The Leopard(39)

‘What about you?’ Harry asked.

‘They want me out of here really; they think I’m well and I’m taking up someone else’s place. But I like it here. The room service stinks, but it’s safe. I’ve got TV and can come and go as I want. In a month or two I’ll move back home maybe, who knows.’

‘Who knows?’

‘No one. The madness is intermittent. What do you want?’

‘What do you want me to want?’

She gave him a long, hard look before answering. ‘Apart from wanting you to have a burning desire to fuck me, I want you to have some use for me.’

‘And that’s exactly what I have.’

‘A desire to fuck me?’

‘Some use for you.’

‘Shit. Well, OK. What’s it about?’

‘Have you got a computer with Internet access here?’

‘We have a communal computer in the Hobbies Room, but it isn’t connected to the Net. They wouldn’t risk that. The only thing it’s used for is playing solitaire. But I’ve got my own computer in my room.’

‘Use the communal one.’ Harry put his hand in his pocket and tossed a dongle across the table. ‘This is a mobile office as they called it in the shop. You just plug it into—’

‘—one of the USB ports,’ Katrine said, taking the device and pocketing it. ‘Who pays the subscription?’

‘I do. That is, Hagen does.’

‘Yippee, there’s gonna be some surfing tonight. Any hot new porno sites I should know about?’

‘Probably.’ Harry pushed a file across the table. ‘Here are the reports. Three murders, three names. I want you to do the same as you did on the Snowman case. Find connections we’ve missed. Do you know about the case?’

‘Yes,’ Katrine Bratt said without looking at the file. ‘They were women. That’s the connection.’

‘You read newspapers . . .’

‘Barely. Why do you believe they’re any more than random victims?’

‘I don’t believe anything, I’m looking.’

‘But you don’t know what you’re looking for?’

‘Correct.’

‘But you’re sure Marit Olsen’s killer is the same person who killed the other two? The method was completely different, I understand.’

Harry smiled. Amused by Katrine’s attempt to hide the fact that she had scrutinised every detail in the papers. ‘No, Katrine, I’m not sure. But I can hear you’ve drawn the same conclusion as I have.’

‘Course. We were soulmates, remember?’

She laughed, and at a stroke she was Katrine again, and not the skeleton of the brilliant, eccentric detective he had only just got to know before everything crumbled. Harry felt, to his surprise, a lump in his throat. Sodding jet lag.

‘Can you help me, do you think?’

‘To find something Kripos have spent two months not finding? With an outdated computer in the Hobbies Room of a mental institution? I don’t even know why you’re asking me. There are folk at Police HQ who are a lot more computer-savvy than me.’

‘I know, but I have something they don’t. And cannot give them.’

‘The password to the underground.’

She fixed him with an uncomprehending stare. Harry checked no one was within earshot.

‘When I was working for the Security Service, POT, on the Redbreast case, I gained access to the search engine they were using to trace terrorists. They use secret back doors on the Net like MILNET, the American military Internet, made before they released the Net for commercial purposes through ARPANET in the eighties. ARPANET became, as you know, the Internet, but the back doors are still there. The search engines use Trojan Horses that update the passwords, codes and upgrades at the first entry point. Plane ticket bookings, hotel reservations, road tolls, Internet banking, these engines can see the lot.’

‘I’d heard rumours of the search engines, but I honestly thought they were non-existent,’ Katrine said.

‘They do exist. They were set up in 1984. The Orwellian nightmare come true. And best of all, my password is still valid. I checked it.’

‘So what do you need me for? You can do this yourself, can’t you.’

‘Only POT is allowed to use the system, and only in emergency situations. Like Google, your searches can be traced back to the user. If it’s discovered that I or anyone else at Police HQ have been using the search engines, we risk a prison sentence. But if the search were traced and led back to a communal computer in a psychiatric hospital . . .’

Katrine Bratt laughed. Her other laugh, the evil witch variety. ‘I’m beginning to see. Katrine Bratt, the brilliant detective, is not my strongest qualification here, but . . .’ She threw up her hands. ‘Katrine Bratt the patient is. Because she, being of unsound mind, cannot be prosecuted.’