Nemesis(33)

'The Expeditor?'





She smiled bashfully. 'It's just something I've started calling him in private. My grandfather had a farm, so I…yes.'





'Where was that?'





'Valle in the Sete valley.'





'And you saw animals being slaughtered there?'





'Yes.' The intonation didn't invite further questions. Beate pressed the SLOW button and Stine Grette's face became animated. Harry saw her blinking and her lips moving in slow motion. He had begun to dread seeing the shot when Beate suddenly stopped the video.





'Did you see that?' she asked excitedly.





A few seconds passed before Harry clicked.





'She was speaking!' he said. 'She says something seconds before she is shot, but you can't hear anything on the sound recording.'





'That's because she's whispering.'





'How did I miss that? But why? And what does she say?'





'I hope we'll soon find out. I've got hold of a lip-reading specialist from the Institute for the Deaf and Dumb. He's on his way now.'





'Great.'





Beate glanced at her watch. Harry bit his bottom lip, breathed in and said quietly: 'Beate, I once…'





He saw her stiffen when he used her first name. 'I had a colleague called Ellen Gjelten.'





'I know,' she said in a rush. 'She was killed next to the river.'





'Yes. When she and I ground to a halt in a case we had several techniques for activating information trapped in the subconscious. Association games. We wrote down words on scraps of paper, that kind of thing.' Harry, ill at ease, smiled. 'It may sound a bit vague, but occasionally it produced results. I wondered if we could have a go.'





'If you like.' Again it struck Harry how much more confident Beate seemed when they focused on a video or a computer screen. Now she was eyeing him as if he had just suggested playing strip poker.





'I want to know what you feel about this particular case,' he said.





She laughed nervously. 'Feelings, hm.'





'Forget cold facts for a while.' Harry leaned forward in his chair. 'Don't be the clever girl. You don't need to back up what you say. Just say what your gut instinct tells you.'





She stared at the table. Harry waited. Then she raised her gaze and looked him straight in the eyes: 'My money's on a two.'





'Two?'





'Football pools. Away team wins. It's one of the fifty per cent we never solve.'





'Right. And why's that?'





'Simple arithmetic. When you think of all the idiots we don't catch, a man like the Expeditor, who has thought things through and knows a bit about how we work, has pretty good odds.'





'Mm.' Harry rubbed his face. 'So your gut instincts do mental arithmetic?'





'Not exclusively. There's something about the way he functions. So determined. He seems to be driven…'





'What's driving him, Beate? Money?'





'I don't know. According to statistics, the prime motive for robberies is money and the second excitement and—'





'Forget statistics, Beate. You're a detective now. You're analysing not only video images now, but your own subconscious interpretations of what you've seen. Trust me, that's the most important lead a detective has.'





Beate looked at him. Harry was aware he was trying to coax her out of herself. 'Come on!' he urged. 'What drives the Expeditor?'





'Feelings.'





'What kind of feelings?'





'Strong feelings.'





'What kind of strong feelings, Beate?'





She closed her eyes. 'Love or hatred. Hatred. No, love. I don't know.'





'Why does he shoot her?'





'Because he…no.'





'Come on. Why does he shoot her?' Harry had inched his chair towards hers.





'Because he has to. Because it is predetermined…'





'Good! Why is it predetermined?'





There was a knock at the door.





* * *





Harry would have preferred it if Fritz Bjelke from the Institute for the Deaf and Dumb had not cycled quite as mercurially through the city to assist them, but now he was standing in the doorway–a gentle, rotund man with round glasses and a pink cycle helmet. Bjelke was not deaf, and definitely not dumb. In order that he could learn as much as possible about Stine Grette's lip positions, they played the first part of the video tape where they could hear what she said. While the tape was running, Bjelke talked non-stop.





'I'm a specialist, but actually we're all lip-readers even though we can hear what people say. That's why it's such an uncomfortable feeling when the dubbing on films is just hundredths of a second out.'





'Really,' Harry said. 'Personally, I can't make anything out of her lip movements.'





'The problem is that only thirty to forty per cent of all words can be read directly from the lips. To understand the rest you have to study the face and body language, and use your own linguistic instincts and logic to insert the missing words. Thinking is as important as seeing.'