‘That they were killed with the same goddam instrument, but that doesn’t get us any closer to what it was.’

Silence.

Harry coughed. ‘OK, Bjorn, out with it.’

‘Out with what?’

‘What you’ve been brooding about ever since we got here.’

The forensics officer scratched his sideburns while eyeballing Harry. Coughed once. Twice. Glanced at Kaja as if to solicit help there. Opened his mouth, closed it.

‘Fine,’ Harry said. ‘Let’s move on to-’

‘The rope.’

The other two stared at Bjorn.

‘I found shells on it.’

‘Oh yes?’ Harry said.

‘But no salt.’

They were still staring at him.

‘That’s pretty unusual,’ Bjorn went on. ‘Shells. In fresh water.’

‘So?’

‘So I checked it out with a freshwater biologist. This particular mollusc is called a Jutland mussel, it’s the smallest of the pool mussels and has been observed in only two lakes in Norway.’

‘And the nominations are?’

‘Oyeren and Lyseren.’

‘Ostfold,’ Kaja said. ‘Neighbouring lakes. Big ones.’

‘In a densely populated region,’ Harry said.

‘Sorry,’ Holm said.

‘Mm. Any marks on the rope that tell us where it might have been bought?’

‘No, that’s the point,’ Holm said. ‘There are no marks. And it doesn’t look like any rope I’ve seen before. The fibre is one hundred per cent organic, there’s no nylon or any other synthetic materials.’

‘Hemp,’ Harry said.

‘What?’ Holm said.

‘Hemp. Rope and hash are made from the same material. If you fancy a joint, you can just stroll down to the harbour and light up the mooring ropes of the Danish ferry.’

‘It’s not hemp,’ Bjorn Holm said over Kaja’s laughter. ‘The fibre’s made from the elm and the linden tree. Mostly elm.’

‘Home-made Norwegian rope,’ Kaja said. ‘They used to make rope on farms long ago.’

‘On farms?’ Harry queried.

Kaja nodded. ‘As a rule every village had at least one rope-maker. You just soaked the wood in water for a month, peeled off the outer bark and used the bast inside. Twined it into rope.’

Harry and Bjorn swivelled round to face Kaja.

‘What’s the matter?’ she asked hesitantly.

‘Well,’ Harry said, ‘is this general knowledge everyone ought to possess?’

‘Oh, I see,’ Kaja said. ‘My grandfather made rope.’

‘Aha. And for rope-making you need elm and linden?’

‘In principle you can use bast fibres from any kind of tree.’

‘And the composition?’

Kaja shrugged. ‘I’m no expert, but I think it’s unusual to use bast from several different trees for the same rope. I remember that Even, my big brother, said that Grandad used only linden because it absorbs very little water. So he didn’t need to tar his.’

‘Mm. What do you think, Bjorn?’

‘If the compositon is unusual, it will be easier to trace where it was made, of course.’

Harry stood up and began to pace back and forth. There was a heavy sigh every time his rubber soles relinquished the lino. ‘Then we can assume production was limited and sales were local. Do you think that sounds reasonable, Kaja?’

‘Guess so, yes.’

‘And we can also assume that the centres of production and consumption were in close proximity. These home-made ropes would hardly have travelled far.’

‘Still sounds reasonable, but…’

‘So let’s take that as our starting point. You two begin mapping out local rope-makers near lakes Oyeren and Lyseren.’

‘But no one makes ropes like that any more,’ Kaja protested.

‘Do the best you can,’ Harry said, looked at his watch, grabbed his coat from the back of the chair and walked to the door. ‘Find out where the rope was made. I presume Bellman knows nothing about these Jutland mussels. That right, Bjorn?’

Bjorn Holm forced a smile by way of answer.

‘Is it OK if I follow up the theory of a sexually motivated murder?’ Kaja asked. ‘I can talk to someone I know at Sexual Offences.’

‘Negative,’ Harry said. ‘The general order to keep your trap shut about what we’re doing applies in particular to our dear colleagues at Police HQ. There seems to be some seepage between HQ and Kripos, so the only person we speak to is Gunnar Hagen.’

Kaja had opened her mouth, but a glance from Bjorn was enough to make her close it again.

‘But what you can do’, Harry said, ‘is get hold of a volcano expert. And send him the test results of the small stones.’

Bjorn’s fair eyebrows rose a substantial way up his forehead.

‘Porous, black stone, basalt rock,’ Harry said. ‘I would reckon lava. I’ll be back from Bergen at fourish.’

‘Say hello to Baa-baargen Police HQ,’ Bjorn bleated and raised his coffee cup.

‘I won’t be going to the police station,’ Harry said.

‘Oh? Where then?’

‘Sandviken Hospital.’

‘Sand-’

The door slammed behind Harry. Kaja watched Bjorn Holm, who was staring at the closed door with a stunned expression on his face.

‘What’s he going to do there?’ she asked. ‘See a pathologist?’

Bjorn shook his head. ‘Sandviken Hospital is a mental hospital.’

‘Really? So he’s going to meet a psychologist with serial killings as a speciality, is he?’

‘I knew I should have said no,’ Bjorn whispered, still staring at the door. ‘He’s clean out of his mind.’

‘Who’s out of his mind?’

‘We’re working in a prison,’ Bjorn said. ‘We’re risking our jobs if the boss finds out what we’re up to, and the colleague in Bergen. ..’

‘Yes?’

‘She is seriously out of her mind.’

‘You mean she’s…?’

‘Sectioned out of her mind.’

18

The Patient

For every step the tall policeman took, Kjersti Rodsmoen had to take two. Even so, she was left behind as they walked along the corridor of Sandviken Hospital. The rain was pouring down outside the high, narrow windows facing the fjord where the trees were so green you would have thought spring had arrived before winter.

The day before, Kjersti Rodsmoen had recognised the policeman’s voice at once. As though she had been waiting for him to ring. And to make the very request he did: to talk to the Patient. The Patient had come to be called the Patient to give her maximum anonymity after the strain of her most recent murder case as a detective had sent her right back to square one: the psychiatric ward. In fact, she had recovered with remarkable speed, had moved back home, but the press – which was still hysterically pursuing the Snowman case long after it had been cleared up – had not left her in peace. And one evening, a few months ago, the Patient had called Rodsmoen and asked if she could return.

‘So she’s in serviceable shape?’ the police officer asked. ‘On medication?’

‘Yes to the first,’ Kjersti Rodsmoen said. ‘The second is confidential.’ The truth was the Patient was so well that neither medicine nor hospitalisation was required any longer. Nevertheless Rodsmoen had wondered whether she should let him visit her; he had been on the Snowman case and could cause old issues to emerge. Kjersti Rodsmoen had, in her time as a psychologist, come to believe more and more in repression, in shutting things off, in oblivion. It was an unfashionable view within the profession. On the other hand, meeting a person who had been on that particular case might be a good test of how robust the Patient had become.

‘You’ve got half an hour,’ Rodsmoen said before opening the door to the common room. ‘And don’t forget that the mind is tender.’

The last time Harry had seen Katrine Bratt she had been unrecognisable. The attractive young woman with the dark hair and the glowing skin and eyes had gone, to be replaced by someone who reminded him of a dried flower: lifeless, frail, delicate, wan. He had had a feeling he might crush her hand if he squeezed too hard.

So it was a relief to see her now. She looked older, or perhaps she was just tired. But the gleam in her eyes returned as she smiled and got up.