Knife

51

It was lunchtime at the Statholdergaarden restaurant. On the street outside, a young busker blew on his fingers before he started to play. A lonely job, Sung-min Larsen thought as he watched him. He couldn’t hear what he was playing, or if he was any good. Alone and invisible. Perhaps the older buskers who ruled Karl Johans gate had exiled the poor kid out here, to the presumably less lucrative Kirkegata.

He looked up when the waiter snapped the napkin open like a flag in the wind before letting the white damask settle on Alexandra Sturdza’s lap.

“I should have made an effort,” she laughed.

“You look like you did.” Sung-min smiled, and leaned back as the waiter repeated the same gesture with his napkin.

“This?” she said, pointing at her tight skirt with both hands. “These are my work clothes. I just don’t dress as informally as my colleagues. And you’ve made an effort. You look like you’re going to a wedding.”

“I’ve just come from a funeral,” Sung-min said, and saw Alexandra flinch as if he’d slapped her.

“Of course,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry. Bjørn Holm?”

“Yes. Did you know him?”

“Yes and no. He worked in forensics, so obviously we spoke to each other over the phone from time to time. They’re saying he killed himself?”

“Yes,” Sung-min said. He replied “yes” rather than “it looks like it” because there really wasn’t any doubt. His car had been found parked at the side of a grit track at the top of a ridge with a view over the farmland of Toten, not far from his childhood home. The doors were locked, the key was in the ignition. A few people had been confused that Bjørn Holm had been sitting in the back seat, and that he had shot himself in the temple with a pistol whose serial number couldn’t be traced back to anyone. But his widow, Katrine Bratt, had explained that Holm’s idol, Something-or-other Williams, had died in the back seat of his car. And it wasn’t particularly unlikely that a forensics officer had access to a weapon with no registered owner. The church had been full of family and colleagues, from both Police Headquarters and Kripos, because Bjørn Holm had worked for both. Katrine Bratt had seemed composed — more composed, in fact, than when they had met at Norafossen.

After she had efficiently worked her way through the queue of people offering condolences, she had come over to him and said there were rumours that he wasn’t happy where he was. That was the word she had used, pronounced in her distinct Bergen accent. Happy. And said they should have a chat. She had an empty position that needed to be filled. It had taken him a moment to realise that she was talking about Harry Hole’s job. And he wondered if it was doubly inappropriate for her to be talking shop after her own husband’s funeral, and to offer Sung-min the job of a man who was still only missing. But presumably she needed whatever distractions she could find to take her mind off the pair of them. Sung-min said he’d think about it.

“I hope Kripos’s budget can handle this,” Alexandra had said when the waiter brought the first course and told them it was raw scallop, black pepper mayonnaise, Ghoa cress and a soy-butter sauce. “Because Forensic Medicine can’t.”

“Oh, I think I’ll be able to justify the expense, if you can keep the promise you made over the phone.”

Alexandra Sturdza had called him the previous evening. Without beating around the bush, she had told him that she had information regarding the Rakel Fauke case. That she was calling him because the implications were sensitive, and that she had decided she trusted him after their first encounter. But that she would prefer not to discuss it over the phone.

Sung-min had suggested lunch. And booked a table somewhere she had rightly guessed wasn’t within the price range covered by Kripos. He would have to pay for it himself, but he had told himself it was a wise investment, a way of nurturing a professional contact in the Forensic Medicine Institute that could turn out to be useful if and when he needed a favour. A DNA analysis that needed to be prioritised. Something like that. Probably. Somewhere at the back of his mind he had an idea that there was more to it than that. What? He hadn’t had time to give the matter too much thought. Sung-min glanced at the busker, who was in full flow now. People were rushing past, paying him no attention. Hank. That was what his colleague had said. Hank Williams. He would have to google him when he got home.

“I’ve analysed Harry Hole’s blood from the trousers he was wearing on the night of the murder,” she said. “It contains Rohypnol.”

Sung-min looked back from the street and focused on her.

“Enough to knock a man out for four or five hours,” she said. “That got me thinking about the time of the murder. Our medical officer narrowed it down to between 22:00 and 02:00, of course. But that was based on body temperature. There were other indications, such as the discolouration around the wounds, which suggest that it could” — she held up a long forefinger, which looked even longer because of the vivid pink of her fingernail — “and I repeat could, have happened earlier.”

Sung-min remembered that she hadn’t been wearing nail polish last time. Had she painted them specially?

“So I checked with the company that supplies electricity to Rakel Fauke’s home. It turns out that consumption went up by seventy kilowatts between 20:00 and 24:00. All that electricity suggests an increase in temperature, and if that happened in the living room, it would mean a rise in temperature of five degrees. My medical officer says that if that was the case, she would have given the time of death as between 18:00 and 22:00.”

Sung-min blinked. He had read somewhere that the human brain can only process sixty kilobits per second. And that that makes the brain a very weak computer. But the fact that it can work as fast as that depends on how data already stored there is organised. That most of our conclusions rely on recalling memories and patterns and using them rather than thinking new thoughts. Perhaps that was why it was taking him so long. He was having to think new thoughts. Completely new. He heard Alexandra’s voice as if it were coming from far away:

“From what Ole Winter has said in the papers, Harry Hole was in a bar with witnesses until 22:30. Is that correct?”

Sung-min stared down at his crayfish. It stared back disinterestedly.

“So the question now has to be whether you have ever had anyone else in your sights? Someone you might have ignored because they had an alibi for the time it was assumed Rakel was murdered. But who may not have had an alibi between 18:00 and 22:00.”

“You’ll have to excuse me, Alexandra.” Sung-min stood up, then realised he’d forgotten his napkin, which fell to the floor. “Please, finish your lunch. I need... I’ve got some things I need to get on with. Another day we can... you and I can...”

He saw from her smile that they could.

He walked away, gave the maître d’ his card and asked him to send him the bill, then hurried out into the street. The busker was playing a song Sung-min had heard, something about a car crash, an ambulance and Riverside, but he wasn’t interested in music. Songs, lyrics, names, for some reason none of them stuck. But he remembered every word, every moment of the transcription of the interview with Svein Finne. He had arrived at the maternity ward at 21:30. In other words, Svein Finne had had three and a half hours in which to murder Rakel Fauke. The problem was that no one knew where Finne was.

So why was Sung-min running?

He was running because it was quicker.

What difference did it make if he was quicker, if everyone was already trying to find Svein Finne?

Sung-min wanted to try harder. And he was better. And extremely motivated.

Ole Winter, the useless scavenger, would soon be choking on his big fat team victory.

Dagny Jensen got off the metro at Borgen. She stood there for a moment, looking out across Western Cemetery. But that wasn’t where she was going; she didn’t know if she would ever go into a cemetery again. Instead she walked down Skøyenveien to Monolitveien, where she turned right. She walked past the white wooden houses behind picket fences. They looked so empty. Afternoon, a weekday. People were are work, at school, doing things, being active. She was static. On sick leave. Dagny hadn’t asked for it, but her psychologist and the head teacher had told her to take a few days off to compose herself, and see how she really felt after the attack in the women’s toilet. As if anyone wanted to think about how they really felt!

Well, at least now she knew how bloody awful she felt.

She heard her phone buzz in her bag. She took it out and saw that it was Kari Beal, her bodyguard, again. They would be looking for her now. She pressed Reject and tapped out a message: Sorry. No danger. Just need some time alone. Will be in touch when I’m done.

Twenty minutes earlier Dagny and Kari Beal had been in the city centre when Dagny said she wanted to buy some tulips. She had insisted that the police officer wait outside while she went into the florist’s, which she knew had another door in the next street. From there, Dagny had made her way to the metro station behind Stortinget and took the first train heading west.

She looked at the time. He had told her to be there by two o’clock. Which bench she should sit on. That she should wear something different from what she usually wore, to make her harder to recognise. What direction she should be looking in.

It was madness.

It was what it was. He had called her from an unknown number. She had answered and not been able to hang up. And now, as if she had been hypnotised and had no will of her own, she was doing as he had instructed, the man who had used and deceived her. How was that possible? She had no answer to that. Just that she must have had something in her that she didn’t know was there. A cruel, animalistic urge. Well, it was what it was. She was a bad person, as bad as him, and now she was letting him drag her down with him. She felt her heart beat faster. Oh, she was already longing to be down there, where she would be cleansed by fire. But would he come? He had to come! Dagny heard her own shoes hitting the pavement, harder and harder.

Six minutes later she was in position, on the bench she had been told about.

It was five minutes to two. She had a view of Smestaddammen. A white swan was gliding over the water. Its head and neck formed a question mark. Why was she having to do this?

Svein Finne was walking. Long, calm, terrain-conquering strides. Walking like that, in the same direction, for hour after hour, was what he had missed most during his years in prison. Oh well. Spilled milk.

It took him just under two hours to walk from the cabin he had found in Sørkedalen into the centre of Oslo, but he guessed it would have taken most people three.

The cabin lay at the top of a vertical rock face. Because there were bolts drilled into the cliff and he had found rope and carabiners in the cabin, he guessed it had been used by climbers. But there was still snow on the ground, and meltwater was trickling down the red and grey-black granite when the sun was shining, and he hadn’t seen any climbers.

But he had seen evidence of the bear. So close to the cabin that he had bought what he needed and set a trap with a tripwire and some explosives. When the last of the snow melted and the climbers began to appear, he would find himself a place deeper in the forest, build himself a teepee. Hunt. Go fishing in the lakes. Only as much as he needed. Killing anything you weren’t going to eat was murder, and he wasn’t a murderer. He was already looking forward to it.

He walked through the grey, urine-stinking pedestrian tunnel beneath the Smestad junction, emerged into the daylight and carried on towards the lake.

He saw her as soon as he entered the park. Not that he — even with his sharp eyesight — could recognise her from this distance, but he could tell by her posture. The way she was sitting. Waiting. A little scared, probably, but mostly excited.

He didn’t walk directly towards the bench, but took a detour to check that there were no police around. That was what he did when he visited Valentin’s grave. He quickly concluded that he was alone on this side of the lake. There was someone sitting on a bench on the other side, but they were too far away to see or hear much of what was about to happen, and they wouldn’t have time to intervene. Because this was going to happen quickly. Everything was ready, the scene was set and he was ready to burst.

“Hello,” he said as he approached the bench.

“Hello,” she said, and smiled. She seemed less frightened than he had expected. But of course she didn’t know what was about to happen. He glanced around once more to make sure they were alone.

“He’s running a bit late,” Alise said. “That sometimes happens. You know, being a successful lawyer.”

Svein Finne smiled. The girl was relaxed because she thought Johan Krohn was going to be joining them. That must be the explanation Krohn had given her for why she should be sitting on a bench beside Smestaddammen at two o’clock. That she and Krohn were going to be meeting Svein Finne, but because their client was currently being sought by the police, the meeting couldn’t take place in the office. All of this had been in the note Finne had found pinned to the ground with a knife in front of Valentin’s grave, signed by Johan Krohn. Krohn had also used a splendid knife, and Finne had put it in his pocket to add to his collection. It would come in useful in the cabin. Then he had opened the letter. It looked like Krohn had thought of pretty much everything to let both Finne and Krohn himself walk free afterwards. Apart from the consequences of having given his mistress to Finne, of course. Krohn didn’t know it yet, but he would never again be able to love Alise the way he had before. And he would never be free. Krohn had, after all, entered into a pact with the devil, and, as everyone knows, the devil is in the detail. Finne was never going to have to worry about getting hold of anything he needed again, whether it be money or pleasure.

Johan Krohn was still sitting in his car in the visitors’ car park at Hegnar Media. He had arrived early, he mustn’t be at the lake in the park on the other side of the road before five past two. He took out the new packet of Marlboro, got out of the car — because Frida didn’t like the smell of smoke in the car — and tried to light a cigarette. But his hands were shaking too much and he gave up. Just as well, he’d decided to stop anyway. He looked at his watch again. The plan was for him to get two minutes. They hadn’t been in direct contact, it was safest that way, but his message had said that two minutes were all he needed.

He followed the second hand with his eyes. There. Two o’clock.

Johan Krohn closed his eyes. Naturally it was terrible, something he would have to live with for the rest of his life, but when it came down to it, it was the only solution.

He thought about Alise. What she was having to go through right now. She would survive, but the nightmares would obviously haunt her. All because of the decision he had taken, without saying a word to her. He had deceived her. It was him, not Finne, who had done this to Alise.

He looked at his watch again. In one and a half minutes he would walk into the park, making out that he was just a bit late, comfort her as well as he could, call the police, act appalled. Correction: he would hardly have to act. He would give the police an explanation that was 90 percent true. And Alise an explanation that was 100 percent lie.

Johan Krohn caught sight of his own reflection in the car window.

He hated what he saw. The only thing he hated more was Svein Finne.

Alise looked at Svein Finne, who had sat down on the bench beside her.

“Do you know why we’re here, Alise?” he asked.

He had a red bandana tied around his black hair, with just a few strands of grey.

“Only in general terms,” she said. All Johan had told her was that it was to do with the Rakel Fauke case. Her first thought had been that they were going to press charges against the police for the physical injuries inflicted on their client by Harry Hole in the bunker in Nordstrand. But when she asked, Johan had simply replied curtly that it was to do with a confession, and that he didn’t have time to explain. He had been like that for the past few days. Cold. Dismissive. If she didn’t know better, she would have thought he was starting to lose interest. But she did know better. She had seen him like this before, during the brief periods when his conscience was getting at him and he suggested taking a break, saying he needed to focus on his family, the firm. Yes, he had tried. And she had stopped him. Dear Lord, it didn’t take much. Men. Or, to be more accurate: boys. Because every so often she got the feeling that she was the older of the pair of them, that he was just an overgrown Boy Scout equipped with a razor-sharp legal brain but not much else. Even if Johan liked to play the role of master to her slave, they both knew it was the other way around. But she let him play that role, the way a mother plays a frightened princess when her child wants to pretend to be a troll.

Not that Johan didn’t have his good qualities. He did. He was kind. Considerate. Loyal. He was. Alise had known men who had far fewer scruples about deceiving their wives than Johan Krohn. The question that had begun to worry Alise, though, wasn’t Johan’s loyalty to his family, but what she herself was getting out of it. No, she hadn’t had a carefully thought-out plan when she embarked upon the affair with Johan, it wasn’t that calculated. As a newly qualified lawyer she had obviously been star-struck by the hotshot lawyer who had been permitted to practise in the Supreme Court when he had barely started shaving, and was a partner in one of the best law firms in the city. But Alise was also fully aware of what she, with her average grades, had to offer a law firm, and what with her youth and appearance she had to offer a man. At the end of the day (Johan had stopped correcting her Anglicisms and had instead started to copy them), the reasons why you choose to have an affair with someone were a combination of rational and apparently irrational factors. (Johan would have pointed out that factors lead to a product, not a combination.) It was hard to know what was what, and perhaps it wasn’t that useful to know anyway. What was more important was that she was no longer sure if the combination was positive. She may have got a slightly larger office than the others on the same level as her, and perhaps slightly more interesting cases as a result of working for Johan. But her annual bonus was the same, symbolic amount that the other non-partners got. And there hadn’t been any indication that she could expect anything more. And even if Alise knew how much married men’s promises to leave their wives and families were worth, Johan hadn’t even bothered to make any of those.

“In general terms,” Svein Finne said, and smiled.

Brown teeth, she noted. But also that he didn’t smoke, seeing as he was sitting so close to her that she could feel his breath on her face.

“Twenty-five,” he said. “You kn-know you’re heading past the most fruitful time for having children?”

Alise stared at Finne. How did he know how old she was?

“The best age is your late t-teens, up to twenty-four,” Finne said, as his eyes slid over her. Yes, slid, Alise thought. Like a physical thing, like a snail leaving a trail of slime behind it.

“From then on, the health risks increase, and also the chances of spontaneous miscarriage,” he said, tugging up one cuff of his flannel shirt. He pressed a button on the side of his digital watch. “While the quality of men’s semen remains the same throughout their lives.”

That isn’t true, she thought. She had read that compared to a man her age, the risk of a man over the age of forty-one getting you pregnant was five times lower. And he was five times as likely to give you a child suffering from some sort of autism. She’d googled it. She had been invited by Frank to join him and a couple of fellow students on a trip to the mountains. When she and Frank were together he had been rather too fond of partying, without any clear goal or good grades, and she had written him off as a daddy’s boy with no motivation of his own. That turned out to be wrong, Frank had done surprisingly well in his father’s law firm. But she still hadn’t replied to the invitation.

“So look upon this as my and Johan Krohn’s gift to you,” Finne said, undoing his jacket.

Alise looked at him intently. A thought flew through her head, that he was going to attack her, but she dismissed it. Johan would be here any minute, and they were in a very public place. OK, there was nobody in their immediate vicinity, but she could see someone on the other side of the lake, maybe two hundred metres away, sitting on another bench.

“What...” Alise began, but got no further. Svein Finne’s left hand had locked around her throat, and his right hand was shoving his jacket aside. She tried to breathe but couldn’t. His erect penis had a curve, like a swan’s neck.

“Don’t be scared, I’m not like the others,” Finne said. “I don’t kill.”

Alise tried to get up from the bench, tried to push his arm away, but his hand was like a claw that had locked around her throat.

“Not if you do as I say,” Finne said. “First, look.”

He was still holding her with just one hand, and sat there, legs apart, exposed, as if he wanted her to look at it, see what she had coming. And Alise looked. Saw the white swan’s neck with its veins and a dancing red dot that was moving up the shaft.

What was that? What was that?

Then the head of his penis exploded as she heard a muffled sound, like when she tenderised a steak extra hard with the meat hammer. She felt a warm rain on her face and got something in her eye, and closed them as she heard thunder roll over them.

For a moment Alise thought it was her screaming, but when she opened her eyes again she saw that it was Svein Finne. He was holding both hands to his groin, blood was pumping between his fingers, and he was staring at her with big, shocked, accusing eyes as if she was the person who had done this to him.

Then the red dot was there again, on his face this time. It slid over his furrowed cheek, up to his eye. She could see the red dot on the white of his eye. And perhaps Finne saw it too. Either way, he whispered something that she didn’t hear until he repeated it.

“Help.”

Alise knew what was coming, closed her eyes and managed to put one protective hand in front of her face before she heard the sound again, more like a whip crack this time. And then, with a long delay, as if the shot had been fired from a long way away, the same rolling thunder.

Roar Bohr looked through the sniper sight.

The last headshot had thrown the target backwards, then he had slid sideways off the bench and was now lying on the gravel path. He moved the sight. Saw the young woman running along the path towards Hegnar Media, saw her throw her arms around a man who was hurrying towards her. Then the man took out a phone and started tapping at it, as if he knew exactly what he should do. Which he probably did, but what did Bohr know?

No more than he wanted to know.

No more than Harry Hole had told him twenty-four hours ago.

That he had found the man Bohr had been looking for all these years.

In a conversation with what Harry said was an extremely reliable source, Svein Finne had claimed to have raped Bishop Bohr’s daughter many years ago in Mærradalen.

The case had long since passed the statute of limitations, of course.

But Harry had what he called a “solution.”

And he had told Bohr all he needed to know, and no more. Just like when he was in E14. Two o’clock by Smestaddammen, on the same bench that Harry and Pia had sat on.

Roar Bohr moved the sight, and from the other side of the lake he saw a woman walking away quickly. As far as he could tell, she seemed to be the only other witness. He closed the basement window and put the rifle down. Looked at the time. He had promised Harry Hole that it would be done within two minutes of the target arriving, and he had stuck to that, even if he had given in to the temptation of letting Svein Finne have a little foretaste of his impending death when he exposed himself. But he had used so-called frangible bullets, bullets with no lead that disintegrate and stay inside the body of the target. Not because he needed them to in order to be fatal, but because the police’s ballistics experts wouldn’t have a projectile that could be matched to a weapon, or any point of impact in the ground that would enable them to work out where the shots had been fired from. In short, they would be left standing there, looking up helplessly at a hillside covered with something like a thousand houses, and with absolutely no idea where they should start looking.

It was done. He had shot the mink. He had finally avenged Bianca.

Roar felt ecstatic. Yes, that was the only way he could describe it. He locked the rifle away in the gun cabinet, then went and had a shower. On the way he stopped and pulled his phone from his pocket. Called a number. Pia answered on the second ring.

“Is anything wrong?”

“No.” Roar Bohr smiled. “I just wondered if you’d like to go out for dinner this evening?”

“Out for dinner?”

“It’s been ages since we last did that. I’ve heard good things about Lofoten, that fish restaurant on Tjuvholmen.”

He heard her hesitation. Suspicion. He followed her train of thought on towards the same why not? that he had thought.

“OK,” she said. “Are you going—”

“Yes, I’ll book a table. How does eight o’clock sound?”

“Great,” Pia said. “That all sounds great.”

They hung up, and Roar Bohr undressed, got in the shower and turned the water on. Warm water. He wanted to have a warm shower.

Dagny Jensen left the park the same way she had come. She thought about how she really felt. She had been sitting too far away to see any of the details on the other side of the lake, but she had seen enough. Yes, she had let herself be persuaded by Harry Hole’s almost hypnotic request, but this time he hadn’t deceived her, he had kept his promise. Svein Finne was out of her life. Dagny thought about Hole’s deep, hoarse voice on the phone, when he had told her what was going to happen, and why she must never, ever tell anyone. And even if she had already felt a peculiar excitement, and knew she wasn’t going to be able to resist, she had asked why, and if he thought she was the sort of person who would allow themselves to be entertained by a public execution.

“I don’t know what entertains you,” he had replied. “But you said it wasn’t enough for you to see him dead for him not to haunt you. You needed to see him die. I owe you that much, after everything I’ve put you through. Take it or leave it.”

Dagny thought about her mother’s funeral, the young female priest who had said that no one knew for certain what lay beyond the threshold of death, just that those who crossed it never came back.

But Dagny Jensen knew now. She knew that Finne was dead. And how she really felt.

She didn’t feel brilliant.

But she did feel better.

Katrine Bratt was sitting behind the desk, looking around.

She had packed the last of the things she wanted to take home. Bjørn’s parents were in the flat looking after Gert, and she knew that any good mother would probably have wanted to get home as quickly as she could. But Katrine wanted to wait a little longer. Catch her breath. Stretch this pause from the suffocating grief, the unanswered questions, the nagging suspicions.

The grief was easier to deal with when she was alone. When she didn’t feel she was being watched, didn’t have to stop herself from laughing at something Gert did, or from saying something wrong, like she was looking forward to spring or something. Not that Bjørn’s parents reacted — they were sensible, they understood. They were wonderful people, actually. But she clearly wasn’t. The grief was there, but she was able to chase it away when no one else was there to remind her constantly that Bjørn was dead. That Harry was dead.

The unspoken suspicion she knew they must be feeling, but didn’t show. That she, one way or another, must be the reason why Bjørn had taken his own life. But she knew she wasn’t. On the other hand, though: Should she have realised something was wrong with Bjørn when he had gone completely to pieces when he heard that Harry was dead? Should she have known that it was more than that, that Bjørn was struggling with something bigger, a deep depression he had managed to fend off and keep hidden until Harry’s death came along. Not just the drop that made his cup overflow, but burst the entire dam. What do we really know about the people we share our beds, our lives with? Even less than we know about ourselves. Katrine found it an unpalatable idea, but the impressions we have of the people around us are precisely that: impressions.

She had raised the alarm when Bjørn handed Gert over without wanting to talk to her.

Katrine had just got home from the terrible press conference with Ole Winter, to an empty flat and no message saying where Bjørn and Gert were, when someone rang the front doorbell. She had picked up the entryphone and heard Gert crying, and opened the door to the flat in case Bjørn had forgotten his keys, then pressed the button to open the door down on the street. But she hadn’t heard the whirr of the lock, just the baby crying close to the microphone. After saying Bjørn’s name several times without getting any response, she had gone downstairs.

The Maxi-Cosi baby carrier with Gert in it was sitting on the pavement right outside the door.

Katrine had looked up and down Nordahl Bruns gate, but couldn’t see any sign of Bjørn. Nor had she seen anyone in any of the darkened doorways on the other side of the street, although that didn’t necessarily mean there was no one there, of course. And then a random thought occurred to her: that it hadn’t been Bjørn who rang the bell.

She had taken Gert up to the flat and called Bjørn’s number, only to be told that his phone was switched off or out of reach of the network. She realised something was wrong and called Bjørn’s parents. And it was the fact that she had instinctively called them rather than any of Bjørn’s friends or workmates, who, after all, lived in the city, that made her realise that she was worried.

His parents had reassured her, saying that he was bound to get in touch with a good explanation, but Katrine could hear from Bjørn’s mother’s voice that she too was concerned. Perhaps she too had noticed that Bjørn didn’t seem to have been himself recently.

You might think that a murder detective would eventually come to accept that there are some things, some questions you will never get an answer to, and you just have to move on. But some of them never managed that. Like Harry. Like her. Katrine didn’t know if this was an advantage or a hindrance from a professional perspective, but one thing was certain: for life outside of work it was nothing but a disadvantage. She was already dreading the weeks and months of sleepless nights that lay ahead of her. Not because of Gert. You could set your watch by when he slept and woke up. It was the restless, compulsive activity of her brain in the darkness that would stop her sleeping.

Katrine zipped up the bag containing the case files and papers she needed to take home, walked towards the door, turned out the light and was about to leave her office when the phone on her desk started to ring.

She picked it up.

“It’s Sung-min Larsen.”

“Great,” Katrine said, in a toneless voice. Not that she meant that it wasn’t great, but if this phone call meant he had decided to accept her offer of a job in Crime Squad, the timing wasn’t exactly good.

“I’m calling because... Is now a good time, by the way?”

Katrine looked out of the window, towards Botsparken. Bare trees, brown, withered grass. It wouldn’t be long before the trees grew leaves and blossoms, before the grass turned green. And then, after that, it would be summer. Or so they said.

“Yes,” she said, and heard that she still wasn’t managing to sound enthusiastic.

“I’ve just experienced a remarkable coincidence,” Larsen said. “Earlier today I received information that sheds new light on the Rakel Fauke case. And I’ve just had a phone call from Johan Krohn, Sv—”

“I know who Krohn is.”

“He says he’s at Smestaddammen, where he and his assistant had arranged to meet his client, Svein Finne. And that Svein Finne has just been shot and killed.”

“What?”

“I don’t know why Krohn called me in particular, he says he’ll explain that later. Either way, this is primarily a case for Oslo Police District, which is why I’m calling you.”

“I’ll pass it on to the uniforms,” Katrine said. She saw a deer creep across the brown lawn in front of Police Headquarters, heading towards the old prison block, Botsfengselet. She waited. Noted that Larsen was also waiting. “What did you mean when you said it was a coincidence, Larsen?”

“It seems odd that Svein Finne has been shot just an hour after I received information that means Finne is back as a suspect in the Fauke case.”

Katrine let go of her bag and sank down on the chair behind the desk. “You’re saying...”

“Yes, I’m saying I’m in possession of information that indicates that Harry Hole is innocent.”

Katrine felt her heart start to beat. Blood was coursing through her body, pricking her skin. And something else, something that had been lying dormant, woke up.

“When you say ‘in possession of,’ Larsen...”

“Yes?”

“It sounds as if you haven’t shared this information with your colleagues yet. Is that correct?”

“Not entirely. I’ve shared it with you.”

“All you’ve shared with me is your own conclusion that Harry’s innocent.”

“You’ll end up reaching the same conclusion, Bratt.”

“Really?”

“I’ve got a suggestion.”

“I thought you might have.”

“That you and I meet at the crime scene, and we’ll take it from there.”

“OK. I’ll come over with the uniforms.”

Katrine called the duty officer, then let her parents-in-law know she was going to be late. While she was waiting for them to answer she looked down at Botsparken again. The deer was gone. Her late father, Gert, had told her that badgers hunt everything. Anytime, anywhere. They’ll eat anything, and fight anything. And that some detectives had the badger in them, and some didn’t. And what Katrine could feel right now was the badger waking from hibernation.

52

Sung-min Larsen was already there when Katrine arrived at Smestaddammen. Between his legs stood a quivering, trembling dog, as if it was trying to hide. There was a thin but insistent bleeping sound, like an alarm clock, coming from somewhere.

They walked over to the body, which was lying on the ground beside the bench. Katrine realised that the bleeping was coming from the dead body. And that the body was Svein Finne. That the deceased had been shot in the groin and through one eye, but that there were no exit wounds in his back or head. Special ammunition, perhaps. Even if Katrine knew it couldn’t be the case, it felt like the monotonous electronic bleeping from the dead man’s watch was gradually getting louder.

“Why hasn’t anyone...” she began.

“Fingerprints,” Sung-min said. “I have a preliminary witness statement, but it would be good to be able to know for certain that no one else has touched his watch.”

Katrine nodded. Then gestured that they should move away.

The officers were setting up cordon tape as Sung-min told Katrine what he had found out about the sequence of events from Alise Krogh Reinertsen and her boss, Johan Krohn, who were standing on the other side of the lake with a small crowd of curious onlookers. Sung-min told Katrine that he had ushered them all over there to get them out of the line of fire, seeing as it couldn’t be ruled out entirely that Svein Finne was merely a random victim, and that the perpetrator was looking for others.

“Hmm,” Katrine said, squinting up at the hillside. “You and I must be right in the line of fire right now, so we don’t really believe that, do we?”

“No,” Sung-min said.

“So what do you think?” Katrine said, crouching down to pat the dog.

“I don’t think anything, but Krohn has a theory.”

Katrine nodded. “Is it the body that’s upset your dog?”

“No. He got attacked by a swan when we arrived.”

“Poor thing,” Katrine said, scratching the dog behind one ear. She got a lump in her throat, as if there was something familiar about the trusting look in the dog’s eyes as it gazed up at her.

“Has Krohn explained why he called you specifically?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“I think you should talk to him yourself.”

“OK.”

“Bratt?”

“Yes?”

“Like I said before, Kasparov used to be a police dog. Is it OK if he and I start to look into which direction Finne came from?”

Katrine looked at the trembling dog. “I can have the dog unit here within half an hour. I presume that’s one of the reasons why Kasparov was retired.”

“His hips are worn out,” Larsen said. “But I can carry him if it turns out to be a long way.”

“Really? But don’t dogs’ sense of smell get weaker as they get older?”

“A little,” Larsen said. “Same as human beings.”

Katrine looked at Sung-min Larsen. Was he referring to Ole Winter?

“Get going,” she said, patting Kasparov’s head. “Good hunting.”

And, as if the old dog recognised what she said, its tail, which had been drooping down, started to wag.

Katrine walked around the lake.

Krohn and his assistant both looked pale and cold. A slight but chill north wind had started to blow, the sort that puts a temporary stop to Oslo’s inhabitants’ thoughts of spring.

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to go through everything again, from the start,” Katrine said, taking out her notebook.

Krohn nodded. “It started when Finne came to see me a few days ago. All of a sudden he was just standing there on my terrace. He wanted to tell me he’d killed Rakel Fauke, so I could help him if and when you started to close in on him.”

“And Harry Hole?”

“After the murder he drugged Harry Hole and left him at the scene. He fiddled with the thermostat to make it look like Rakel was killed after Hole arrived there. Finne’s motive was that Harry Hole had shot his son when he was trying to arrest him.”

“Really?” Katrine didn’t know why she didn’t instantly buy this story. “Did Finne tell you how he got inside Rakel Fauke’s house? Seeing as the door was locked from the inside, I mean.”

Krohn shook his head. “The chimney? I have no idea. I’ve seen that man arrive and leave in the most inexplicable ways. I agreed to meet him here because I wanted him to hand himself in to the police.”

Katrine stamped her feet on the ground. “Who do you think shot Finne? And why?”

Krohn shrugged. “A man like Svein Finne, who assaulted children, gets plenty of enemies in prison. He managed to stay alive in there, but I know that several of them who’d been released were just waiting for Finne to get out. Men like that often have access to firearms, sadly, and some of them know how to use them as well.”

“So we’ve got loads of potential suspects, all of whom have served time for serious offences, some of them for murder, is that what you’re saying?”

“That’s what I’m saying, Bratt.”

Krohn was a persuasive storyteller, there was no doubt about that. Maybe Katrine’s skepticism was based on the fact that she had heard too many of the stories he had told in court. She looked at Alise. “I’ve got a few questions, if that’s OK?”

“Not yet,” Alise said, folding her arms over her chest. “Not until six hours have passed. New research shows that dwelling on dramatic experiences before that increases the risk of long-term trauma.”

“And we’ve got a killer who’s getting a bit harder to catch with each minute that passes,” Katrine said.

“Not my responsibility, I’m a defense lawyer,” the woman said, with a defiant look in her eyes but in a shaky voice.

Katrine felt sorry for her, but this wasn’t the time for kid gloves.

“In that case you’ve done a terrible job, because your client’s dead,” she said. “And you’re not a defense lawyer, you’re a young woman with a law degree and a boss you’re fucking because you think it’ll help you climb the ladder. It won’t. And it won’t help you to try and play tough with me, OK?”

Alise Krogh Reinertsen stared at Katrine. Blinked. A first tear began to make its way through the powder on the young woman’s cheek.

Six minutes later, Katrine had all the details. She had asked Alise to close her eyes, relive the first shot, and say “now” when the bullet hit, and “now” when she heard the rumble. There was over a second between them, so the shot had come from at least four hundred metres away. Katrine thought about the points of impact. The man’s genitals, then one of his eyes. That wasn’t an accident. The killer had to be either a competitive marksman or have specialist military training. There couldn’t be many people like that who had served time at the same time as Svein Finne. Probably none, at a guess.

And a suspicion, almost a hope — no, not even that, just a vain wish — ran through her. Then disappeared. But that glimpse of an alternative truth left something warm and soothing behind it, like the faith religious people cling to even though their intellect rejects it. And for a few moments Katrine couldn’t feel the northerly wind as she looked at the park in front of her and imagined it in the summer, the island with the willow tree, the flowers, insects buzzing, birds singing. All the things she would soon be able to show Gert. Then another thought struck her.

The stories she was going to tell Gert about his father.

The older he got, the more he would want to know about that part of him, the man he had come from.

Something that would make him either proud or ashamed.

It was true that the badger in her had woken up. And that a badger, in theory, could dig right through the planet in the course of its lifetime. But how deeply did she want to dig? Maybe she’d found out all she wanted to know.

She heard a sound. No, it wasn’t a sound. Silence.

The watch on the other side of the lake. It had stopped bleeping.

A dog’s sense of smell is, roughly speaking, a hundred thousand times more sensitive than a human’s. And, according to recent research that Sung-min had read, dogs can do more than just smell. A dog’s Jacobson’s organ, located in its palate, also allows it to detect and interpret scentless pheromones and other information without any smell. This means that a dog — in perfect conditions — can follow the trail left by a human being up to a month later.

The conditions weren’t perfect.

The worst of it was that the trail they were following ran along a sidewalk, which meant that other people and animals had confused the scent. And there wasn’t much vegetation for scent particles to cling to.

On the other hand, both Sørkedalsveien and the sidewalk — which ran through a residential area — weren’t as heavily trafficked as the city centre. And it was cold, which helped preserve scent. But, more important, even if there were large clouds blowing in from the northwest, it hadn’t rained since Svein Finne had been there.

Sung-min felt tense each time they approached a bus stop, sure that the trail was about to end, that that was where Finne had got off a bus. But Kasparov just kept going, straining at his leash — he seemed to have forgotten all about his aching hips — and on the slopes heading up towards Røa, Sung-min began to regret not changing out of his suit into jogging gear.

But as he sweated he was getting more and more excited. They had been going for almost half an hour, and it seemed unlikely that Finne would have used public transport at all, only to walk such an unnecessarily long way after he got off.

Harry stared out across Porsanger Fjord, towards the sea, towards the North Pole, towards the end and the beginning, towards where there was probably a horizon on clearer days. But today, the sea, sky and land all blurred together. It was like sitting under a huge, grey-white dome, and it was as quiet as a church, the only sounds the occasional plaintive cry of a gull and the sea lapping gently against the rowing boat the man and boy were sitting in. And Oleg’s voice:

“...and when I got home and told Mum that I put my hand up in class and said that Old Tjikko isn’t the oldest tree in the world, but the oldest roots, she laughed so much I thought she was going to start crying. And then she said that the three of us had roots like that. I didn’t tell her, but I thought that couldn’t be right, because you’re not my father the way the roots are Old Tjikko’s father and mother. But as the years passed, I realised what she meant. That roots are something that grow. That when we used to sit there talking about... I don’t know, what did we talk about? Tetris. Skating. Bands we both like...”

“Mm. And both...”

“...hate.” Oleg grinned. “That’s when we grew roots. That was how you became my father.”

“Mm. A bad father.”

“Rubbish.”

“You think I was an average father?”

“An unusual father. Lousy grades in some subjects, world’s best in others. You saved me when you came back from Hong Kong. But it’s funny, I remember the little things best. Like the time you tricked me.”

“I tricked you?”

“When I finally managed to beat your Tetris record, you boasted that you knew all the countries in the world atlas in the bookcase. And you knew exactly what was going to happen after that.”

“Well...”

“It took me a couple of months, but by the time my classmates looked at me weirdly when I mentioned Djibouti, I knew the names, flags and capital cities of every country in the world.”

“Almost all.”

“All.”

“Nope. You thought San Salvador was the country and El Salvador—”

“Don’t even try.”

Harry smiled. And realised that was exactly what it was. A smile. Like the first glimpse of sun after months of darkness. Even if a new period of darkness lay ahead of him, now that he had finally woken up, but it couldn’t be worse than the one that lay behind him.

“She liked that,” Harry said. “Listening to us talk.”

“Did she?” Oleg looked off to the north.

“She used to bring the book she was reading, or her knitting, and sit down near us. She didn’t bother to interrupt or join in the conversation, she didn’t even bother to listen to what we were talking about. She said she just liked the sound. She said it was the sound of the men in her life.”

“I liked that sound too,” Oleg said, pulling the fishing rod towards him so that the tip bowed respectfully towards the surface of the water. “You and Mum. After I’d gone to bed I used to open the door just so I could listen to you. You used to talk quietly, and it sounded like you’d already said pretty much everything, understood each other. That all that needed adding was the occasional key word here or there. Even so, you used to make her laugh. It was such a safe sound, the best sound to fall asleep to.”

Harry chuckled. Coughed. Thought that sound carried a long way in this weather, possibly all the way to land. He tugged dutifully at his own fishing rod.

“Helga says she’s never seen two grown-ups as in love with each other as you and Mum. That she hopes we can be like you.”

“Mm. Maybe she ought to hope for more than that.”

“More than what?”

Harry shrugged. “Here comes a line I’ve heard too many men say. Your mother deserved better than me.”

Oleg smiled briefly. “Mum knew what she was getting, and it was you she wanted. She just needed that break to remember that. For the pair of you to remember Old Tjikko’s roots.”

Harry cleared his throat. “Listen, maybe it’s time for me to tell—”

“No,” Oleg interrupted. “I don’t want to know anything about why she threw you out. If that’s OK with you? And nothing about the rest of it either.”

“OK,” Harry said. “It’s up to you how much you want to know.” That was what he used to say to Rakel. She had made a habit of asking for less rather than more information.

Oleg ran his hand along the side of the boat. “Because the rest of the truth is bad, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“I heard you in the spare room last night. Did you get any sleep?”

“Mm.”

“Mum’s dead, nothing can change that, and for the time being it’s enough for me to know that someone other than you was guilty. If I discover that I do need to know, maybe you can tell me later on.”

“You’re very wise, Oleg. Just like your mother.”

Oleg gave him a sardonic smile and looked at the time. “Helga will be waiting for us. She’s bought some cod.”

Harry looked down at the empty bucket in front of him. “Smart woman.”

They reeled their lines in. Harry looked at his watch. He had a ticket for an afternoon flight back to Oslo. He didn’t know what was going to happen after that; the plan he had worked out with Johan Krohn went no further than this.

Oleg put the oars in the rowlocks and started to row.

Harry watched him. Thought back to the time he used to row while his grandfather sat in front of him, smiling and giving Harry little bits of advice. How he should use his upper body and straighten his arms, row with his stomach, not his biceps. That he should take it gently, never stress, find a rhythm, that a boat gliding evenly through the water moves faster even with less energy. That he should feel with his buttocks to make sure he was sitting in the middle of the bench. That it was all about balance. That he shouldn’t look at the oars, but keep his eyes on the wake, that the signs of what had already happened showed you where you were heading. But, his grandfather had said, they told you surprisingly little about what was going to happen. That was determined by the next stroke of the oars. His grandfather took out his pocket watch and said that when we get back on shore, we look back on our journey as a continuous line from the point of departure to the point of arrival. A story, with a purpose and a direction. We remember it as if it were here, and nowhere but here, that we intended the boat to meet the shoreline, he said. But the point of arrival and the intended destination were two different things. Not that one was necessarily better than the other. We get to where we get to, and it can be a consolation to believe that was where we wanted to get to, or at least were on our way towards the whole time. But our fallible memories are like a kind mother telling us how clever we are, that our strokes with the oar were clean and fitted into the story as a logical, intentional part. The idea that we may have gone off course, that we no longer know where we are or where we are going, that life is a chaotic mess of clumsy, fumbled oar strokes, is so unappealing that we prefer to rewrite the story in hindsight. That’s why people who appear to have been successful and are asked to talk about it often say it was the dream — the only one — they’d had since they were little, to succeed in whatever it was that they had been successful in. It is probably honestly meant. They have probably just forgotten about all the other dreams, the ones that weren’t nurtured, that faded and disappeared. Who knows, perhaps we would acknowledge the meaningless chaos of coincidences that make up our lives if — instead of writing autobiographies — we had written down our predictions for life, how we thought our lives would turn out. We could forget all about them, then take them out later on to see what we had really dreamed about.

Around now his grandfather would have taken a long swig from his hip flask, then looked at the boy, at Harry. And Harry would have looked at the old man’s heavy eyes, so heavy that they looked like they were going to fall out of his head, as if he were going to cry egg white and iris. Harry hadn’t thought about it at the time, but he thought about it now — that his grandfather had sat there hoping his grandson would have a better life than him. Would avoid the mistakes he had made. But perhaps also that one day, when the boy was grown up, he would sit like this, watching his son, daughter, grandchild row. And give them some advice. See some of it help, some get forgotten or ignored. And feel his chest swell, his throat tighten, in a strange mixture of pride and sympathy. Pride because the child was a better version of himself. Sympathy because they still had more pain ahead of them than behind them, and were rowing with the conviction that someone, they themselves perhaps, or at least their grandfather, knew where they were going.

“We’ve got a case,” Oleg said. “Two neighbours, childhood friends, who fell out at a party. There’d never been any trouble between them before, solid types. They each went home, then the next morning one of them, a maths teacher, showed up at the other’s door with a jack in his hand. Afterwards the neighbour accused the maths teacher of attempted murder, said he’d hit out at his head before he managed to close the door. I questioned the maths teacher. And I’m sitting there thinking: no, if he’s capable of murder, then we all are. And we aren’t. Are we?”

Harry didn’t answer.

Oleg stopped rowing for a moment. “I thought the same thing when they told me that Kripos had evidence against you. That it just couldn’t be true. I know you’ve had to kill in the course of duty, to save your own or someone else’s life. But a premeditated, planned murder, the sort of murder where you clean up all the evidence afterwards... You couldn’t have done that, could you?”

Harry looked at Oleg, sitting there waiting for him to answer. The boy, almost a man, with his journey still ahead of him, with the possibility of becoming a better man than him. Rakel had always had a note of concern in her voice when she told him how much Oleg looked up to him, tried to copy him down to the smallest details, the way he walked, with his feet turned out slightly, a bit like Charlie Chaplin. That he used Harry’s special words and expressions, such as the archaic “indubitably.” He copied the way Harry rubbed the back of his neck when he was thinking hard. Repeated Harry’s arguments about the rights and limitations of the state.

“Of course I couldn’t have done it,” Harry said, pulling his cigarettes from his pocket. “It takes a particular type of person to plan a cold-blooded murder, and you and I, we’re not like that.”

Oleg smiled. Looked almost relieved. “Can I bum a—”

“No, you don’t smoke. Keep rowing.”

Harry lit a cigarette. The smoke rose straight up, then drifted off towards the east. He squinted towards the horizon that wasn’t there.

Krohn had looked utterly confused, standing there in the doorway in just his boxer shorts and slippers. He had hesitated for a moment before asking Harry in. They had sat down in the kitchen, where Krohn had served tasteless espresso from a black machine while Harry briefly checked that everything he said was in confidence, then he served up the whole story.

When he had finished, Krohn’s coffee cup was still standing untouched.

“So what you want is to clear your name,” Krohn said. “But without identifying your colleague, Bjørn Holm.”

“Yes,” Harry said. “Can you help me?”

Johan Krohn had scratched his chin. “That’s going to be difficult. As you know, the police don’t like to let go of one suspect unless they’ve got another one. And what we’ve got, the analysis of some blood on a pair of trousers that shows you were drugged with Rohypnol, and the electricity usage that shows the thermostat had been turned up and then down again, those are just corroborating factors. The blood could have come from another occasion, the electricity could have been used in another room, it doesn’t prove anything at all. What we need... is a scapegoat. Someone who hasn’t got an alibi. Someone with a motive. Someone everyone would accept.”

Harry had noted that Krohn said “we,” as if they were already a team. And something else had changed in Krohn. His face had a bit of colour in it again, he was breathing deeper, his pupils had dilated. Like a carnivore that’s caught sight of some prey, Harry thought. The same prey as me.

“There’s a widespread misconception that a scapegoat has to be innocent,” Krohn said. “But the purpose of the scapegoat isn’t to be innocent, but to take the blame, regardless of what he has or hasn’t done. Even under the current rule of law, we see that offenders who arouse public disgust but who are only tangentially guilty receive disproportionately severe sentences.”

“Shall we get to the point?” Harry said.

“The point?”

“Svein Finne.”

Krohn looked at Harry. Then gave a brief nod to indicate that they understood each other.

“With this new information,” Krohn said, “Finne no longer has an alibi for the time of the murder, he hadn’t arrived at the maternity ward by then. And he has a motive: he hates you. You and I can ensure that an active rapist ends up behind bars. And he isn’t an innocent scapegoat. Think about all the suffering he’s caused people. Do you know, Finne admitted... no, he boasted about assaulting the daughter of Bishop Bohr, who lived just a couple of hundred metres away from here.”

Harry took his cigarette packet from his pocket. He tapped out a bent cigarette. “Tell me what Finne’s got on you.”

Krohn laughed. Raised his cup to his lips to camouflage the fake laughter.

“I haven’t got time for games, Krohn. Come on, all the details.”

Krohn swallowed. “Of course. I’m sorry, I haven’t slept. Let’s go and have coffee in the library.”

“What for?”

“My wife... Sound doesn’t carry as far there.”

The acoustics were dry and muffled among the books that lined the walls from floor to ceiling. Harry listened as he sat slumped in a deep leather armchair. This time it was his turn not to touch his coffee.

“Mm,” he said when Krohn had finished. “Shall we skip the bit where we beat around the bush?”

“Of course,” said Krohn, who had put a raincoat on and reminded Harry of a flasher who used to hang around in a patch of woodland in Oppsal when Harry was a boy. Øystein and Harry had snuck up on the flasher and shot at him with water pistols. But what Harry remembered most was the look of sorrow in the wet, passive flasher’s eyes before they ran off, and that he regretted it afterwards without really knowing why.

“You don’t want Finne behind bars,” Harry said. “That wouldn’t stop him telling your wife what he knows. You want Finne out of the way. For good.”

“So...” Krohn began.

“That’s your problem with taking Finne alive,” Harry continued. “Mine is that if we manage to find him at all, he may still have an alibi for between 18:00 and 22:00 that we don’t know about. It may be that he was with the pregnant woman during the hours before they went to the maternity ward. Not that I imagine that she’d come forward if Finne was killed, of course.”

“Killed?”

“Liquidated, terminated, annulled.” Harry took a drag on the cigarette, which he had lit without asking permission. “I prefer ‘killed.’ Bad things deserve bad names.”

Krohn let out a short, bemused laugh. “You’re talking about cold-blooded murder, Harry.”

Harry shrugged. “Murder, yes. Cold-blooded, no. But if we’re going to manage this, we need to lower the temperature. If you understand me?”

Krohn nodded.

“Good,” Harry said. “Let me think for a minute.”

“Can I have one of your cigarettes?”

Harry handed him the packet.

The two men sat in silence, watching the smoke rise towards the ceiling.

“If—” Krohn began.

“Shhh.”

Krohn sighed.

His cigarette had almost burned down to the filter when Harry spoke again.

“What I need from you, Krohn, is a lie.”

“OK?”

“You need to say that Finne confessed to killing Rakel. And I’ll be inviting two more people to participate in this. One works at the Forensic Medicine Institute. The other is a sniper. None of you will know the names of the others. OK?”

Krohn had nodded.

“Good. We need to write an invitation to Finne, telling him when and where to meet your assistant, then you need to attach it to the grave with something I’m going to give you.”

“What?”

Harry took one last drag on his cigarette, then stubbed it out in his coffee cup. “A Trojan horse. Finne collects knives. If we’re lucky, it’ll be enough to kill any other speculation stone dead.”

Sung-min heard a crow somewhere among the trees as he looked up at the sheer rock face in front of him. The meltwater was painting black stripes down the grey granite, which rose up some thirty metres above him. He and Kasparov had been walking for almost three hours, and it was obvious that Kasparov was in pain now. Sung-min didn’t know if it was loyalty or the hunting instinct that was driving him on, but even when they had been standing at the end of the muddy forest track looking at the fragile rope-bridge across the river, with snow and pathless forest on the other side, he had been straining at the leash to keep going. Sung-min had seen footsteps in the snow on the other side, but he would have to carry Kasparov over the bridge while at the same time holding on with at least one hand. He found himself wondering: Then what? Sung-min’s hand-sewn Loake shoes were long since soaked through and ruined, but the question now was how far he would get on the slippery leather soles on the rugged, snow-covered terrain on the other side of the river.

Sung-min had crouched down in front of Kasparov, rubbed both hands together and looked into the old dog’s tired eyes.

“If you can, then so can I,” he had said.

Kasparov had whimpered and squirmed as Sung-min picked him up and carried him towards their wet fate, but somehow or other they had managed to get across.

And now, after twenty minutes of sliding about, their path was blocked by this rock face. Or was it? He followed the tracks that led to the side of the cliff, and there he saw a worn, slippery rope that was tied to a tree trunk farther up the almost vertical surface. Then he spotted that the rope carried on through the trees, and that there were some steps cut into the ground to make a path. But he wouldn’t be able to climb the rope and carry Kasparov at the same time.

“Sorry, my friend, this is bound to hurt,” Sung-min said, then knelt down, put Kasparov’s front legs around his neck, turned and strapped the dog’s legs around him tightly with his belt.

“If we don’t see anything up there, we’ll go back,” he said. “I promise.”

Sung-min grabbed the rope and braced his feet. Kasparov howled as he hung helplessly round his owner’s neck like a rucksack, his back legs scratching and scrabbling at the jacket of Sung-min’s suit.

It went quicker than Sung-min expected, and suddenly they were standing at the top of the cliff, where the forest carried on in front of them.

There was a red cabin twenty metres away.

Sung-min freed Kasparov, but instead of following the trail that led straight to the cabin, the dog shrank between his owner’s legs, whimpering and whining.

“There now, there’s nothing to be scared of,” Sung-min said. “Finne’s dead.”

Sung-min spotted animal tracks — large tracks, at that. Could that be what Kasparov was reacting to? He took a step towards the cabin. He felt the wire against his leg, but it was too late, and he knew he’d walked into a trap. There was a hissing sound, and he had time to see a flash of light from the object filled with explosive that flew up in front of him. He closed his eyes instinctively. When he opened them again, he had to lean his head back to see the object as it rose up into the sky, leaving a thin trail of smoke behind it. Then there was a damp kerblam as the rocket exploded, and even though it was daylight he saw the shower of yellow, blue and red, like a miniature Big Bang.

Someone had evidently wanted to be warned if anything was approaching. Possibly also to scare something off. He could feel Kasparov trembling against his leg.

“It’s only a firework,” he said, patting the dog. “But thanks for the warning, my friend.”

Sung-min walked over to the wooden terrace in front of the cabin.

Kasparov had plucked up courage again and ran past him, up to the door.

Sung-min saw from the splintered door frame beside the lock that he wasn’t going to have to break in, that job had already been done for him.

He pushed the door open and stepped inside.

He noted at once that the cabin had no electricity or water. There were ropes hanging from hooks on the walls, possibly strung up there to stop mice eating them.

But there was food on the bench by the west-facing window.

Bread. Cheese. And a knife.

Not like the short, all-purpose blade with the brown handle he had found when they searched Finne’s body. This one had a blade that he estimated to be just under fifteen centimetres long. Sung-min’s heart started to beat harder, more happily, almost like when he had seen Alexandra Sturdza walk into Statholdergaarden.

“You know what, Kasparov?” he whispered as he looked along the oak handle and horn collar. “I think winter really is almost over.”

Because there was no doubt. This was a Tojiro kitchen knife. This was the knife.

53

“What can I get you?” the white-clad bartender asked.

Harry let his eyes roam along the bottles of aquavit and whisky on the shelves behind him before settling once again on the silent television screen. He was the only person in the bar, and it was oddly quiet. Quiet for Gardermoen Airport, anyway. A sleep-inducing voice was making an announcement at one of the gates in the distance, and a pair of hard shoes was clicking on the floor. It was the sound of an airport that would soon be closing down for the night. But there were still several options. He had arrived on the flight from Lakselv, via Tromsø, an hour ago, and with only his hand luggage he had walked to the transit area instead of the arrivals hall. Harry squinted at the large screen of departures hanging next to the bar. The options were Berlin, Paris, Bangkok, Milan, Barcelona or Lisbon. There was enough time, and the SAS ticket desk was still open.

He looked back at the bartender, who was waiting for his order.

“Since you ask, I’d quite like some volume,” Harry said, pointing towards the television, where Katrine Bratt and the Head of Information, Kedzierski, a man with a head of thick, curly hair, were sitting behind the desk in the Parole Hall, the usual venue for press conferences, on the fourth floor of Police Headquarters. Below them ran the single, repeated line of text: Murder suspect Svein Finne shot by unknown sniper in Smestad.

“Sorry,” the bartender said. “All televisions in the airport have to be silent.”

“There’s nobody here except us.”

“Those are the rules.”

“Five minutes, just this item. I’ll give you a hundred kroner.”

“And I can’t accept bribes.”

“Mm. It wouldn’t be a bribe if I ordered a Jim Beam, then gave you a tip if I thought I’d received particularly good service?”

The bartender smiled briefly. Looked at Harry more closely. “Aren’t you that author?”

Harry shook his head.

“I don’t read, but my mum likes you. Can I have a selfie?”

Harry nodded towards the screen.

“OK,” the bartender said, leaning over the counter with his phone in his hand and snapping a selfie of the pair of them before pressing the remote. The television rose a few cautious decibels and Harry leaned forward to hear better.

Katrine Bratt’s face seemed to glow every time a flash went off. She was listening intently to a question from the floor that the microphone couldn’t pick up. Her voice was clear and firm when she answered the reporter.

“I can’t go into detail, only repeat that in the process of investigating the murder of Svein Finne earlier today, Oslo Police District has found compelling evidence that Finne was responsible for the murder of Rakel Fauke. The murder weapon has been found in Svein Finne’s hideout. And Finne’s lawyer has told the police that Finne told him he killed Rakel Fauke and afterwards planted evidence to frame Harry Hole. Yes?” Katrine pointed to someone in the room.

Harry recognised the voice of Mona Daa, VG’s crime reporter. “Shouldn’t Winter be here to explain how he and Kripos were so thoroughly taken in by Finne?”

Katrine leaned towards the forest of microphones. “Winter will have to answer that when Kripos hold their own press conference. We at Oslo Police District will be sending what we know about Finne’s connection to the Rakel Fauke case to Winter, and we’re here primarily to account for Finne’s murder, seeing as that case is solely our responsibility.”

“Do you have any comment on Winter’s handling of the case?” Daa went on. “He and Kripos have gone public with allegations of murder against an innocent and deceased police officer who worked here in the Crime Squad Unit.”

Harry could see Katrine stop herself just as she was about to speak. Swallow. Compose herself. Then she said: “I and Oslo Police District aren’t here to criticise Kripos. On the contrary, one of Kripos’s detectives, Sung-min Larsen, has been instrumental in what appears to be our successful identification of Rakel Fauke’s killer. One last question. Yes?”

“Dagbladet. You say you haven’t identified a suspect for Finne’s murder. We have sources who’ve told us he had been threatened by men he was in prison with who have since been released. Is that something the police are looking into?”

“Yes,” Katrine said, and looked at the Head of Information.

“Well, thanks very much for coming,” Kedzierski said. “We don’t have another press conference planned, but we’ll...”

Harry signalled to the bartender that he’d heard enough.

He saw Katrine stand up. Presumably she would be going home now. Someone would have been watching Gert for her. The child who had lain there in the baby carrier, smiling, just awake, peering up at Harry as he carried him through the city streets. He had rung the buzzer for Katrine’s flat, felt something around his forefinger and looked down. The tiny, pale baby fingers looked like they were clutching a baseball bat. Those intense blue eyes looked like they were commanding him not to go, not to leave him like this, not here. Telling Harry that he owed him a father now. And when Harry had stood in the darkness of one of the doorways on the other side of the street and watched Katrine come out, he had been on the verge of stepping forward into the light. And telling her everything. Letting her make the decision for herself, for them both. For all three of them.

Harry straightened up again on the bar stool.

He saw that the bartender had placed a glass containing something brown next to him on the bar. Harry studied it. Just one glass. He knew it was the voice he mustn’t listen to talking. Saying: Come on, you deserve a little celebration!

No.

No? OK, not to celebrate, but to show respect to the dead, to drink a toast in their memory, you heartless, dishonourable bastard.

Harry knew that if he entered into a discussion with that voice, he would lose.

He looked at the departure board. At the glass. Katrine was on her way home. He could walk out of here, get in a taxi. Ring her doorbell again. Wait in the light this time. Rise from the dead. Why not? He could hardly hide forever. And now that he was no longer a suspect, why should he? A thought struck him. In the car, under the ice in the river, there had been something there. But it had slipped away from him. The question was: What did he have to offer Katrine and Gert? Would the truth and his presence do them more damage than good? God knows. God knows if he had invented these dilemmas to give himself an excuse to leave. He thought of those small fingers wrapped around his. That commanding stare. His thoughts were interrupted when he felt his phone ring. He took it out and looked at it.

“It’s Kaja.” Her voice still sounded close. Perhaps the Pacific wasn’t so far away after all.

“Hi. How are you getting on?”

“It’s been crazy. I’ve only just woken up, I slept for fourteen hours solid. I’m standing outside the tent, on the beach. The sun’s just coming up. It looks like a red balloon being slowly inflated, and sometime soon it might just pull free of the horizon and take off.”

“Mm.” Harry looked at the glass.

“How about you? How are you coping with waking up?”

“Being asleep was easier.”

“It’s going to be tough, the grieving process you’re setting out on. And now that you’ve lost Bjørn too. Have you got people around you who can...”

“God, yes.”

“No, you haven’t, Harry.”

He didn’t know if she could sense him smiling. “I just need someone to make some decisions,” he said.

“Is that why you called?”

“No. I called to say I’d put your key back. Thanks for letting me stay.”

“Letting you stay...” she repeated. Then sighed. “The earthquake’s wrecked a lot of what few buildings there were, but it’s incredibly beautiful here, Harry. Beautiful and wrecked. Beautiful and wrecked, get it?”

“Get what?”

“I like beautiful and wrecked. Like you. And I’m a bit wrecked myself.”

Harry guessed where this was going.

“Can’t you get a flight out here, Harry?”

“To a Pacific island that’s just been wiped out by an earthquake?”

“To Auckland in New Zealand. We’ll be coordinating the international effort from there, and they’ve put me in charge of security. I’m setting off on a transport plane this afternoon.”

Harry looked at the departure board. Bangkok. Maybe there were still direct flights from there to Auckland.

“Let me think about it, Kaja.”

“Great. How long do you think—”

“One minute. Then I’ll call you back, OK?”

“One minute?” She sounded happy. “OK, I can just about cope with that.”

They ended the call.

He still hadn’t touched the glass in front of him.

He could disappear. Sink down into the darkness. And then he caught it again, the thought that kept escaping him, from when he was in the car under the ice. It had been cold. Frightening. And lonely. But something else too. It had been quiet. So incredibly peaceful.

He looked at the departure board again.

Places a man could disappear.

From Bangkok he could go to Hong Kong. He still had connections there, he could probably get a job without too much difficulty, maybe even something legitimate. Or he could head off in the other direction. South America. Mexico City. Caracas. Really disappear.

Harry rubbed the back of his neck. The ticket desk closed in six minutes.

Katrine and Gert. Or Kaja and Auckland. Jim Beam and Oslo. Sober in Hong Kong. Or Caracas.

Harry felt in his pocket and pulled out the small, blue-grey lump of metal. Looked at the dots on its sides. Took a deep breath, cupped his hands, shook the dice. Rolled it along the counter.