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  He was the proud father of two girls.

  “Dave, glad you could make it,” he said and squeezed his hand, “this is doctor Mortensen.”

  Mortensen nodded his bald head and also gave Dave’s hand a squeeze with a cold hammy hand.

  Thankfully Mortensen’s apron did not have any fresh blood on it.

  “So, what’s going on?” asked Dave, looking at the two bodies lying on metal tables.

  Andy moistened his lips, “Remember that woman who was found by her daughter, that was tied up on her bed, dead?”

  Dave nodded, “Of course, how can I forget? Choked on her own crap, right?.”

  “Right. Now we have two more bodies. The first incident was not an accident. Another serial killer for your files.”

  “Oh great, that’s all I needed.” Dave looked at Doctor Mortensen with a manly but pained expression. Mortensen walked over to the bodies, with either a laid back or a resigned stride, and the two men drifted over after him.

  The doctor lifted the cover of the first victim. “This one is Jane Donovan. Fifty-six-years-old.”

  A middle-aged woman was lying on her back, staring into nothing. The doctor had already kindly manipulated her facial muscles into a more fitting, more somber expression and had closed her eyes, but that didn’t help much to take away the dreadful undertone of the whole situation.

  “Cause of death: suffocation by cling film,” said Mortensen, “time of death: just hours ago, probably last night. She was found this morning by a co-worker who was to pick her up in the morning before work.”

  “That’s a crappy way to start the day,” muttered Andy.

  Dave winced at the word ‘crappy’. “If it’s cling film, why do we think it’s the same killer?” he asked.

  “Because she was found bound and had traces of her own feces in her stomach,” said Andy, “mixed, would you believe, with some bananas.” The doctor nodded in affirmation.

  “I see.” Dave checked a shudder and tried to teeter nonchalantly on his heels, hands compulsively playing with pocket change. “What about the other one?”

  “The other one was also found bound, and suffocated by her own feces, like the first victim.” Mortensen lifted the cover of the second victim. “Miya Hanski, twenty-two, found yesterday by roommate returning from home town.”

  Dave felt very sick. The face and body of Miya Hanski were painfully familiar. He had kissed and used them mere days ago.

  This was Georgette.

  He had made love to Miya’s alter ego, and now the real person lay in front of him, inanimate, cold, dead.

  “Some abrasions on the inner side of the cheeks point to a metallic mouth-restraint being used, like with the first victim,” droned Mortensen.

  “What is the time of death for Miya?” David’s voice was hoarse. It didn’t sound familiar at all.

  “Last Saturday probably. Maybe Friday.”

  “Jesus.” Dave covered his eyes with his hands for a second, as if washing with some invisible water. Then he opened his eyes again, straining to be serious and collected.

  Andy looked at him. Dave met his gaze unsteadily and answered the unspoken question, “I had sex with this girl just a few days ago.”

  Andy promptly reacted with a look of commiseration, “You knew her well?”

  “Not really, it was a one night stand. We met at a swinger club. The Faceoff.”

  “When was that?”

  “Last Wednesday evening, I think.”

  Andy edged closer and put his hand on Dave’s shoulder. He gave a friendly squeeze, which men do to each other from time to time in order to show empathy.

  Dave looked at the floor, trying to kick-start his brain into producing something useful, instead of just going to pieces. “I also saw her with some joker on Friday, in the same club.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Just a second.” David tried to remember. What did he call him back then? Mister…Mister Greenpants. “Fashionable looking dude, had green pants and a black latex jacket, and I think he had red gloves.”

  Andy mused, “If he poses as a guy with a latex fetish and never undresses and doesn’t take his gloves off, that would explain why he leaves no trace of himself.”

  “Is there no trace of him with these two cases as well?”

  “Didn’t look like it. The forensics from Byer and Schmidt are working on it right now. Hopefully they’ll find something this time.”

  Dave tried to concentrate. Forget the taste of Georgette’s skin for now, focus on the job at hand.

  His jaw muscles ached from the attempts of keeping his lips from quivering. He spoke in a deep, unemotional, manly tone. “So, we’re dealing here with someone who likes to suffocate women. How does he meet them?” He answered his own question, “Georgette was a swinger. Perhaps the other two were also swingers. He meets them, and then they go to their places. How does he convince them to do that?”

  “Probably feeds them some crap about...”

  David’s right cheek twitched. He pointed his bloodshot eyes at Andy, “Don’t, don’t say that man. Don’t use that expression. Not here, not now.”

  Andy spread his hands placatingly, with a guilty smile curving the sides of his mustache. “Sorry, of course, what was I thinking? I meant that there are many things you can say to bluff your way into someone’s home. Like that you have roommates, or that you have a wife and kids at home, or something.”

  “What if they also can’t go home, and prefer to go to a hotel?”

  “Then they probably stay alive.”

  “Video clips,” said Doctor Mortensen, who had only listened until now.

  “What?” David looked at the doctor uncomprehendingly.

  “These swinger types...aren’t they prone to make secret recording of their sex at home?”

  Dave scowled. These moronic stereotypes were no help at all.

  Andy was polite. He grinned and nodded. “That’s a good idea, Doc. We’ll check it out.”

  Dave remembered the club again. “There must be records from the security cameras of the Faceoff Club too.”

  “Yeah, right.” Andy displayed a positive, confident face. “We’ll catch the bastard yet, he can’t evade all the cameras in the world. He can’t play with fate and win all the time. There must be at least a bit of spit somewhere which the Bayer boys will find.”

  Dave knew Andy said this mainly for his sake. He gave him a grateful smile.

  They squeezed hands with the good doctor again and left the college building.

  The light filtering through the gray sky was not much warmer than the light in the morgue. The passing cars made Dave think of mechanized coffins.

  Andy cleared his throat. “I sent you an email with info about a pedophile site that was found, we won’t discuss it now...”

  “No, I’m cool, tell me about it.”

  “Well, a contact in the N.M.H. office found it. There are clips of a clown, I mean a real clown, with a red nose and everything, having sex with little boys and girls. Those are just two-minute samples. You can become a member and download the full movies.”

  “And?”

  Andy picked at some gravel with the toe of his shoe. “Well, so far we can’t break into the security of the site and see what the addresses of the clients are, or who’s hosting it. The chap from the N.M.H. said he has a programmer contact who maybe will give him some software to try and break in. Quietly. All we can do is hope this program doesn’t get detected and scare off the bad guys.”

  Dave looked at the cracked, discolored pavement below his feet, and also flicked at a tiny piece of gravel with his shoe. “Christ. A clown with kids. A maniac killing women with shit. Decades of Season Girls with no result except detectives dying off. A little sex robot killing other l
ittle sex robots.” He looked an Andy, “You got a cigarette?”

  Andy reacted automatically to this request and patted one pocket before checking himself and frowning at Dave. “I thought you didn’t smoke,” he said, searching the detective’s eyes.

  “I don’t,” Dave said in a queer, detached voice, “but now may be the time to start, by the look of things.”

  Andy leaned forward, patting him on both shoulders. “Look, just go back to your office, have a beer or two on the way and try to relax. We’ll figure this all out step by step.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” Dave said, mainly out of courtesy and tried to hide his feelings.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow evening, to get that toy-basher,” Andy insisted, still searching Dave’s face.

  “Yeah.” Dave obliged with a bleak smile. “See you tomorrow, man.”

  * * * *

  Back in his office, Dave looked at the printouts from the Twinker-Belles site.

  Then he thought about the two bodies in the college morgue.

  Then he received an email with the details concerning all three bodies.

  The roommate who had found Miya Hanski was Robert Hink, nineteen, working in the same mall with her. The co-worker who had found Jane Donovan was Natalie Martorino, twenty-six, employed in ‘Spectrum Sociology and PR’.

  Dave stood right up, again masking an upsurge of feelings with a thoughtful face, and walked over to the window.

  The autumn wind pushed small, dark clouds with urgency below the immobile gray lid that was the sky. Buildings looked sad and fragile. Pedestrians looked furtive and uncomfortable.

  What a day. What a week. What a world. This was the last straw. Poor Natalie of all people having to find the body.

  Dave picked up his phone to call her, and then decided against it. Now was probably not a good time. She would have called him already by now if she needed him.

  He sat down again. A rational part of his mind brought out another disturbing angle. If out of three bodies left by the shit-strangler one was of a woman with whom he had sex just days ago and another was a woman who worked with Natalie, suspicions would arise if someone added two and two.

  Perhaps someone would think that he and Natalie were working as a tandem of maniac killers. The evening in which Georgette was killed, his alibi was only Natalie herself. Damn, damn, damn.

  He hoped she had a good alibi for the night Jane was killed.

  * * * *

  When he returned home in the evening, he had no appetite and no desire to do anything. He simply lay limp on his sofa and slowly guzzled beer. He thought again of Georgette and Jane.

  Both were women whom he would have liked to have sex with. It was simple chance that he had only had sex with one of them. Judging by the photo of the first victim, Sarah, she would also have made a great one night stand.

  Apparently, both he and the killer had the same taste in women. Nothing too classy, rather the opposite.

  Girls who were young and therefore wanted to please, and were easy to make do things. Women who were plain, and therefore wanted to please, and were easy to make do things. Women who were old and therefore wanted to please, and were easy to make do things.

  Dave’s lunch suddenly appeared to be at the threshold of his throat. He jumped off the sofa and ran to the toilet.

  After flushing the vomit and cleansing his mouth from the acrid taste, he returned to his couch. He lay down, pale, trembling, and very depressed.

  He and the killer chose the same types of women. Women whose buttons were easy to push.

  Young insecure provincials, plain looking housewife-clerk types, and old-timers who refused to admit that they were not girls anymore and were ready to prove the contrary by any means.

  “God,” he said aloud and tried to hide the world from himself by means of a pillow put on his face. That only reminded him of the cling film by which Jane was killed.

  There was only one thing to do.

  He got up again and with a slight stoop shuffled slowly to the kitchen, where he opened another beer.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Anton parked his car in front of the building Natalie had described to him. It said ‘National Patriots’ above the entrance. He studied the logo. Typical Nazi revivalist anesthetics.

  Why was she mixed up with a bunch of obscure Nazis? She sounded very distressed over the phone and so was he now. This was the first time she had ever, as an adult, asked him to pick her up.

  Something must be very wrong.

  Anton looked at the gray sky from his rear window and then at the gray sidewalk. He got out of his car. He lighted a cigarette and stood there smoking.

  Spouting the white smoke, he looked around, to see if anyone wanted to make something out of him smoking in public.

  Everyone minded their own businesses. They better be. They damn better be.

  He looked at the time on his phone. What was keeping her? He was early, but surely she knew he would be early? Maybe she had forgotten his habits...they had drifted so much apart in the last years.

  When he was almost forty, they took his stepdaughter away from him, because he was a heroin addict.

  Heroin addict.

  Anton felt ancient anger stirring inside him. Brain-dead, chicken-shit, pill-poppers trying to find someone at whose expense to feel smug about themselves.

  He was very good at his work back then, needing only a morning fix and an evening fix, and was far from the degenerates who beg for spare change on the streets, steal the hand bags of old ladies, or shoot down helicopters in action films.

  He was no hoodlum.

  He was more like a nineteenth century gentleman, who injected himself morphine in the morning and then proceeded to be a good husband, father and...surgeon, or writer, or whatever they were back then.

  Like in Poe’s stories. No one pounced on his characters waving badges, no one called them junkies. No, everyone patiently listened to their explanations about shimmering ghostly cities from other dimensions.

  No one ever persecuted Sherlock Holmes for injecting cocaine to liven up his inner worlds.

  These ignorant, uncouth bastards had taken Natalie away after he got caught out in a random drug test at work, and he had to go through that tedious, terrible methadone program, and then report weekly with a piss sample for a year, and then once a fortnight for another year, before they would give her back to him.

  By the time he was pronounced ‘cured’ and ‘clean’, and ‘without relapses’, by then she was an adult, and had already won her first scholarship, and had gone to Finland for three years, to study sociology.

  He was proud and sad at the same time back then. Ever since, they were never really close again. She liked him and probably respected him. He certainly respected her but some important bond was broken.

  Somewhere in the back of her mind, she almost certainly blamed him for being a weakling, for being a junkie.

  Now, she called him with a trembling voice, asking for ‘Daddy’ to come and take her from work. This meant things must be bad.

  Anton sucked intensely at the remains of his cigarette, actually wrinkling it, crumpling it by his forceful inhalation, and then threw the stub away to land below his car.

  He saw the National Patriot HQ door open.

  There she was, going out of the building, looking so fragile. He grabbed her, hugged her, pecked her cheek, and steered her to his car.

  * * * *

  They sat in his home on the thick rug on the floor. At least Natalie was sitting, cross-legged, while Anton was lying on his right side, holding his cigarette with his left hand, and propping up his head with this right one.

  Natalie was also smoking.

  “I understand that it was a terrible shock,” Anton said, trying to keep up a n
o-nonsense attitude, “but I must say that you look terribly thin as well. How are you eating these days?’

  Natalie looked at him with a guilty smile, which turned into a defiant grin. “I eat, I eat.”

  “What did you eat today?”

  “Nothing, but that’s understandable.”

  “Okay, what about yesterday?”

  “I...had some nuts at work?”

  Anton turned on the skeptical parental expression. “What about the day before yesterday?”

  “Half an apple,” fibbed Natalie.

  Anton eyed her for ten seconds. “Are you an anorexic, dear daughter?”

  “No, no, of course not. I just...it’s the strain lately...”

  “Why not take a few days off?”

  “Oh, I can’t do that. Everyone is depending on me—especially now, that...now that Jane is dead...and the elections are so close.”

  Anton pursed his lips. He saw that his lovely stepdaughter was in the grinder, trapped by the office merry-go-round, but why didn’t she want to take a break?

  This meant that she was so afraid to be alone with herself and her own thoughts, that she preferred to work herself to death rather than face this.

  It was a manic state, which was encouraged by moral authorities as the only proper way to live.

  Bastards.

  “I’ll be quite fine, Daddy, I just needed to talk to you, because today was such a big shock. Poor Jane.”

  “Indeed. I’m surprised that you have not gone to pieces. You should be curled up like a baby and crying by now.”

  Anton saw that Natalie took this as a compliment concerning her toughness.

  “No,” he tried to clarify. “I mean it. You should let yourself go and shake in fear and cry. You should let your body react to this naturally. Don’t bury this shock. You’re doing yourself a bad favor bottling it up. You’re in a safe place. You are not at work. Now’s the time to do it. You can use my bedroom if you like.”

  Natalie smiled tolerantly at his pop psychology. She knew she had to be tough and that she should never let down her guard—never relax. It was much better that way. Everything would collapse otherwise. “I hope they catch the person who is responsible soon,” she changed the angle of the conversation.