Jo Nesbo - The Devil's star

Ina laughed again. When she had felt something touch her cheek she had automatically struck out with her hand and had hit the tray with the teaset on. There was still a fine layer of white sugar on the carpet.

‘Someone played me his records.’

‘That’s such a secretive smile,’ Olaug said. ‘Was it your gentleman friend?’

She regretted her question the moment she asked it. Ina would think she was spying on her.

‘Perhaps,’ Ina said, her eyes a-twinkle.

‘He’s older than you then, is he?’ Olaug wanted to intimate indirectly that she hadn’t gone out of her way to catch a glimpse of him. ‘Since he likes old music, I mean.’

She could hear that was the wrong thing to say, too. Now she was asking questions and probing like an old tittle-tattle. In a flash of panic, she saw Ina mentally looking for somewhere else to live already.

‘A bit older, yes.’

Ina’s playful smile confused Olaug.

‘Much like you and Herr Schwabe perhaps.’

Olaug laughed happily along with Ina, mostly out of relief.

‘Just imagine. He was sitting exactly where you’re sitting now,’ Ina said out of the blue.

Olaug ran her hand across the blanket on the bed.

‘Yes, just imagine.’

‘When he was crying that evening was it because he couldn’t have you?’

Olaug was still stroking the blanket. The rough wool felt good under her hand.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I didn’t dare ask. Instead I made up my own answers, the ones I liked best, dreams I could cosset at night. That was probably why I was so much in love as I was.’

‘Did you ever go out together?’

‘Yes. He took me once in his car to Bygdoy. We went swimming. That is, I went swimming while he sat and watched. He called me his very own nymph.’

‘Did his wife find out that her husband was the father when you became pregnant?’

Olaug gave Ina a lingering look. Then she shook her head.

‘They left the country in May of 1945. I never saw them again. It was only in July that I discovered I was pregnant.’

Olaug slapped the blanket with her hand.

‘But you must be sick and tired of my old stories, my dear. Let’s talk about you. Who is your gentleman friend?’

‘He’s a fine man.’

Ina still had the dreamy expression on her face that she usually wore when Olaug was telling her about her first and last lover, Ernst Schwabe.

‘He’s given me something,’ Ina said, opening a drawer in the desk and holding up a little packet tied with a golden ribbon.

‘He said I couldn’t open it until we got engaged.’

Olaug smiled and stroked Ina’s cheek. She was happy for her.

‘Are you fond of him?’

‘He’s different from all the others. He’s not so… he’s old-fashioned. He wants us to wait. With… you know what.’

Olaug nodded. ‘It sounds like he’s serious.’

‘Yes.’ A little sigh escaped her.

‘You’ll have to make sure he’s the man for you before you let him go any further,’ Olaug said.

‘I know,’ Ina said. ‘That’s what’s so difficult. He’s just been here, and before he left, I told him I needed time to think. He said he understood, I am so much younger than him.’

Olaug was going to ask if he had a dog, but caught herself in time. She had done enough prying and probing. She ran her hand across the blanket for the last time and stood up.

‘I’m going to go back and put on some more tea, my dear.’

It was a revelation. Not a miracle, just a revelation.

It was half an hour since the others had left and Harry had just finished reading the interview transcripts of the two women who lived together across from Lisbeth Barli. He turned off the reading lamp on the desk, blinked in the dark and suddenly it came to him. Perhaps because he had turned off the light as you do when you go to bed. Or perhaps because he had stopped thinking for a moment. Whatever the reason, it was as if someone had thrust a clear, sharp photograph in his face.

He went into the office where the keys for the crime scenes were kept and found the one he was looking for. Then he drove to Sofies gate, collected his torch and walked to Ullevalsveien. It was almost midnight. The first floor was locked and the launderette was closed. In the shop selling headstones there was a spotlight in the window lighting up ‘Rest in Peace’.

Harry let himself into Camilla Loen’s flat.

None of the furniture or anything else had been removed, but still his footsteps echoed. It was as if the demise of the owner had lent the flat a physical void it hadn’t had before. At the same time he had the feeling that he wasn’t alone. Harry believed in the existence of the soul. Not that he was particularly religious as such, but it was one thing which always struck him when he saw a dead body: the body was bereft of something, something that wasn’t to do with the processes of physical change that bodies undergo. Bodies looked like the empty shells of insects in a spider’s web – the creature had gone, the light had gone, there was not the illusory afterglow that long-since burned-out stars have. The body was missing its soul and it was this absence of the soul that made Harry believe.

He didn’t put on the light; the light of the moon through the skylights was enough. He went straight into the bedroom where he switched on his torch and shone it at the load-bearing beam beside the bed. A sharp intake of breath. It wasn’t a heart round a triangle as he had first thought.

Harry sat down on the bed and ran the tips of his fingers over the grooves in the beam. The cuts in the brown, aged wood were so clear that they had to be fresh. And it was clear it had to be one cut. One long cut consisting of straight lines which doubled back and intersected each other. A pentagram.

Harry shone the torch on the floor. There were a fine layer of dust and a couple of hefty dustballs on the wood. Camilla Loen obviously had not done the cleaning before she departed. But there, by one of the legs at the top of the bed, he saw what he had been looking for. Wood shavings.

Harry lay back on the bed. The mattress was soft and giving. He stared up at the slanting ceiling while trying to think. If it really was the killer who had carved the star in the beam above the bed, what did it mean?

‘Rest in peace,’ Harry mumbled, closing his eyes.

He was too tired to think clearly. There was another question churning around in his brain. Why hadn’t he actually noticed the pentagram? Why hadn’t he put the two things together, the star and the diamonds? Or had he? Perhaps he had been too quick, perhaps his subconscious had connected the pentagram with something else, something he had seen at one of the killings, but he hadn’t managed to draw out.

He tried to establish a mental picture of the crime scenes.

Lisbeth in Sannergata. Barbara in Carl Berners plass. And Camilla here in the shower, in the room next door. She was almost naked. Wet skin. He had felt it. The hot water had made it seem as if she had been dead for less time than she really had. He had felt her skin. Beate watched him. He couldn’t stop touching her. It was like running your fingers over warm, smooth rubber. He looked up and saw that they were alone, and it was only then that he felt the warm stream of water from the shower. His eyes wandered down again; he saw her staring up at him with an odd gleam in her eyes. He gave a start and withdrew his hands; her stare faded away like on a television screen when the set has been switched off. Odd, he thought, and put a hand against her cheek. He waited while the hot water from the shower soaked through his clothes. The gleam came slowly back. He placed his other hand on her stomach. Her eyes became alive and he could feel her body stir beneath his fingers. He knew that it was touch that brought her back to life, that without touch she would disappear, die. He rested his forehead against her forehead. The water ran down the inside of his clothing, soaked his skin and lay like a warm filter between them. It was then that he noticed that her eyes were not blue, but brown. And her lips were no longer pale, but red and full of life. Rakel. He put his lips against hers. He recoiled when he discovered that they were ice cold.