Sascha Arango - The Truth and Other Lies

A special task force was already hard at work looking for a nature lover, a forester, or a hunter. Hundred-strong police contingents combed the areas where the caller had switched on his phone. Thermal imaging cameras and satellite optics were also deployed in case there was a secret hideout to be found. Specialized dog teams hunted for underground burrows. They found only poachers’ hideaways and an abandoned Boy Scout camp. A lot of innocent hikers were detained by the police and had their phones examined — but the search yielded nothing.

As the search for the unknown person wasn’t getting them anywhere, Blum’s teams reopened murder cases in which the trail had gone cold, and applied the same techniques. More experts with new hypotheses arrived on the scene. The homicide squads were expanded further, and the search area widened again. Jenssen, who had started throwing darts at the map in his office, didn’t believe in the nature-lover theories. He saw a much more flexible strategy in the guerrilla-like appearance and disappearance of the unknown caller. For Jenssen it was clear that the mystery man could be none other than Henry Hayden.

At the daily briefings in the meeting room, Awner Blum circulated a photocopy of a new profile. “We’re looking for a man,” he began, “who’s been living a double life for a long time. He’s sporty, about thirty to forty-five years old, might well be married, have children, and leads an unremarkable middle-class existence. He lives in a radius of two hundred miles from here. Perhaps he’s a hunter or a forester — he might even be a policeman or a regular soldier by profession, because he’s a master of disguise and knows a lot about location technology. He’s looking for the kick that his day-to-day life can’t provide. Maybe he robs banks in his spare time, or kills people. It’s possible that he’s on the run from something.”

“From what?” asked Jenssen in the back row.

“Something in his past,” Blum replied. “A traumatic experience that’s still haunting him, or else a crime. He leaves nothing to chance. At some point he gets to know his victim. He must have told her some fanciful story about himself, a story so plausible that she didn’t talk about him to anyone, not even to her closest friends and relations. We have to assume that she was unaware of his true identity. Then one day or night she gets pregnant by him. He didn’t want that; the thing starts to get too risky for him. He was in the car with her when she was on her way to meet Mr. Hayden. That’s when the murderer killed her and disposed of her body.”

“How?” asked Jenssen from the back.

“By boat or by ship. The murder took place right by the water.”

Jenssen rose from his seat.

“Excuse me for saying this, but no woman is that stupid. The victim was an editor. Editors read books for a living. They analyze them. They look for logical errors and inconsistencies in them. They’re experts in fanciful stories. Nothing escapes them. I think you can fool anyone, but not indefinitely. If our man wanted to disguise himself — and there’s no doubt that’s what he wanted — then why did he phone her at all?”

Jenssen’s reflections aroused a feeling of unease in the room, but he carried on regardless. “I think this fellow just likes going for walks. Why should he of all people send ultrasound images of the baby to the publisher when no one’s supposed to find out?”

Awner Blum looked around at the assembled company. “Is it possible that the murder victim sent the pictures herself in order to get rid of him?”

“Certainly not if she was afraid of him.”

“OK, Jenssen.” Blum was getting angry. As a certified investigative genius, he had no use for time-wasting skeptics. “So why don’t you tell us who you think the unknown person is?”

Jenssen mumbled something.

“Sorry? Speak up, please. We can’t hear you.”

“I said, maybe we already know him.”

“Maybe?”

Awner Blum looked at the clock on the wall. Jenssen was getting on his nerves with his “maybe.” He was still young and relatively inexperienced to be on a homicide squad, and on top of that he was slow on his feet and not a good team player. Blum had been considering a transfer for Jenssen for quite some time. A friendly “recruitment” by another department would be an excellent method.

“We all know your theory, Jenssen, and we wonder why you persist in defending it. At the time in question, Mr. Hayden was sitting on a crowded restaurant terrace. He has no motive other than being famous. He has tried to the best of his ability to assist in solving the crime — what is more, he was talking to the victim on his phone when she died. What in your opinion would be a possible motive?”

“Sex,” replied Jenssen after clearing his throat noisily. “The murder victim Betty Hansen was his lover. He’s the child’s father. Either he or she or both of them together killed his wife Martha. And something went wrong.”

——

In the air-conditioned silence of his private room, Gisbert Fasch realized that he was a man who had problems. Not just since the accident, but also long before. His mother, Amalie, who paid him sporadic visits, confirmed this. He’d always been something of an only child, she explained to her son, even though he’d had two older sisters. That was why he’d spent half his childhood in children’s homes. After this clarifying conversation, Fasch broke off relations with his mother.

The tiresome whistling sound, Fasch was told by a neurologist by the name of Rosenheimer, was not coming through the wall. It was tinnitus, a disorder of auditory perception caused by his cerebral bleeding. This bleeding incidentally also damaged his visual cortex, which, wonder of wonders, is situated right at the back of the brain — according to Rosenheimer that was why he was seeing double. Both afflictions were permanent, along with stiffness in his legs, a fifty percent lung capacity, and an eighty percent chance of having one or more epileptic seizures in the next sixteen months. Rosenheimer was not a sympathetic person. Gisbert would have liked to talk to a psychiatrist, but psychiatrists are famous for not visiting hospital patients. Three weeks after the accident he still wasn’t capable of getting up by himself. His legs were no longer hanging in slings, but encased in plastic sleeves. Only a trickle of clear fluid flowed from the drain in his chest.

Gisbert Fasch had never been happier. The knowledge that he was able to enjoy his new-given life with all the possibilities of starting over filled him with joy and gratitude, and made his pains and the ringing in his ears more bearable. He often thought about the man he had to thank for it. Next to his head on the bedside table was a box set of The Sopranos that Henry had brought him and a letter from the public prosecutor’s office. From the letter he gathered there were proceedings against him on a charge of arson by culpable negligence. The entire contents of his apartment had been incinerated. Electric curling irons that had caught fire inside a Miss Wong — brand silicon doll were said to be the cause. It looked very much as if Fasch was going to be homeless on his release from the hospital and then thrown into jail soon afterward. If Fasch had read the underlined paragraph “Cause of Fire” once, he’d read it a hundred times — he could have sworn he’d switched off the curling irons in her groin before leaving the house.

There was a knock. The evening-duty sister looked in. Her slim face, her black hair with its pageboy cut, and the thick eyeliner over her expressive eyes all reminded Fasch of his ex, Miss Wong, and, night after night, stimulated his curling-iron fantasies.

“There’s a visitor for you,” the sister said.