Гарри Алекзандер: Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 128, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 781 & 782, September/October 2006

The Plastic Sack Killer had raped and killed two young girls. He had stuffed the badly molested corpses into big black plastic sacks and dumped them in a roadside ditch on the outskirts of the city, probably from a car. The police had gotten nowhere with their investigations. Kjell Bakk was not the Plastic Sack Killer. I knew him well enough to say that with one-hundred-percent certainty. But he was intelligent enough to commit a murder on the same pattern. Suspicion would inevitably fall upon the person who committed the two previous crimes.

Ten years back. Through Kjell Bakk I know almost every detail of what happened. The train stops. Lilly Meinert gets off. She smiles and waves to Stein and blows him a kiss as the train leaves. Neither of them knows what is in store. They have been sitting excitedly discussing the film. Lilly is flushed and her cheeks are warm. She hurries along the grey platform. Her high heels clatter energetically on the concrete.

Just as she is about to take her first step up the stairs Kjell Bakk comes upon her from behind. Suddenly an arm is round her waist, another is on her mouth. With a fearsome force she is dragged backwards into the dark space below the stairs. For a few seconds she is able to pull herself free and catch a glimpse of the creepy, blurred face beneath the brown silk stocking. Then she cries out in fear of death. The next moment he knocks the back of her head against the concrete wall with the mad power of desperation. She crumples up, unconscious. And there she lies flat on her back, Lilly Meinert. Still so beautiful, rosy-cheeked and quivering with a life that might still be lived.

Ten minutes later she is no longer alive. I shall not say what Kjell Bakk did to her, but I know the physical and psychological reasons for what he did. He had never achieved intimate contact with any girl. He was incapable, and he didn’t want to anyway. On the other hand, he was still very much a man and Lilly Meinert represented for him the ultimate in feminine beauty. He loved, he envied, and he hated her so much that she drove him, an unsure and sensitive youth, to become a bestial murderer.

Kjell Bakk killed Lilly Meinert to put a distance between himself and what he was.

The next day the first train runs over a plastic sack containing the dismal, maltreated corpse of Lilly Meinert. She had been desecrated, but not raped.

A few hours later the entire school knew what had happened. After the first shock came the ghastly paralysis. Our homes were filled with manic thoughts completely devoid of logic or realism. No! No! It can’t be true.

Kjell Bakk is at school, apparently paralysed too. In the days that followed he was still Kjell Bakk in a physical sense, but psychologically, he was in the process of becoming a different, softer person. Softer, but firm and purposeful at the same time. He is about to accept that he is soon going to disappear, to be obliterated.

Who could ever suspect him? He often spoke and joked with Lilly Meinert. They were both interested in ballet. They performed together in the school show, and laughed together. Lilly had never done him any wrong. No, who would ever suspect Kjell Bakk?

The school principal gave a moving speech and could not restrain his tears. Then he allowed us to take the rest of the day off. Home to our grief. But Stein Vangsvik did not go home. He went to pieces and had to be taken in hand. Time and again, he muttered, “Why did I not take her home?”

Now, more or less the whole country is up in arms about the Plastic Sack Killer. The investigations intensify. Every technical and psychological tool is brought to bear. But without result. The first two murders are and will be a mystery for me, too. But I know the murderer in the third.

So here I stand, ten years after the deed. The thoughts flash through my mind. I try to conjure up Kjell Bakk and I see he slowly became sickly in the years that followed. And soon it is eight years since he vanished completely. He got his punishment. They put him on a couch, doped him, castrated him, and made deep incisions in him with their scalpels. And then he was no more.

It’s soon half-past one in the morning. The light down here is as pale as death itself. This burial chamber should be filled in. Many people have demanded it. I go slowly along the platform, up the stairs, and into the still night street.

After a quarter of an hour I am home. There are lights on in the windows of the great old house. In the studio on the second floor I see something moving behind the flaming red drapes. Stein Vangsvik is walking to and fro there. I know that he is in the phase just before he begins a new painting. He only has two subjects: Lilly Meinert or the Plastic Sack Killer. Over the years he has been unable to paint anything but these two subjects. He, who was going to conquer the whole world! He paints and paints, but he is no great artist. With paints and brush he tries to bring Lilly to life again, but he always fails, and eventually casts the pictures aside in a rage. The Plastic Sack Killer is portrayed with the most grotesque features, and when Stein is through, he takes his vengeance for Lilly by slashing the painted faces with a long sharp knife.

No one but me can put up with him. Had it not been for me, he would have been put away in an asylum. I am the only one who can tackle him, calm him down. I have always loved him, and I always will. When he puts his head with those beautiful blond curls on my shoulder I reach the peak of happiness. I have bleached my own hair and made my nose smaller. I do my best to look like Lilly. More and more he thinks that I am her. Then he strokes my hair and my cheeks and he kisses me, and lets his beautiful hands slide over my breasts, which the surgeons have filled with silicone. Then he makes love to me, as he used to make love to Lilly. With outstanding skill the doctors have made me into a woman.

We have each other. Two wounded people in a world of deceit, fraud, and brutality. And I am the center of his life. It is the ultimate happiness for me.

Copyright © 2006 Richard Macker

Translated from the Norwegian by Jorunn and Michael Fergus ©2006.