Cnut - The Isaiah Prophecies

By Stig Larssen

In his twenty years as a detective, Cnut has come up against all manner of murders and murderers, but there is always a surprise around the corner, and this killer supplies it. His chosen victims are all teenaged virgins, in their death poses portrayed as clowns and whores, with their private parts on full display and a religious message written on their foreheads. Cnut has seen versions of each of those features before, but now there is a highly original twist: the girls, though still virgins, are all pregnant.

The Biblical quotations from the Book of Isiaih point to the men whose sperm has caused the pregnancies – men whose reputations the killer intends to destroy, and for a detective like Chief Inspector 'Pretty Boy' Lund, of the Stockholm police, the knowledge of whose sperm was used is enough to close the case. Not so with Cnut, who sees beyond the obvious. With his own educationally-challenged, bipolar daughter abducted and likely to be used as a victim, he is driven to finding and stopping the killer before it's too late, even though he knows his life may well be forfeit – he knows a ticking bomb awaits him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: TONY NASH
• Release date: Jun 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223656425

Stig Larssen

Stig Larssen is the Norwegian pen name of Tony Nash – acclaimed author of over thirty detective, historical and war novels, who began his career as a navigator in the Royal Air Force, later re-training at Bletchley Park to become an electronic spy, intercepting Russian and East German agent transmissions, during which time he studied many languages and achieved a BA Honours Degree from London University. Diverse occupations followed: Head of Modern Languages in a large comprehensive school, ocean yacht skipper, deep sea fisher, fly tyer, antique dealer, bespoke furniture maker, restorer and French polisher, professional deer stalker and creative writer.

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Other works by this author:

THE TONY DYCE/NORFOLK THRILLERS:

Murder by Proxy

Murder on the Back Burner

Murder on the Chess Board

Murder on the High ‘C’

Murder on Tiptoes

Bled and Breakfast

MET POLICE THRILLERS:

Carve Up

Single to Infinity

The Most Unkindest Cut

The Iago Factor

Blockbuster

Bloodlines

Beyond Another Curtain

HISTORICAL THRILLERS

A Handful of Destiny

A Handful of Salt

WWI EPIC:

A Handful of Courage

WWII EPIC:

No Tears For Tomorrow

THE HARRY PAGE 

THRILLERS

Tripled Exposure

Unseemly Exposure

So Dark, The Spiral

THE NORWEGIAN SERIES:

LOOT

CNUT – Past Present

CNUT – The Isiaih Prophesies

CNUT – Paid in Spades

CNUT – The Sin Debt

CNUT – They Tumble Headlong

CNUT – Night Prowler

CNUT -  Cry Wolf

CNUT -  When The Pie Was Opened

CNUT – The Bottom of the Pot

CNUT -  Mind Games

CNUT -  Nemesis

CNUT -  Cut and Come Again

CNUT -  The Man Who Did It Doggy Fashion

CNUT -  The Man From Next Week

CNUT -  Cabal of Silence

CNUT -  Deadly Premise

CNUT -  Deadly Relations

CNUT -  Hide the Lady

CNUT -  Hidden Agenda

CNUT -  The Bone Age

CNUT -  Tontine Trauma

CNUT –  The Man from Tomorrow

OTHER NOVELS:

The Devil Deals Death 

The Makepeace Manifesto

Panic

The Last Laugh

The Sinister Side of the Moon

Hell and High Water

Hardrada’s Hoard (with Richard Downing)

The Thursday Syndrome

ESPIONAGE:

‘Y’ OH ‘Y;

Romans, VI, 23 – Do not offer any part of your body as sin

I

When Elli Balken saw Jesus in the flesh, she was unaware that she was looking into the eyes of Death.

He had first spoken to her on her ninth birthday.

When she woke, his face was imprinted on her mind. She remembered that she’d been dreaming, and woke up to find Him standing next to her bed.

His voice was like warm molasses as He told her, ‘You are the chosen one, Elli. One day I will need you by my side, and you must come to me when I call, and be ready to serve me in any way I want you to. Remember – you are the chosen one and you will come when I need you.’

It never entered her mind that His ‘appearance’ in her dream might have something to do with having sat next to her parents at the cinema three weeks before, watching. ‘The Passion of Christ’ - and that the face in her dream bore a resemblance to the leading man.

His words kept coming back to her as she progressed from junior to senior school, her body developing voluptuously. Her devotion and avowed need for religion and chastity made her parents extremely happy.

She saw Him next six years later, looking very much as she remembered Him, out of the window of the bus on her way home from school and the strict discipline of the nuns for the weekend.

She flew out of her seat, and insisted that the driver should stop immediately.

On the pavement, she looked back desperately, but Jesus was no longer standing where she’d seen Him.

She ran through the drenching drizzle, unheeding, to the spot where he had been and looked around, dreading the thought that she had been seeing things that were not there, but suddenly, as she turned yet again, there He was, near enough to touch.

Swooning, she murmured, ‘Oh, Jesus’, and felt His arms go around her as she fainted.

With his hand on one of her budding breasts, he could not believe his luck.

Oh, Jesus is right!

When she came to, He was holding her at arm’s length and smiling.

She asked, ‘Is it time, Lord? Do you need me now?’

She was in such a state of euphoria that His disbelief and crafty pleasure went unheeded.

‘You are...?’

‘Elli...Elli Balken.’ It never crossed her mind to wonder why He didn’t know her name.

‘Where do you live, Elli?’

‘Here – in Ulvig.’

‘With your parents?’

‘Mm.’

‘But you are ready to leave them and follow me?’

‘Oh, yes, Lord.’

He hid his delight.

Fuck me! No one told me I was going to win the Lottery today. It’s too soon, but with how keen she is, it’s obvious that she’ll wait. She must be a bit touched, but that’s a good fault, and she’s the right age if I want to use her like the first one. Maybe not though. She could be damned useful in helping to recruit the others.

‘Well, I have another disciple to meet today, Elli, but I will need you soon to aid me with my greatest work – ‘The Church of the Second Coming’. This is what I want you to do...’

She nodded compliance as He gave her detailed instructions and a cell phone number to call each Friday evening.

‘I want you to leave me now, Elli, and go home, and I need you to act absolutely normally with your parents, your teachers and your friends, and not mention our meeting. Can you do that?’

‘Oh, yes, but can I mention your church to my friends?’

‘In general terms, if you want to.’

‘Of course, Lord.’

‘Off you go then.’

She had to stand for twenty minutes at the stop for the next bus, getting steadily soaked to the skin, but inside she was glowing.

She was about to fulfil her destiny.

‘Jesus’ was glowing too, but with lust and anticipation.

II

Benni Larstrupp leant forward anxiously till his face was only centimetres from the mirror and swore, ‘Faen!’

He couldn’t believe it - there was another fucking zit on the side of his nose – a new one, not huge yet, but developing.

It hadn’t been there yesterday, and he’d thought the new and damned expensive gel he’d spent all his pocket money on – Zap those zits - success guaranteed or your money back was doing the trick.

I’ve been conned – again! Bastards!

The others that he’d squeezed before the gel arrived in the post were healing nicely, and were no longer obvious. Should he pinch this one out and try to cover it up with some of his mother’s foundation cream, or leave it and hope it didn’t get bigger and more obvious? Freshly squeezed and red like a sore, he’d be so aware of it that it would make him embarrassed and tongue-tied - the last thing he wanted.

Today was the big day, a day he’d been looking forward to for months – a day  when he needed to look and sound his best – a suave fifteen-year old at last.

He stood back and looked at himself admiringly. Five centimetres taller than the second tallest boy in his year and athletically built, with lashes as long as a girl’s, and what his mother called ‘come to bed eyes’, in a comfortably attractive, squarish face, he felt he could definitely fancy himself if he was a girl, but they were funny creatures – you couldn’t tell what attracted or annoyed them. That zit might put Lana off, just when he hoped she’d let him into her knickers at last.

She must let him on his birthday, mustn’t she? Hand relief was all very well, and she was damned good at it, but he’d heard she had screwed half her year - the one above his. Why not him? Or were the stories just that – bragging from boys who wanted to and had been rebuffed? It happened, he knew. They had exchanged sexts - she was not shy about showing off her most private parts – in fact she boasted that they were on dozens of cell-phone screens around the school, but these days that meant nothing. Most of the determined virgins did the same - peer pressure demanded it.

The bathroom door handle rattled and his sixteen-year old sister, Berit, banged hard on the door panel and yelled from the other side, ‘How long are you going to be in there, Benni? Are you playing with yourself again? Leave it off and open the damned door, will you?’

He shouted, ‘Go away, can’t you? I’m busy.’

‘Yes, and we know what you’re busy at. Open up – now!’

He sighed; she would not give up – she never did when she wanted to pee, and she always seemed to want to pee. He guessed it must be a girl thing. The mirror in his room was not as good as the one in the bathroom for a zit-squeezing operation, but it would have to do if he decided to take a chance and go for it.

He slid back the bolt and pulled the door open.

Berit punched his bicep hard with her bunched knuckles as he tried to dodge past her, and it hurt.

She was grinning annoyingly, ‘You’ll go blind if you’re not careful, bror.’

As he dodged the second blow he knew would follow, he wondered what had happened between them.

They’d been the best of pals till the previous year, lying outside on the grass in the hot sun or on one or another’s bed, wrestling with each other in fun, giggling and sharing every kind of secret about themselves: their dreams, their deepest feelings and desires, their most intimate thoughts, and their joys and fears, or the actions, idiosyncrasies and failings of their parents and their friends, but then almost overnight things had changed; she had become secretive as her body bloomed, spending hours locked away in her room, her hi-fi loud enough to raise the roof, treating him with disdain whenever he tried to initiate a conversation about anything. She was eighteen months his senior and had always been more mature. Since the change, she made him feel like a little boy again.

Could it have been the move from the bustle and traffic noise from buses, trams, emergency vehicles and other transport that constantly invaded their Norbygata home in Oslo centre to the quieter and more affluent Carl Kjølsens Vei in Sogn, he wondered? He’d hated the move to start with, and his dad had never bought him the dog he’d always wanted and had been promised, once they had the new property.

It was around the time Berit started dating Per Viseland when she changed, and Benni guessed that the school’s top football player had taken her cherry.

Lucky Per! Though he would never dream of telling her, Benni had to admit that his sister was the best looking girl in the school, apart from Lana. Well okay, maybe even better looking than Lana.

In his room he viewed the zit again. There was no head on it yet, though he knew it would be only a matter of hours before there was. He made a decision: he’d leave it for now.

He heard the toilet flush and Berit’s footsteps passing outside his bedroom door, and he rushed out onto the landing and into the bathroom again, sliding the locking bolt into its housing before she changed her mind.

There, he used his father’s razor and shaving cream to remove the almost invisible, cobweb-fine fluff that had only recently begun to show on his chin, and liberally rubbed in the exclusive Fitjar Folgefonn after-shave cooling gel that his father had made to order, from the small company that manufactured it, replacing the tube in exactly the same spot from which he’d taken it, to avoid awkward questions.

He turned towards the door and then turned back again and picked up his toothbrush and the dental paste to brush his teeth for the fourth time that day.

Replacing the brush and paste, he breathed out of his mouth into his hand and breathed in through his nose.

Could he smell garlic, or was it his imagination? The lapskaus his mother had made him eat at dinner the previous evening had been heavily laced with it, as usual. If he ever complained, she said, ‘Garlic is good for the blood. Eat up.’

He could hardly tell her that it might be good for the blood, but no help at all in getting one’s leg over.

He visualised the scene, with his father turning away to hide his grin.

Oh, well, better not.

He picked up a packet of mints and shoved them into his jacket pocket, just to be sure.

What to wear was the next problem.

Lana usually dressed casually, but once, when he’d worn jeans and a sweat shirt to meet her, she’d been wearing an expensive and new, pleated cream dress, ruining his hopes of lying on the grass with her.

He took a chance and decided on jeans, a tank top and a loose black cagoule. The Nikes were a must, though he thought they looked odd with the jeans.

He poked his nose into the lounge and told his parents, ‘See you later.’

His mother, Martha, was not that easily satisfied, ‘Not so fast, Benni. Come in here and tell us where you’re going and what you’ll be getting up to.’

Oh, yeah, sure, mor. You want a fucking heart attack?

He moved half a metre inside the door.

‘Just going for a walk, mor.’

‘That’s unlike you – are you starting a health kick?’ She looked him up and down, and smiled, ‘Oh, I see - you’re meeting the strawberry blonde again.’

He’d never understood why his mother used that term. There was nothing remotely strawberry-like about Lana’s shoulder-length, corn-blond locks.

He hedged, ‘No, I’m meeting the boys.’

His mother smiled, ‘Is that why you’ve combed your hair – for the boys? Really? Oh, dear me, Benni. Please don’t tell me you’re leaning that way.’

‘And is that my expensive after-shave I can smell? You’ve put that on for the boys too? Wow! Look out, boys.’ Alvin, his father, pretended to look stern, remembering his own courting days.

Benni blushed crimson, not so much from the gay inference – he knew they were joshing him - but from being caught out.

‘I might have used a little, far. I didn’t think you’d mind.’

‘I don’t, son. Now, treat that girl with respect, won’t you?’

‘Of course, far.’

Up to now I’ve damned well had to. Chance would be a fine thing.

He managed to escape, still blushing, but he needn’t have worried – his complexion was back to peaches and cream by the time Lana turned up - late as usual – almost fifteen minutes late, and he’d begun to think she’d changed her mind, but she looked great, and like him was dressed casually, in jeans and a soft pink angora wool pullover. He thought he could see the shape of her nipples bulging through the material and wondered if she’d left her bra off. If so, it was a good sign. He decided to test the waters.

He pulled her into the bushes that lined the road and kissed her, his hand reaching for her breast.

She didn’t resist and kissed him back, her tongue tickling his tonsils. He’d been right - she was not wearing a bra.

Almost breathless after the long kiss, she asked, ‘Where are you going to take me, birthday boy?’

‘The football shack?’ He suggested hopefully.

‘Can you get in?’

He nodded, ‘I borrowed the key.’

‘Have you got a condom?’

His heart leapt – she was going to let him.

‘I’ve brought two – got them from dad’s bedside drawer.’

‘Won’t he notice they’ve gone?’

Benni shrugged, grinning, he hoped, nonchalantly, ‘Don’t care if he does.’

She giggled, ‘Come on then – let’s give you your birthday present.’

She grabbed his hand and began to run.

They cantered round the corner and through the gate onto the communal playing field.

The shack was at the far end, a plain wooden structure that had been erected the previous year to give shelter to the football players in inclement weather. Inside, it was basic: bare boards, a couple of dozen plastic stacking chairs, and an old but strong pine table. Benni hoped to get Lana up on that table, but the floor would do just as well.

Must be careful not to get any splinters in her arse. That would put her off!

They arrived breathless at the door and Benni inserted the key in the lock and turned it.

He kissed her, his tongue deep in her mouth, and fondled her left breast again, harder this time, and squeezed the nipple, his heart pounding loud enough for her to hear it.

She was smiling, knowing that he was a virgin, and that she would be teaching him, not the other way round. He was only her second virgin, and she was looking forward to it, as long as he could manage to hold back. Mats Carlsson, the other one, had come all over her thighs before he got it in, and after cleaning herself up with his filthy handkerchief she had to wait almost ten minutes before he was ready again.

Benni pushed open the door and made a little bow, like the gentlemen he’d seen in films, for his lady to enter first.

She giggled again as she moved inside – and screamed.

He caught her as she fell into a dead faint, only then seeing what she had seen, and he swayed dizzily too.

He’d hoped to see a girl’s intimate parts, but not those on open display in front of him.

The body was that of a girl younger than Lana, dressed like a whore in a skimpy miniskirt, and a blouse with a wide V-top that went down to the waist. She had been arranged so that her body lay back on a chair with her legs wide open. She wore no panties.

The face had been painted like that of a clown, the crimson lips extended to the ears in a hideous, macabre grin, and on her forehead someone had written in black marker pen the inscription, ‘Is. VII 14’.

III

Politioverbetjent Cnut, the senior detective in Oslo Police Headquarters Serious Crimes Division, expertly slit the body from the vent to the rear of the jaw, and then cut through the neck bone of the four-pound trout, the first and largest of eight that he’d caught that day, stopping immediately before cutting into the bile sac. He then took the body of the fish in his left hand and the head in his right and pulled the two apart, removing the head and guts in one motion, then cut off the tail and used the rounded small end of a spoon to remove the kidney, humming happily the old standard, Georgia on my mind.

He laid the cleaned fish on his wooden block, lifted the razor sharp knife to begin the filleting and swore when the phone rang.

His hands were wet and slimy; his wife, Astrid, had gone next door to speak to their neighbour, and Lisa, his fourteen-year-old, educationally challenged, bi-polar daughter, sat at the dining table, playing a Nintendo game. She was no longer allowed to use the phone after several unfortunate incidents, and didn’t look up.

He used the back of his hand to push the lever up and turn the tap on, quickly washed off most of the goo, grabbed two sheets of paper towel off the roll, and rushed across the room, drying his hands as he went, to lift the receiver and grunt, ‘Ja?’

Cindy, his ageing Labrador bitch, lying on the carpet by Lisa’s feet, lifted her head at the sudden movement, tired out from their long walk along the lake shore and her romp that morning, when she’d repeatedly done her trick that always amazed any other anglers: diving into the water when Cnut had played a fish out and taking it into her soft but locking jaws to bring it back to shore unmarked for the fatal application of the ‘priest’, saving him the trouble of taking a landing net with him when he went fishing. She wondered for a moment if her master was going out again and needed her with him. Realising that he was not, she went back to sleep.

‘Hei, Cnut. Good that you’re at home.’

Mats Arnis, the duty officer, knew that Cnut fished every Sunday, and when he went out to sea returned home late in the evening, or not until the early hours if it had been a long trip.

‘Yes, I’m early today, Mats. I just fished the morning at Østensjøvannet. Bjørn Hagerson is away from port, fishing off Greenland all this week, so I stayed onshore, close to home. My bad luck, by the sound of it, you ringing me at this time on a Sunday and not just for a chat, I’ll bet. Have you rung Eirik?’

‘Not yet. I thought I should contact you and let you take it from there.’

‘Okay. So what’s so urgent? A death?’

‘A strange one, and obviously murder, by the sound of it.’

Cnut, suddenly all attention, grabbed the pad and pen that lay close to the phone. ‘Give me the details.’

‘In the shack on the football field in Sogn, off Holsteinveien. The body of a young girl dressed like a whore, with a clown’s face.’

‘Is a unit already there?’

‘The local boys responded, but they’ve not approached, so your scene hasn’t been trampled on.’

‘That makes a pleasant change for plods – they must be getting a better quality of recruit these days. What about forensics?’

‘Viv is already on her way, and the SOCOs too. I called them first, as per protocol.’

‘Right. Thanks.’

Cnut replaced the receiver and used his cell phone to call his long-time partner, Eirik Holssen.

Eirik’s wife answered and called him to the phone. He sounded tired and grumpy, unusual for him, ‘Christ, Cnut, it’s fucking Sunday. Can’t a guy have any peace and quiet?’

Cnut chuckled, ‘Stop moaning and get off your fat arse. I’ll be picking you up in ten minutes. We’ve got a murder.’

Cnut deliberately ignored the fact that his partner’s previously voluminous arse, which had always complemented his overweight body, was much slimmer these days, and he’d lost a lot of weight. When Cnut mentioned it to him, he’d said Margit had made him go on a diet.

‘A gangland killing?’

‘Uh-uh. This one sounds like a homespun job – a young girl.’

‘That’s the first for a while. It must be eight months since the last one.’

‘More like nine. Are you okay? You don’t sound it. And Margit?’

‘Yeah. We’re both fine.’ Eirik lied. He’d told neither his partner nor his wife the news that the doctor had shocked him with the previous week. He was not fine at all and had secretly been putting his affairs in order, selling his shares and transferring the money to his current account, to make it easier for Margit to access when he died. Five bloody years his usual doctor had been treating him for diverticulitis, but lately the pain had become so bad that it had affected his life and his work. Visit after visit to his ageing medic had resulted in stronger and stronger pain killers, and reassurances that the pains were typical of the disease. It was only when a locum, a pretty coloured girl, looking far too young to be a doctor, and only recently qualified, stood in for a few days while the doctor took a short holiday. Despite Eirik’s vocal objections, she’d insisted on doing a touchy/feely inspection with him half naked on the couch and had, after detecting a huge lump, found out from him that he’d never had a scan or even an X-ray.

She hit the roof, swearing out loud about lack of care, and within hours the shit began to hit the fan. She’d insisted on an immediate scan and bullied the hospital staff on the phone until they agreed to do it that day.

The next morning, she told him, ‘There’s no way to sweeten the pill, Herr Holssen: you have Stage Four cancer of the colon, and it has metastasized to your liver and lungs. I’m astonished you’re still on your feet.’

He begged, ‘Is there nothing you can do?’

Wishing there was, and to stop the tears that she knew would flow if she allowed her feelings to come to the fore, she shook her head firmly, ‘Nothing to delay the inevitable, but we can control the pain a bit better. You’ve been taking tramadol, and you’re still in severe pain. I’ll prescribe morphine – there’s nothing stronger, and you don’t need to worry about how much you take or becoming addicted - you won’t be taking it long enough.’ She looked into his eyes, and gave him a clear message, ‘Whatever you do, don’t crush a tablet and inhale the dust. It can kill you quite quickly.’

Knowing that she’d given him the way to end it in a hurry if things became too bad, he asked, ‘How long have I got?’

She shrugged, ‘I’d say something short of a month, but these things are very difficult to judge accurately. It depends on many variables, not least the will to live. You’re