Jo Nesbo - The Thirst

‘OK,’ Katrine said, turning back towards the body. ‘Any ideas about what he could have stabbed her with? Or hacked, seeing as there’s a whole load of incisions close together.’

‘It’s not very easy to see, but they form a pattern,’ he said. ‘Two patterns, in fact.’

‘Oh?’

Bjørn went over to the body and pointed towards the woman’s neck, beneath her short blonde hair. ‘Do you see that the incisions form two small, overlapping ovals, one here – and one here?’

Katrine tilted her head. ‘Now that you mention it …’

‘Like bite marks.’

‘Oh, fuck,’ Katrine blurted out. ‘An animal?’

‘Who knows? But imagine a fold of skin being pulled out and pressed together when upper and lower jaws meet. That would leave a mark like this …’ Bjørn pulled a piece of semi-transparent paper from his pocket and Katrine instantly recognised it as the wrapper of the packed lunch he took to work each day. ‘Looks like it matches the bite of someone from Toten, anyway.’

‘Human teeth can’t have done that to her neck.’

‘Agreed. But the pattern is human.’

Katrine moistened her lips. ‘There are people who file their teeth to make them sharper.’

‘If it was teeth, we may find saliva around the wounds. Either way, if they were standing on the rug in the hallway when he bit her, the bite marks indicate that he was standing behind her, and that he’s taller than her.’

‘The forensics officer didn’t find anything under her nails, so I reckon he was holding her tight,’ Katrine said. ‘A strong man of average or above average height, with the teeth of a predator.’

They stood in silence, looking at the body. Like a young couple in an art gallery contemplating opinions with which to impress other people, Katrine thought. The only difference was that Bjørn never tried to impress people. She was the one who did that.

Katrine heard steps in the hall. ‘No more people in here now!’ she called.

‘Just wanted to let you know there were only people at home in two of the flats, and none of them saw or heard anything.’ Wyller’s high-pitched voice. ‘But I’ve just spoken to two lads who saw Elise Hermansen when she came home. They say she was alone.’

‘And these lads are …?’

‘No criminal record, and they had a taxi receipt to prove that they left here just after 11.30. They said she walked in on them while they were urinating in the archway. Shall I bring them in for questioning?’

‘It wasn’t them, but yes.’

‘OK.’

Wyller’s steps receded.

‘She returned home alone and there are no signs of a break-in,’ Bjørn said. ‘Do you think she let him in voluntarily?’

‘Not unless she knew him well.’

‘No?’

‘Elise was a lawyer, she knew the risks, and that security chain on the door looks pretty new. I think she was a careful young woman.’ Katrine crouched down beside the body. Looked at the splinter of wood sticking out of Elise’s middle finger. And the scratch on her lower arm.

‘A lawyer,’ Bjørn said. ‘Where?’

‘Hollumsen & Skiri. They were the ones who called the police when she didn’t show up at a hearing and wasn’t answering her phone. It’s not exactly unusual for lawyers to be the victims of attacks.’

‘Do you think …?’

‘No, like I said, I don’t think she let anyone in. But …’ Katrine frowned. ‘Do you agree that this splinter looks pinkish white?’

Bjørn leaned over her. ‘White, certainly.’

‘Pinkish white,’ Katrine said, standing up. ‘Come with me.’

They went out into the hall, where Katrine opened the door and pointed at the splintered door frame outside. ‘Pinkish white.’

‘If you say so,’ Bjørn said.

‘Don’t you see it?’ she asked incredulously.

‘Research has shown that women usually see more nuances of colour than men.’

‘You do see this , though?’ Katrine asked, holding up the security chain that was hanging down the inside of the door.

Bjørn leaned closer. His scent came as a shock to her. Maybe it was just discomfort at the sudden intimacy.

‘Scraped skin,’ he said.

‘The scratch on her lower arm. Do you see?’

He nodded slowly. ‘She scratched herself on the security chain, so it must have been on. So he wasn’t trying to push past her, she was fighting to get out.’

‘We don’t usually use security chains in Norway, we rely on locks, that’s the general rule. And if she did let him in, if this strong man was someone she knew, for instance …’

‘… she wouldn’t have fiddled about putting the chain back on after she’d opened the door to let him in. Because she would have felt safe. Ergo …’

‘Ergo,’ she took over, ‘he was already in the flat when she got home.’

‘Without her knowing,’ he said.

‘That’s why she put the security chain on, she thought anything dangerous was outside .’ Katrine shuddered. This was what the expression ‘horrified delight’ was for. The feeling a homicide detective gets when they suddenly see and understand .

‘Harry would have been pleased with you now,’ Bjørn said. And laughed.

‘What?’

‘You’re blushing.’

I’m so fucked up, Katrine thought.

THURSDAY AFTERNOON

KATRINE HAD TROUBLE concentrating during the press conference, where they gave a brief account of the victim’s identity, age, where and when she was found, but that was about it. The first press conferences immediately after a murder were almost always a matter of saying as little as possible and simply going through the motions, in the name of modern, open democracy.

Alongside her sat the head of Crime Squad, Gunnar Hagen. The flashlights reflected off the shiny bald patch above his ring of dark hair as he read out the short sentences they had composed together. Katrine was happy to let Hagen do the talking. Not that she didn’t like the spotlight, but that could come later. At the moment she was so new to the role of lead detective that it felt reassuring to let Hagen deal with the talking until she learned the right way to say things, and watch as an accomplished senior police officer used body language and tone of voice rather than actual content to convince the general public that the police were in control.

She sat there, looking out over the heads of the thirty or so journalists who had gathered in the Parole Hall on the fourth floor, at the large painting that covered the whole of the back wall. It showed naked people swimming, most of them skinny young boys. A beautiful, innocent scene from a time before everything became loaded and interpreted in the worst possible way. And she was no different: she assumed the artist was a paedophile. Hagen was repeating his mantra in response to the journalists’ questions: ‘We aren’t in a position to answer that at present,’ with simple variations to stop the replies sounding arrogant or directly comical. ‘At this moment in time we can’t comment on that.’ Or a more benevolent: ‘We’ll have to come back to that.’

She heard their scratching pens and keyboards write questions that were obviously more elaborate than the answers: ‘Was the body badly damaged?’, ‘Was there any evidence of sexual assault?’, ‘Do you have a suspect, and, if so, is it someone close to her?’ Speculative questions that could lend a certain tremulous subtext to the reply ‘No comment’, if nothing else.

In the doorway at the back of the room she could make out a familiar figure. He had a black patch over one eye, and had put on the Police Chief’s uniform that she knew always hung, freshly pressed, in the cupboard in his office. Mikael Bellman. He didn’t come all the way inside, just stood there as an observer. She noted that Hagen had also spotted him, and he sat up a little straighter in his chair under the gaze of the rather younger Police Chief.