something to do with the case?”

“No idea. But there, underneath the photo, what does that say?”

“It only says that the picture was taken in the Knudtzonsalen, which is probably a room named after somebody called Knudtzon. And then the names of the people in the picture. Participants at the conference, I would guess.”

“What would you say if I told you that one of these men told me that he doesn’t know anything about Scandinavian book collections?”

“I’d probably say that was pretty strange. I don’t think he just stumbled into this photograph.”

“That’s what I think, too. But when is this article from?”

“Let’s see, here’s the date. They write dates the other way around in Norway. It was published in April this year.”

“Do a search on this room, this Knudtzonsalen,” she said.

Jensen searched for it, and he got a number of hits. He clicked on the first one and read: “The room was named after a guy named Broder Lysholm Knudtzon,” he said, after reading for a while on what looked like the home page of some institution, maybe a library or university. “He was apparently a big-time book collector.”

“I knew it,” Felicia Stone muttered.

Jensen clicked onto another article. She saw that this one was from
Adresseavisen,
too. The article was quite recent. It was actually from today.

Knut Jensen sat there in silence, reading.

“I don’t get this,” he said after a while.

“Problems with the Norwegian?”

“No, the language is understandable enough. It’s the content that’s baffling. The mention of Knudtzonsalen refers to the fact that all the employees in a certain department of the university library in Trondheim were assembled there today during a police investigation. And the case that was being investigated … Well, that’s amazing. This changes nearly everything, I should think. Either you’re a genius, or you’re the luckiest detective I know.”

“Tell me what the hell you’re talking about!” She almost felt like grabbing Knut Jensen by the collar and shaking him.

“Exactly twelve hours ago a woman was found murdered in the book vault at the university library in Trondheim.”

“All right, that’s a strange coincidence.”

“Right, but here’s the really strange thing. The woman was found with her throat cut and her body flayed.”

Felicia just stared at him. This is where the case cracks wide open, she thought. She might have felt even better if they hadn’t simply stumbled on this information by accident. But what difference did it make? It was moments like this that a detective lived for. A breakthrough in the case. Finally!

Then she stared at an image on the screen. It was a picture of a red-haired, full-figured woman. And she knew right away that she’d seen her before. It was the woman from Bond’s mysterious photograph.

“Who’s that a picture of?” she asked, pointing, even though she already knew the answer.

“That’s the woman who was murdered.”

She gave Jensen a long look, wondering whether she ought to hug him. She made do with putting a hand on his shoulder.

“Jensen, we need a written translation of this article as soon as possible. I’m calling an urgent meeting for the whole team, and I want you to be there.”

*   *   *

An hour later the team was assembled in the conference room. They began with the pathologist reading aloud his translation of the article from
Adresseavisen
. He had also spent time before the meeting surfing other major Norwegian online papers and told them that the case was big news all over Norway, and the police already had a suspect in custody. To that, Reynolds replied, as he chewed a big wad of gum, “If the press over there is anything like ours, we can take it all with a grain of salt. We also have a probable suspect.”

“Well, do we really?” said Felicia Stone, who’d had time to go over a number of things in her mind after the initial intoxication over the breakthrough had subsided. “How likely is it that Nevins is actually in Norway?”

“Theoretically, Nevins could be in Norway,” said Reynolds. “He left for Europe three days ago.”

“He went to Germany,” she pointed out. “He mentioned that trip to me last week.”

“In the meantime I’ve checked his alibi for the day Bond was killed. He was meeting with a book dealer in Louisville. I talked to the guy as well as people at the hotel he was staying the night of the murder. There’s no reason to doubt that he was there.”

“We don’t have anything concrete on him at the moment,” said Morris, who until now had been sitting silently at the head of the table. “But just because he didn’t personally commit the murder, it doesn’t mean we can rule him out as a suspect. We shouldn’t forget the most important discovery. Today we learned that there were two murders instead of one. And no matter how much Nevins seems to be the link, it looks as though the victims actually knew each other. Bond had a photo of this Norwegian woman, Gunn Brita Dahle, on his PC.”

“Well, there’s one more connection. Old books,” said Felicia. “I think we have to focus on that. It’s got something to do with books and bindings made of human skin.”

“The main thing now is to confirm that these two cases are as similar as they seem. Jensen, what did you say the inspector’s name was? The one handling the library case in Norway?” Morris asked.

“I didn’t say,” said Jensen, leaning close to his PC. “Let me see. His name is Odd Singsaker.”

“Odd? That’s an odd sort of name,” Patterson said with a chuckle.

Felicia just rolled her eyes.

“Stone, get him on the phone so you two can compare notes. Maybe you ought to start thinking about packing an overnight bag.”

“Yes, sir. Not to be difficult, but is that the way it’s done?”

“What do you mean?”

“We’re talking about a foreign case here. Aren’t there certain procedures that have to be followed? Don’t we have to go through a higher authority?”

“Not before we know more. For the time being we have a case we’re working on, and they do, too. All we want is to exchange information. And I’ll bet they’re just as interested in talking to us as we are in talking to them.”

“Great. But isn’t it better for Jensen to do the talking, since he knows the lingo?”

“Jensen’s not a cop. No hard feelings, Jensen,” said Morris.

“Morris is right,” Jensen said. “Besides, they’re good at languages over there. I was in Norway on vacation two years ago. As they heard my accent, they switched right into English.”

“So Norwegians who’ve lived in Norway all their lives speak better English than you speak Norwegian?” Patterson asked.

“Yep, you could put it that way,” Jensen said with a smile.

“So how can we trust your translation then?” asked Patterson.

Everybody looked at him in surprise. Patterson shrugged.

“Just a joke,” he said, with a sheepish grin.

*   *   *

One hour and several discoveries later, Felicia Stone sat with the telephone in her hand and a swarm of butterflies in her stomach that were very restless, even for butterflies. Despite Jensen’s assurances that Norwegians spoke excellent English, she was worried that they wouldn’t understand her. A friendly woman at overseas information had found her the number of police headquarters in Trondheim. When she called and introduced herself in English, a pleasant woman there switched to her language, with a lilting accent that was nevertheless easy to understand.

Then she was patched through to Odd Singsaker.

22

Padua, 1518

“
Monkeys!” The word sprayed
out of Master Alessandro’s mouth as if he were spitting at them. “Monkeys!”

The boy and the beard-cutter were sitting on the bench at the back of the room where they had eaten breakfast, which consisted of dark bread and salt-cured ham. The master was pacing the floor in front of them. He had just come home from his morning walk. As usual his head was full of thoughts that he needed to air before he could calm down. Some days they were the most elevated ideas and insights, other days they were reproaches and protests. The latter were seldom directed at Galen of Pergamon, that great scholar of the human body. But today it was his turn to be criticized. The master had not even taken off his new ocher-yellow velvet cloak, which had flowered embroidery on the chest and ermine collar. The cloak was supposed to be worn only on his morning walks and when he stood at the lectern. Now it was flapping around him like a whirl of autumn leaves in the wind. They could do nothing but listen without comment. The topic of Galen and the interior of the human body always made the master’s cheeks flush and the words spray from his mouth, but as a rule not in anger.

“Good Lord my Creator! Monkeys!”

The boy had never seen a monkey before. The kids on the street never tired of talking about the merchant who had brought three monkeys with him to the marketplace the summer before they arrived in Padua. The merchant had sewn hats for them, and the monkeys performed a trick in which they imitated craftsmen using various tools. He was banned from the marketplace after one of the monkeys hit a margrave on the head with a hammer. The margrave was saved only by the tall hat that he had purchased that very day. Oddly enough it was the same nobleman, a student from somewhere in North Germany, who bought the monkeys after the merchant was unable to perform with them any longer. It was because of what he had done with them that Master Alessandro was now getting all worked up.

Even though the boy never got to see the monkeys, he’d seen many of the drawings the other kids had made of them on the walls of neighborhood houses. They looked like people with long arms. But in one of the master’s books from the Orient he had also seen a picture drawn by a more skilled artist. In it he could clearly see that the monkeys were animals with fur and big, stupid eyes. And that was exactly what the master was talking about as he circled the room, waving a quill pen, as if he were writing something in the air.

“Dumb animals, with no resemblance to human beings whatsoever. What can they teach us about the secrets of the human body?”

The secrets of the human body. That was something he was always going on about; the boy knew that he loved this phrase, perhaps because he knew more about these secrets than anyone else. In short, it was a matter of secrets to which he had been made privy. What he actually was thinking about now, as he paced and his cheeks flushed red, was that he knew things about which Galen had never had the slightest idea.

Galen’s renowned anatomical knowledge had been elevated to the required curriculum, not only at Galen’s own academy—consecrated to the god Asclepius on the outskirts of the magnificent city of Pergamon long ago—but in all later studies of human anatomy. It was true at the medical school in Salerno, at the universities, and not least here in Padua, where Master Alessandro himself was a teacher.

Many times the boy had heard him lecture on the teachings of Galen. From the lectern the master called the end of the intestine the rectum, without winking, and made a point of mentioning that a man’s rectum was not straight, but curved—all because this was what Galen had taught. But then these monkeys had shown up on Alessandro’s table. The vengeful North German margrave had bought the monkeys and then kept them captive in his study for almost a year before giving them to the medical faculty at the university. There they ended up under the expert knives of the beard-cutter and Alessandro. No public dissection, but a long examination at night of the monkeys’ anatomy.