Jo Nesbo - The Redeemer

'I was wondering what you felt when you entered the building,' Harry said. 'And looked up into the chute.'

'Felt?' Margaret asked with a puzzled smile.

'Yes, felt!' Stale Aune bellowed, proffering a hand which Harry shook without hesitation. 'Come along and learn, folks, for this is the famous gospel according to Hole. Before entering a crime scene empty your mind of all thoughts, become a newly born child, without language, open yourself to the sacred first impression, the vital first seconds which are your great, and only, chance to behold what happened without an ounce of a fact. It almost sounds like exorcism, doesn't it? Smart suit, Beate. And who is your charming colleague?'

'This is Margaret Svendsen.'

'Stale Aune,' the man said, seizing Margaret's begloved hand and kissing it. 'Goodness me, you taste of rubber, my dear.'

'Aune is a psychologist,' Beate said. 'He often helps us.'

'He often tries to help you,' Aune said. 'Psychology is, I'm afraid to say, a science that is still in its rompers and should not be accorded too much value for another fifty to a hundred years. And what is your response to Detective Inspector Hole's question, my dear?'

Margaret looked to Beate for help.

'I… don't know,' she said. 'The eye was a bit off-putting, of course.'

Harry unlocked the door.

'You know I can't stand the sight of blood,' Aune warned.

'Think of it as a glass eye,' Harry said, opening the door and stepping to the side. 'Walk on the plastic and don't touch anything.'

Aune trod with care on the path of black plastic traversing the floor. He crouched down beside the eye, which still lay in the pile of dust next to the vacuum cleaner but which now had a grey film over it.

'Apparently it's called enucleation,' Harry said.

Aune raised one eyebrow. 'Performed with a vacuum cleaner to the eye?'

'You can't suck an eye out of the head with just a vacuum cleaner,' Harry said. 'The perp must have sucked it out far enough for him to get a couple of fingers inside. Muscles and optic nerves are solid matter.'

'What you don't know, Harry.'

'I once arrested a woman who had drowned her child in the bath. While she was in custody she tore out one of her eyes. The doctor acquainted me with the technique.'

They heard a sharp intake of breath from Margaret behind them.

'Removing an eye does not have to be fatal,' Harry said. 'Beate thinks the woman may have been strangled. What's your first thought?'

'It goes without saying that this act has been committed by a person in a state of emotional or rational disequilibrium,' Aune said. 'The mutilation suggests uncontrolled anger. There may of course be practical reasons for the perpetrator to choose to dispatch the body down the chute…'

'Unlikely,' Harry said. 'If the intention was that the body should not be found for a while, it would have been smarter to leave it in the empty flat.'

'In that case to some extent this kind of thing tends to be a conscious symbolic act.'

'Hm. Remove an eye and treat the rest as rubbish?'

'Yes.'

Harry looked at Beate. 'It doesn't sound like the work of a professional killer.'

Aune shrugged. 'It could well be an angry professional killer.'

'In general pros have a method they rely on. Christo Stankic's method so far has been to shoot his victims.'

'He may have a wider repertoire,' Beate said. 'Or perhaps the victim surprised him while he was in the flat.'

'Perhaps he didn't want to shoot because it would have alerted the neighbours,' Margaret said.

The other three faced her.

She flashed an intimidated smile. 'I mean… perhaps he needed time and peace and quiet. Perhaps he was searching for something.'

Harry noticed that all of a sudden Beate had begun to breathe hard through her nose and was even paler than usual.

'How does that sound?' he asked, addressing Aune.

'Like psychology,' Aune said. 'A mass of questions. And hypotheses by way of a response.'

Outside again, Harry asked Beate if something was the matter.

'Just a bit of nausea,' she said.

'Oh? You're refused permission to be sick right now. Understood?'

She answered him with a cryptic smile.

He woke up, opened his eyes and saw lights roaming across the white ceiling above him. His body and head ached, and he was frozen. There was something in his mouth. And when he tried to move he could feel that his hands and feet had been shackled. He raised his head. In the mirror at the end of the bed, in the light from the burning candles, he could see he was naked. And there was something on his head, something black like a horse's harness. One of the straps went across his face, over his mouth, which was obstructed by a black ball. His hands were held by metal handcuffs, his feet by something black like bondage restraints. He stared into the mirror. On the sheet between his legs lay the end of a string that disappeared up between his buttocks. And there was something white on his stomach. It looked like semen. He sank back on the pillow and shut his eyes. He wanted to scream, but knew that the ball would effectively prevent any attempt.

He heard a voice from the living room.

'Hello? Politi?'

Politi? Polizei? Police?

He thrashed around on the bed, jerking his arms down and moaning with pain as the handcuffs cut into the back of his thumb, taking off the skin. He twisted his hands so that his fingers could get hold of the chain between the cuffs. Handcuffs. Steel bars. His father had taught him that building materials were almost always made to withstand pressure in one direction and that the art of bending steel was about knowing where and which way it would offer the least resistance. The chain between the handcuffs was made to prevent them being pulled apart.

He heard the man speaking briefly on the living-room telephone, then all went quiet.

He pressed the point where the final link in the chain met one cuff against the bar of the bed head, but instead of pulling he twisted. After a quarter-turn the link locked against the bar. He tried to twist further, but it wouldn't budge. He tried again, but his hands slipped.

'Hello?' came the voice from the living room.

He took a deep breath. Closed his eyes and saw his father with enormous forearms in a short-sleeved shirt before the line of steel rods on the building site. He whispered to the boy: 'Banish all doubt. There's only room for willpower. The steel has no willpower and that's why it always loses.'

Tore Bjorgen drummed his fingers with impatience on the rococo mirror with the pearl-grey clam adornments. The owner of the antiques shop had told him that 'rococo' was often used in a derogatory sense, to mean the style was over the top, almost grotesque. Tore had realised afterwards that that was what had tipped the balance, when he had made up his mind to take out a loan to be able to lay out the twelve thousand kroner which the mirror had cost.

The switchboard at Police HQ had tried to put him through to Crime Squad, but no one had picked up and now they were trying the uniformed police.

He heard sounds from the bedroom. The rattle of chains against the bed. Perhaps Stesolid had not been the most effective sedative after all.

'Duty officer.' The deep, calm voice startled Tore.

'Um, this is… it's about the reward. For… erm, that guy who shot the guy from the Salvation Army.'

'Who's speaking? And where are you ringing from?'

'Tore. From Oslo.'

'Could you be a bit more precise, please?'

Tore gulped. He had – for several good reasons – exercised his right not to disclose his telephone number when phoning and he knew that now 'unknown number'would be flashing on whatever display the duty officer had.

'I can help you.' Tore's voice had gone up a register.