Knife

1

A ragged dress was hanging from one branch of a rotting pine tree. It put the old man in mind of a song from his youth, about a dress on a washing line. But this dress wasn’t hanging in a southerly breeze like in the song, but in the ice-cold meltwater in a river. It was completely still down at the bottom of the river, and even though it was five o’clock in the afternoon, and it was March, and the sky above the surface of the water was clear, just as the forecast had said, there wasn’t a lot of sunlight left after it had been filtered through a layer of ice and four metres of water. Which meant that the pine tree and dress lay in weird, greenish semi-darkness. It was a summer dress, he had concluded, blue with white polka dots. Maybe the dress had once been coloured, he didn’t know. It probably depended on how long the dress had been hanging there, snagged on the branch. And now the dress was hanging in a current that never stopped, washing it, stroking it when the river was running slowly, tugging and pulling at it when the river was in full flow, slowly but surely tearing it to pieces. If you looked at it that way, the old man thought, the dress was a bit like him. That dress had once meant something to someone, a girl or woman, to the eyes of another man, or a child’s arms. But now, just like him, it was lost, discarded, without any purpose, trapped, constrained, voiceless. It was just a matter of time before the current tore away the last remnants of what it had once been.

“What are you watching?” he heard a voice say from behind the chair he was sitting in. Ignoring the pain in his muscles, he turned his head and looked up. And saw that it was a new customer. The old man was more forgetful than before, but he never forgot the face of someone who had visited Simensen Hunting & Fishing. This customer wasn’t after guns or ammunition. With a bit of practice you could tell from the look in their eyes which ones were herbivores, the look you saw in that portion of humanity who had lost the killing instinct, the portion who didn’t share the secret shared by the other group: that there’s nothing that makes a man feel more alive than putting a bullet in a large, warm-blooded mammal. The old man guessed the customer was after one of the hooks or fishing rods that were hanging on the racks above and below the large television screen on the wall in front of them, or possibly one of the wildlife cameras on the other side of the shop.

“He’s looking at the Haglebu River.” It was Alf who replied. The old man’s son-in-law had come over to them. He stood rocking on his heels with his hands in the deep pockets of the long leather gilet he always wore at work. “We installed an underwater camera there last year with the camera manufacturers. So now we have a twenty-four-hour live stream from just above the salmon ladder round the falls at Norafossen, so we can get a more accurate idea of when the fish start heading upstream.”

“Which is when?”

“A few in April and May, but the big rush doesn’t start until June. The trout start to spawn before the salmon.”

The customer smiled at the old man. “You’re pretty early, then? Or have you seen any fish?”

The old man opened his mouth. He had the words in his mind, he hadn’t forgotten them. But nothing came out. He closed his mouth again.

“Aphasia,” Alf said.

“What?”

“A stroke, he can’t talk. Are you after fishing tackle?”

“A wildlife camera,” the customer said.

“So you’re a hunter?”

“A hunter? No, not at all. I found some droppings outside my cabin up in Sørkedalen that don’t look like anything I’ve seen before, so I took some pictures and put them on Facebook, asking what it was. Got a response from people up in the mountains straight away. Bear. A bear! In the forest just twenty minutes’ drive and a three-and-a-half-hour walk from where we are now, right in the centre of the capital of Norway.”

“That’s fantastic.”

“Depends what you mean by ‘fantastic.’ Like I said, I’ve got a cabin there. I take my family there. I want someone to shoot it.”

“I’m a hunter, so I understand exactly what you mean. But you know, even in Norway, where you don’t have to go back very far to a time when we had a lot of bears, there have been hardly any fatal bear attacks in the past couple of hundred years.”

Eleven, the old man thought. Eleven people since 1800. The last one in 1906. He may have lost the power of speech and movement, but he still had his memory. His mind was still OK. Mostly, anyway. Sometimes he got a bit muddled, and noticed his son-in-law exchange a glance with his daughter Mette, and realised he’d got something wrong. When they first took over the shop he had set up and run for fifty years he had been very useful. But now, since the last stroke, he just sat there. Not that that was so terrible. No, since Olivia died he didn’t have many expectations of the rest of his life. Being close to his family was enough, getting a warm meal every day, sitting in his chair in the shop watching a television screen, an endless programme with no sound, where things moved at the same pace as him, where the most dramatic thing that could happen was the first spawning fish making their way up the river.

“On the other hand, that doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen again.” The old man heard Alf’s voice. He had gone over to the shelves of wildlife cameras with the customer. “No matter how much it might look like a teddy bear, all carnivores kill. So yes, you should definitely get a camera so you can figure out if it’s settled down somewhere near your cabin or if it was just passing through. And now’s the time brown bears emerge from hibernation, and they’re starving. Set up a camera where you found the droppings, or somewhere close to the cabin.”

“So the camera’s inside that little bird box?”

“The bird box, as you call it, protects the camera from the elements and any animals that get too close. This one’s a simple, reasonably priced camera. It’s got a Fresnel lens that registers the infrared radiation from the heat animals, humans and everything else give off. When the level deviates from the norm, the camera automatically starts to record.”

The old man was half listening to the conversation, but something else had caught his attention. Something that was happening on the television screen. He couldn’t see what it was, but the green darkness had taken on a lighter shimmer.

“Recordings are stored on a memory card inside the camera — you can play it back on your PC afterwards.”

“Now that’s fantastic.”

“Yes, but you do have to physically go and check the camera to see if it’s recorded anything. If you go for this slightly more expensive model, you’ll get a text message every time it’s recorded anything. Or there’s this one, the most advanced model, which still has a memory card but will also send any recordings directly to your phone or email. You can sit inside your cabin and only have to go back to the camera to change the battery every so often.”

“What if the bear comes at night?”

“The camera has black-light LEDs as well as white. Invisible light that means the animal doesn’t get frightened off.”

Light. The old man could see it now. A beam of light coming from upriver, off to the right. It pushed through the green water, found the dress, and for a chilling moment it made him think of a girl coming back to life at last and dancing with joy.

“That’s proper science fiction, that is!”

The old man opened his mouth when he saw a spaceship come into the picture. It was lit up from within and was hovering a metre and a half off the riverbed. The current knocked it against a large rock, and, almost in slow motion, it spun round until the light from the front of it swept across the riverbed and for a moment blinded the old man when it hit the camera lens. Then the hovering spaceship was caught by the thick branches of the pine tree and stopped moving. The old man felt his heart thudding in his chest. It was a car. The interior light was on, and he could see that the inside was full of water, almost up to the roof. There was someone in there. Someone half sitting, half standing on the driver’s seat as he desperately pressed his head up to the roof, obviously trying to get air. One of the rotten branches holding the car snapped and drifted off in the current.

“You don’t get the same clarity and focus as daylight, and it’s black and white. But as long as there’s no condensation on the lens or anything in the way, you should certainly be able to see your bear.”

The old man stamped on the floor in an attempt to attract Alf’s attention. The man in the car looked like he was taking a deep breath before ducking under again. His short, bristly hair was swaying, and his cheeks were puffed out. He hit both hands against the side window facing the camera, but the water inside the car leached the force from the blows. The old man had put his hands on the armrests and was trying to get up from his chair, but his muscles wouldn’t do what he told them to. He noticed that the middle finger on one of the man’s hands was a greyish colour. The man stopped banging and butted the glass with his head. It looked like he was giving up. Another branch snapped and the current tugged and strained to pull the car free, but the pine wasn’t ready to let go just yet. The old man stared at the anguished face pressed against the inside of the car window. Bulging blue eyes. A scar in a liver-coloured arc from one corner of his mouth up towards his ear. The old man had managed to get out of his chair and took two unsteady steps towards the shelves of cameras.

“Excuse me,” Alf said quietly to the customer. “What is it, Dad?”

The old man gesticulated at the screen behind him.

“Really?” Alf said dubiously, and hurried past the old man towards the screen. “Fish?”

The old man shook his head and turned back to the screen. The car. It was gone. And everything looked the same as before. The riverbed, the dead pine tree, the dress, the green light through the ice. As if nothing had happened. The old man stamped the floor again and pointed at the screen.

“Easy now, Dad,” Alf said, giving him a friendly pat on the shoulder. “It is very early for spawning, you know.” He went back to the customer and the wildlife cameras.

The old man looked at the two men standing with their backs to him, and felt despair and rage wash over him. How was he going to explain what he had just seen? His doctor had told him that when a stroke hits both the front and back parts of the left side of the brain, it wasn’t only your speech that was lost, but often the ability to communicate in general, even by writing or through gestures. He tottered back to the chair and sat down again. Looked at the river, which just went on flowing. Imperturbable. Undeterred. Unchanging. And after a couple of minutes he felt his heart start to beat more calmly again. Who knows, maybe it hadn’t actually happened after all? Maybe it had just been a glimpse of the next step towards the absolute darkness of old age. Or, in this case, its colourful world of hallucinations. He looked at the dress. For a moment, when he had thought it was lit up by car headlights, it had seemed to him as if Olivia was dancing in it. And behind the windshield, inside the illuminated car, he had glimpsed a face he had seen before. A face he remembered. And the only faces he still remembered were the ones he saw here, in the shop. And he had seen that man in here on two occasions. Those blue eyes, that liver-coloured scar. On both occasions he had bought a wildlife camera. The police had been in asking about him fairly recently. The old man could have told them he was a tall man. And that he had that look in his eyes. The look that said he knew the secret. The look that said he wasn’t a herbivore.

2

Svein Finne leaned over the woman and felt her forehead with one hand. It was wet with sweat. The eyes staring up at him were wide with pain. Or fear. Mostly fear, he guessed.

“Are you afraid of me?” he whispered.

She nodded and swallowed. He had always thought her beautiful. When he saw her walk to and from her home, when she was at the gym, when he was sitting on the metro just a few seats away from her, letting her see him. Just so she would know. But he had never seen her look more beautiful than she did right now, lying there helpless, so completely in his power.

“I promise it will be quick, darling,” he whispered.

She gulped. So frightened. He wondered if he should kiss her.

“A knife in the stomach,” he whispered. “Then it’s over.”

She screwed her eyes shut, and two glistening tears squeezed through her eyelashes.

Svein Finne laughed quietly. “You knew I’d come. You knew I couldn’t let you go. It was a promise, after all.”

He ran one finger through the mix of sweat and tears on her cheek. He could see one of her eyes through the big, gaping hole in his hand, in the eagle’s wing. The hole was the result of a bullet fired by a policeman, a young officer at the time. They had sentenced Svein Finne to twenty years in prison for eighteen charges of sexual assault, and he hadn’t denied the charges in and of themselves, just the description of them as “assault,” and the idea that those acts were something that a man like him should be punished for. But the judge and jury evidently believed that Norway’s laws were above nature’s. Fine, that was their opinion.

Her eye stared at him through the hole.

“Are you ready, darling?”

“Don’t call me that,” she whimpered. More pleading than commanding. “And stop talking about knives...”

Svein Finne sighed. Why were people so frightened of the knife? It was humanity’s first tool, they’d had two and a half million years to get used to it, yet some people still didn’t appreciate the beauty of what had made it possible for them to descend from the trees. Hunting, shelter, agriculture, food, defense. Just as much as the knife took life, it created it. You couldn’t have one without the other. Only those who appreciated that, and accepted the consequences of their humanity, their origins, could love the knife. Fear and love. Again, two sides of the same thing.

Svein Finne looked up. At the knives on the bench beside them, ready for use. Ready to be chosen. The choice of the right knife for the right job was important. These ones were good, purpose-made, top quality. Sure, they lacked what Svein Finne looked for in a knife. Personality. Spirit. Magic. Before that tall young policeman with the short, messy hair had ruined everything, Svein Finne had had a fine collection of twenty-six knives.

The finest of them had been Javanese. Long, thin, asymmetrical, like a curved snake with a handle. Sheer beauty, feminine. Possibly not the most effective to use, but it had the hypnotic qualities of both a snake and a beautiful woman, it made people do exactly what you told them. The most efficient knife in the collection, on the other hand, was a Rampuri, the favourite of the Indian mafia. It emanated a sort of chill, as if it were made of ice; it was so ugly that it was mesmerising. The karambit, which was shaped like a tiger’s claw, combined beauty and efficiency. But it was perhaps a little too calculated, like a whore wearing too much makeup and a dress that was too tight, too low-cut. Svein Finne had never liked it. He preferred them innocent. Virginal. And, ideally, simple. Like his favourite knife in the collection. A Finnish puukko knife. It had a worn, brown wooden handle, without any real relation to the blade, which was short with a groove, and the sharp edge curved up to form a point. He had bought the puukko in Turku, and two days later he had used it to clarify the situation to a plump eighteen-year-old girl who had been working all alone in a Neste petrol station on the outskirts of Helsinki. Even back then he had — as always when he felt a rush of sexual anticipation — started to stammer slightly. It wasn’t a sign that he wasn’t in control, but rather the opposite, it was just the dopamine. And confirmation that at the age of almost eighty his urges were undiminished. It had taken him precisely two and a half minutes from the moment he walked through the door — when he pinned her down on the counter, cut her trousers off, inseminated her, took out her ID card, noted Maalin’s name and address — until he was out again. Two and a half minutes. How many seconds had the actual insemination taken? Chimpanzees spent an average of eight seconds having intercourse, eight seconds in which both monkeys were defenseless in a world full of predators. A gorilla — who had fewer natural enemies — could stretch out the pleasure to a minute. But a disciplined man in enemy territory often had to sacrifice pleasure for the greater goal: reproduction. So, just as a bank robbery should never take more than four minutes, an act of insemination in a public place should never take more than two and a half minutes. Evolution would prove him right, it was just a matter of time.

But now, here, they were in a safe environment. Besides, there wasn’t going to be any insemination. Not that he didn’t want to — he did. But this time she was going to be penetrated by a knife instead; there was no point trying to impregnate a woman when there was no chance of it resulting in offspring. So the disciplined man saved his seed.

“I have to be allowed to call you darling, seeing as we’re engaged,” Svein Finne whispered.

She stared at him with eyes that were black with shock. Black, as if they had already gone out. As if there were no longer any light to shut out.

“Yes, we are engaged.” He laughed quietly, and pressed his thick lips to hers. He automatically wiped her lips with the sleeve of his flannel shirt so there wouldn’t be any traces of saliva. “And this is what I’ve been promising you...” he said, running his hand down between her breasts towards her stomach.

3

Harry woke up. Something was wrong. He knew it wouldn’t take long for him to remember what, that these few blessed moments of uncertainty were all he was going to get before reality punched him in the face. He opened his eyes and regretted it at once. It was as if the daylight forcing its way through the filthy, grimy window and lighting up the empty little room carried straight on to a painful spot just behind his eyes. He sought shelter in the darkness behind his eyelids again and realised that he had been dreaming. About Rakel, obviously. And it had started with the same dream he had had so many times before, about that morning many years ago, not long after they had first met. She had been lying with her head on his chest, and he had asked if she was checking to see if what they said was true, that he didn’t have a heart. And Rakel had laughed the laugh he loved; he could do the most idiotic things to coax it out of her. Then she had raised her head, looked at him with the warm brown eyes she had inherited from her Austrian mother, and replied that they were right, but that she would give him hers. And she had. And Rakel’s heart was so big, it had pumped blood around his body, thawing him out, making him a real human being again. And her husband. And a father to Oleg, the introverted, serious boy that Harry had grown to love as his own son. Harry had been happy. And terrified. Happily unaware of what was going to happen, but unhappily aware that something was bound to, that he wasn’t made to be this happy. And terrified of losing Rakel. Because one half of a heart couldn’t beat without the other, he was well aware of that, as was Rakel. So if he couldn’t live without her, why had he been running away from her in his dream last night?

He didn’t know, couldn’t remember, but Rakel had come to claim her half-heart back, had listened out for his already weak heartbeat, found out where he was and rung the doorbell.

Then, at last, the blow that had been coming. Reality.

That he had already lost her.

And not because he had fled from her, but because she had thrown him out.

Harry gasped for air. A sound was boring through his ears, and he realised that the pain wasn’t only behind his eyes, but that his whole brain was a source of immense hurt. And that it was that noise that had triggered the dream before he woke up. There really was someone ringing the doorbell. Stupid, painful, irrepressible hope poked its head up.

Without opening his eyes, Harry reached one hand down towards the floor next to the sofa bed, feeling for the whisky bottle. He knocked it over, and realised it was empty from the sound it made as it rolled across the worn parquet floor. He forced his eyes open. Stared at the hand that was dangling above the floor like a greedy claw, at the grey, titanium prosthetic middle finger. The hand was bloody. Shit. He sniffed his fingers and tried to remember what had happened late last night, and if it had involved women. He threw back the covers and glanced down at all 1.92 metres of his lean, naked body. Too little time had passed since he had fallen off the wagon for it to have left any physical trace, but if things followed their usual course, his muscles would start to weaken, week by week, and his already greyish-white skin would turn as white as a sheet, he would turn into a ghost and eventually vanish altogether. Which, of course, was the whole point of drinking — wasn’t it?

He pushed himself up into a sitting position. Looked around. He was back where he had been before he became a human being again. Only, one rung further down now. In what could have been an ironic twist of fate, the two-room apartment, all forty square metres of it, that he had borrowed and then gone on to rent from a younger police colleague, lay just one floor below the flat he had lived in before he moved in with Rakel, to her wooden house in Holmenkollen. When he moved into the flat, Harry had bought a sofa bed at IKEA. That, together with the bookcase full of vinyl records behind the sofa, a coffee table, a mirror that was still leaning against the wall, and a wardrobe out in the hall, was the total extent of the furniture. Harry wasn’t sure if it was due to a lack of initiative on his part, or if he was trying to convince himself that this was only temporary, that she was going to take him back when she had finished thinking things through.

He wondered if he was going to be sick. Well, that was probably up to him. It was as if his body had got used to the poison after a couple of weeks, had built up a tolerance to the dosage. And demanded that it increase. He stared down at the empty whisky bottle that had come to rest between his feet. Peter Dawson Special. Not that it was particularly good. Jim Beam was good. And it came in square bottles that didn’t roll across the floor. But Dawson was cheap, and a thirsty alcoholic with a fixed salary and an empty bank account couldn’t afford to be fussy. He looked at the time. Ten to four. He had two hours and ten minutes until the liquor store closed.

He took a deep breath and stood up. His head felt like it was about to burst. He swayed but managed to stay upright. Looked at himself in the mirror. He was a bottom feeder that had been reeled in so quickly that his eyes and innards were trying to get out; so hard that the hook had torn his cheek and left a pink, sickle-shaped scar running from the left side of his mouth up towards his ear. He felt under the covers but couldn’t find any underwear, so pulled on the jeans that were lying on the floor and went out into the hall. A dark shape was silhouetted against the patterned glass in the door. It was her, she had come back. But he had thought that the last time the doorbell rang too. And that time it had been a man who said he was from Hafslund Electricity and needed to change the meter and replace it with a modern one that meant they could monitor usage from hour to hour, down to the nearest watt, so all their customers could see exactly what time of day they turned the stove on, or when they switched their reading light off. Harry had explained that he didn’t have a stove, and that if he did have one, he wouldn’t want anyone to know when he switched it on or off. And with that he had shut the door.

But the silhouette he could see through the glass this time was a woman’s. Her height, her outline. How had she got into the stairwell?

He opened the door.

There were two of them. A woman he had never seen before, and a girl who was so short she didn’t reach the glass in the door. And when he saw the collection box the girl was holding up in front of him he realised that they must have rung on the door down in the street and one of the neighbours had let them in.

“We’re collecting for charity,” the woman said. They were both wearing orange vests with the emblem of the Red Cross on top of their coats.

“I thought that was in the autumn,” Harry said.

The woman and girl stared at him silently. At first he interpreted this as hostility, as if he had accused them of fraud. Then he realised it was derision, probably because he was half naked and stank of drink at four o’clock in the afternoon. And was evidently entirely unaware of the nationwide, door-to-door charity collection that had been getting loads of TV coverage.

Harry checked to see if he felt any shame. Actually, he did. A little bit. He stuck his hand into the trouser pocket where he usually kept his cash when he was drinking, because he had learned from experience that it wasn’t wise to take bank cards with him.

He smiled at the girl, who was staring wide-eyed at his bloody hand as he pushed a folded note into the slot on the sealed collection box. He caught a glimpse of a moustache just before the money disappeared. Edvard Munch’s moustache.

“Damn,” Harry said, and put his hand back in his pocket. Empty. Like his bank account.

“Sorry?” the woman said.

“I thought it was a two hundred, but I gave you a Munch. A thousand kroner.”

“Oh...”

“Can I... er, have it back?”

The girl and woman looked at him in silence. The girl cautiously lifted the box a little higher so that he could see the plastic seal across the charity logo more clearly.

“I see,” Harry whispered. “What about change?”

The woman smiled as though he were trying to be funny, and he smiled back to assure her that she was right, while his brain searched desperately for a solution to the problem. 299 kroner and 90 øre before six o’clock. Or 169.90 for a half-bottle.

“You’ll have to console yourself with the fact that the money will go to people who really need it,” the woman said, guiding the girl back towards the stairs.

Harry closed the door, went into the kitchen and rinsed the blood off his hand, feeling a sting of pain as he did so. Back in the living room, he looked around and saw that there was a bloody handprint on the duvet cover. He got down on all fours and found his mobile under the sofa. No texts, just three missed calls from last night, one from Bjørn Holm, the forensics officer from Toten, and two from Alexandra from the Forensic Medical Institute lab. She and Harry had become intimately acquainted fairly recently, after he got thrown out, and going by what he knew — and remembered — about her, Alexandra wasn’t the sort to use menstruation as grounds to cancel on him. The first night, when she had helped him home and they had both searched his pockets in vain for his keys, she had picked the lock with disconcerting ease and laid him — and herself — down on the sofa bed. And when he had woken up again she was gone, leaving just a note thanking him for services rendered. It could have been her blood.

Harry closed his eyes and tried to focus. The events and chronology of the past few weeks were pretty hazy, but when it came to last night his memory was blank. Completely blank, in fact. He opened his eyes and looked down at his stinging right hand. Three bleeding knuckles, with the skin scraped off and congealed blood around the edges of the wounds. He must have punched someone. And three knuckles meant more than one punch. Then he noticed the blood on his trousers. Too much of it to have come from his knuckles alone. And it was hardly menstrual blood.

Harry pulled the cover off the duvet as he returned the missed call from Bjørn Holm. As it started to ring, he knew that somewhere out there a ringtone in the form of a particular song by Hank Williams had gone off, a song Bjørn was convinced was about a forensics officer like him.

“How’s things?” Bjørn asked in his cheery Toten dialect.

“That depends,” Harry said, going into the bathroom. “Can you lend me three hundred kroner?”

“It’s Sunday, Harry. The liquor store’s closed today.”

“Sunday?” Harry pulled his trousers off and stuffed both them and the duvet cover into the overflowing washing basket. “Bloody hell.”

“Did you want anything else?”

“You were the one who called me, around nine o’clock.”

“Yes, but you didn’t answer.”

“No, looks like my phone’s been under the sofa for the past day or so. I was at the Jealousy.”

“I thought as much, so I called Øystein and he told me you were there.”

“And?”

“So I went over there. You really don’t remember any of this?”

“Shit. What happened?”

Harry heard his colleague sigh, and imagined him rolling his slightly protruding eyes, his pale moon of a face framed by a flat cap and the bushiest, reddest beard in Police Headquarters.

“What do you want to know?”

“Only as much as you think I need to know,” Harry said as he discovered something in the basket of dirty washing. The neck of a bottle, sticking up from the dirty underpants and T-shirts. He snatched it up. Jim Beam. Empty. Or was it? He unscrewed the top, put it to his lips and tipped his head back.

“OK, the short version,” Bjørn said. “When I arrived at the Jealousy Bar at 21:15 you were drunk, and by the time I drove you home at 22:30, you had only spoken coherently about one thing. One single person. Guess who?”

Harry didn’t answer, he was squinting cross-eyed at the bottle, following the drop that was trickling down inside it.

“Rakel,” Bjørn said. “You passed out in the car and I got you up into your flat, and that was that.”

Harry could tell by the speed of the drop that he had plenty of time, and he moved the bottle away from his mouth. “Hm. That was that?”

“That’s the short version.”

“Did we fight?”

“You and me?”

“From the way you stress ‘me,’ it sounds like I had a fight with someone. Who?”

“The Jealousy’s new owner may have taken a bit of a knock.”

“A knock? I woke up with three bloody knuckles and blood on my trousers.”

“Your first punch hit him on the nose, so there was a lot of blood. But then he ducked and you punched the wall instead. More than once. The wall’s probably still got your blood on it.”

“But Ringdal didn’t fight back?”

“To be honest, you were so fucked that there was no way you were going to hurt anyone, Harry. Øystein and I managed to stop you before you did yourself any more damage.”

“Shit. So I’m barred?”

“Oh, Ringdal deserved at least one punch. He’d played the whole of that White Ladder album and had just put it on again. Then you started yelling at him for ruining the bar’s reputation, which you claimed you, Øystein and Rakel had built up.”

“But we had! That bar was a gold mine, Bjørn. He got the whole thing for next to nothing, and I only made one demand. That he should take a stand against all the crap, and only play decent music.”

“Your music?”

“Our music, Bjørn. Yours, mine, Øystein’s, Mehmet’s... Just not... just no fucking David Gray!”

“Maybe you should have been more specific... Uh-oh, the little lad’s started crying, Harry.”

“Oh, right, sorry. And thanks. And sorry about last night. Shit, I sound like an idiot. Let’s just hang up. Say hi to Katrine.”

“She’s at work.”

The line went dead. And at that moment, in a sudden flash, Harry saw something. It happened so quickly he didn’t have time to see what it was, but his heart was suddenly beating so hard that he gasped for breath.

Harry looked at the bottle that he was still holding upside down. The drop had trickled out. He looked down. A brown drop was glinting on a filthy white floor tile.

He sighed. He sank to the floor, naked, feeling the cold tiles under his knees. He stuck his tongue out, took a deep breath and leaned forward, resting his forehead on the floor, as if in prayer.

Harry was striding down Pilestredet. His Dr. Martens boots left a black trail in the thin layer of snow that had fallen overnight. The low spring sun was doing its best to melt it before sinking behind the old four- and five-storey buildings of the city. He listened to the rhythmic scrape of the pavement against the small stones that had caught in the coarse grooves on the soles of his boots as he passed the taller modern buildings on the site of the old Rikshospitalet, where he had been born almost fifty years ago. He looked at the latest street art on the facade of Blitz, the once shabby squat that had been the citadel of punk in Oslo, where Harry had attended obscure gigs in his teens despite never being a punk. He passed the Rex Pub, where he had drunk himself senseless back when it was called something different, when the beer was cheaper, the bouncers more forgiving and it was frequented by the jazz crowd. But he hadn’t been one of them either. Or one of the born-again souls talking in tongues in the Pentecostal church on the other side of the street. He passed the Courthouse. How many murderers had he managed to get convicted in there? A lot. Not enough. Because it wasn’t the ones you caught that haunted your nightmares, it was the ones who got away, and their victims. Still, he had caught enough to get himself a name, a reputation. For better or worse. The fact that he had been directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of several colleagues was part of that reputation.

He reached Grønlandsleiret, where, sometime back in the 1970s, mono-ethnic Oslo finally collided with the rest of the world, or the other way round. Restaurants with Arabic names, shops selling imported vegetables and spices from Karachi, Somali women in hijabs going for Sunday walks with pushchairs, their men engaged in lively conversation three steps behind them. But Harry also recognised some of the pubs from back when Oslo still had a white working class and this was their neighbourhood. He passed Grønland Church and carried on towards the glass palace at the top of the park. Before pushing open the heavy metal door with a porthole in it, he turned around. He looked out across Oslo. Ugly and beautiful. Cold and hot. Some days he loved this city, and on others he hated it. But he could never abandon it. He could take a break, get away for a while, sure. But never abandon it for good. Not like she had abandoned him.

The guard let him in and he undid his jacket as he waited in front of the lifts. He felt himself start to sweat anyway. Then the tremble as one of the lift doors in front of him slid open. He realised that it wasn’t going to happen today, and turned and took the stairs to the sixth floor.

“Working on a Sunday?” Katrine Bratt said, looking up from her computer as Harry walked into her office unannounced.

“I could say the same about you.” Harry sank heavily into the chair in front of her desk.

Their eyes met.

Harry closed his, leaned his head back and stretched out his long legs, which reached all the way to the desk. The desk had come with the job she had taken over from Gunnar Hagen. She had had the walls painted a lighter colour, and the parquet floor had been polished, but apart from that the head of department’s office was the same as before. And even if Katrine Bratt was the newly appointed head of Crime Squad as well as a mother now, Harry still saw before him the wild girl who had arrived from the Bergen Police, armed with a plan, emotional baggage, a black fringe and a black leather jacket wrapped round a body that disproved the argument that there were no women in Bergen and that made Harry’s colleagues stare at her a little too long. The fact that she only had eyes for Harry had the usual paradoxical explanations. His bad reputation. The fact that he was already taken. And that he had seen her as something more than just a fellow officer.

“I could be mistaken,” Harry yawned. “But on the phone it sounded almost as if your little Toten lad was happy on paternity leave.”

“He is,” Katrine said, tapping at her computer. “How about you? Are you happy with—”

“Marital leave?”

“I was going to ask if you were happy being back in Crime Squad.”

Harry opened one eye. “Working on entry-level material?”

Katrine sighed. “It was the best Gunnar and I could get, given the circumstances, Harry. What did you expect?”

Still with one eye closed, Harry surveyed the room as he thought about what he had expected. That Katrine’s office would show more of a feminine touch? That they would give Harry the same elbow room he had had before he resigned from his post as a murder detective, started teaching at Police College, married Rakel and tried to live a peaceful, sober life? Of course they couldn’t do that. But with Gunnar Hagen’s blessing and Bjørn’s help, Katrine had literally picked him up from the gutter and given him this as a place to go to, something to think about other than Rakel, a reason not to drink himself to death. The fact that he had agreed to sit and sort out paperwork and go through cold cases merely proved that he had sunk lower than he had believed possible. Still, experience had taught him it was always possible to sink a bit lower. So Harry grunted:

“Can you lend me five hundred kroner?”

“Bloody hell, Harry.” Katrine looked at him despairingly. “Is that why you’re here? Didn’t you have enough yesterday?”

“That’s not how it works,” Harry said. “Was it you who sent Bjørn out to pick me up?”

“No.”

“So how did he find me, then?”

“Everyone knows where you spend your evenings, Harry. Even if plenty of people think it’s a bit weird to hang out in the bar you’ve only just sold.”

“They don’t usually refuse to serve a former owner.”

“Not until yesterday, maybe. According to Bjørn, the last thing the owner said to you was that you’re barred for life.”

“Really? I don’t remember that at all.”

“Let me see if I can help you there. You tried to persuade Bjørn to help you report the Jealousy to the police for the music they were playing, and then you wanted him to call Rakel and talk her round. From his phone, seeing as you’d left yours at home and weren’t actually sure if she’d answer if she saw it was you calling.”

“Bloody hell,” Harry said, covering his face with his hands as he massaged his temples.

“I’m not saying this to humiliate you, Harry, just to show you what happens when you drink.”

“Thanks a lot.” Harry folded his hands over his stomach. He saw that there was a two-hundred-kroner note lying on the edge of the desk in front of him.

“Not enough to get drunk on,” Katrine said. “But enough to help you sleep. Because that’s what you need. Sleep.”

He looked at her. Her gaze had got softer over the years, she was no longer the angry young woman who wanted to take her revenge on the world. Maybe that was thanks to other people, the team in the department, and her nine-month-old son. Sure, that sort of thing could raise awareness and make people gentler. During the vampirist case one and a half years ago, when Rakel had been in hospital and he had fallen off the wagon, Katrine had picked him up and taken him home. She had let him throw up in her otherwise spotless bathroom and granted him a few hours of carefree sleep in the bed she shared with Bjørn.

“No,” Harry said. “I don’t need sleep, I need a case.”

“You’ve got a case.”

“I need the Finne case.”

Katrine sighed. “The murders you’re referring to aren’t called the Finne case, there’s nothing to suggest that it’s him. And, as I’ve already told you, I’ve got the people I need on the case.”

“Three murders. Three unsolved murders. And you’re telling me you don’t need someone who can actually prove what you and I both know — that Finne is the man responsible?”

“You’ve got your case, Harry. Solve that one, and leave me to run things here.”

“My case isn’t even a case, it’s a domestic murder where the husband has confessed and we’ve got both a motive and forensic evidence.”

“He could suddenly withdraw his confession, so we need a lot more flesh on those bones.”

“It’s the sort of case you could have given to Wyller or Skarre or one of the juniors. Finne is a sexual predator and serial killer, and I’m the only detective you’ve got with specialist experience of that type of case, for fuck’s sake.”

“No, Harry! And that’s my final word on the subject.”

“But why?”

“Why? Look at yourself! If you were running Crime Squad, would you send a drunk, unstable detective to talk to our already skeptical colleagues in Copenhagen and Stockholm who have pretty much already made up their minds that the same man isn’t behind the murders in their cities? You see serial killers everywhere because your brain is programmed to see serial killers.”

“That may well be true, but it is Finne. It’s got all the characteristic—”

“Enough! You’ve got to let go of this obsession, Harry.”

“Obsession?”

“Bjørn told me you were babbling about Finne the whole time when you were drinking, saying you have to get him before he gets you.”

“When I was drinking? Say it like it is: when I was drunk. Drunk.” Harry reached for the money and tucked it into his trouser pocket. “Have a good Sunday.”

“Where are you going?”

“Somewhere I can properly observe the day of rest.”

“You’ve got stones in your shoes, so pick your feet up properly when you walk across my parquet floor.”

Harry hurried down Grønlandsleiret towards Olympen and Pigalle. Not his first choices of watering hole, but they were nearest. There was so little traffic on the main street in Grønland that he was able to cross the road on a red light, checking his mobile at the same time. He wondered if he should return Alexandra’s call but decided against it. He didn’t have the nerve. He saw from the call log that he had tried to call Rakel six times between six and eight o’clock the previous evening. He shuddered. Call rejected, it said. Sometimes technological language could be unnecessarily precise.

As Harry reached the opposite pavement he felt a sudden pain in his chest and his heart started to race, as if it had lost the spring that checked its speed. He had time to think heart attack, then it was gone. It wouldn’t be the worst way to go. A pain in the chest. Down on his knees. Head hitting the pavement. The End. A few more days of drinking at this rate and it really wouldn’t be that unrealistic either. Harry kept walking. He had caught a tiny glimpse. He had seen more now than when it happened earlier that afternoon. But it had slipped away, like a dream once you’ve woken up.

Harry stopped outside Olympen and looked inside. It had once been one of the roughest bars in Oslo, but had been given such a thorough makeover that Harry hesitated to go in. He checked out the new clientele. A mix of hipsters and smartly dressed couples, as well as families with young children, time-poor but with enough money to shell out for Sunday lunch at a restaurant.

He stuck his hand tentatively into his pocket. Found the two-hundred-kroner note, as well as something else. A key. Not his, but to the scene of the domestic murder. On Borggata in Tøyen. He didn’t really know why he’d asked for the key seeing as the case was as good as concluded. But at least he had the scene to himself. Entirely to himself, seeing as the other so-called detective on the case, Truls Berntsen, wasn’t going to lift a finger. Truls Berntsen’s admittance to Crime Squad owed very little to merit, and a damn sight more to his childhood friendship with Mikael Bellman, one-time Chief of Police and current Minister of Justice. Truls Berntsen was utterly useless, and there was a tacit agreement between Katrine and Truls that he would steer clear of detective work and concentrate on making coffee and other basic office jobs. Which, when it came down to it, meant playing patience and Tetris. The coffee tasted no better than before, but Truls sometimes beat Harry at Tetris now. They made a pretty wretched couple, marooned at the far end of the open-plan office with a one-and-a-half-metre-tall moveable screen separating them.

Harry took another look. There was a free booth next to the families seated just inside the window. The little boy at the table suddenly noticed him, and laughed and pointed. The father, who had his back to Harry, turned round and Harry instinctively took a step back, out into the darkness. And from there he saw his own pale, lined face mirrored in the glass, while at the same time it merged with that of the boy inside. A memory floated up. His grandfather, and him as a boy. The long summer holiday, a family meal in Romsdalen. Him laughing at his grandfather. The worried look on his parents’ faces. His grandfather, drunk.

Harry felt the keys again. Borggata. A five- or six-minute walk away.

He got his phone out. Looked at the log. Made a call. Stared at the knuckles of his right hand as he waited. The pain was already fading, so he couldn’t have punched very hard. But obviously the virginal nose of a David Gray fan couldn’t cope with much before it started to squirt blood.

“Yes, Harry?”

“Yes, Harry?”

“I’m in the middle of dinner.”

“OK, I’ll be quick. Can you come and meet me after dinner?”

“No.”

“Wrong answer, try again.”

“Yes?”

“That’s more like it. Borggata 5. Call me when you get there and I’ll come down and let you in.”

Harry heard a deep sigh from Ståle Aune, his friend of many years’ standing and Crime Squad’s go-to psychological expert on murder cases. “Does that mean this isn’t an invitation to go to a bar where I’ll have to pay, and that you’re actually sober?”

“Have I ever let you pay?” Harry pulled out a packet of Camels.

“You used to pick up the tab, and remember what you’d done. But alcohol is well on its way to eating up your finances as well as your memory. You do know that, don’t you?”

“Yes. This is about that domestic murder. With the knife and—”

“Yes, yes, I read about it.”

Harry put a cigarette between his lips. “Are you coming?”

He heard another deep sigh. “If it’ll keep you away from the bottle for a few hours.”

“Great,” Harry said, then ended the call and slipped his phone into his jacket pocket. He lit the cigarette. Inhaled deeply. He stood with his back to the restaurant’s closed door. He had time to have one beer in there and still be in Borggata in time to meet Aune. The music filtered out. An autotuned declaration of undying love. He held one hand up apologetically towards a car as he lurched out into the road.

The old, working-class facades of Borggata hid newly built flats with bright living rooms, open-plan kitchens, modern bathrooms, and balconies overlooking the inner courtyards. Harry took that as a sign that Tøyen was going to be tarted up as well: rents would go up, the residents moved out, the social status of that part of town adjusted upwards. The immigrants’ grocery stores and little cafés would give way to gyms and hipster restaurants.

The psychologist looked uncomfortable as he sat on one of the two flimsy rib-backed chairs Harry had placed in the middle of the pale parquet floor. Harry assumed that was because of the disparity between the chair and Ståle Aune’s overweight frame, as well as the fact that his small round glasses were still steamed up after he had reluctantly foregone the lift and walked up the stairs to the third floor with Harry. Or possibly the pool of blood that lay like a congealed, black wax seal between them. One summer holiday when Harry was young, his grandfather had told him that you couldn’t eat money. When Harry got to his room he took out the five-kroner coin his grandfather had given him and tried. He remembered the way it had jarred his teeth, the metallic smell and sweet taste. Just like when he licked the blood after cutting himself. Or the smell of crime scenes he would later attend, even if the blood wasn’t fresh. The smell of the room they were sitting in now. Money. Blood money.

“A knife,” Ståle Aune said, pushing his hands up into his armpits as if he was afraid someone was going to hit them. “There’s something about the idea of a knife. Cold steel pushing through skin and into your body. It just freaks me out, as the young folk would say.”

Harry didn’t reply. He and the Crime Squad Unit had used Aune as a consultant on murder cases for so many years that Harry couldn’t actually put his finger on when he had started to think of the psychologist, who was twenty years his senior, as a friend. But he knew Aune well enough to recognise that his pretending not to know that “freak out” was a phrase older than both of them was an affectation. Aune liked to present himself as an old, conservative type, unfettered by the spirit of the times his colleagues chased after so desperately in an effort to appear “relevant.” As Aune had once said to the press: Psychology and religion have one thing in common: to a large extent, they both give people what they want. Out there in the darkness, where the light of science has yet to reach, psychology and religion have free rein. And if they were to stick to what we actually know, there wouldn’t be jobs for all these psychologists and priests.

“So this was where the husband stabbed his wife... how many times?”

“Thirteen times,” Harry said, looking around. There was a large, framed black-and-white photograph of the Manhattan skyline on the wall facing them. The Chrysler Building in the centre. Probably bought from IKEA. So what? It was a good picture. If it didn’t bother you that lots of other people had the same picture, and that some visitors would look down their noses at it, not because it wasn’t good, but because it was bought at IKEA, then why not go for it? He had used the same line on Rakel when she said she would have liked a numbered print of a photograph by Torbjørn Rødland — a white stretch limo negotiating a hairpin bend in Hollywood — that cost eighty thousand kroner. Rakel had conceded that Harry was entirely right. He had been so happy that he had bought the stretch limo picture for her. Not that he didn’t realise she had tricked him, but because deep down he’d had to admit that it really was a much cooler image.

“He was angry,” Aune said, undoing the top button of his shirt, where he normally wore a bow tie, usually with a pattern that balanced between serious and amusing, like the blue EU flag with gold stars.

A child started to cry in one of the neighbouring flats.

Harry tapped the ash from his cigarette. “He says he can’t remember the details of why he killed her.”

“Suppressed memories. They should have let me hypnotise him.”

“I didn’t know you did that.”

“Hypnosis? How do you think I got married?”

“Well, there was no real need here. The forensic evidence shows that she was heading across the living room, away from him, and that he came after her and stabbed her from behind first. The blade penetrated low on her back and hit her kidneys. That probably explains why the neighbours didn’t hear any screaming.”

“Oh?”

“It’s such a painful place to be stabbed that the victim is paralysed, can’t even scream, then loses consciousness almost immediately and dies. It also happens to be the favoured method among military professionals for a so-called silent kill.”

“Really? What happened to the good old method of sneaking up on someone from behind, putting one hand over their mouth and cutting their throat with the other?”

“Outdated — it was never really that good anyway. It takes too much coordination and precision. You wouldn’t believe the number of times soldiers ended up cutting themselves in the hand that was clamped over the victim’s mouth.”

Aune grimaced. “I’m assuming our husband isn’t a former commando or anything like that?”

“The fact that he stabbed her there was probably sheer coincidence. There’s nothing to suggest that he intended to conceal the murder.”

“Intended? You’re saying it was premeditated rather than impulsive?”

Harry nodded slowly. “Their daughter was out jogging. He called the police before she got home so that we were in position outside and were able to stop her before she came in and found her mother.”

“Considerate.”

“So they say. That he was a considerate man.” Harry tapped more ash from his cigarette. It fell onto the pool of dried blood.

“Shouldn’t you get an ashtray, Harry?”

“The CSI team are done here, and everything makes sense.”

“Yes, but even so.”

“You haven’t asked about the motive.”

“OK. Motive?”

“Classic. The battery in his phone ran out, and he borrowed hers without her knowledge. He saw a text message he thought was suspicious, and checked the thread. The exchange went back six months, and was evidently between her and a lover.”

“Did he confront the lover?”

“No, but the report says the phone’s been checked, the messages found and the lover contacted. A young man, mid-twenties, twenty-five years younger than her. He’s confirmed that they had a relationship.”

“Anything else I should know?”

“The husband is a highly educated man with a secure job, no money worries, and had never been in trouble with the police. Family, friends, workmates and neighbours all describe him as friendly and mild-mannered, solidity personified. And, as you said, considerate. ‘A man prepared to sacrifice everything for his family,’ one of the reports said.” Harry drew hard on his cigarette.

“Are you asking me because you don’t think the case has been solved?”

Harry let the smoke out through his nostrils. “The case is a no-brainer, the evidence has all been secured, it’s impossible to fuck this one up, which is why Katrine has given it to me. And Truls Berntsen.” Harry pulled the corners of his mouth into something resembling a smile. The family was well off. But they chose to live in Tøyen, a cheaper part of town with a large migrant population, and bought art from IKEA. Maybe they just liked it here. Harry himself liked Tøyen. And maybe the picture on the wall was the original, now worth a small fortune.

“So you’re asking because...”

“Because I want to understand,” Harry said.

“You want to understand why a man kills his wife because she’s been having an affair behind his back?”

“Usually a husband only kills if he thinks other people’s opinion of him has been damaged. And when he was questioned, the lover said they had kept the affair strictly secret, and that it was in the process of winding down anyway.”

“Maybe she didn’t have time to tell her husband that before he stabbed her, then?”

“She did, but he says he didn’t believe her, and that she had still betrayed their family.”

“There you go. And to a man who has always put his family above everything else, that betrayal would feel even worse. He’s a humiliated man, and when that humiliation cuts deeply enough it can make anyone capable of killing.”

“Anyone?”

Aune squinted at the bookcases next to the picture of Manhattan. “Fiction.”

“Yes, so I saw,” Harry said. Aune had a theory that killers didn’t read, or, if they did, only non-fiction.

“Have you ever heard of Paul Mattiuzzi?” Aune asked.

“Hmm.”

“Psychologist, an expert in violence and murder. He divides murderers into eight main groups. You and I aren’t in any of the first seven. But there’s room for all of us in the eighth group, which he calls the ‘traumatised.’ We become murderers as a reaction to a simple but massive assault on our identity. We experience the attack as insulting, literally unbearable. It renders us helpless, impotent, and we would be left without any right to exist, emasculated, if we didn’t respond. And obviously being betrayed by your wife can feel like that.”

“Anyone, though?”

“A traumatised murderer doesn’t have defined personality traits like the other seven groups. And it’s there — and only there — that you find murderers who read Dickens and Balzac.” Aune took a deep breath and tugged at the sleeves of his tweed jacket. “What are you really wondering about, Harry?”

“Really?”

“You know more about murderers than anyone I know. None of what I’m saying about humiliation and categories is new to you.”

Harry shrugged. “Maybe I just need to hear someone say it out loud one more time to make me believe it.”

“What is it you don’t believe?”

Harry scratched his short, stubbornly unruly hair — there were now streaks of grey among the blond. Rakel had said he was starting to look like a hedgehog. “I don’t know.”

“Maybe it’s just your ego, Harry.”

“What do you mean?”

“Isn’t it obvious? You were given the case after someone else had already solved it. So you want to find something that throws doubt on it. Something that proves Harry Hole can see things no one else has spotted.”

“What if I am?” Harry said, studying the glowing tip of his cigarette. “What if I was born with a magnificent talent for detective work and have developed instincts that not even I’m capable of analysing?”

“I hope you’re joking.”

“Barely. I’ve read the interviews. The husband certainly seemed pretty traumatised from what he said. But then I listened to the recordings.” Harry was staring in front of him.

“And?”

“He sounded more frightened than resigned. A confession is a form of resignation. There shouldn’t be anything to be frightened of after that.”

“Punishment, of course.”

“He’s already had his punishment. Humiliation. Pain. Seeing his beloved wife dead. Prison is isolation. Calm. Routine. Peace. That can’t be anything but a relief. Maybe it’s the daughter, him worrying about what’s going to happen to her.”

“And then there’s the fact that he’s going to burn in hell.”

“He’s already there.”

Aune sighed. “So, let me repeat, what do you really want?”

“I want you to call Rakel and tell her to take me back.”

Ståle Aune’s eyes widened.

“That was a joke,” Harry said. “I’ve been having palpitations. Anxiety attacks. No, that’s not quite right. I’ve been dreaming... something. Something I can’t quite see, but it keeps coming back to me.”

“Finally, an easy question,” Aune said. “Intoxication. Psychology is a science without a lot of solid facts to lean on, but the correlation between the consumption of intoxicants and mental distress is one of the few firm facts. How long has this been going on?”

Harry looked at his watch. “Two and a half hours.”

Ståle Aune let out a hollow laugh. “And you wanted to talk to me so you can at least tell yourself that you sought external medical help before you go back to self-medication?”

“It’s not the usual stuff,” Harry said. “It isn’t the ghosts.”

“Because they come at night?”

“Yes. And they don’t hide. I see them and I recognise them. Victims, dead colleagues. Killers. This was something else.”

“Any idea what?”

Harry shook his head. “Someone who’s been locked up. He reminded me of...” Harry leaned forward and stubbed his cigarette out on the pool of blood.

“Of Svein Finne, ‘the Fiancé,’ ” Aune said.

Harry looked up with one eyebrow raised. “Why do you think that?”

“It’s obvious that you think he’s out to get you.”

“You’ve spoken to Katrine.”

“She’s worried about you. She wanted an evaluation.”

“And you agreed?”

“I said that as a psychologist I don’t have the necessary detachment from you. But that paranoia can also be one aspect of alcohol abuse.”

“I’m the one who finally got him locked away, Ståle. He was my first case. He got twenty years for sexual assault and murder.”

“You were just doing your job. There’s no reason why Finne would take it personally.”

“He confessed to the assaults but denied the murder charges, claimed we’d planted evidence. I went to see him in prison the year before last to see if he could help us with the vampirist case, if he knew anything about Valentin Gjertsen. The last thing he did before I left was tell me exactly when he was due to be released, and to ask if my family and I felt safe.”

“Did Rakel know about this?”

“Yes. At New Year I found boot prints in the patch of woodland outside the kitchen window, so I set up a camera.”

“That could have been anyone, Harry. Someone who just got lost.”

“On private property, past a gate and up a steep, icy, fifty-metre driveway?”

“Hang on — didn’t you move out at Christmas?”

“More or less.” Harry wafted the smoke away.

“But you went back after that, to the patch of trees? Did Rakel know?”

“No, but come on, I haven’t turned into a stalker. Rakel was frightened enough as it is, and I just wanted to check that everything was OK. And, as it turns out, it wasn’t.”

“So she didn’t know about the camera either?”

Harry shrugged his shoulders.

“Harry?”

“Hmm?”

“You’re quite sure that you set that camera up because of Finne?”

“You mean, did I want to find out if my ex was seeing anyone else?”

“Did you?”

“No,” Harry said firmly. “If Rakel doesn’t want me, she’s welcome to try someone else.”

“Do you really believe that?”

Harry sighed.

“OK,” Aune said. “You said you caught a glimpse of someone who looked like Finne, locked up?”

“No, that’s what you said. It wasn’t Finne.”

“No?”

“No, it was... me.”

Ståle Aune ran his hand through his thinning hair. “And now you want a diagnosis?”

“Come on. Anxiety?”

“I think your brain is looking for reasons why Rakel would need you. For instance, to protect her from external threats. But you’re not locked up, Harry — you’ve been locked out. Accept it and move on.”

“Apart from the ‘accept it’ stuff, any medication you can prescribe?”

“Sleep. Exercise. And maybe you could try meeting someone who could take your mind off Rakel.”

Harry stuck a cigarette in the corner of his mouth and held up his clenched fist with his thumb sticking out. “Sleep. I drink myself senseless every night. Check.” His index finger shot up. “Exercise. I get into fights with people in bars I used to own. Check.” The grey, titanium finger. “Meet someone. I fuck women, nice ones, nasty ones, and afterwards I have meaningful conversations with some of them. Check.”

Aune looked at Harry. Then he let out a deep sigh, stood up and fastened his tweed jacket. “Well, you should be fine, then.”

Harry sat there staring out of the window after Aune had gone. Then he got up and walked through the rooms in the flat. The married couple’s bedroom was tidy, clean, the bed neatly made. He looked in the cupboards. The wife’s wardrobe was spread across four spacious cupboards, while the husband’s clothes were squeezed into one. A considerate husband. There were rectangles on the wallpaper in the daughter’s room where the colours were brighter. Harry guessed they had been made by teenage posters she had taken down now she was nineteen. There was still one small picture, a young guy with a Rickenbacker electric guitar slung round his neck.

Harry looked through the little collection of records on the shelf by the mirror. Propagandhi. Into It. Over It. My Heart to Joy. Panic! at the Disco. Emo stuff.

So he was surprised when he switched on the record player to listen to the album already on it and heard the gentle, soothing tones of something that sounded like early Byrds. But despite the Roger McGuinn — style twelve-string guitar, he quickly recognised that it was a far more recent production. It didn’t matter how many valve amps and old Neumann microphones they used, retro production never fooled anyone. Besides, the vocalist had a distinct Norwegian accent, and you could tell he’d listened to more 1995-vintage Thom Yorke and Radiohead than Gene Clark and David Crosby from 1965. He glanced at the album sleeve lying upside down next to the record player and, sure enough, the names all looked Norwegian. Harry’s eyes moved on to a pair of Adidas trainers in front of the wardrobe. They were the same sort as his, he’d tried to buy a new pair a couple of years ago but they had already stopped making them then. He thought back to the interview transcripts, in which both father and daughter had said she left the flat at 20:15 and returned thirty minutes later after a run to the top of the sculpture park in Ekeberg, coming back via the Ekeberg Restaurant. Her running gear was on the bed, and in his mind’s eye he could see the police letting the poor girl in and watching as she got changed and packed a bag of clothes. Harry crouched down and picked up the trainers. The leather was soft, the soles clean and shiny, the shoes hadn’t been used much at all. Nineteen years. An unused life. His own pair had split. He could buy new ones, obviously, a different type. But he didn’t want to, he’d found the only design he wanted from now on. The only design. Maybe they could still be repaired.

Harry went back into the living room. He wiped the cigarette ash from the floor. Checked his phone. No messages. He put his hand in his pocket. Two hundred kroner.

4

“Last orders, then we’re closing.”

Harry stared down at his drink. He had managed to drag it out. Usually he necked them because it wasn’t the taste he liked, but the effect. “Liked” wasn’t really the right word, though. Needed. No, not needed either. Had to have. Couldn’t live without. Artificial respiration when half your heart had stopped beating.

Those running shoes would just have to be repaired.

He took out his phone again. Harry only had seven people in his contacts, and because they all had names starting with different letters, the list consisted of single letters, not first and last names. He tapped on R and saw her profile picture. That soft, brown gaze that asked to be met. Warm, glowing skin that asked to be stroked. Red lips that asked to be kissed. The women he had got undressed and slept with in the past few months — had there been a single second when he hadn’t been thinking about Rakel while he was with them, hadn’t imagined that they were her? Had they realised, had he even told them, that he was being unfaithful to them with his wife even as he fucked them? Had he been that cruel? Almost certainly. Because his half-heart was beating weaker and weaker with each passing day, and he had returned from his temporary life as a real person.

He stared at the phone.

And he thought the same thing he had thought every day as he passed the phone box in Hong Kong so many years ago. That she was there. Right then, her and Oleg. Inside the phone. Twelve tapped digits away.

But even that was long after Rakel and Harry met for the first time.

That happened fifteen years ago. Harry had driven up the steep, winding road to her wooden house in Holmenkollen. His car had breathed a sigh of relief when he arrived, and a woman emerged from the house. Harry asked after Sindre Fauke as she locked the front door, and it wasn’t until she turned round and came closer that he noticed how pretty she was. Brown hair; pronounced, almost wild eyebrows above brown eyes; high, aristocratic cheekbones. Dressed in a simple, elegant coat. In a voice that was deeper than her appearance suggested, she told him that was her father, that she had inherited the house and he no longer lived there. Rakel Fauke had a confident, relaxed way of speaking, with exaggerated, almost theatrical diction, and she looked him right in the eye. When she walked off, she walked in an absolutely straight line, like a ballet dancer. He had stopped her, asked for help jump-starting his car. Afterwards he gave her a lift. They discovered that they had studied law at the same time. That they had attended the same Raga Rockers concert. He liked the sound of her laughter; it wasn’t as deep as her voice, but bright and light, like a trickling stream. She was going to Majorstua.

“It’s by no means certain this car’s going to make it that far,” he had said. And she agreed with him. As if they already had an idea of what hadn’t yet begun, what really couldn’t happen. When she was about to get out, he had to shove the broken passenger door open for her, breathing in her scent. Only thirty minutes had passed since they’d met, and he wondered what the hell was going on. All he wanted to do was kiss her.

“Maybe see you around,” she said.

“Maybe,” he replied, then watched as she disappeared down Sporveisgata with a ballerina’s steps.

The next time they met was at a party in Police Headquarters. It turned out that Rakel Fauke worked in the foreign section of POT, the Police Surveillance Agency. She was wearing a red dress. They stood talking together, laughing. Then they talked some more. He about his upbringing, his sister Sis who had what she herself described as “a touch of Down’s Syndrome,” about his mother who died when Harry was young, and that he had had to look after his father. Rakel had told him about studying Russian in the Armed Forces, her time at the Norwegian Embassy in Moscow, and the Russian man she had met, who ended up becoming the father of her son, Oleg. And that when she left Moscow, she had also left her husband, who had alcohol problems. And Harry had told her that he was an alcoholic, something she might already have guessed when she saw him drinking Coke at a staff party. He didn’t mention the fact that his intoxicant that evening was her laughter — clear, spontaneous, bright — and that he was willing to say the most revealing, idiotic things about himself just to hear it. And then, towards the end of the evening, they had danced. Harry had danced. To a turgid version of “Let It Be” played on panpipes. That was the proof: he was hopelessly in love.

A few days later he went on a Sunday outing with Oleg and Rakel. At one point, Harry had held Rakel’s hand, because it felt natural. After a while she pulled her hand away. And when Oleg was playing Tetris with his mum’s new friend, Harry had felt Rakel staring darkly at him and knew what she was thinking. That an alcoholic, possibly similar to the one she had walked away from, was now sitting in her house with her son. And Harry had realised he was going to have to prove himself worthy.

He had done it. Who knows, maybe Rakel and Oleg saved him from drinking himself to death. Obviously things hadn’t been one unbroken triumphal march after that, he had fallen flat on his face several times, there had been breaks and separations, but they had always found their way back to each other. Because they had found laughter in each other. Love, with a capital L. Love so exclusive that you should count yourself bloody lucky if you ever get to experience it — and have it reciprocated — just once in your life. And for the past few years they had woken up each morning to a harmony and happiness that was simultaneously so strong and so fragile that it had frightened the life out of him. It made him creep about as if he were walking on thin ice. So why had it cracked anyway? Because he was the man he was, of course. Harry fucking Hole. Or “the demolition man,” as Øystein called him.

Could he follow that path again? Drive up the steep, winding, difficult road to Rakel and introduce himself again. Be the man she had never met before. Of course he could try. Yes, he could do that. And now was as good a time as ever. The perfect time, in fact. There were just two problems. Firstly, he didn’t have the money for a taxi. But that was easily fixed, it would take him ten minutes to walk home, where his Ford Escort, his third one, was sitting covered in snow in the car park in the backyard.

Secondly, the voice inside him telling him it was a terrible idea.

But that could be stopped. Harry downed his drink. Just like that. He stood up and walked towards the door.

“See you, mate!” the bartender called after him.

Ten minutes later Harry was standing in the backyard on Sofies gate, looking dubiously at the car, which was parked in eternal shadow between the snowboards covering the basement windows. It wasn’t as badly covered with snow as he had expected, so he just had to go upstairs, fetch the keys, start it up and put his foot on the gas. He could be at hers in fifteen minutes. Open the front door to the big, open room that served as hall, living room and kitchen, covering most of the ground floor. He would see her standing at the worktop by the window looking out over the terrace. She would give him a wry smile, nod towards the kettle and ask if he still preferred instant coffee over espresso.

Harry gasped at the thought of it. And there it was again, the claw in his chest.

Harry was running. After midnight on a Sunday in Oslo, that meant you had the streets to yourself. His cracked trainers were held together with gaffer tape around the ankles. He was taking the same route the daughter on Borggata had said she had run, according to the report. Along illuminated paths and tracks through the hillside sculpture park — a gift to the city from property tycoon Christian Ringnes, and an homage to women. It was perfectly still, the only sounds were Harry’s own breathing and the crunch of the grit beneath his shoes. He ran up to where the park flattened out towards Ekebergsletta, then down again. He stopped at Damien Hirst’s Anatomy of an Angel, a sculpture in white stone that Rakel had told him was Carrera marble. The graceful, seated figure had made Harry think of the Little Mermaid in Copenhagen, but Rakel — who as usual had read up on what they were going to see — had explained that the inspiration was Alfred Boucher’s L’Hirondelle from 1920. Maybe, but the difference was that Hirst’s angel had been cut open by knives and scalpels so that her innards, muscles, bones and brain were visible. Was that what the sculptor wanted to show, that angels were also people inside? Or that some people are actually angels? Harry tilted his head. He could agree on the latter point. Even after all these years and everything he and Rakel had been through together, and even if he had dissected her as much as she had dissected him, he had found nothing but an angel. Angel and human, all the way through. Her capacity for forgiveness — which had obviously been a precondition for being with someone like Harry — was almost limitless. Almost. But obviously he had managed to find that limit. And then crossed it.

Harry looked at his watch and ran on. Sped up. Felt his heart work harder. He increased his speed a little more. Felt the lactic acid. A bit more. Felt the blood pumping around his body, tugging at the rubbish. Ironing out the past few bad days. Rinsing away the shit. Why did he imagine that running was the opposite of drinking, that it was the antidote, when it merely gave him a different type of rush? But so what? It was a better rush.

He emerged from the forest in front of the Ekeberg Restaurant, the once run-down modernist structure where Harry, Øystein and Tresko had drunk their first beers in their youth, and where the seventeen-year-old Harry was picked up by a woman he remembered as being really old, but who was probably only in her thirties. Either way, she had given him an uncomplicated initiation under her experienced direction, and he probably hadn’t been the only one. Occasionally he wondered if the investor who had refurbished the restaurant might have been one of them, and had done it as a gesture of gratitude. Harry could no longer remember what she looked like, just the cooing whisper in his ear afterwards: Not bad at all, lad. You’ll see, you’re going to make some women happy. And others unhappy.

And one woman, both.

Harry stopped on the steps of the closed, dark restaurant.

Hands on his knees, head hanging down. He could feel his gag reflex tickling deep in his throat, and heard his own rasping breath. He counted to twenty as he whispered her name. Rakel, Rakel. Then he straightened up and looked down at the city beneath him. Oslo, an autumn city. Now, in spring, she looked like she had woken up reluctantly. But Harry wasn’t bothered about the centre of the city, he was looking towards the ridge, towards her house, on the far side of what, in spite of all the lights and febrile human activity, was really nothing but the crater of a dead volcano, cold stone and solidified clay. He cast another glance at the timer on his watch and started to run.

He didn’t stop until he was back in Borggata.

There, he stopped his watch and studied the numbers.

He jogged the rest of the way home at an easy pace. As he unlocked the door to his flat he heard the rough sound of grit against wood under his trainers and remembered what Katrine had said about picking his feet up.

He used his phone to play more of his Spotify list. The sound of The Hellacopters streamed from the Sonos Playbar that Oleg had got him for his birthday, which had overnight reduced the record collection on the shelves behind him to a dead monument to thirty years of laborious collecting, where anything that hadn’t stood the test of time had been pulled out like weeds and thrown away. As the chaotic guitar and drum intro to “Carry Me Home” made the speakers vibrate and he picked the grit from the sculpture park from the soles of his shoes, he thought about how the nineteen-year-old had willingly retreated into the past with vinyl records, whereas Harry was unwillingly backing into the future. He put his shoes down, looked for The Byrds, who weren’t on any of his playlists — sixties and early seventies music were more Bjørn Holm’s thing, and his attempts to convert Harry with Glen Campbell had been futile. He found “Turn! Turn! Turn!”, and moments later Roger McGuinn’s Rickenbacker guitar was echoing around the room. But she had been converted. She had fallen in love with it even though it wasn’t her music. There was something about guitars and girls. Four strings were enough, and this guy had twelve.

Harry considered the possibility that he might be the one who was wrong. But the hairs on the back of his neck were rarely wrong, and they had stood up when he recognised one of the names from the record sleeve in the interview transcript. And connected it to the picture of the guy with the Rickenbacker guitar. Harry lit a cigarette and listened to the double guitar solo at the end of “Rainy Days Revisited.” He wondered how long it would be before he fell asleep. How long he would manage to leave his phone alone before checking to see if Rakel had replied.

5

“We know you’ve answered these questions before, Sara,” Harry said, looking at the nineteen-year-old girl sitting opposite him in the cramped interview room that felt a bit like a doll’s house. Truls Berntsen was sitting in the control room with his arms folded, yawning. It was ten o’clock, they had been going for an hour and Sara was showing signs of impatience as they went through the sequence of events, but no emotion beyond that. Not even when Harry read out loud from the report about the injuries her mother had suffered from the thirteen knife wounds. “But, as I said, Officer Berntsen and I have taken over the investigation, and we’d like to understand everything as clearly as possible. So — did your father usually help with the cooking? I’m asking because he must have been very quick to find the sharpest kitchen knife, and must have known exactly which drawer it was in, and where.”

“No, he didn’t help,” Sara said, her displeasure even more apparent now. “He did the cooking. And the only person who helped was me. Mum was always out.”

“Out?”

“Meeting friends. At the gym. So she said.”

“I’ve seen pictures of her, it looks like she kept herself in shape. Kept herself young.”

“Whatever. She died young.”

Harry waited. Let the answer hang in the air. Then Sara pulled a face. Harry had seen it in other cases, the way that someone left behind struggled with grief as if it were an enemy, an irritating nuisance that needed to be cajoled and tricked. And one way of doing that was to downplay the loss, to discredit the dead. But he suspected that wasn’t actually the case this time. When Harry had suggested Sara might like to bring a lawyer she had dismissed the offer. She just wanted to get it over with, she said, she had other plans. Understandable enough, she was nineteen, alone, but she was adaptable, and life went on. And the case had been solved, which was presumably why she had relaxed. And was showing her true feelings. Or rather her lack of feelings.

“You don’t get as much exercise as your mother,” Harry said. “Not running, anyway.”

“Don’t I?” she replied with a half-smile and looked up at Harry. It was the self-assured smile of a young person from a generation in which you were one of the thin ones if you had a body Harry’s generation would have thought of as average.

“I’ve seen your running shoes,” Harry said. “They’ve barely been used. And that isn’t because they’re new, because they stopped making that sort two years ago. I’ve got the same ones.”

Sara shrugged. “I’ve got more time to go running now.”

“Yes, your father’s going to be in prison for twelve years, so you won’t have to help him with the cooking for a while.”

Harry looked at her and saw that he had hit home. Her mouth was hanging open and her black-painted eyelashes were fluttering up and down as she blinked hard.

“Why are you lying?” Harry asked.

“Wh... What?”

“You said you ran from home to the top of the sculpture park, down to the Ekeberg Restaurant, then back home again in thirty minutes. I ran the same distance last night. It took me almost forty-five minutes, and I’m a pretty good runner. I’ve also spoken to the police officer who stopped you when you got back. He said you weren’t sweating or particularly out of breath.”

Sara was sitting up straight now on the other side of the little doll’s-house table, staring unconsciously at the red light on the microphones that indicated they were recording, when she replied.

“OK, I didn’t run all the way to the top.”

“How far?”

“To the Marilyn Monroe statue.”

“So you must have run along those gritted paths, like me. When I got home I had to pick small stones out of the soles of my shoes, Sara. Eight in total. But the soles of your shoes were completely clean.”

Harry had no idea if there had been eight stones or only three. But the more precise he was, the more incontestable his reasoning would seem. And he could see from Sara’s face that it was working.

“You didn’t go running at all, Sara. You left the flat at the time you told the police, at 20:15, while your father called the police claiming that he’d murdered your mother. Maybe you ran around the block, just long enough for the police to arrive, then you jogged back. Like your father told you to. Isn’t that right?”

Sara didn’t answer, just went on blinking. Harry noted that her pupils had expanded.

“I’ve spoken to your mother’s lover. Andreas. Professional name Bom-Bom. He may not sing quite as well as he plays his twelve-string guitar.”

“Andreas sings...” The anger in her eyes faded and she stopped herself.

“He admitted that you and he had met a few times, and said that was how he met your mother.” Harry looked down at his notepad. Not because he couldn’t remember what was written in it — nothing — but to lower the intensity, to give her a bit of breathing room.

“Andreas and I were in love.” There was a faint tremor in Sara’s voice.

“Not according to him. He said you’d had a couple of...” — Harry pulled his head back slightly to read what wasn’t written in his notebook — “ ‘groupie fucks.’ ”

Sara twitched.

“But you wouldn’t leave him alone, apparently. He said there’s a fine line between groupie and stalker, in his experience. That things were simpler with a mature, married woman who accepted things for what they were. A bit of excitement to liven up the daily routine, spice things up a bit. That’s how he put it. A way to spice things up.”

Harry looked at her.

“It was you who borrowed your mother’s phone, not your father. And discovered that she and Andreas had been having an affair.”

Harry checked to see how his conscience was doing. Bulldozing a nineteen-year-old with no lawyer, a lovesick teenager who had been betrayed by her mother and a guy she had managed to convince herself belonged to her.

“Your father isn’t just self-sacrificing, Sara, he’s smart too. He knows that the best lie is one that’s as close to the truth as possible. The lie is that your father was at the local shop picking up some things for dinner before going home, borrowing your mother’s phone, finding the messages and killing her. The truth is that while he was at the shop, you found the messages, and from that point on I’m guessing that if we swap your and your father’s roles in the report, we’d get a fairly accurate description of what happened in the kitchen. You argued, she turned her back on you to walk out, you knew where the knife was, and the rest played out more or less of its own accord. And when your father got home and discovered what had happened, you came up with this plan together.”

Harry saw no reaction in her eyes. Just an even, intense, black hatred. And realised that his conscience felt just fine. The authorities gave guns to nineteen-year-olds and ordered them to kill. And this one had killed her mother and was prepared to let her innocent father throw himself under the bus for her. Sara wasn’t going to be one of the figures who visited Harry in his nightmares.

“Andreas loves me,” she whispered. It sounded like her mouth was full of sand. “But Mum lured him away from me. She seduced him just so I couldn’t have him. I hate her. I...” She was close to tears. Harry held his breath. They were almost there, the race was on, he just needed a few more words on tape, but crying would cause a delay, and in the delay the avalanche might grind to a halt. Sara raised her voice. “I hate that fucking bitch! I should have stabbed her even more, I should have cut off that smug face she was so fucking proud of!”

“Mm.” Harry leaned back in his chair. “You wish you’d killed her more slowly, is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes!”

Confession to murder. Touchdown. Harry cast a quick glance through the doll’s house window and saw that Truls Berntsen had woken up and was giving him the thumbs up. But Harry felt no joy. On the contrary, the excitement he had felt just a few seconds before had been replaced by a weary sadness, almost disappointment. It wasn’t an unfamiliar feeling, it often arose after a long chase where anticipation of solving the case had built up, anticipation of the arrest as a cathartic climax, a hope that it might change something, make the world a slightly better place. Instead, what followed was often a sort of post-case depression with associated alcoholic elements and days or weeks on the bottle. Harry imagined that it resembled a serial killer’s frustration when the murder didn’t provide any prolonged sense of satisfaction, just a feeling of anti-climax that drove him back out into the chase again. Maybe that’s why Harry — for a fleeting moment — felt bitter disappointment, as if he had briefly swapped places with her and was sitting on the other side of the table.

“We sorted that out very nicely,” Truls Berntsen said in the lift on the way up to the Crime Squad Unit on the sixth floor.

“We?” Harry said drily.

“I pressed the Record button, didn’t I?”

“I certainly hope so. Did you check the recording?”

“Did I check it?” Truls Berntsen raised one eyebrow questioningly. Then he grinned. “Relax.”

Harry took his eyes off the glowing floor numbers and looked down at Berntsen. And felt that he envied his colleague with the weak chin, protruding brow and the grunting laughter that had earned him the nickname Beavis, which no one dared say out loud, probably because there was something about Truls Berntsen’s passive-aggressive demeanour that meant you didn’t want to be in his line of fire during a critical situation. Truls was even less popular than Harry Hole in Crime Squad, but that wasn’t why Harry envied him. He envied Truls’s ability to not give a damn. Mind you, Harry didn’t give a damn what his colleagues thought of him either. No, it was Berntsen’s ability to shrug off any sense of responsibility, practical as well as moral, for the job he was supposed to do as a police officer. You could say a lot of things about Harry, and he was well aware that plenty of people did, but no one could take away the fact that he was a real police officer. That was one of his few blessings, and probably his greatest curse. Even when Harry was on the skids in his private life, like he had been since Rakel kicked him out, the policeman in him couldn’t just give up and tumble headlong into anarchy and nihilism the way Truls Berntsen had. No one would thank Harry for not giving up, but that was fine, he wasn’t after gratitude, and he wasn’t seeking salvation through good deeds. His tireless, almost compulsive search for the worst offenders in society had been his only reason for getting up each morning until he met Rakel. So he was grateful for that herd instinct or whatever it was, for providing him with an anchor. But part of him longed for total, destructive freedom, cutting the anchor chain and getting crushed by the breakers, or simply disappearing into the deep, dark ocean.

They got out of the lift and walked along the corridor with its red-painted walls that confirmed they had got off at the right floor, past the separate offices towards the open-plan space.

“Hey, Hole!” Skarre called from an open door. He had recently been appointed an inspector and had been given Harry’s old office. “The dragon’s looking for you.”

“Your wife?” Harry asked, not bothering to slow down to wait for Skarre’s presumably furious and failed attempt at a retort.

“Nice,” Berntsen said with a grin. “Skarre’s an idiot.”

Harry didn’t know if that was meant as an outstretched hand, but he didn’t answer. He had no intention of acquiring any more ill-advised friendships.

He turned off left without any word of goodbye and stepped in through the open door to the head-of-department’s office. A man was standing with his back to him, leaning over Katrine Bratt’s desk, but it wasn’t hard to recognise the shiny bald head with its oddly profuse wreath of black hair.

“Hope I’m not disturbing, but I heard I was wanted?”

Katrine Bratt looked up, and the Chief of Police Gunnar Hagen spun around as if he had been caught doing something. They looked at Harry in silence.

He raised an eyebrow. “What? You’ve already heard?”

Katrine and Hagen exchanged a look. Hagen grinned. “Have you?”

“What do you mean?” Harry said. “I was the one who questioned her.”

Harry’s brain searched and came up with a suggestion that the police lawyer Harry had called after the interview to discuss the father’s release must have called Katrine Bratt in turn. But what was the Chief of Police doing here?

“I advised the daughter to bring a lawyer, but she declined,” Harry said. “And I repeated the offer before the start of the interview, but she declined again. We’ve got that on tape. Well, not tape, but on the hard drive.”

Neither of them smiled, and Harry could tell that something was wrong. Very wrong.

“Is it the father?” Harry asked. “Has he... done something?”

“No,” Katrine said. “It’s not the father, Harry.”

Harry’s brain unconsciously noted the details: the fact that Hagen had let Katrine, the one of them who was closer to him, take over. And that she had used his first name when she didn’t have to. To soften the blow. In the silence that followed, he felt the clawing at his chest again. And even if Harry didn’t have any great belief in telepathy and foresight, it felt as if what was coming was what the claw, the little glimpses, had been trying to tell him all along.

“It’s Rakel,” Katrine said.

6

Harry held his breath. He had read that it was possible to hold your breath for so long that you died. And that you don’t die from too little oxygen, but from too much carbon dioxide. That people can’t usually hold their breath for more than a minute or a minute and a half, but that one Danish free diver had held his for over twenty minutes.

Harry had been happy. But happiness is like heroin; once you’ve tasted it, once you’ve found out that happiness exists, you will never be entirely happy with an ordinary life without happiness again. Because happiness is something more than mere satisfaction. Happiness isn’t natural. Happiness is a trembling, exceptional state; seconds, minutes, days that you know simply can’t last. And sorrow at its absence doesn’t come afterwards, but at the same time. Because with happiness comes the terrible insight that nothing can be the same again, that you are already missing what you have, you’re worrying about the withdrawal pangs, grief at the loss, cursing the awareness of what you are capable of feeling.

Rakel always used to read in bed. Sometimes she read out loud to him, if it was something he liked. Like Kjell Askildsen’s short stories. That made him happy. One evening she read a sentence that stuck in his mind. About a young girl who had lived her whole life alone with her parents in a lighthouse, until a married man, Krafft, arrived and she fell in love. And she thought to herself: Why did you have to come and make me so lonely?

Katrine cleared her throat, but her voice still sounded muffled. “They’ve found Rakel, Harry.”

He felt like asking how they could have found someone who wasn’t missing. But to do that he would have to breathe. He breathed. “And... that means what?”

Katrine was struggling to keep control of her face, but gave up and clapped her hand to her mouth, which was contorted into a grimace.

Gunnar Hagen took over. “The worst, Harry.”

“No,” Harry heard himself say. Angry. Pleading. “No.”

“She—”

“Stop!” Harry held his hands up defensively in front of him. “Don’t say it, Gunnar. Not yet. Just let me... just wait a bit.”

Gunnar Hagen waited. Katrine had covered her face with her hands. She was sobbing silently, but her shaking shoulders gave her away. His eyes found the window. There were still greyish-white islands and small continents of snow on the brown sea of Botsparken. But in the past few days buds had begun to appear on the lime trees that led up to the prison. A month or so from now, those buds would suddenly burst into life, and Harry would wake up and see that Oslo had once again been invaded by the blitzkrieg of spring overnight. And it would be utterly meaningless. He had been alone most of his life. It had been fine. Now it wasn’t fine. He wasn’t breathing. He was full of carbon dioxide. And he hoped it would take less than twenty minutes.

“OK,” he said. “Say it.”

“She’s dead, Harry.”

7

Harry weighed his mobile phone in his hand.

Eight digits away.

Four less than the time he had lived in Chungking Mansions in Hong Kong, those four grey tower blocks that were a small community in themselves, with hostels for guest workers from Africa and the Philippines, restaurants, prayer rooms, tailors, money-changers, maternity rooms and funeral parlours. Harry’s room had been on the second floor of C-block. Four square metres of bare concrete with space for a shabby mattress and an ashtray, where a dripping air-conditioning unit had counted the seconds, while he himself lost count of the days and weeks as he slid in and out of an opium haze that decided when he came and went. In the end, Kaja Solness from the Crime Squad Unit had turned up to take him home. But before then he had fallen into a rhythm. And every day, after eating glass noodles at Li Yuan or walking down Nathan Road and Melden Row to buy a lump of opium in a baby’s bottle, he had walked back, waited by the lift doors of the Chungking Mansions and looked at the payphone hanging on the wall.

He had been on the run from everything. From his work as a murder detective, because it was eating away at his soul. From himself, because he had become a destructive force that killed everyone near him. But first and foremost from Rakel and Oleg, because he didn’t want to hurt them as well. No more than he already had done.

And every day, as he waited for the lift, he had stood there staring at the payphone. Touching the coins in his trouser pocket.

Twelve numbers, and he would be able to hear her voice. Reassure himself that she and Oleg were OK.

But he couldn’t know that until he called.

Their lives had been in chaos, and anything could have happened since he’d left. It was possible that Rakel and Oleg had been dragged down into the maelstrom left in the Snowman’s wake. Rakel was strong, but Harry had seen it happen in other murder cases, where the survivors also ended up as victims.

But as long as he didn’t call, they were there. In his head, in the payphone, somewhere in the world. As long as he didn’t know better — or worse — he could carry on seeing them in front of him, hiking in Nordmarka in October. Where he, Rakel and Oleg had gone walking. The young boy running ahead of them, excitedly trying to catch falling leaves. Rakel’s warm, dry hand in Harry’s. Her voice, laughing as she asked what he was smiling for, him shaking his head when he realised that he had actually been smiling. So he never touched the payphone. Because as long as Harry resisted pressing those twelve numbers, he could always imagine that it could be like that again.

Harry tapped in the last of the eight digits.

The phone rang three times before he answered.

“Harry?” The first syllable expressed surprise and joy, the second surprise, but mixed with a degree of anxiety. On the rare occasions that Harry and Oleg called each other, it happened in the evening, not in the middle of the working day. And even then, it was to discuss things of a practical nature. Obviously the practical pretext was sometimes rather contrived, but neither Oleg nor Harry were that fond of talking on the phone, so even if they were really only calling to see how the other was, they usually kept things brief. None of that had changed since Oleg and his girlfriend Helga moved up north to Lakselv in Finnmark, where Oleg was doing a year’s practical training before his final year at Police College.

“Oleg,” Harry said, and heard that his voice sounded choked. Because he was about to pour boiling water over Oleg, and Oleg would bear the scars of the burns he was about to receive for the rest of his life. Harry knew that because he had so many similar scars himself.

“Is something wrong?” Oleg asked.

“It’s about your mother,” Harry said, then stopped abruptly because he couldn’t go on.

“Are you getting back together again?” Oleg’s voice sounded hopeful.

Harry closed his eyes.

Oleg had been angry when he found out that his mother had broken up with Harry. And because Oleg had been spared any explanation of the causes, his anger had been directed at Rakel rather than Harry. Not that Harry could see how he had been a good enough dad to warrant anyone taking his side. When Harry had come into their lives he had taken a very low profile, as both a parent and a shoulder to cry on, because it was obvious the boy didn’t need a replacement dad. And Harry definitely didn’t need a son. But the problem — if that’s what it was — was that Harry had taken a liking to the serious, sullen young man. And vice versa. Rakel used to accuse them of being like each other, and perhaps there was something in that. And after a while — when the boy was particularly tired or wasn’t concentrating — the word “Dad” would slip out instead of the “Harry” they had agreed on.

“No,” Harry said. “We’re not getting back together. Oleg, it’s bad news.”

Silence. Harry could tell Oleg was holding his breath. Harry poured the water.

“She’s been reported dead, Oleg.”

Two seconds passed.

“Can you say that again?” Oleg said.

Harry didn’t know if he could manage that, but he did.

“How do you mean, ‘dead’?” Oleg said, and Harry heard all the metallic desperation in his voice.

“She was found in the house this morning. It looks like murder.”

“Looks like?”

“I’ve only just found out myself. The crime team are already there, I’m about to head over.”

“How...?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“But...”

Oleg didn’t get any further, and Harry knew there was no continuation to that all-encompassing “but.” It was just an instinctive objection, a self-sustaining protest, a rejection of the possibility that things could be the way they actually were. An echo of his own “but...” in Katrine Bratt’s office twenty-five minutes ago.

Harry waited while Oleg struggled to hold back tears. He replied to Oleg’s next five questions with the same “I don’t know, Oleg.”

He heard the hiccough in the boy’s voice, and thought that, as long as he’s crying, I won’t.

Oleg ran out of questions and the line went quiet.

“I’ll keep my phone on, and I’ll call as soon as I know more,” Harry said. “Are there any flights...?”

“There’s one that leaves Tromsø at one o’clock.” Oleg’s heavy, laboured breathing echoed through the phone.

“Good.”

“Call as soon as you can, OK?”

“I will.”

“And, Dad?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t let them...”

“No, I won’t,” Harry said. He didn’t know how he knew what Oleg was thinking. It wasn’t a rational thought, it just... appeared. He cleared his throat. “I promise that no one at the scene will see more than they need to in order to do their job. OK?”

“OK.”

“OK.”

Silence.

Harry tried to think of some words of comfort, but found nothing that didn’t sound meaningless.

“I’ll call you,” he said.

“OK.”

They ended the call.

8

Harry walked slowly up the hill to the black timber house, in the glare of the rotating blue lights of the police cars parked in the drive. The orange and white cordon tape had started down by the gate. Colleagues who didn’t know what to say or do stared at him as he passed. It felt like he was walking underwater. Like a dream he hoped he was about to wake up from. Maybe not wake up, actually, because it offered a numbness, a peculiar absence of sensation and sound, just hazy light and the muffled sound of his own steps. As if he had been injected with something.

Harry walked up the three steps to the open door leading into the house he, Rakel and Oleg had shared. Inside, he could hear the chatter of police radios and Bjørn Holm’s clipped commands to the other crime-scene investigators. Harry took several trembling breaths.

Then he stepped across the threshold and automatically walked outside the white flags the forensics team had set up.

Investigation, he thought. This is an investigation. I’m dreaming, but I can do an investigation in my sleep. It’s just a matter of doing it properly, getting it going, and I won’t wake up. As long as I’m not awake, it isn’t true. So Harry did it properly, he didn’t look directly at the sun, at the body he knew was lying on the floor between the kitchen and living-room areas. The sun — that, even if it hadn’t been Rakel — would blind him if he stared straight at it. The sight of a body does something to your senses even if you’re an experienced murder detective; it overwhelms them to a greater or lesser extent, numbs them and makes them less sensitive to other, less violent impressions, all the small details of a crime scene that can tell you something. That can help piece together a coherent, logical narrative. Or the reverse, something that jars, that doesn’t belong in the picture. He let his eyes roam across the walls. A single red coat hung from the hooks under the hat rack. Where she used to hang the coat she had used last, unless she knew she wasn’t going to wear it next time, in which case she hung it in the wardrobe with her other jackets. He had to pull himself together to stop himself clutching the coat and pressing it to his face to breathe in the smell of her. Of forest. Because no matter what perfume she used, the symphony of smells always had an underlying note of sun-warmed Norwegian forest. He couldn’t see the red silk scarf she usually wore with that coat, but her black boots were standing on the shoe rack directly beneath it. Harry looked on towards the living room, but there was nothing different there. It looked just like the room he had walked out of two months, fifteen days and twenty hours ago. None of the pictures were hanging crookedly, none of the rugs were out of place. He looked across to the kitchen. There. There was a knife missing from the pyramid-shaped wooden block on the kitchen worktop. His eyes began to circle towards the body.

He felt a hand on his shoulder.

“Hello, Bjørn,” Harry said without turning around, unable to stop his eyes systematically photographing the crime scene.

“Harry,” Bjørn said. “I don’t know what to say.”

“You ought to be telling me I shouldn’t be here,” Harry said. “You ought to be saying I’m disqualified, that this isn’t my case, that I’ll just have to wait to see her like any other civilian until I’m called in to formally identify her.”

“You know I can’t say any of that.”

“If you don’t, someone else will,” Harry said, noting the blood sprayed across the bottom of the bookcase, across the spines of Hamsun’s collected works and an old encyclopaedia that Oleg used to like looking at while Harry explained the things that had changed since the encyclopaedia was printed and why. “And I’d rather hear it from you.” Only now did Harry look at Bjørn Holm. His eyes were shiny and bulging even more than usual in his pale face, framed by bright red sideburns à la 1970s-era Elvis, a beard and the new cap that had replaced his Rasta hat.

“I’ll say it if you want me to, Harry.”

Harry’s eyes ventured closer to the sun, hit the edge of the pool of blood on the floor. The outline revealed that it was large. He had said “reported dead” to Oleg. As if he didn’t quite believe it until he had seen it for himself. Harry cleared his throat. “Tell me what you’ve got first.”

“Knife,” Bjørn said. “The forensic medical officer’s on the way, but it looks to me like three blows, no more. And one was at the back of the neck, directly below the skull. Which means that she died—”

“Quickly and painlessly,” Harry said. “Thanks for that, Bjørn.”

Bjørn nodded curtly, and Harry realised that the forensics officer had said it as much for his own sake as Harry’s.

He looked back at the wooden block on the kitchen worktop again. The ultra-sharp Tojiro knives that he had bought in Hong Kong, traditional Santoku-style, with oak handles, but these had a water-buffalo-horn collar. Rakel had loved them. It looked like the smallest one was missing, an all-purpose knife with a blade between ten and fifteen centimetres long.

“And there’s no sign of sexual assault,” Bjørn said. “All her clothes are still in place, and intact.”

Harry’s eyes had reached the sun.

Mustn’t wake up.

Rakel was lying curled up with her back to him, facing the kitchen. More tightly curled than when she was asleep. She had no obvious injuries or knife wounds to her back, and her long dark hair was covering her neck. The roaring voices in his head were trying to drown each other out. One was screaming that she was wearing the traditional cardigan he had bought her during a trip to Reykjavik. Another that it wasn’t her, that it couldn’t be her. A third was saying that if it was the way it looked at first glance, that she had been stabbed from the front at first, and that the perpetrator hadn’t been standing between her and the door, so she hadn’t made any attempt to escape. The fourth was saying that she was going to get up any moment, walk towards him with a smile and point at the hidden camera.

The hidden camera.

Harry heard someone clear their throat quietly and turned around.

The man standing in the doorway was large and rectangular, with a head that looked like it had been cut from granite and drawn with a ruler. A hairless cranium with a straight chin, straight mouth, straight nose and straight narrow eyes under a pair of straight eyebrows. Blue jeans, a smart jacket and a shirt with no tie. There was no expression in his grey eyes, but his voice and the way he dragged the words out — as if he were enjoying them, had been waiting for the chance to say them — expressed everything his eyes were hiding.

“I’m sorry for your loss, but I’m going to have to ask you to leave the scene, Hole.”

Harry met Ole Winter’s gaze, noting that Kripos’s senior inspector had used an expression directly translated from English, as if Norwegian didn’t have a perfectly adequate way of expressing sympathy. And that he hadn’t even allowed himself a full stop after his expression of sympathy before throwing Harry out, just a quick comma. Harry didn’t answer, merely turned and looked at Rakel again.

“That means now, Hole.”

“Mm. As far as I’m aware, the task of Kripos is to assist Oslo Police District, not to issue—”

“And now Kripos is helping to keep the partner of the victim away from the crime scene. You can act like a professional and do as I say, or I can get a couple of uniforms to help you out.”

Harry knew Ole Winter wouldn’t have any objection to that, letting two officers lead Harry out to a police car in full view of his colleagues, neighbours, and the media vultures who were standing down at the road photographing everything they could. Ole Winter was a couple of years older than Harry and they had worked on either side of the fence as homicide detectives for twenty-five years, Harry with the Oslo Police District and Winter in the specialist national unit, Kripos, which assisted local police departments in serious criminal cases such as murder. And which occasionally, because of its superior resources and competence, took over the investigations altogether. Harry assumed that his own Chief of Police, Gunnar Hagen, had taken the decision to bring Kripos in. A perfectly valid decision, given that the victim’s partner was employed in the Crime Squad Unit at Police Headquarters in Oslo. But also a somewhat sensitive decision given that there was always an unspoken rivalry between the two largest murder investigation units in the country. What wasn’t unspoken, however, was Ole Winter’s opinion that Harry Hole was seriously overrated, that his legendary status owed more to the sensational nature of the cases he had solved than the factual quality of his detective work. And that Ole Winter — even though he was the undisputed star of Kripos — was undervalued, at least outside the inner circle. And that his triumphs never got the same headlines as Hole’s, because serious police work rarely did, while an alcoholic loose cannon with one single lucid moment of inspiration always did.

Harry pulled out his packet of Camels, stuck a cigarette between his lips and took out his lighter.

“I’m going, Winter.”

He walked past the other man, went down the steps and out onto the drive before needing to steady himself. He stopped, and went to light the cigarette, but was so blinded by tears that he couldn’t see either lighter or cigarette.

“Here.”

Harry heard Bjørn’s voice, blinked quickly several times and sucked in the flame from the lighter Bjørn was holding up to the cigarette. Harry inhaled hard. Coughed, then inhaled again.

“Thanks. Have you been thrown out too?”

“No, my work’s as good for Kripos as it is for the Oslo Police District.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be on paternity leave?”

“Katrine called. The lad’s probably sitting on her lap behind her desk running Crime Squad right now.” Bjørn Holm’s crooked smile vanished as soon as it appeared. “Sorry, Harry, I’m babbling.”

“Mm.” The wind tugged at the smoke as Harry exhaled. “So, you’re finished with the garden?”

Stay in investigation mode, stay sedated.

“Yes,” Bjørn Holm said. “There was a frost on Saturday night, so the gravel was harder. If there was anyone here, or any vehicles, they haven’t left much evidence.”

“Saturday night? You’re saying that’s when it happened?”

“She’s cold, and when I bent her arm it felt as if the rigor mortis was already starting to ease.”

“At least twenty-four hours, then.”

“Yes. But the medical officer should be here anytime. Are you OK, Harry?”

Harry had started to retch, but nodded and swallowed the stinging bile. He would manage. He would manage. Stay asleep.

“The knife wounds, do you have any idea of what sort of knife was used?”

“I’d say a small- to medium-sized blade. No bruising on the side of the wound, so either he didn’t stab very deep or the knife doesn’t have much of a shaft.”

“The blood. He went deep.”

“Yes.”

Harry sucked desperately at the cigarette, which was already close to the filter. A tall young man in a Burberry jacket and suit was walking up the drive towards them.

“Katrine said it was someone from Rakel’s work who called it in,” Harry said. “Do you know any more than that?”

“Just that it was her boss,” Bjørn said. “Rakel didn’t show up for an important meeting, and they couldn’t get hold of her. He thought something might be wrong.”

“Mm. Is it normal to call the police when one of your staff doesn’t show up for a meeting?”

“I don’t know, Harry. He said it wasn’t like Rakel not to turn up, or at least not to call beforehand. And obviously they knew that she lived alone.”

Harry nodded slowly. They knew more than that. They knew she had recently thrown her husband out. A man with a reputation for being unstable. He dropped the cigarette and heard it hiss on the grit as he ground his heel on it.

The young man had reached them. He was in his thirties, thin, upright, with Asian features. The suit looked tailor-made, the shirt chalk-white and freshly ironed, the tie neatly knotted. His thick black hair was cut short, in a style that could have been discreet if it hadn’t been so calculatedly classic. Kripos detective Sung-min Larsen smelled vaguely of something Harry assumed was expensive. At Kripos he was apparently known as the Nikkei Index, despite the fact that his first name — Sung-min, which Harry had come across several times when he was in Hong Kong — was Korean rather than Japanese. He had graduated from Police College the first year Harry had been lecturing there, but Harry could still remember him from his lectures on criminal investigation, mostly because of those white shirts and his quiet demeanour, the wry smiles when Harry — still an inexperienced lecturer — felt he was on shaky ground, and also his exam results, which had evidently been the highest grades ever achieved at Police College.

“I’m sorry, Hole,” Sung-min Larsen said. “My deepest condolences.” He was almost as tall as Harry.

“Thanks, Larsen.” Harry nodded to the notepad the Kripos detective was holding. “Been talking to the neighbours?”

“That’s right.”

“Anything of interest?” Harry looked round. There was plenty of space between the houses up here in fashionable Holmenkollen. Tall hedges and ranks of fir trees.

For a moment, Sung-min Larsen seemed to ponder whether this was information he could share with the Oslo Police District. Unless the problem was that Harry was the victim’s husband.

“Your neighbour, Wenche Angondora Syvertsen, says she didn’t hear or see anything unusual on Saturday night. I asked if she sleeps with the window open, and she said she did. But she also said she was able to do that because familiar sounds don’t wake her up. Like her husband’s car, the neighbours’ cars, the dustcart. And she pointed out that Rakel Fauke’s house has thick timber walls.”

He said this without having to look down at his notes, and Harry got the feeling that Larsen was presenting these minor details as a test, to see if they prompted any sort of reaction.

“Mm,” Harry said, a rumbling sound that merely indicated he’d heard what the other person had said.

“So it’s her house?” Larsen asked. “Not yours?”

“Separate property,” Harry said. “I insisted. Didn’t want anyone to think I was marrying her for her money.”

“Was she rich?”

“No, that was just a joke.” Harry nodded towards the house. “You’ll have to pass any information you’ve managed to get to your boss, Larsen.”

“Winter’s here?”

“It was certainly cold enough in there.”

Sung-min Larsen smiled politely. “In formal terms Winter is leading the tactical investigation, but it looks like I’m going to be in charge of the case. I’m not in the same class as you, Hole, but I promise to do my utmost to catch whoever murdered your wife.”

“Thanks,” Harry said. He had a feeling the young detective meant every word he said. Apart from the bit about not being in the same class. He watched as Larsen made his way past the police cars towards the house.

“Hidden camera,” Harry said.

“Huh?” Bjørn said.

“I set up a wildlife camera on that middle fir tree there.” Harry nodded towards the thicket of bushes and trees, a little cluster of raw Norwegian forest in front of the fence to the neighbouring property. “I suppose I’ll have to tell Winter about it.”

“No,” Bjørn said emphatically.

Harry looked at him. It wasn’t often he heard him sound so decisive. Bjørn Holm shrugged his shoulders. “If it’s recorded anything that can help solve the case, I don’t think Winter should get the glory.”

“OK?”

“On the other hand, you shouldn’t touch anything here either.”

“Because I’m a suspect,” Harry said.

Bjørn didn’t answer.

“That’s fine,” Harry said. “The ex-husband is always the first suspect.”

“Until you’ve been ruled out,” Bjørn said. “I’ll get hold of whatever the camera recorded. The middle tree, you said?”

“It’s not easy to spot,” Harry said. “It’s hidden in a sock the same colour as the trunk. Two and a half metres up.”

Bjørn looked amiably at Harry. Then the stocky forensics officer began to pad towards the trees with his surprisingly soft and extremely slow gait. Harry’s phone rang. The first four digits told him it was from a landline in the offices of VG. The vultures scented carrion. And the fact that they were calling him meant that they probably knew the victim’s name and had made the connection. He rejected the call and put his phone back in his pocket.

Bjørn was crouching down over by the trees. He looked up and beckoned Harry over to him. “Don’t come any closer,” Bjørn said, pulling on a fresh pair of white latex gloves. “Someone got here before us.”

“What the fuck...?” Harry whispered. The sock had been pulled from the tree and was lying in tatters on the ground. Beside it lay the wreckage of the camera. Someone had stamped it to pieces. Bjørn picked it up. “The memory card is gone,” he said.

Harry was breathing hard through his nose.

“Pretty good going to spot the camera with its camouflage sock on,” Bjørn said. “You’d pretty much have to be standing here among the trees to see it.”

Harry nodded slowly. “Unless...” he said, and felt that his brain needed more oxygen than he could give it. “Unless the perpetrator knew the camera was there.”

“Sure. So who have you told?”

“No one.” Harry’s voice was hoarse, and at first he didn’t recognise what it was, the pain growing in his chest, trying to get out. Was he waking up? “No one at all,” Harry said. “And I set it up in complete darkness in the middle of the night, so no one saw me do it. No one human, anyway.” Then Harry realised what it was that was trying to get out. The shrieking of crows. The wailing of a madman. Laughter.

9

It was half past two in the afternoon, and most of the clientele looked up disinterestedly at the door when it swung open.

Schrøder’s Restaurant.

“Restaurant” was perhaps something of a misnomer, although the brown café did indeed serve a selection of Norwegian specialities, such as pork chops and dripping, but the main courses were beer and wine. The bar had existed on Waldemar Thranes gate since the mid-fifties, and it had been Harry’s regular haunt since the nineties. There had been an interval of a few years after he moved in with Rakel in Holmenkollen. But now he was back.

He sank down onto the bench by the wall at one of the window tables.

The bench was new. But apart from that, the interior had stayed the same for the past twenty years, the same tables and chairs, the same stained-glass ceiling, the same Sigurd Fosnes paintings of Oslo, even the red tablecloths with a white cloth set diagonally on top were the same. The biggest change Harry could remember was when the smoking ban came into force in 2004 and they repainted the bar to get rid of the smell of smoke. The same colour as before. And the smell of smoke never went completely.

He checked his phone, but Oleg hadn’t replied to his messages telling him to call him; he was probably in the air.

“It’s terrible, Harry,” Nina said, removing two half-litre glasses from in front of him. “I just read it online.” She wiped her free hand on her apron and looked down at him. “How are you doing?”

“Not great, thanks,” Harry said. So the vultures had published her name already. Presumably they had managed to get hold of a picture of Rakel from somewhere. And of Harry, of course. They had plenty of those in their archives, some of them so awful that Rakel had wondered if he couldn’t at least try to pose a bit better next time. She never looked bad in photographs, even if she tried. No. Had never looked bad. Fuck.

“Coffee?”

“I’m going to have to ask you for beer today, Nina.”

“I understand what’s going on, but I haven’t served you beer for — how many years is it now, Harry?”

“A lot. And I’m grateful for your concern. But I mustn’t wake up, you know?”

“Wake up?”

“If I go anywhere that serves strong liquor today, I’ll probably drink myself to death.”

“You came here because we only have a licence to serve beer?”

“And because I can find my way home from here with my eyes closed.”

The plump, stubborn waitress stood there looking at him with a concerned, thoughtful expression. Then she let out a deep sigh. “OK, Harry. But I decide when you’ve had enough.”

“I can never have enough, Nina.”

“I know. But I think you came here because you wanted to be served by someone you trust.”

“Maybe.”

Nina left him and came back with a half-litre of beer that she put down in front of him.

“Slowly,” she said. “Slowly.”

Some way into the third half-litre the door swung open again.

Harry noted that the customers who had raised their heads hadn’t lowered them again, and that their eyes were following the long, leather-clad legs until they reached Harry’s table, where she sat down.

“You’re not answering your phone,” she said, waving Nina away as she approached the table.

“I’ve turned it off. VG and the others have started to call.”

“You have no idea. I haven’t seen such a scrum at a press conference since the vampirist case. And that’s partly because the Chief of Police has decided to suspend you until further notice.”

“What? I get that I’m not allowed to work on this case, but suspended from all duties? Really? Because the press are all over a murder investigation?”

“Because you won’t be left in peace no matter what you’re working on, and we don’t need that sort of distraction right now.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“Keep going.” Harry raised his glass to his lips.

“There isn’t anything else.”

“Yes, there is. The politics. Let’s hear it.”

Katrine sighed deeply. “Since Bærum and Asker were moved into Oslo Police District, we’re responsible for a fifth of the population of Norway. Two years ago surveys showed that 86 percent of the population had high or very high confidence in us. That figure has now fallen to 65, thanks to a couple of unfortunate individual cases. And that means our beloved Chief of Police, Hagen, has been summoned to see our rather less beloved Minister of Justice, Mikael Bellman. To be blunt: at the present time, Hagen and the Oslo Police District would not find it remotely helpful if the press were to publish an interview with an unhinged officer who was drunk on duty.”

“Don’t forget paranoid. Paranoid, unhinged and drunk.” Harry tipped his head back and drained his glass.

“Please, Harry, no more paranoia. I’ve spoken to Winter at Kripos, and there’s no evidence to suggest it’s Finne.”

“So what is there evidence to suggest, then?”

“Nothing.”

“There was a dead woman lying there, of course there’s evidence.” Harry gestured to Nina that he was ready for his next glass.

“OK, this is what we’ve got from the Forensic Medical Institute,” Katrine said. “Rakel died as the result of a knife wound to the back of her neck. The blade penetrated the part of the medulla oblongata that regulates breathing, between the top vertebra and the cranium. She probably died instantly.”

“I didn’t ask Bjørn about the other two,” Harry said.

“The other two what?”

“Knife wounds.”

He saw Katrine swallow. He could tell she had been hoping to spare him.

“Her stomach,” she said.

“So not necessarily a painless death, then?”

“Harry...”

“Go on,” Harry said harshly, hunching over. It was as if he could feel the stab wounds himself.

Katrine cleared her throat. “As you know, it’s usually extremely difficult to determine the time of death with any degree of accuracy when someone’s been dead for over twenty-four hours, as in this case. But as you may have heard, the Forensic Medical Institute and the Criminal Forensics Unit have together developed a new method where they combine measurements of rectal temperature, eye temperature, hypoxanthine levels in the intraocular fluid, and brain temperature...”

“Brain temperature?”

“Yes. The cranium protects the brain which means that it’s less affected by external factors. They insert a needle-like probe through the nose, into the lamina cribrosa where the base of the skull—”

“You’ve obviously learned a lot of Latin recently.”

Katrine stopped.

“Sorry,” Harry said. “I’m... I’m not...”

“Don’t worry about it,” Katrine said. “There were a couple of fortuitous external factors. We know that the temperature on the ground floor was constant, because all the radiators are controlled by a central thermostat. And because that temperature was relatively low...”

“She used to say she thought better with a woolly jumper and a cold head,” Harry said.

“...the internal organs of the body hadn’t yet quite cooled down to the temperature of the room. Which means that we’ve been able to use this new method to determine that the time of death was somewhere between 22:00 on Saturday and 02:00 on Sunday, 11 March.”

“What about the crime-scene investigation, what did that come up with?”

“The front door was unlocked when the first officers arrived, and because it hasn’t got a Yale lock, that suggests the perpetrator left via that door. There are no signs of a break-in, which suggests that the front door was unlocked when the killer arrived...”

“Rakel always kept that door locked. And all the other doors. That house is a fucking fortress.”

“...or that Rakel let him in.”

“Mm.” Harry turned and looked impatiently for Nina.

“You’re right about it being a fortress. Bjørn was one of the first on the scene, and he says he went through the house from basement to attic, and all the doors were locked from the inside, and all the windows closed with their latches on. So what do you think?”

“I think there must be more evidence.”

“Yes,” Katrine said with a nod. “There’s evidence of someone removing the evidence. Someone who knows what evidence he needs to remove.”

“OK. And you don’t think that Finne knows how to do that?”

“Oh, I do. And obviously Finne is a suspect, he always will be. But we can’t say that publicly, we can’t point the finger at a specific individual based on nothing but gut feeling.”

“Gut feeling? Finne threatened me and my family, I’ve told you that.”

Katrine stayed silent.

Harry looked at her. Then he nodded slowly. “Correction: claims the spurned husband of the murder victim.”

Katrine leaned over the table. “Listen. The sooner we can rule you out of the case, the less fuss there’ll be. Right now Kripos are taking the lead, but we’re working with them, so I can push them to prioritise deciding whether or not you’re beyond suspicion, then we can issue a press release.”

“Press release?”

“You know the papers aren’t saying anything explicitly, but their readers aren’t stupid. And they’re not wrong, because the probability that the husband is the killer in cases like this is around...”

“Eighty percent,” Harry said loudly and slowly.

“Sorry,” Katrine said, turning red. “We just need to stop that in its tracks as soon as possible.”

“I get it,” Harry mumbled, wondering if he ought to try calling for Nina. “I’m just a bit sensitive today.”

Katrine reached her hand across the table and put it on his. “I can’t even begin to imagine what it must be like, Harry. Losing the love of your life like that.”

Harry looked at her hand. “Nor me,” he said. “And that’s why I’m planning to be as far away as possible while it eventually sinks in. Nina!”

“They can’t interview you if you’re drunk, so you won’t be ruled out of the case until you sober up.”

“It’s only beer, I’ll be sober again in a few hours if they call. The maternal role suits you, by the way, have I told you?”

Katrine smiled briefly and stood up. “I need to get back. Kripos have asked to use our interview facilities. Look after yourself, Harry.”

“I’ll do my best. Go and get him.”

“Harry...”

“If you don’t, I will. Nina!”

Dagny Jensen was walking along the spring-damp path between the gravestones in the Vår Frelsers Cemetery. There was a smell of scorched metal from some roadworks on Ullevålsveien, as well as decaying flowers and wet earth. And dog shit. This was what spring was like in Oslo just after the snow melted, but she couldn’t help wondering who they were, these dog owners who made use of the usually deserted cemetery, where they could walk away from their dogs’ excrement without any witnesses. Dagny had been visiting her mother’s grave, like she did every Monday after her last class at the Cathedral School, only three or four minutes’ walk away, where Dagny worked as an English teacher. She missed her mother, missed their daily conversations about everything and nothing. Her mother had been such a real, vital part of Dagny’s life that when they called from the old people’s home to say her mother was dead, at first she hadn’t believed it. Not even when she saw the body, which looked like a wax doll, a fake. That’s to say, her brain knew, of course, but her body refused. Her body demanded to have actually witnessed her mother’s death in order to accept it. Sometimes Dagny still dreamed that someone was banging on her door up on Thorvald Meyers gate, and that her mother was standing outside, like it was the most natural thing in the world. And why not? Soon they’d be able to send people to Mars, and who could know for certain that it was medically impossible to breathe life back into a dead body? During the funeral the priest, a young woman, had said that no one knew what lay on the other side of the threshold of death, that all we knew was that those who crossed it never came back. That had upset Dagny. Not that the so-called church of the people had become so feeble that it had surrendered its only real function: to give absolute and comforting answers about what happened after death. No, it was the “never” that the priest had uttered with such confidence. If people needed hope, a fixed belief that their loved ones would one day rise from the dead, why take that away from them? And if what the priest’s faith claimed was true, that it had happened before, then surely it could happen again? Dagny would be forty in two years, she had never been married or engaged, she hadn’t had any children, she hadn’t travelled to Micronesia, she hadn’t realised her dream of starting an orphanage in Eritrea or finished that poetry collection. And she hoped that she would never again hear anyone say the word “never.”

Dagny was heading up the path at the end of the cemetery closest to Ullevålsveien when she caught sight of the back view of a man. Or rather she noticed the long, thick, black plait that hung down his back, as well as the fact that he wasn’t wearing a jacket over his checked flannel shirt. He was standing in front of a headstone that Dagny had noticed before, when it had been covered by snow in winter, and she had thought it belonged to someone who had left no one behind, or at least no one who had cared for him or her.

Dagny had the type of appearance that’s easy to forget. A thin, small woman who so far had managed to creep quietly through life. It was already rush hour on Ullevålsveien — though it wasn’t even three o’clock — because the working week had shrunk so much in Norway over the past forty years, to a level that either irritated or impressed foreigners. So she was surprised when the man evidently heard her approaching. And, when he turned around, that he was an old man. His leathery face had furrows so sharp and deep that they seemed cut to the bone. His body looked slender, muscular and young beneath the flannel shirt, but his face and the yellowish whites around his pin-sized pupils and brown irises declared that he must be at least seventy. He was wearing a red bandana, like a Native American, and had a moustache around his thick lips.

“Good afternoon,” he said loudly to drown out the traffic.

“How nice to see someone at this grave,” Dagny replied with a smile. She wasn’t usually so talkative with strangers, but today she was in a good mood, almost a little excited, because she had been asked out for a drink by Gunnar, a new teacher who also taught English.

The man smiled back.

“It’s my son’s,” he said in a deep, rough voice.

“I’m sorry to hear that.” She saw that what was sticking out of the ground in front of the headstone wasn’t a flower, but a feather.

“In the Cherokee tribe they used to lay eagles’ feathers in the coffins of their dead,” the man said, as if he had read her thoughts. “This isn’t an eagle’s, but a buzzard’s.”

“Really? Where did you find it?”

“The buzzard feather? Oslo’s surrounded by wilderness on all sides, didn’t you know?” The man smiled.

“Well, it seems fairly civilised. But the feather is a nice thought, perhaps it will carry your son’s soul to heaven.”

The man shook his head. “Wilderness, no civilisation. My son was murdered by a policeman. Now, my son probably won’t get to heaven no matter how many feathers I give him, but he’s not in a hell as fiery as the one that policeman is going to.” There was no hatred in his voice, just sorrow, as if he felt for the policeman. “And who are you visiting?”

“My mother,” Dagny said, looking at the son’s gravestone. Valentin Gjertsen. There was something vaguely familiar about the name.

“Not a widow, then. Because a b-beautiful woman like you must have married young and have children?”

“Thanks, but neither of those.” She laughed, and a thought ran through her head: a child with her fair curls and Gunnar’s confident smile. That made her smile even wider. “That’s lovely,” she said, pointing at the beautiful, artistic metal object stuck in the ground in front of the headstone. “What does it symbolise?”

He pulled it up and held it out to her. It looked like a slithering snake and ended in a sharp point. “It symbolises death. Is there any m-madness in your family?”

“Er... not that I know of.”

He tugged at one sleeve of his shirt, revealing a wristwatch.

“Quarter past two,” Dagny said.

He smiled as if it were an unnecessary observation, pressed a button on the side of the watch, looked up and added: “Two and a half m-minutes.”

Was he going to time something?

Suddenly he had taken two long strides and was standing right in front of her. He smelled of bonfires.

And as if he could read her thoughts, he said: “I can smell you too. I smelled you when you were walking this way.” His lips were wet now, they curled like eels in a trap when he spoke. “You’re ov-ovulating.”

Dagny regretted stopping. But still she stood there, as if pinned to the spot by his stare.

“If you don’t struggle, it will soon be over,” he whispered.

It was as if she finally managed to pull free, and she spun around to run. But a quick hand had reached under her short jacket, grabbed hold of the belt of her trousers and tugged her back. She let out a short cry and glanced across the deserted cemetery before she was thrown against — and pushed into — the hedge that grew in front of the railings facing Ullevålsveien. Two powerful arms wrapped around her chest, holding her in a vise-like grip. She managed to take a deep breath to scream, but it was as if that was what he had been waiting for, because when she started to make a noise by letting the air out, the arms tightened the vise a bit more and emptied her lungs of air. She saw that he was still holding the curved metal snake in one hand. The other moved to her neck and squeezed. Her vision was already starting to blur, and even though one arm around her chest suddenly let go, she felt her body turn limp and heavy.

This isn’t happening, she thought as the other hand forced its way between her thighs from behind. She felt something sharp against her stomach just below her waistband and heard the tearing sound as the sharp object split her trousers from the belt in the front all the way to the belt loop at the back. This doesn’t happen, not in a cemetery in the middle of the day in the middle of Oslo. It doesn’t happen to me, anyway!

Then the hand around her neck let go, and inside Dagny’s head it sounded like when Mum blew air into the old inflatable mattress, as she desperately inhaled a mixture of Oslo’s spring air and the exhaust fumes of rush hour into her aching lungs. At the same time she felt something sharp pressed against her throat. She caught a glimpse of the curved knife at the bottom of her field of vision and heard his whispering, rough voice close to her ear:

“The first was a boa constrictor. This is a poisonous snake. One little bite and you die. So just stay perfectly still and don’t make a sound. That’s right. Just like that. Are you standing c-comfortably?”

Dagny Jensen felt tears running down her cheeks.

“There, there, everything’s going to be fine. Do you want to make me a happy man and marry me?”

Dagny felt the point of the knife press harder against her throat.

“Do you?”

She nodded cautiously.

“Then we’re engaged, my darling.” She felt his lips against the back of her neck. Right in front of her, on the other side of the hedge and railings, she could hear footsteps on the pavement, two people walking past, engaged in lively conversation.

“And now to consummate our engagement. I told you the snake pressed to your neck symbolises d-death. But this symbolises life...”

Dagny felt it and screwed her eyes tight shut.

“Our life. A life that we shall create now...”

He thrust forward, and she clenched her teeth to stop herself crying out.

“For each son I lose, I shall bring f-five more into the world,” he hissed into her ear as he thrust again. “And you wouldn’t dare destroy what we have created, would you? Because a child is the Lord’s work.”

He thrust a third time and ejaculated with a drawn-out groan.

He removed the knife and let go of her. Dagny loosened her grip and saw that the palms of her hands were bleeding from where she had grabbed the thorny hedge. But she didn’t move, stayed bent over with her back to him.

“Turn around,” the man commanded.

She didn’t want to, but she did as he said.

He was holding her purse, and had pulled out a bill.

“Dagny Jensen,” he read. “Thorvald Meyers gate. Nice street. I’ll be calling in from time to time.” He handed her the purse, tilted his head and looked at her. “Remember, this is our secret, Dagny. From now on I’m going to watch over and protect you, like an eagle you can never see, but one you know is always up there and it can see you. Nothing can help you, because I am a spirit that no one can catch. But no harm will come to you either, because we’re engaged now, and my hand rests upon you.”

He held up one hand, and only now did she see that what she had thought was a nasty scar on the back of his hand was actually an open hole that went right through.

He left, and Dagny Jensen sank weakly onto the dirty snow by the railings with a stifled sob. Through her tears she saw the man’s back, and the plait of hair, as he walked calmly through the cemetery towards the northern gate. There was a bleeping, pulsating sound, and the man stopped, pulled up his sleeve and pressed his wrist. The bleeping stopped.

Harry opened his eyes. He was lying on something soft, staring up at the ceiling, at the small but beautiful crystal chandelier Rakel had brought home with her when she moved back after her years at the embassy in Moscow. Seen from below, the crystals formed the letter S, he had never noticed that before. A woman’s voice said his name. He rolled over but couldn’t see anyone. “Harry,” the voice repeated. He was dreaming. Was this waking up? He opened his eyes. He was still sitting upright. He was still in Schrøder’s.

“Harry?” It was Nina’s voice. “You’ve got a visitor.”

He looked up. Right into Rakel’s worried eyes. The face had Rakel’s mouth, Rakel’s faintly glowing skin. But the father’s smooth Russian hair. No, he was still dreaming.

“Oleg,” Harry said in a thick voice, made an attempt to get up and give his stepson a hug, but had to give up. “I didn’t think you’d get here until later.”

“I arrived in Oslo an hour ago.” The tall young man sank onto the chair where Katrine had sat earlier. He pulled a face as if he’d sat on a drawing pin.

Harry looked out of the window and discovered to his amazement that it had gotten dark.

“And how did you know...”

“Bjørn Holm tipped me off. I’ve spoken to a funeral director and have arranged a meeting for tomorrow morning. Will you come with me?”

Harry let his head fall forward. Groaned. “Of course I’ll come with you, Oleg. Christ, here I am, drunk when you arrive, and now you’re doing what ought to be my job.”

“Sorry, but it’s easier to keep busy. Keep my head working on practical things. I’ve started to think about what we should do with the house when...” He stopped, raised one hand in front of his face and pressed his thumb and middle finger to his temples. “That’s sick, right? Mum’s barely even cold, and...” His fingers massaged his temples, and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down.

“It’s not sick,” Harry said. “Your brain is trying to find a way to avoid the pain. I’ve found my own way, but I wouldn’t recommend it.” He moved the empty glass that was between them. “You can fool the pain for a while, but it will always catch up with you. When you relax a little, let your guard down, when you stick your head up out of the trench. Until then, it’s fine not to feel too much.”

“Numb,” Oleg said. “I just feel numb. I realised earlier that I hadn’t eaten anything today, so I bought a chili hotdog. I smothered it with the strongest mustard they had, just so I could feel something. And you know what?”

“Yes,” Harry said. “I know. Nothing.”

“Nothing,” Oleg repeated, blinking something out of his eyes.

“The pain will come,” Harry said. “You don’t have to look for it. It will find you. You, and all the chinks in your armour.”

“Has it found you?”

“I’m still asleep,” Harry said. “I’m trying not to wake up.” He looked at his hands. He would have given anything to take some of Oleg’s pain on himself. What could he say? That nothing will ever be so painful as the first time you lose someone you really love? He no longer even knew if that was true. He cleared his throat.

“The house is shut off until the crime-scene team are finished. Are you staying at mine?”

“I’m staying with Helga’s parents.”

“OK. How’s Helga taking it?”

“Badly. She and Rakel had become good friends.”

Harry nodded. “Do you want to talk about what happened?”

Oleg shook his head. “I had a long talk with Bjørn, he told me what we know. And don’t know.”

We. Harry noted that just a few months into the practical year of his training, Oleg found it perfectly natural to use the pronoun “we” about the police in general. The same “we” that he himself had never used even after twenty-five years in the force. But experience had taught him that it was more deeply imprinted in him than he was aware of. Because it was a home. For better or worse. And when you’ve lost everything else, mostly for better. He hoped that Oleg and Helga would cling tight to each other.

“I’ve been called in for an interview first thing tomorrow morning,” Oleg said. “Kripos.”

“Right.”

“Will they ask about you?”

“If they’re doing their job, they will.”

“What shall I say?”

Harry shrugged. “The truth. Unvarnished, the way you see it.”

“OK.” Oleg closed his eyes again and took a deep breath. “Are you going to get me a beer?”

Harry sighed. “I am, as you can see, not much of a man, but at least I’m the sort of man who has trouble breaking promises. That’s why I never promised your mother much. But I promised her this: because your father has the same bad gene as me, I swore that I would never, ever buy you a drink.”

“Mum did, though.”

“That promise was my idea, Oleg. I’m not going to get you into anything.”

Oleg turned around and raised one finger. Nina nodded.

“How long are you going to sleep?” Oleg asked.

“As long as I can.”

The beer arrived, and Oleg drank it slowly in small sips. He put the glass down between them each time, as if it was something they were sharing. They didn’t speak. They didn’t need to. Couldn’t. Their silent sobbing was deafening.

When the glass was empty, Oleg took out his phone and looked at it. “It’s Helga’s brother, he’s picking me up in the car, he’s outside. Can we give you a lift home?”

Harry shook his head. “Thanks, but I need the walk.”

“I’ll text you the address of the funeral director.”

“Great.”

They stood up at the same time. Harry noted that Oleg was still a couple of centimetres short of his own 1.92 metres. Then he remembered that the race was over, and that Oleg was a full-grown man.

They embraced, holding each other hard. Chins on each other’s shoulders. And didn’t let go.

“Dad?”

“Mm?”

“When you called and said it was about Mum, and I asked if you were getting back together... That was because I asked her two days ago if she couldn’t give it another chance.”

Harry felt something catch in his chest. “What?”

“She said she’d think about it over the weekend. But I know she wanted it. She wanted you back.”

Harry closed his eyes and clenched his jaw so tightly it felt like the muscles would burst. Why did you have to come and make me so lonely? There wasn’t enough alcohol in the world to fend off this pain.

10

Rakel had wanted him back.

Did that make things better or just even worse?

Harry dug his phone out of his pocket to switch it off. He saw that Oleg had sent a text about a couple of the practical questions the funeral directors had asked. Three missed calls that he guessed were newspapers, as well as one call from a number he recognised as belonging to Alexandra at the Forensic Medical Institute. Did she want to pass on her condolences? Or to have sex? She could have sent a text if she wanted to convey her condolences. Both, maybe. The young technician had said several times that strong emotions turned her on, whether they were good or bad. Rage, joy, hate, pain. But grief? Hm. Lust and shame. The shocking, titillating idea of fucking someone in mourning — there were probably worse things. Wasn’t it, for instance, worse that he was sitting here thinking about Alexandra’s possible sexual fantasies just hours after Rakel had been found dead? What the hell was that about?

Harry held the Off button until the screen turned black, then slipped his phone back into his trouser pocket. He looked at the microphone on the table in front of him in the cramped doll’s house room. The little red light indicated that it was recording. Then he fixed his gaze on the person on the other side of the table.

“Shall we begin?”

Sung-min Larsen nodded. Rather than hang his Burberry jacket on the hook on the wall next to Harry’s peacoat, he had hung it over the back of the only free chair.

Larsen cleared his throat before he began.

“Today is 13 March, the time is 15:50, and we’re in interview room 3 in Police Headquarters in Oslo. The interviewer is Detective Inspector Sung-min Larsen of Kripos, the interviewee Harry Hole...”

Harry listened as Larsen continued, his language so distinct and correct that it sounded like someone in an old radio play. Larsen held his gaze as he gave Harry’s ID number and address without checking the notes in front of him. Perhaps he’d memorised them to impress his hitherto more-esteemed colleague. Unless it was just his standard scare tactic to demonstrate intellectual superiority, so that the interviewee would give up any idea of manipulating and lying to hide the truth. And of course there was a third possibility: that Sung-min Larsen simply had a good memory.

“As a police officer I assume you’re aware of your rights,” Larsen said. “And you’ve declined the option of having a lawyer present.”

“Am I a suspect?” Harry asked, looking past the curtains to the control room, where Police Inspector Winter was sitting with his arms folded as he watched them.

“This is a routine interview, you’re not under suspicion of anything,” Larsen said. He was following the rulebook. He went on to inform Harry that the interview was being recorded. “Can you tell me about your relationship to the deceased, Rakel Fauke?”

“She’s... she was my wife.”

“You’re separated?”

“No. Well, yes, she’s dead.”

Sung-min Larsen looked up at Harry as if he wondered if that was meant as a challenge. “Not separated, then?”

“No, we hadn’t got that far. But I’d moved out.”

“I understand from other people we’ve spoken to that she was the one who wanted to split up. What was the cause of the break-up?”

She had wanted him back. “Disagreements. Can we skip to the bit where you ask if I’ve got an alibi for the time of the murder?”

“I appreciate that this is painful, but...”

“Thanks for letting me know how you feel, Larsen, and your guess hits the nail on the head, it is painful, but the reason for my request is that I don’t have much time.”

“Oh? I understood that you’ve been suspended until further notice.”

“I have. But I’ve got a lot of drinking to do.”

“And that’s urgent?”

“Yes.”

“I’d still like to know what sort of contact you and Rakel Fauke had during the time before her murder. Your stepson Oleg says he felt he never got a good explanation either from you or his mother for why you split up. But that it probably didn’t help that you were spending more and more of your free time while you were a lecturer at Police College trying to track down Svein Finne, who had just been released from prison.”

“When I said ‘request,’ that was a nice way of saying no.”

“So you’re refusing to explain your relationship with the deceased?”

“I’m declining the option to tell you about personal details and offering to give you my alibi so that we can both save time. So that you and Winter can concentrate on finding the culprit. I assume you remember from your lectures that if murder cases aren’t solved within the first forty-eight hours, the witnesses’ memories and any physical evidence deteriorate to the point where the chances of solving the case are reduced by half. Shall we get to the night of the murder, Larsen?”

The Kripos detective stared at a point on Harry’s forehead as he tapped the end of a pen on the table. Harry could see he would have liked to glance across at Winter to get some indication of where to go from here: press on, or do as Harry wanted.

“OK,” Larsen said. “Let’s do that.”

“Great,” Harry said. “So tell me.”

“Sorry?”

“Tell me where I was on the night of the murder.”

Sung-min Larsen smiled. “You want me to tell you?”

“You’ve chosen to interview other people before me, to make sure you’re as prepared as you can be. Which is what I would have done in your place, Larsen. That means you’ve spoken to Bjørn Holm and know I was at the Jealousy Bar, where he came to find me that night, and took me home and put me to bed. I was drunk as hell, don’t remember a thing, and have absolutely no idea what time any of this happened. So I’m in no position to give you any times that can either confirm or contradict what he told you. But with a bit of luck you’ve spoken to the bar’s owner and maybe a few other witnesses who’ve been able to confirm what Holm said. And seeing as I don’t know what time my wife died, it’s pretty much down to you to tell me if I’ve got an alibi or not, Larsen.”

Larsen clicked his pen several times as he studied Harry, like a poker player toying with his chips before deciding whether to risk them or not. “OK,” he said, putting the pen down. “We’ve checked the base stations in the area around the crime scene for the time in question, and none of them picked up any signal from your mobile.”

“OK. I’ve been out of the game, but is it still the case that all mobile phones automatically send a signal to the nearest base station every thirty minutes?”

Larsen didn’t answer.

“So either I left my phone at home, or I went there and back within half an hour. So I’ll ask again: have I got an alibi?”

This time Larsen couldn’t help it, he glanced over at the control room and Winter. From the corner of his eye Harry saw Winter rub his hand over his granite head before giving the detective a slight nod.

“Bjørn Holm says the two of you left the Jealousy Bar at half past ten, and the owner has confirmed that. Holm says he helped you into your flat and put you to bed. On his way out, Holm met your neighbour, Gule, who was coming home from his shift on the trams. I understand that Gule lives on the floor below you, and he says he was up until three o’clock that night, that the walls are thin and that he would have heard if you’d gone out again before then.”

“Mm. And when does the medical officer say the victim died?”

Larsen looked down at his notebook as if he needed to check it, but Harry knew the young detective had all the facts firmly fixed in his memory, and just wanted time to figure out how much he could tell his interviewee — or how much he wanted to. Harry also noted that Larsen didn’t look at Winter before making his decision.

“Forensics are basing their findings on body temperature versus room temperature, seeing as the body wasn’t moved. It’s still hard to specify an exact time given that she’d probably been lying there for a day and a half, but sometime between ten o’clock in the evening and two o’clock in the morning seems most likely.”

“Which means that I’m officially ruled out?”

The suited detective nodded slowly. Harry noted that Winter was sitting up in his chair outside, as if he wanted to protest, and that Larsen was ignoring him.

“Mm. And now you’re wondering if I wanted to get rid of her, but that as a homicide detective I knew I’d inevitably be one of the suspects, so did I sort out a hitman and an alibi? Is that why I’m still here?”

Larsen ran his hand over his tie clip, which Harry noticed had the British Airways logo on it. “Not really. But we’re aware of how important the first forty-eight hours are, so we wanted to get this out of the way before asking you what you think happened.”

“Me?”

“You’re no longer a suspect. But you’re still...” Larsen let this hang in the air for a moment before he said the name with his almost exaggerated pronunciation: “Harry Hole.”

Harry looked across at Winter. Was that why he had let his detective reveal what they knew? They were stuck. They needed help. Or was this Sung-min Larsen’s own initiative? Winter looked oddly stiff as he sat out there.

“So it’s true, then?” Harry said. “The perpetrator didn’t leave a single piece of forensic evidence at the scene?”

Harry took Larsen’s expressionless face as confirmation.

“I’ve got no idea what happened,” Harry said.

“Bjørn Holm said you’d found some unidentified boot marks on the property.”

“Yes. But they could just have been from someone who got lost, that sort of thing does happen.”

“Really? There’s no sign of a break-in, and Forensics have confirmed that your... that the victim was killed where she was found. Which suggests that the killer was invited in. Would the victim have let a man she didn’t know into the house?”

“Mm. Did you notice the bars on the windows?”

“Wrought-iron bars over all twelve windows, but not the four basement windows,” Larsen said without hesitation.

“That wasn’t paranoia, but a consequence of being married to a murder detective with a rather too-high profile.”

Larsen made a note. “Let’s assume the murderer was someone she knew. The presumed reconstruction suggests that they were standing face to face. The killer closer to the kitchen, the victim nearer the door, when he first stabbed her twice in the stomach.”

Harry took a deep breath. The stomach. Rakel had been in pain before the blow to the back of her neck. The blow that put her out of her misery.

“The fact that the killer was closer to the kitchen,” Larsen went on. “That made me think that the killer had moved into a more intimate part of the home, that he felt at home there. Do you agree, Hole?”

“That’s one possibility. Another is that he walked round her to grab the knife that’s missing from the block.”

“How do you know—”

“I managed to take a quick look at the scene before your boss threw me out.”

Larsen tilted his head slightly and looked at Harry. As if he were evaluating him. “I see. Well, the business with the kitchen made us think of a third possibility. That it was a woman.”

“Oh?”

“I know it doesn’t often happen, but I’ve just read that a woman has confessed to the Borggata stabbing. The daughter. Heard of that one?”

“I might have.”

“A woman would be less suspicious of opening the door and letting another woman in, even if they didn’t know each other well. And for some reason or other, I find it easier to imagine a woman going straight into another woman’s kitchen than a man. OK, maybe that’s stretching things a bit.”

“I agree,” Harry said, without specifying if he meant the first, second or both ideas. Or that he agreed in general, that he had thought the same when he was at the scene.

“Are there any women who could have had a motive to harm Rakel Fauke?” Larsen asked. “Jealousy, anything like that?”

Harry shook his head. Obviously he could have mentioned Silje Gravseng, but there was no reason to do that now. A few years ago she had been one of his students at Police College, and the closest thing Harry had had to a female stalker. She had visited him in his office one evening and tried to seduce him. Harry had rejected her advances, and she had reacted by accusing him of rape. But her story had been so full of holes that her own lawyer, Johan Krohn, had stopped her, and the whole thing ended with Silje having to leave Police College. After that she paid a visit to Rakel at the house, not to harm or threaten her, but to apologise. All the same, Harry had run a quick check on Silje yesterday. Perhaps because he remembered the hatred in her eyes when she’d realised he didn’t want her. Perhaps because the lack of physical evidence suggested the killer knew a thing or two about detection methods. Perhaps because he wanted to rule out all other possibilities before reaching a final verdict. And enacting a final sentence. It hadn’t taken long to find out that Silje Gravseng was working as a security guard up in Tromsø, where she had been on duty on Saturday night, 1,700 kilometres from Oslo.

“Going back to the knife,” Larsen said when he got no response. “The knives in the block belong to a Japanese set, and the size and shape of the one that’s missing matches the knife wounds. If we assume that was the murder weapon, that suggests that the murder was spontaneous rather than planned. Agreed?”

“That’s one possibility. Another is that the killer knew about the block of knives before he arrived. A third is that the killer used his own knife, but decided to remove a knife from the scene in an attempt to confuse you, as well as getting rid of the forensic evidence.”

Larsen made some more notes. Harry looked at the time and cleared his throat.

“Finally, Hole. You say you’re not aware of any women who might have wanted to kill Rakel Fauke. What about men?”

Harry shook his head slowly.

“What about this Svein Finne?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “You’d have to ask him.”

“We don’t know where he is.”

Harry stood up and took his peacoat from the hook on the wall. “If I run into him, I’ll be sure to let him know you’re looking for him, Larsen.”

He turned towards the window, gave a two-fingered salute to Winter. He got a sour smile and one finger in return.

Larsen stood up and held his hand out to Harry. “Thanks for your help, Hole. Obviously you can find your own way.”

“The big question is whether or not you lot can.” Harry gave Larsen a brief smile, an even briefer handshake, then left.

At the lift he pressed the button and leaned his forehead against the shiny metal beside the door.

She wanted you back.

So, did that make things better or worse?

All these pointless what-ifs. All the self-flagellating I-should-haves. But something else as well, the pathetic hope people cling to about there being a place where those who love each other, those who have Old Tjikko’s roots, will meet again, because the thought of that not being the case is unbearable.

The lift doors slid open. Empty. Just a claustrophobic, constricting coffin inviting him in to carry him down. Down to what? To all-encompassing darkness?

Anyway, Harry rarely used lifts, he couldn’t stand them.

He hesitated. Then stepped inside.

11

Harry woke with a start and stared out at the room. The echo of his own scream was still bouncing between the walls. He looked at the time. Ten o’clock. In the evening. He pieced together the previous thirty-six hours. He had been drunk for pretty much all of them, absolutely nothing had happened, but despite that he had still managed to come up with a workable timeline with no holes in it. He was usually able to do that. But Saturday evening at the Jealousy stood out as a long, complete blackout. Probably the long-term effects of alcohol abuse finally catching up with him.

Harry swung his legs off the sofa as he tried to remember what had made him cry out this time. Then immediately regretted doing so. He had been holding Rakel’s face in his hands, her shattered eyes had been staring, not at him, but through him, like he wasn’t there. She had a thin layer of blood on her chin, as if she’d coughed and a bubble of blood had burst on her lips.

Harry grabbed the bottle of Jim Beam from the coffee table and took a swig. It no longer seemed to work. He took another. The odd thing was that even though he hadn’t seen her face, and didn’t want to see it before the funeral on Friday, it had been so real in the dream.

He looked at his phone, which lay black and dead beside the bottle on the table. It had been switched off since before the interview the previous morning. He ought to turn it on. Oleg was bound to have called. Things needed to be arranged. He needed to pull himself together. He picked up the cork of the bottle of Jim Beam from the end of the table. Sniffed it. It didn’t smell of anything. He threw the cork at the bare wall and closed his fist round the neck of the bottle in a tight stranglehold.

12

At three o’clock in the afternoon Harry stopped drinking. There was nothing special that happened, no particular resolution that stopped him from drinking until four o’clock, or five, or the rest of the evening. His body simply couldn’t take any more. He switched his phone on, ignored the missed calls and text messages, and called Oleg.

“Have you surfaced?”

“More like finished drowning,” Harry said. “You?”

“Keeping afloat.”

“Good. Beat me up first? Then talk about practical stuff?”

“OK. Ready?”

“Go for it.”

Dagny Jensen looked at the time. It was only nine, and they had only just finished the main course. Gunnar had been responsible for most of the conversation, but Dagny still felt she couldn’t handle any more. She explained that she had a headache, and Gunnar was very understanding, thank goodness. They skipped dessert, and he insisted on seeing her home even though she assured him that wasn’t necessary.

“I know Oslo’s safe,” he said. “I just like walking.”

He had talked about entertaining, harmless things, and she had done her best to pay attention and laugh in the right places, even though she was in complete meltdown inside. But as they passed Ringen Cinema and started the climb up Thorvald Meyers gate to the block where she lived, a silence arose. And then he said it, at last.

“You’ve seemed a little out of sorts in the past few days. It’s none of my business, but is anything wrong, Dagny?”

She knew she’d been waiting for it. Hoping for it. That someone would ask. That it might prompt her to dare. Unlike all the rape victims who kept quiet about it, who covered their silence with shame, impotence, fear of not being believed. She had thought that she’d never react like that. And sure enough, she felt none of those things. So why was she behaving like this? Was that why, after she got home from the cemetery, she had cried for two hours non-stop before calling the police, then, while she was waiting to be transferred to the Vice Squad or wherever it was they wanted her to report her rape, she had suddenly cracked and hung up? Then fell asleep on the sofa and woke up in the middle of the night, when her first thought was that the rape was just something she’d dreamed. And she had felt an immense relief. Until she remembered. But she had also caught a glimpse of the idea that it could have been a bad dream. And that if she decided that was the case, it could go on being a dream, as long as she didn’t tell a single soul about it.

“Dagny?”

She took a trembling breath and managed to say: “No, there’s nothing wrong. This is where I live. Thanks for walking me home, Gunnar. See you tomorrow.”

“Hope you’re feeling better then.”

“Thanks.”

He must have noticed that she shrank away when he hugged her, because he let go of her quickly. She walked towards stairwell D as she took her key out of her bag, and when she looked up again she saw that someone had stepped out of the darkness into the light shining from the lamp above the door. A broad-shouldered, slim man in a brown suede jacket and a red bandana around his long black hair. She stopped abruptly with a gasp.

“Don’t be scared, Dagny, I’m not going to hurt you.” His eyes were glowing like embers in his furrowed face. “I’m just here to check up on you and our child. Because I keep my promises.” His voice was low, barely more than a whisper, but he didn’t have to speak loudly for her to hear him. “Because you do remember my promise, don’t you? We’re engaged, Dagny. Until death do us part.”

Dagny tried to breathe, but it was as if her lungs were paralysed.

“To seal our union, let’s repeat our promise with God as our witness, Dagny. Let’s meet in the Catholic church in Vika on Sunday evening, when we’ll have it to ourselves. Nine o’clock? Don’t leave me standing at the altar.” He let out a short laugh. “Until then, sleep well. Both of you.”

He stepped aside, out into the darkness again, and the light from the stairwell momentarily blinded her. By the time she had raised her hand to her eyes, he was gone.

Dagny stood there in silence as warm tears trickled down her cheeks. She looked at the hand holding the key until it stopped shaking. Then she unlocked the door and went inside.

13

The altocumulus clouds lay like a crocheted cloth across the sky above Voksen Church.

“My condolences,” Mikael Bellman said in a heartfelt voice, with a well-practised facial expression. The former young Chief of Police, now an equally young Minister of Justice, shook Harry’s hand with his right as he placed his left hand on top of the handshake as if to seal it. As if to express that he really meant it. Or to assure himself that Harry wasn’t going to snatch his hand away before the assembled press photographers — who hadn’t been given permission to take pictures inside the church — had done their thing. Once Bellman had ticked off Minister of Justice takes time to attend funeral of former police colleague’s spouse, he disappeared towards the waiting black SUV. He had probably checked in advance that Harry wasn’t a suspect.

Harry and Oleg went on shaking hands and nodding at the faces in front of them, most of them Rakel’s friends and colleagues. A few neighbours. Apart from Oleg, Rakel didn’t have any close relatives still alive, but the large church had still been well over half full. The funeral director had said that if they’d delayed the funeral until the following week, even more people would have been able to rearrange their schedules. Harry was pleased Oleg hadn’t announced any gathering after the funeral. Neither of them knew Rakel’s colleagues particularly well or felt like chatting to the neighbours. What needed saying about Rakel had been said by Oleg, Harry and a couple of her childhood friends inside the church, and that would have to do. Even the priest had to confine himself to the hymns, prayers and prescribed phrases.

“Fuck.” It was Øystein Eikeland, one of Harry’s own two childhood friends. With tears in his eyes he placed his hands on Harry’s shoulders and breathed fresh alcohol into his face. Maybe it was just his appearance that made Harry think of Øystein whenever anyone trotted out jokes about Keith Richards. For every cigarette you smoke, God takes an hour away from you... and gives it to Keith Richards. Harry saw that his friend was thinking hard before he finally opened his mouth to reveal his brown stumps and repeated, with a little more intensity: “Fuck.”

“Thanks,” Harry said.

“Tresko couldn’t make it,” Øystein said without letting go of Harry. “That’s to say, he gets panic attacks in groups of more than... well, more than two people. But he sends his best wishes, and says...” Øystein screwed his eyes up against the morning sunlight. “Fuck.”

“A few of us are meeting at Schrøder’s.”

“Free bar?”

“Max three.”

“OK.”

“Roar Bohr, I was Rakel’s chief.” Harry looked into the slate-grey eyes of a man who was fifteen centimetres shorter than him, but who still seemed just as tall. And there was something about his posture, and also the slightly archaic “chief,” that put Harry in mind of an officer in the military. His handshake was firm and his gaze steady and direct, but there was also a soreness, possibly even vulnerability there. But perhaps that was because of the circumstances. “Rakel was my best co-worker, and a wonderful person. It’s a huge loss to the NHRI and all of us who work there, and especially for me, because I worked so closely with her.”

“Thanks,” Harry said, believing him. But perhaps that was just the warmth of his handshake. The warm hand of a man who worked in human rights. Harry watched Roar Bohr as he walked over to two women standing a short distance away, and noted that Bohr looked down at where he was putting his feet. Like someone who automatically looks for landmines. Then he noticed that there was something familiar about one of the women, although she had her back to him. Bohr said something, evidently quietly, because the woman had to lean over, and Bohr put one hand gently on the base of her spine.

And then the condolences were finished. The hearse had driven away with the coffin, and a few people had already gone off to meetings and other everyday concerns. Harry saw Truls Berntsen walking off on his own to catch the bus back to the office, presumably to play more solitaire. Some of the others were standing in little groups outside the church talking. Police Chief Gunnar Hagen and Anders Wyller, the young detective Harry was renting his flat from, were standing with Katrine and Bjørn, who had brought the baby with them. Some people probably found the sound of a baby crying something of a comfort at a funeral, a reminder that life did actually go on. To anyone who wanted life to go on, anyway. Harry announced to everyone who was still there that there was going to be a small gathering at Schrøder’s. Sis, his sister, who had travelled up from Kristiansand with her partner, came over, gave Harry and Oleg each a long, hard hug, then said they needed to be getting back. Harry nodded and said that was a shame but that he understood, even though he was actually relieved. Apart from Oleg, Sis was the only person with the potential to make him cry in public.

Helga drove to Schrøder’s with Harry and Oleg. Nina had laid a long table for them.

A dozen people showed up, and Harry was sitting hunched over his coffee listening to the sound of the others talking when someone put a hand on his back. It was Bjørn.

“I don’t suppose people usually give presents at funerals.” He handed Harry a flat, rectangular parcel. “But this has helped me through some rough times.”

“Thanks, Bjørn.” Harry turned the present over. It wasn’t hard to guess what it was. “By the way, there’s something I meant to ask you.”

“Oh?”

“Sung-min Larsen didn’t ask me about the wildlife camera when he interviewed me. Which means you didn’t mention it when they spoke to you.”

“He didn’t ask. And I thought it was up to you to mention it if you thought it was relevant.”

“Mm. Really?”

“If you didn’t tell them about it either, then it strikes me that it can’t be that relevant.”

“You didn’t say anything because you’ve figured out that I’m planning to go after Finne without Kripos or anyone else getting involved?”

“I didn’t hear that, and if I did, I wouldn’t have a clue what you were talking about.”

“Thanks, Bjørn. One more thing: what do you know about Roar Bohr?”

“Bohr? Only that he’s the guy in charge where Rakel worked. Something to do with human rights, isn’t it?”

“The National Human Rights Institution.”

“That’s it. It was Bohr who called to say they were worried when Rakel didn’t show up for work.”

“Mm.” Harry glanced over at the door when it swung open. And instantly forgot whatever follow-up question he had been thinking of asking Bjørn. It was her, the woman who had been talking to Bohr with her back to Harry. She stopped and looked around tentatively. She hadn’t changed much. That face with its high cheekbones, prominent, jet-black eyebrows above almost childishly large green eyes, her honey-brown hair, full lips and slightly wide mouth.

Her gaze finally found Harry and she lit up.

“Kaja!” he heard Gunnar Hagen exclaim. “Come and sit down!”

The Police Chief pulled out a chair.

The woman by the door smiled at Hagen and indicated that she wanted to say hello to Harry first.

The skin of her hand felt just as soft as he remembered.

“My condolences. I really do feel for you, Harry.”

Her voice too.

“Thanks. This is Oleg. And his girlfriend, Helga. This is Kaja Solness, an old colleague.”

They all shook hands.

“So you’re back,” Harry said.

“Not for long.”

“Mm.” He tried to think of something to say. Found nothing.

She put a feather-light hand on his arm. “You carry on, and I’ll go and talk to Gunnar and the others.”

Harry nodded and watched as her long legs wove their way between the chairs to the other end of the table.

Oleg leaned closer to him. “Who’s she? Apart from an old colleague?”

“Long story.”

“So I saw. What’s the short version?”

Harry took a sip of coffee. “That I once let her go in favour of your mother.”

It was three o’clock when the first of the final three guests, Øystein, stood up, misquoted a Bob Dylan lyric in parting and left.

One of the two remaining guests moved to the chair next to Harry’s.

“Haven’t you got a job to go to?” Kaja asked.

“Not tomorrow either. Suspended until further notice. You?”

“I’m on standby for the Red Cross. I mean, I’m getting paid, but right now I’m just waiting at home for shit to kick off somewhere in the world.”

“Which it will, of course?”

“Which it will. When you look at it like that, it’s a bit like working in Crime Squad. You go around almost hoping that something terrible is going to happen.”

“Mm. The Red Cross. That’s a bit of a leap from Crime Squad.”

“Yes and no. I’m in charge of security. My last deployment was two years in Afghanistan.”

“And before that?”

“Another two years. In Afghanistan.” She smiled, revealing her small, pointed teeth, the imperfect feature that made her face interesting.

“What’s so good about Afghanistan?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “To start with it was probably just the fact that you were confronted with problems so big that your own personal problems seemed small. And that you could be useful. And then you get to like the people you meet and work with.”

“Like Roar Bohr?”

“Yes. Did he tell you he was in Afghanistan?”

“No, but he looked like a soldier who doesn’t want to step on any mines. Was he in Special Forces?”

Kaja looked at him thoughtfully. The pupils in the centre of those green irises were large. They didn’t waste energy on the lighting in Schrøder’s.

“Confidential?” Harry asked.

She shrugged again. “Yes, Bohr was a lieutenant colonel in the Special Operations Forces. He was one of the team sent to Kabul with a list of Taliban terrorists that the ISAF wanted taken out.”

“Mm. A desk jockey, or did he shoot the jihadists himself?”

“We both took part in security meetings at the Norwegian Embassy, but I was never told any details. All I know is that Roar and his sister were both shooting champions in Vest-Agder.”

“And he dealt with the list?”

“I assume so. You’re pretty similar, you and Bohr. You don’t give up until you’ve got the people you’re after.”

“If Bohr was so good at the job, why did he leave and start working with human rights?”

She raised an eyebrow. As if to ask why he was so interested in Bohr. But she seemed to conclude that he just needed to talk about something different — anything, as long as it wasn’t Rakel, himself, the current situation.

“ISAF was replaced by Resolute Support, which meant a transition from so-called peacekeeping to non-combat operations. So they were no longer allowed to shoot. Besides, his wife wanted him home. She couldn’t handle being left on her own with two children any longer. A Norwegian officer with ambitions to become a general needs to have completed at least one tour in Afghanistan, so when Roar requested a transfer, he knew he was effectively ruling himself out of a senior position. And it probably just wasn’t as enjoyable anymore. Besides, people with his leadership experience are highly sought-after in other branches.”

“But to go from shooting people to human rights?”

“What do you think he was fighting for in Afghanistan?”

“Mm. An idealist and a family man, then.”

“Roar is a man who believes in things. And who’s prepared to make sacrifices for the people he loves. Like you did.” She pulled a face. A fleeting, painful smile. She buttoned her coat. “That’s worth respect, Harry.”

“Mm. You think I sacrificed something back then?”

“We like to think we’re rational, but we always follow the diktat of our hearts, don’t we?” She pulled out a business card from her bag and laid it down on the table in front of him. “I still live in the same place. If you need someone to talk to, I know a bit about loss and longing.”

The sun had slipped down behind the ridge, colouring the sky orange, when Harry let himself into the wooden house. Oleg was on his way back to Lakselv and had given him the keys so that he could let an estate agent in once a week. Harry had asked Oleg to think about whether he really wanted to sell the house, if it wouldn’t be useful to come back to when he’d completed his year on placement. Somewhere for him and Helga, possibly. Oleg promised to think it through carefully, but it sounded like he’d made his mind up.

The crime-scene investigators had finished their work, and had cleaned up after themselves. That’s to say: the pool of blood was gone, but not the classic chalk outline showing where the body had been lying. Harry could imagine the estate agent anxiously trying to find a tactful way to suggest that the chalk should be removed before the first viewing.

Harry went over to the kitchen window and watched the sky grow pale as the glow disappeared. Darkness took over. He had been sober for twenty-eight hours, and Rakel had been dead for at least 141.

He walked across the floor and stood above the outline. He knelt down. Ran his fingertips over the rough wooden floor. He lay on the floor, crawled inside the lines, and curled up into the same fetal position, trying to stay within the white lines. And then, at last, he started to cry. But there were no tears at first, just hoarse wails that started in his chest, grew and forced their way out through his too-narrow throat before finally filling the room, sounding like a man who was struggling to stay alive. When he stopped screaming, he rolled onto his back to catch his breath. And then the tears came. And through the tears, swimming forward as if in a dream, he saw the crystal chandelier directly above him. And saw that the crystals formed the letter S.

14

The birds were singing with joy in Lyder Sagens gate.

Possibly because it was nine o’clock in the morning and nothing had spoiled the day yet. Possibly because the sun was shining and it looked like it was going to be the perfect start to what was forecast to be a warm weekend. Or possibly because the birds in Lyder Sagens gate were happier than in the rest of the world. Because even in a country that regularly topped the statistics of the happiest countries in the world, this not particularly striking street named after a teacher from Bergen was a particular high point: 470 metres of happiness, free not only from financial worries, but also from exaggerated materialism, with solid, unfussy villas and large but not excessively neat gardens, where children’s toys lay scattered with a charm that left no doubt as to the families’ priorities. Bohemian, but with a new Audi, though not one of the flashy ones, in a garage full of old, heavy and delightfully impractical garden furniture made of well-seasoned wood. Lyder Sagens gate may have been one of the most expensive streets in the country, but its ideal resident seemed to be an artist who had inherited the house from their grandmother. Either way, the residents largely appeared to be good social democrats who believed in sustainable development and had values as solid as the outsized wooden beams that jutted out here and there from their old-fashioned houses.

Harry pushed the gate open and the creak sounded like an echo from the past. Everything seemed the same as before. The creak of the steps that led up to the door. The bell with no nameplate. The man’s shoes, size forty-six, that Kaja Solness left outside to deter burglars and other unwelcome visitors.

Kaja opened the door, brushed a sun-bleached strand of hair from her face and folded her arms.

Even the woolly cardigan that was too big for her and the shabby felt slippers were the same.

“Harry,” she stated.

“You live within walking distance of my flat, so I thought I’d try calling round instead of ringing.”

“What?” She tilted her head to one side.

“That’s what I said the first time I rang your doorbell.”

“How can you remember that?”

Because I spent a very long time thinking about what to say and practising it, Harry thought, and smiled. “Memory like an elephant. Can I come in?”

He saw a hint of hesitation in her eyes, and it struck him that it hadn’t even occurred to him that she might have someone. A partner. A lover. Or some other reason to keep him on the other side of the threshold.

“If I’m not disturbing you, I mean?”

“Er, no, it... it’s just a bit of a surprise.”

“I could come back another time.”

“No. No, goodness, I said you could come anytime.” She stepped aside.

Kaja put a cup of steaming tea on the coffee table in front of Harry and sat down on the sofa, tucking her long legs beneath her. Harry looked at the book that lay open, spine up. Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. He remembered something about a young woman who fell in love with a gloomy loner who was separated but who turned out to have his wife locked up in the attic.

“They’re not letting me investigate the murder,” he said. “Even though I’ve been ruled out as a suspect.”

“That’s standard procedure in cases like this, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know if there’s a set procedure for murder detectives whose wives have been murdered. And I know who did it.”

“You know?”

“I’m pretty certain.”

“Evidence?”

“Gut feeling.”

“Like everyone else who has ever worked with you, I have the greatest respect for your gut feeling, Harry, but are you sure it’s reliable when it comes to your own wife?”

“It isn’t just my gut. I’ve ruled out the other possibilities.”

“All of them?” Kaja was holding her cup without drinking it, as if she had made the tea mostly to warm her hands up. “I seem to remember having a mentor called Harry who told me that there are always other possibilities, that conclusions based on deduction have an undeserved good reputation.”

“Rakel had no enemies apart from this one. Who wasn’t actually hers, he’s my enemy. His name is Svein Finne. Also known as the Fiancé.”

“Who’s he?”

“A rapist and murderer. He’s called the Fiancé because he impregnates his victims and kills them if they don’t give birth to his child. I was a young murder detective, and I worked day and night to catch him. He was my first. And I laughed with joy when I put the cuffs on him.” Harry looked down at his hands. “That was probably the last time I felt so happy when I arrested someone.”

“Oh? Why?”

Harry’s eyes wandered across the beautiful, old, floral-patterned wallpaper.

“There are probably several reasons, and my self-awareness is pretty limited. But one reason is that as soon as Finne had finished his sentence, he raped a nineteen-year-old girl and threatened to kill her if she had an abortion. She had one anyway. A week later she was found lying on her stomach on a forest track in Linnerud. Blood everywhere, they were sure she was dead. But when they turned her over they heard a sound, a babyish voice saying ‘mama.’ They got her to hospital, and she survived. It wasn’t the girl talking. Finne had cut her open, inserted a battery-operated talking doll, and sewn her up again.”

Kaja gasped for breath. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m a bit out of practice.”

Harry nodded. “So I caught him again. I set a trap and caught him with his trousers down. Literally. There’s a photograph. Bright flash, slightly overexposed. Apart from the humiliation, I have personally been responsible for the fact that Svein Finne, the Fiancé, has spent twenty of his seventy-plus years behind bars. Among other things, for a murder he says he didn’t commit. So there’s the motive. That’s the reason for my gut feeling. Can we go out onto the terrace for a cigarette?”

They got their coats and sat down on the large, covered terrace that looked out onto a garden full of bare apple trees. Harry glanced up at the windows of the first floor in the neighbouring house on Lyder Sagens gate. There were no lights on in any of them.

“Your neighbour,” Harry said as he took out his cigarette packet. “Has he stopped watching over you?”

“Greger turned ninety a couple of years ago. He died last year,” Kaja sighed.

“So now you have to take care of yourself?”

She shrugged. There was a rhythm in the movement, like a dance. “I have a feeling someone’s always watching over me.”

“Have you got religious?”

“No. Can I have a cigarette?”

Harry looked at her. She was sitting on her hands. The way he remembered her doing because she got cold so quickly.

“You know we sat right here doing this years ago? Seven years? Eight?”

“Yes,” she said. “I remember.” She pulled one hand out from beneath her. Held the cigarette between her index and middle fingers as she let Harry light it. She inhaled and breathed out grey smoke. She handled the cigarette just as clumsily as she had last time.

Harry felt the sweet aftertaste of the memories. They had talked about all the smoking in the film Now, Voyager, about material monism, free will, John Fante and the pleasures of stealing little things. Then, as punishment for those pain-free moments, he started at the sound of her name and the knife was twisted again.

“You sound so certain when you say that Rakel had no enemies apart from this Finne guy, Harry. But what makes you think you know all the details of her life? People can live together, share a bed, share everything, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they share each other’s secrets.”

Harry cleared his throat. “I knew her, Kaja. She knew me. We knew each other. We didn’t have any sec—” He heard the tremble in his own voice and broke off.

“That’s great, Harry, but I don’t know what you want me to be here. Comforter or professional?”

“Professional.”

“OK.” Kaja put her cigarette down on the edge of the wooden table. “Then I’ll give you another possibility, just as an example. Rakel had embarked on a relationship with another man. It might be impossible for you to imagine that she would have gone behind your back, but believe me, women are better at hiding things like that than men, especially if they think there’s good reason to. Or, to be more accurate: men are worse at uncovering infidelity than women.”

Harry closed his eyes. “That sounds like a big—”

“Generalisation. Of course it is. Here’s another one. Women are unfaithful for different reasons than men. Maybe Rakel knew she needed to get away from you, but needed a catalyst, something to give her a push. Like a short-term fling. Then, once the fling had served its purpose and she was free from you, she finished with the other man as well. And bingo, you’ve got an infatuated, humiliated man with a motive for murder.”

“OK,” Harry said. “But do you believe that yourself?”

“No, but it just shows that there could be other possibilities. I certainly don’t believe the motive you’re trying to ascribe to Finne.”

“No?”

“The idea that he killed Rakel just because you were doing your job as a police officer? That he hates you, had made threats against you, fine. But men like Finne are driven by sexual lust, not revenge. No more than other criminals, anyway. And I’ve never felt threatened by anyone I sent to jail, no matter how loud-mouthed they were. There’s a long way between firing off a cheap threat and taking the risk of actually committing murder. I think Finne would have needed a far stronger motive to risk twelve years, possibly the rest of his life, in prison.”

Harry sucked hard, angrily, on his cigarette. Angrily because he could feel every fibre of his being fighting against what she had said. Angrily because he knew she was right. “So what sort of revenge motive would you consider strong enough?”

Once again, the dancing, almost childish shrug of the shoulders. “I don’t know. Something personal. Something that fits with what he’s done to you.”

“But that’s what I’ve done. I took his freedom from him, the life he loved. So he’s taken what I loved most away from me.”

“Rakel.” Kaja pushed her bottom lip out and nodded. “To make you live with the pain.”

“Exactly.” Harry noticed that he had smoked the cigarette down to the filter. “You see things, Kaja. That’s really why I came.”

“What do you mean?”

“You can tell I’m not really functioning.” Harry tried to smile. “I’ve become my own worst example of an emotion-led detective who starts with a conclusion and then looks for questions whose answers he hopes will confirm it. And that’s why I need you, Kaja.”

“I don’t follow.”

“I’ve been suspended and am no longer allowed to work with anyone in the department. As detectives, we all need someone to bounce ideas off. Someone to offer a bit of resistance. New ideas. You used to be a murder detective, and you haven’t got anything to fill your days.”

“No. No, Harry.”

“Hear me out, Kaja.” Harry leaned forward. “I know you don’t owe me anything, I know I walked away from you that time. The fact that my heart was broken may have been the explanation, but that was still no excuse for me to break yours. I knew what I was doing, and I’d do the same thing again. Because I had to, because I loved Rakel. I know it’s a lot to ask, but I’m asking anyway. Because I’m going mad, Kaja. I’ve got to do something, and the only thing I can do is investigate murders. And drink. I can drink myself to death if I have to.”

Harry saw Kaja flinch again.

“I’m just saying it like it is,” he said. “You don’t have to reply now, all I’m asking is that you think about it. You’ve got my number. And now I’m going to leave you in peace.”

Harry stood up.

He pulled his boots on, walked out of the door, down to Suhms gate, down past Norabakken and Fagerborg Church, successfully passed two open pubs with their own congregations crowded around the bar, saw the entrance to Bislett Stadium, which had once had its own congregation but now seemed more like a prison, and looked up at the pointlessly clear sky above him, where he caught a glimpse of an S twinkling in the sunlight as he crossed the street. There was a shriek as a tram braked hard, echoing his own scream when he got up from the floor and one of his boots slipped on blood.

Truls Berntsen was sitting in front of his PC watching the third episode of the first season of The Shield. He had watched the whole series twice already, and had started again. Television series were like porn films: the old, classic ones were the best. Besides, Truls was Vic Mackey. OK, not entirely, but Vic was the man Truls Berntsen would like to be: corrupt through and through, but with a moral code that made it all right. That was what was so cool. That you could be so bad, but only because of how you looked at it. From which angle. The Nazis and Communists had made their own war films, after all, and got people to cheer on their own bastards. Nothing was entirely true, and nothing was absolutely false. Point of view. That was everything. Point of view.

The phone rang.

That was disconcerting.

It was Hagen who had insisted that the Crime Squad Unit should be staffed at weekends too. With just the one officer, but that suited Truls fine, he was happy to take other people’s shifts too. To start with, he had nothing better to be doing, and he needed the money and time owing for his trip to Pattaya in the autumn. And there was absolutely nothing to do, seeing as the duty officer fielded all the calls. He wasn’t entirely sure that they knew there was anyone sitting in Crime Squad at the weekend, but he had no intention of telling them.

Which was why this call was disconcerting, seeing as the screen said it was the duty officer.

After five rings, Truls swore quietly, turned the volume of The Shield down but left it playing, and picked up the receiver.

“Yes?” he said, managing to make that single, positive syllable sound like a rejection.

“Duty officer here. We’ve got a lady who needs assistance. She wants to see pictures of rapists, in connection with a rape.”

“That’s the Vice Squad’s job.”

“You’ve got the same pictures, and they don’t have anyone there at the weekend.”

“Better if she comes back on Monday.”

“Better if she sees the pictures while she remembers the face. Are you open at weekends or not?”

“Fine,” Truls Berntsen grunted. “Bring her up, then.”

“We’re pretty busy down here, so how about you come down and get her?”

“I’m busy too.” Truls waited, but got no response. “OK, I’ll come down,” he sighed.

“Good. And listen, it’s been a while since it was called the Vice Squad. It’s called the Sexual Offences Unit these days.”

“Fuck you too,” Truls muttered, almost too quietly to be heard, then hung up and pressed Pause, making The Shield freeze just before one of Truls Berntsen’s favourite scenes, the one where Vic liquidates his police colleague Terry with a bullet just below his left eye.

“So we’re not talking about a rape that you were subjected to, but one you’re saying you witnessed?” Truls Berntsen said, pulling an extra chair over to his desk. “You’re sure it was rape?”

“No,” the woman said. She had introduced herself as Dagny Jensen. “But if I recognise any of the rapists in your archive, I’d be pretty sure.”

Truls scratched his protruding Frankenstein’s-monster forehead. “So you don’t want to file a report until you’ve recognised the perpetrator?”

“That’s right.”

“That’s not the way we usually do things,” Truls said. “But let’s say I run a ten-minute slideshow here and now, and if we find the guy, you can go back to the duty officer to file the report and explain. I’m on my own up here and I’ve got my hands full. Deal?”

“OK.”

“Let’s get going. Estimated age of the rapist?”

Just three minutes later, Dagny Jensen pointed at one of the pictures on the screen.

“Who’s that?” He noted that she was trying to suppress a tremble in her voice.

“The one and only Svein Finne,” Truls said. “Was it him you saw?”

“What’s he done?”

“What hasn’t he done? Let’s see.”

Truls typed, pressed Enter and a detailed criminal record appeared.

He saw Dagny Jensen’s eyes move down the page, and the growing horror on her face as the monster materialised in dry police language.

“He’s murdered women he got pregnant,” she whispered.

“Mutilation and murder,” Truls corrected. “He’s served his time, but if there’s one man we’d be happy to receive a new report about, it’s Finne.”

“Are you... are you completely certain you’d be able to catch him, then?”

“Oh, we’d get hold of him if we issued a warrant for his arrest,” Truls said. “Obviously, whether or not we’d get a conviction in a rape trial is an entirely different matter. It’s always one person’s word against another’s in cases like that, and we’d probably just have to let him go again. But obviously with a witness like you, it would be two against one. With a bit of luck.”

Dagny Jensen swallowed several times.

Truls yawned and looked at the time. “Now you’ve seen the picture, you can make your way back down to the duty officer and get the paperwork started, OK?”

“Yes,” the woman said, staring at the screen. “Yes, of course.”

15

Harry was sitting on the sofa staring at the wall. He hadn’t turned the lights on, and the falling darkness had slowly erased the contours and colours and settled like a cool cloth on his forehead. He wished it could erase him too. When you actually thought about it, life didn’t have to be that complicated. It could basically be reduced to The Clash’s binary question: should I stay or should I go? Drink? Not drink? He wanted to drown. Disappear. But he couldn’t, not quite yet.

Harry opened the present Bjørn had given him. As he had assumed, it was a vinyl album. Road to Ruin. Of the three albums Øystein resolutely claimed were the Ramones’ only really good work (here he would usually refer to Lou Reed describing the Ramones’ music as “shit”), Bjørn had managed to buy the only one Harry didn’t have. On the shelves behind him — between The Rainmakers’ first album and Rank and File’s debut — he had both Ramones and his favourite, Rocket to Russia.

Harry pulled the black vinyl disc out and put Road to Ruin on the turntable.

He spotted one track he recognised and placed the needle at the start of “I Wanna Be Sedated.”

Guitar riffs filled the room. It sounded more heavily produced and mainstream than their debut album. He liked the minimalist guitar solo, but wasn’t so sure about the modulation afterwards; it sounded suspiciously like Status Quo — style boogie at its most imbecilic. But it was performed with swaggering confidence. Like his favourite track “Rockaway Beach,” where they stood just as confidently on the shoulders of The Beach Boys, like car thieves cruising down the main street with the windows down.

While Harry was trying to work out if he actually liked “I Wanna Be Sedated” or not, and whether or not he should go to the bar, the room was lit up by the phone on the coffee table.

He peered down at the screen. Sighed. Wondered whether to answer.

“Hi, Alexandra.”

“Hi, Harry. I’ve been trying to get hold of you. You need to change the message on your voicemail.”

“You think?”

“It doesn’t even say your name. ‘Leave a message if you must.’ Just six words that sound more like a warning, followed by a bleep.”

“Sounds like it works the way it should.”

“I’ve called you a lot of times.”

“I saw, but I haven’t been... in the mood.”

“I heard.” She let out a deep sigh, and her voice suddenly sounded pained, sympathetic. “It’s just terrible.”

“Yes.”

A pause followed, like a silent intermezzo marking the transition between two acts. Because when Alexandra went on, it wasn’t in either her deep, playful voice or the pained, sympathetic one. It was her professional voice.

“I’ve found something for you.”

Harry ran his hand over his face. “OK, I’m all ears.”

It had been so long since he first contacted Alexandra Sturdza that he had given up any hope of getting anything from her. More than six months had passed since he’d gone up to the Forensic Medical Institute at Rikshospitalet, where he had been met by a young woman who had come straight from the lab, with a hard, pockmarked face, bright eyes and an almost imperceptible accent. She had taken him into her office and hung up her white lab coat as Harry asked if she could help him, kind of off the record, to compare Svein Finne’s DNA against old cases of murder and rape.

“So, Harry Hole, you want me to jump the queue for you?”

After Parliament abolished the statute of limitations for murder and rape in 2014, naturally there had been a rush of requests to apply new DNA-analysis technology to older cases, and waiting times had shot up.

Harry had considered rephrasing his request, but he could see from the look in her eyes that there was no point. “Yes.”

“Interesting. In exchange for what?”

“Exchange? Hm. What would you like?”

“A beer with Harry Hole would be a start.”

Under her coat Alexandra Sturdza was wearing black, figure-hugging clothes that emphasised a muscular body that made Harry think of cats and sports cars. But he had never really been that interested in cars, and was more of a dog person.

“If that’s what it’ll take, I’ll get you a beer. But I don’t drink. And I’m married.”

“We’ll see,” she said with a hoarse laugh. She looked like she laughed a lot, but it was strangely difficult to guess her age, she could have been anywhere from ten to twenty years younger than him. She tilted her head and looked at him. “Meet me at Revolver at eight o’clock tomorrow, and we’ll see what I’ve got for you, OK?”

She hadn’t had much. Not then, and not much since. Just enough to invite herself for a beer every now and then. But he had maintained a professional distance and made sure their meetings were short and to the point. Until Rakel threw him out and the dam had burst, carrying everything away with it, including any principles about professional distance.

Harry saw that the wall had turned another shade greyer.

“I haven’t got an exact match from a case,” Alexandra began.

Harry yawned; it was the same old story.

“But then I realised that I could compare Svein Finne’s DNA profile against all the others in the database. And I found a partial match to a murderer.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that if Svein Finne isn’t a convicted murderer, then he’s the father of one, at least.”

“Oh, shit.” Something dawned on Harry. A foreboding. “What’s the murderer’s name?”

“Valentin Gjertsen.”

A cold shiver ran down Harry’s spine. Valentin Gjertsen. Not that Harry had more faith in genes than environment, but there was a sort of logic to the fact that Svein Finne’s seed, his genes, had helped create a son who had become one of the worst killers in Norwegian criminal history.

“You sound less surprised than I thought you’d be,” Alexandra said.

“I’m less surprised than I thought I’d be,” Harry replied, rubbing his neck.

“Is that helpful?”

“Yes,” Harry said. “Yes, it’s very helpful. Thanks, Alexandra.”

“What are you going to do now?”

“Mm. Good question.”

“Do you want to come around to mine?”

“Like I said, I’m not really in the—”

“We don’t have to do anything. Maybe we could both do with someone to lie next to for a while. You remember where I live?”

Harry closed his eyes. There had been a number of beds, doorways and courtyards since the dam burst, and alcohol had laid a veil over faces, names, addresses. And right now, the image of Valentin Gjertsen was blocking out pretty much everything else from his memory.

“What the hell, Harry? You were drunk, but couldn’t you at least pretend you remember?”

“Grünerløkka,” Harry said. “Seilduksgata.”

“Clever boy. An hour from now?”

As Harry hung up and called Kaja Solness, a thought struck him. The fact that he had remembered Seilduksgata regardless of how drunk he had been... he always remembered something, his memory was never completely blank. Maybe it wasn’t the long-term effects of drinking that meant he couldn’t remember that evening at the Jealousy Bar, maybe there was something he didn’t want to remember.

“Hello, you’ve reached Kaja’s voicemail.”

“I’ve got the motive you were asking about,” Harry said after the bleep. “His name is Valentin Gjertsen, and it turns out that he was Svein Finne’s son. Valentin Gjertsen is dead. He was killed. By me.”

16

Alexandra Sturdza let out a long sound as she stretched her arms over her head so that her fingers and bare feet touched the brass bedstead at either end of the mattress. Then she rolled onto her side, pushed the duvet between her thighs and put one of the big white pillows under her head. She was grinning so much that her dark eyes almost disappeared into her hard face.

“I’m glad you came,” she said, putting one hand on Harry’s chest.

“Mm.” Harry was lying on his back staring into the bright light from the ceiling lamp. She had been wearing a long silk dressing gown when she opened the door for him, then took him by the hand and led him straight into the bedroom.

“Are you feeling guilty?” she asked.

“Always,” Harry said.

“For being here, I mean.”

“Not particularly. It just fits into the scale of indicators.”

“Indicators of what?”

“That I’m a bad man.”

“If you’re already feeling guilty, you might as well get undressed.”

“So there’s no doubt that Valentin Gjertsen was Svein Finne’s son?” Harry folded his hands behind his head.

“No.”

“Christ, it really is an absurd chain of events. Think about it. Valentin Gjertsen was probably the product of a rape.”

“Who isn’t?” She rubbed her crotch against his thigh.

“Did you know that Valentin Gjertsen raped the prison dentist during an appointment? Afterwards he pulled her nylon tights over her head and set light to them.”

“Shut up, Harry, I want you. There are condoms in the drawer of the bedside table.”

“No thanks.”

“No? You don’t want another kid, do you?”

“I didn’t mean the condoms.” Harry put one hand on the two of hers that had started to undo his belt.

“What the hell?” she snapped. “What’s the point of you if you don’t want to fuck?”

“Good question.”

“Why don’t you want to?”

“Low testosterone levels, at a guess.”

With an angry sniff Alexandra rolled onto her back. “She isn’t just your ex-wife, Harry, she’s dead. When are you going to accept that?”

“You think five days of celibacy is excessive?”

She looked at him. “Funny. But you’re not dealing with it as well as you’re pretending to, are you?”

“Pretending is half the job,” Harry said, raising his hips and pulling his cigarettes from his pocket. “Research shows that you end up in a better mood if you exercise your smile muscles. If you want to cry, laugh. I sleep. What’s the smoking policy in your bedroom?”

“Everything’s allowed. But when people smoke in front of me, my policy is to read what it says on the packet. Tobacco kills, my friend.”

“Mm. That bit about ‘my friend’ is nice.”

“It’s to make you recognise that it isn’t just something you’re doing to yourself, but to everyone who cares for you.”

“I got that. So, at the risk of cancer and feeling even more guilty, I am hereby lighting a cigarette.” Harry inhaled and blew the smoke up at the ceiling lamp. “You like lights,” he said.

“I grew up in Timisoara.”

“Oh?”

“The first town in Europe to have electric streetlamps. Only New York beat us to it.”

“And that’s why you like lights?”

“No, but you like fun facts.”

“Do I?”

“Yes. Such as the fact that Finne had a rapist for a son.”

“That’s a bit more than a fun fact.”

“Why?”

Harry took a drag on the cigarette, but it tasted of nothing. “Because the son gives Finne a strong enough motive for revenge. I hunted down his son in connection with several murder investigations. And it ended with me shooting him.”

“You...”

“Valentin Gjertsen was unarmed, but provoked me to shoot by pretending he was reaching for a gun. Unfortunately I was the only witness, and Internal Investigations found it problematic that I had fired three shots. But I was cleared. They couldn’t, as they put it, prove that I hadn’t acted in self-defense.”

“And Finne found out about this? And you think he killed your ex-wife as a result?”

Harry nodded slowly. “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”

“Logically, he ought to have killed Oleg.”

Harry raised an eyebrow. “So you know his name?”

“You talk a lot when you’re drunk, Harry. And far too much about your ex-wife and the boy.”

“Oleg isn’t mine, he’s from Rakel’s first marriage.”

“You told me that too, but isn’t that just biology?”

Harry shook his head. “Not for Svein Finne. He didn’t love Valentin Gjertsen as a person, he hardly even knew him. He loved Valentin simply because he was carrying his genes. Finne’s driving force is to spread his seed and father children. Biology is everything to him. It’s his way of gaining eternal life.”

“That’s sick.”

“Is it?” Harry looked at his cigarette. Wondered where lung cancer was in the list of things queuing up to kill him. “Maybe we’re more tightly bound by biology than we like to think. Maybe we’re all born bloodline chauvinists, racists and nationalists, with an instinctive desire for global domination for our own family. And then we learn to ignore it, to a greater or lesser extent. Most of us, anyway.”

“We still want to know where we come from, in purely biological terms. Did you know that over the past twenty years at the Forensic Medical Institute we’ve seen a 300 percent increase in the number of DNA tests from people who want to know who their father is, or if their child really is theirs?”

“Fun fact.”

“That tells us something about how our identity is bound up with our genetic inheritance.”

“You think?”

“Yes.” She picked up the glass of wine she’d left on the bedside table. “If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here.”

“In bed with me?”

“In Norway. I came here to find my father. My mother never liked talking about him, all I knew was that he was from Norway. When she died, I bought a ticket and came to look for him. That first year I had three different jobs. All I knew about my father was that he was probably intelligent, because my mother was pretty average but I always got top grades in Romania, and it only took me six months to learn Norwegian fluently. But I couldn’t find my father. So I got a grant to study chemistry at NTNU, then got a job at the Forensic Medical Institute, working on DNA analysis.”

“Where you could carry on looking.”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“I found him.”

“Really? You must have had luck on your side, because as far as I know, you lot delete DNA profiles taken in paternity cases after one year.”

“In paternity cases, yes.”

Then the penny dropped for Harry. “You found your father in the police database. He had a criminal record?”

“Yes.”

“Mm. What had he—”

Harry’s trouser pocket vibrated. He looked at the number. Pressed Answer.

“Hi, Kaja. Did you get my message?”

“Yes.” Her voice was soft against his ear.

“And?”

“And I agree, I think you’ve found Finne’s motive.”

“Does that mean you’re going to help me?”

“I don’t know.” In the pause that followed he could hear Kaja’s breathing in one ear, Alexandra’s in the other. “It sounds like you’re lying down, Harry. Are you at home?”

“No, he’s at Alexandra’s.” Alexandra’s voice cut into Harry’s ear.

“Who’s that?” Kaja asked.

“That...” Harry said, “was Alexandra.”

“In that case I won’t disturb you. Goodnight.”

“You’re not disturbing...”

Kaja had already hung up.

Harry looked at his phone. Put it back in his pocket. He stubbed the cigarette out on the cube light on the bedside table and swung his legs off the bed.

“Where are you going?”

“Home,” Harry said, then bent over and kissed her on the forehead.

Harry was walking west quickly as his brain worked things through.

He took out his phone and called Bjørn Holm.

“Harry?”

“It was Finne.”

“We’ll wake the baby, Harry,” Bjørn said. “Can we do this tomorrow?”

“Svein Finne is Valentin Gjertsen’s father.”

“Oh, shit.”

“The motive’s blood vengeance. I’m certain of it. You need to put out an alert for Finne, and once you’ve got his address, you need to get a search warrant. If you find the knife, it’s case closed...”

“I hear you, Harry. But Gert is finally asleep, and I need to get some rest as well. And I’m not so sure we’d get a search warrant on those grounds. They’ll probably want something more concrete.”

“But this is blood vengeance, Bjørn. It’s in our nature. Wouldn’t you happily do the same if someone had killed Gert?”

“That’s one hell of a question.”

“Think about it.”

“Oh, I don’t know, Harry.”

“You don’t know?”

“Tomorrow. OK?”

“Of course.” Harry closed his eyes tightly and swore silently to himself. “Sorry if I’m behaving like an idiot, Bjørn, I just can’t bear to—”

“It’s fine, Harry. Let’s talk about it tomorrow. And while you’re suspended, it would probably be best if you don’t tell anyone we’re talking about the case.”

“Of course. Get some sleep, mate.”

Harry opened his eyes and slipped his phone back into his pocket. Saturday night. Ahead of him on the pavement stood a drunk, sobbing girl with her head pressed against the wall. A guy was standing behind her with his head bowed; he had one hand consolingly on her back. “He’s fucking other women!” the girl cried. “He doesn’t care about me! No one cares about me!”

“I do,” the guy said quietly.

“You, yeah,” she sniffed derisively, and went on sobbing. Harry caught the guy’s eye as he passed them.

Saturday night. There was a bar on this side of the street one hundred metres ahead. Maybe he ought to cross the road to avoid it. There wasn’t much traffic, just a few taxis. Actually, there were a lot of taxis. And they formed a wall of black vehicles that made it impossible to cross the road. Bloody hell.

Truls Berntsen was watching the seventh and final season of The Shield. He wondered about taking a quick look at Pornhub, then decided against it: someone in IT probably kept a log of what staff had gone surfing for on the Internet. Did people still say “surfing”? Truls looked at the time again. The Internet was slower at home, and it was time he got to bed anyway. He pulled on his jacket, zipped it up. But something was bothering him. He didn’t know what it could be, because he had spent the day at taxpayers’ expense without having to do anything useful, a day when he could go to bed secure in the knowledge that the balance sheet was once again in his favour.

Truls Berntsen looked at the phone.

It was stupid, but if it stopped him thinking about it, great.

“Duty officer.”

“This is Truls Berntsen. That woman you sent up here, did she file a report against Svein Finne when she got back down to you?”

“She never came back.”

“She just left?”

“Must have done.”

Truls Berntsen hung up. Thought for a moment. He tapped at the phone again. Waited.

“Harry.”

Truls could only just make out his colleague’s voice over the music and shouting in the background. “Are you at a party?”

“Bar.”

“They’re playing Motörhead,” Truls said.

“And that’s the only positive thing worth saying about the place. What do you want?”

“Svein Finne. You’ve been trying to keep an eye on him.”

“And?”

Truls told him about his visitor earlier in the day.

“Mm. Have you got the woman’s name and phone number?”

“Dagny something. Jensen, maybe. You can ask the duty officer if they took any other details, but I doubt it.”

“Why?”

“I think she’s frightened Finne will find out she was here.”

“OK. I can’t call the duty officer, I’m suspended. Can you do it for me?”

“I was about to go home.”

Truls listened to the silence at the other end. Lemmy was singing “Killed by Death.”

“OK,” Truls grunted.

“One more thing. My ID card’s been deactivated, so I can’t get into the office anymore. Can you bring my service pistol from my bottom drawer and meet me outside Olympen in twenty minutes?”

“Your pistol? What do you want that for?”

“To protect myself against the evils of the world.”

“Your drawers are locked.”

“But you’ve got a copy of the key.”

“What? What makes you think that?”

“I’ve noticed you moving things about in there. And on one occasion you used it to store a lump of hash that Narcotics had seized, according to the bag it was in. So it wouldn’t be found in your drawers if they started looking for it.”

Truls didn’t answer.

“Well?”

“Fifteen minutes,” Truls grunted. “On the dot. I’m not going to stand there freezing.”

Kaja Solness was standing with her arms folded, staring out of the living-room window. She was freezing. She was always cold. In Kabul, where the temperature veered from minus five to well over thirty, her nocturnal shivers were just as likely to strike in July as they were in December, and there’d been little she could do but wait for morning, when the desert sun would warm her up again. Her brother had been the same, and once she had asked him if he thought they were born cold-blooded, that they were incapable of regulating their own body temperature and were reliant on external heat to stop them seizing up and freezing to death like reptiles. For a long time she had thought that was true. That she wasn’t in control. That she was helplessly dependent on her surroundings. Dependent on others.

She stared out into the darkness. Let her gaze slip along the garden fence.

Was he standing out there somewhere?

It was impossible to know. The blackness was impenetrable, and a man like him knew perfectly well how to keep himself hidden.

She was shivering, but she wasn’t afraid. Because now she knew she didn’t need other people. She could shape her own life.

She thought about the sound of the other woman’s voice.

No, he’s at Alexandra’s.

Her own life. And other people’s.

17

Dagny Jensen stopped abruptly. She had gone for her usual Sunday walk along the banks of the Akerselva. Feeding the ducks. Smiling at families with small children and dogs. Looking for the first snowdrops. Anything to stop herself thinking. Because she had been thinking all night, and all she wanted to do now was forget.

But he wouldn’t let her. She stared at the figure standing outside the door to her building. He was stamping his feet on the ground, as if he was trying to keep warm. As if he had been waiting a long time. She was about to turn and walk away when she realised it wasn’t him. This man was taller than Finne.

Dagny walked closer.

He didn’t have long hair either, but scruffy, fair hair. She walked a bit closer.

“Dagny Jensen?” the man said.

“Yes?”

“Harry Hole. Oslo Police.”

The words sounded like he was grinding them out.

“What’s this about?”

“You wanted to report a rape yesterday.”

“I changed my mind.”

“So I understand. You’re frightened.”

Dagny looked at him. He was unshaven, his eyes were bloodshot, and he had a liver-coloured scar running across one side of his face like a no-entry sign. But even if his face had something of the same brutality as Svein Finne, there was something that softened it, something that made it almost handsome.

“Am I?” she asked.

“Yes. And I’m here to ask for your help to catch the man who raped you.”

Dagny flinched. “Me? You’ve misunderstood, Hole. I’m not the person who was raped. If it was actually a rape at all.”

Hole didn’t answer. Just held her gaze. Now he was the one looking hard at her.

“He was trying to get you pregnant,” the police officer said. “And now that he’s hoping you’re carrying his child, he’s keeping watch over you. Has he been?”

Dagny blinked twice. “How do you know...”

“That’s his thing. Has he threatened you with what will happen if you have an abortion?”

Dagny Jensen swallowed. She was about to ask him to leave, but found herself hesitating. She didn’t know if she could trust what he said about catching Finne, there wasn’t much to go on. But this policeman had something the others hadn’t had. Resoluteness. There was determination in him. Maybe it’s a bit like with priests, Dagny thought; we trust them because we’re so desperate to believe what they say is true.

Dagny poured coffee into the cups on her small, folded-out kitchen table.

The tall policeman had squeezed himself onto the chair between the worktop and the table. “So Finne wants you to meet him at the Catholic church in Vika this evening? At nine o’clock?” He hadn’t interrupted her while she was talking, hadn’t taken any notes, but his bloodshot eyes had stayed on her, giving her the feeling that he was taking in every word, that he was seeing it in his mind’s eye the way she did, frame by frame of the short horror film that kept replaying inside her head.

“Yes,” she said.

“OK. Well, obviously we could pick him up there. Question him.”

“But you haven’t got any evidence.”

“No. Without evidence we’d have to let him go, and because he’d realise it was you who told us...”

“...I’d be in even more danger than I am now.”

The policeman nodded.

“That was why I didn’t report him,” Dagny said. “It’s like shooting a bear, isn’t it? If you don’t bring it down with your first shot, you won’t have time to reload before it gets you. In which case it’s better not to have fired the first shot.”

“Mm. On the other hand, even the largest bear can be brought down by a single, well-aimed shot.”

“How, though?”

The policeman put one hand around his coffee cup. “There are several ways. One is to use you as bait. Fitted with a hidden microphone. Get him to talk about the rape.”

He looked down at the table.

“Go on,” she said.

He raised his head. The blue of his irises looked washed-out. “You’d have to ask him about the consequences if you don’t do as he says. That way we’d have the threats. If we have those and a conversation in which he indirectly confirms the rape, we’d have enough on tape to get him convicted.”

“You still use tape?”

The policeman raised his coffee to his lips.

“Sorry,” Dagny said. “I’m just so...”

“Of course,” the policeman said. “And I’d understand completely if you said no.”

“You said there were several ways?”

“Yes.” He said no more, just sipped from the cup.

“But?”

The policeman shrugged. “In many ways, a church is perfect. There’s no noise, nothing to stop us getting a good-quality recording. And you’d be in a public place where he couldn’t attack you...”

“We were in a public place last time.”

“...and we could be there to monitor the situation.”

Dagny looked at him. There was something in his eyes she recognised. And now she realised what it was. It was the same thing she’d seen in her own eyes, and at first had thought was a flaw in the mirror. A defect. Something broken. And something about his voice put her in mind of pupils with unsteady voices serving up fake explanations of why they hadn’t done their homework. She went over to the stove, put the coffee pot down and looked out of the window. Down below she could see people out for Sunday walks, but she couldn’t see him. Life, going on around her, had become an unnatural, strained idyll. Dagny had never thought about it like that before, she had just thought that was the way it was supposed to be.

She walked back and sat down on the kitchen chair.

“If I do this, I need to be certain he won’t turn up again. Do you understand that, Hole?”

“Yes, I understand. And you have my word that you’ll never see Svein Finne again. Ever. OK?”

Never. She knew that wasn’t true. Just as she had known that what the female priest said wasn’t true when she spoke of salvation. That it was meant as a comfort. But it worked. Even if we saw through “never” and “salvation,” they were passwords that opened the door to the heart, and the heart believed what it wanted to believe. Dagny could feel herself breathing easier already. She half closed her eyes. And when she looked at him like that, with the daylight coming through the window forming a halo around his head, she could no longer see the hurt in the policeman’s eyes, could no longer hear the false note in his voice.

“OK,” she said. “Tell me how we do this.”

Harry stopped in the street outside Kaja Solness’s house and called her number for the third time. Same result again. “The person you are calling has their phone switched off, or is...”

He opened the creaking wrought-iron gate and walked towards the house.

It was crazy. Of course it was crazy. But what else could he do?

He rang the doorbell. Waited. Rang again.

Put his eye to the large peephole in the door and saw her coat, the one she had been wearing at the funeral, hanging on a hook. And her tall black boots were standing on the shoe rack below.

He walked around the house. There were still patches of snow on the withered, flattened grass in the shade of the north side.

He looked up at the window of what had been her bedroom, although obviously she could have moved her bed into one of the other rooms. When he bent down to gather enough snow to make a snowball, he saw it. A footprint in the snow. From a boot. His brain began to search its databases. Found what it was looking for. A boot print in the snow outside the house in Holmenkollen.

His hand reached inside his jacket. Obviously, it could be a completely different print. Obviously, she could have left the house. He clasped the butt of his pistol, a Heckler & Koch P30L, hunched up and walked with long, silent strides back to the front steps. He shifted his grip on the pistol, holding it by the barrel so that he could break the glass in the peephole, but tried the door first.

It was open.

He stepped inside. Listened. Silence. He sniffed. Could only detect a faint smell of perfume — Kaja’s — probably from the scarf hanging from a hook next to her coat.

He walked along the hallway with his pistol in front of him.

The door to the kitchen was open, and the button on the coffee machine was glowing red. Harry tightened his grip on the butt, put his finger on the trigger. He moved farther into the house. The living-room door was ajar. A buzzing sound. Like flies. Harry nudged the door open cautiously with his foot, still holding the pistol in front of him.

She was lying on the floor. Her eyes were closed, and her arms were folded across her chest in that wool cardigan that was too big for her. Her body and pale face were bathed in the daylight streaming through the window.

Harry let the air out of his lungs with a groan. He lowered the pistol and crouched down. He held his thumb and forefinger around her worn slipper and pinched her big toe.

Kaja started, screamed and pulled her headphones off. “Bloody hell, Harry!”

“Sorry, I did try to get hold of you.” He sat down on the rug beside her. “I need help.”

Kaja closed her eyes, put one hand to her chest, still breathless. “So you said.”

What had previously been just a buzzing sound from the headphones was now clearly audible as familiar hard rock, played at loud volume.

“And you called me because you wanted me to persuade you to say yes,” he said, pulling out his cigarettes.

“I’m not the type who lets themselves be persuaded, Harry.”

He nodded towards the headphones. “You let yourself be persuaded to listen to Deep Purple.”

Did he see a hint of a blush on her cheeks? “Only because you said they were the best group in the ‘unintentionally ridiculous but still good’ category.”

“Mm.” Harry put an unlit cigarette to his lips. “Seeing as this plan belongs to the same category, I’m counting on it being of interest and—”

“Harry...”

“And bear in mind that by helping me put a notorious rapist behind bars, you’d be helping all the women of this city. You’d be helping Oleg by getting the man who murdered his mother punished. And you’d be helping me—”

“Stop, Harry.”

“...to get out of a situation I’ve only got myself to blame for.”

She raised one of her dark eyebrows. “Oh?”

“I’ve recruited one of Svein Finne’s rape victims to act as bait, in order to catch him red-handed. I’ve persuaded an innocent woman to wear a microphone and record him in the belief that it’s part of a police operation, whereas it’s actually a solo performance directed by a suspended police officer. Plus his accomplice, a former colleague. You.”

Kaja stared at him. “You’re kidding.”

“No,” Harry said. “It turns out that I have no moral boundaries when it comes to how far I’m willing to go to catch Svein Finne.”

“Those are precisely the words I was going to use.”

“I need you, Kaja. Are you with me?”

“Why on earth would I do that? This is utter madness.”

“How many times did we know who the culprit was, but couldn’t do anything about it because we had to follow the rules? Well, you’re not in the police, you don’t have to follow any rules.”

“But you do, even if you are suspended. You’re not just risking your job, but your liberty. You’re the one they’ll end up putting away.”

“I won’t be losing anything, Kaja. I’ve got nothing left to lose.”

“What about your sleep? You know what you’re exposing this woman to?”

“Not my sleep either. Dagny Jensen knows this isn’t by the book, she’s seen through me.”

“Did she say that?”

“No. And we’re keeping it that way. So afterwards she can claim she thought it was a legitimate police operation, so she won’t be risking anything. She’s just as keen as I am to see that Svein Finne is eliminated.”

Kaja rolled onto her stomach and pushed herself up on her elbows. The sleeves of her cardigan slid down her long, thin lower arms. “Eliminated. What exactly do you mean by that?”

Harry shrugged. “Taken out of the game. Removed.”

“Removed from...?”

“The streets. Public life.”

“Put in prison, then?”

Harry looked at her as he sucked on the unlit cigarette. Nodded. “For instance.”

Kaja shook her head. “I don’t know if I dare, Harry. You’re... different. You always pushed the boundaries, but this isn’t you. This isn’t us. This is...” She shook her head.

“Just say it,” Harry said.

“This is hatred. This is a horrible mixture of hatred and grief.”

“You’re right,” Harry said. He took the cigarette from his mouth and put it back in the packet. “And I was wrong. I haven’t lost everything. I’ve still got the hatred.”

He stood up and walked out of the living room, hearing the buzzing sound as Ian Gillan shrieked in a shrill vibrato that he was going to make it hard for you, that you’d... The sentence remained unfinished, Ritchie Blackmore’s guitar took over before Gillan launched into the conclusion: into the fire... Harry walked out of the house, onto the steps, out into the blinding daylight.

Pia Bohr knocked on the door of her daughter’s bedroom.

Waited. There was no answer.

She pushed the door open.

He was sitting on the bed with his back to her. He was still wearing his camouflage uniform. On the bedspread lay the pistol, the sheathed dagger and his NVGs — night-vision goggles.

“You need to stop,” she said. “Do you hear me, Roar? This can’t go on.”

He turned towards her.

His bloodshot eyes and streaked face showed he’d been crying. And that he probably hadn’t slept.

“Where were you last night? Roar? You can tell me.”

Her husband, or the man who had once been her husband, turned back to the window again. Pia Bohr sighed. He never said where he’d been, but the mud on the floor suggested he could have been out in the forest. Or a field. Or a rubbish dump.

She sat down on the opposite side of the bed. She needed the distance. The distance you’d want to maintain towards a stranger.

“What have you done?” she asked. “What have you done, Roar?”

She waited fearfully for what he was going to say in reply. And when he hadn’t answered after five seconds, she got up and quickly walked out. Almost relieved. Regardless of whatever he might have done, she was innocent. She had asked three times. What more could anyone demand?

18

Dagny looked at her watch under the light above the entrance to the Catholic church. Nine. What if Finne didn’t come? The traffic was rumbling on Drammensveien and Munkedamsveien, but when she stared along the narrow street leading to Slottsparken she couldn’t see any cars or people. Nor in the direction of Aker Brygge and the fjord either. The eye of the storm, the city’s blind spot. The church was squeezed between two office blocks, and there was little to show that it was a house of God. The building got thinner towards the top, and there was a spire, but there was no cross on the facade, no Jesus or Mary, no Latin quotes. The carvings on the solid wooden door — which was wide, tall and unlocked — may perhaps have led your thoughts in a religious direction, but apart from that, for all Dagny knew, it could have been the entrance to a synagogue, mosque or temple for some other small congregation. But if you went closer, you could read on a poster in a glass-fronted cabinet beside the door that there had been masses since early morning that Sunday. In Norwegian, English, Polish and Vietnamese. The last one — in Polish — had ended just half an hour ago. The noise never stopped, but this street remained quiet. How alone was she? Dagny hadn’t asked Harry Hole how many colleagues he had positioned to keep an eye on her, if any of them were out here, or if they were all inside the church. Possibly because she didn’t want to know, because she might then give herself away. She looked along the windows and doorways on the other side of the street, hopefully. But also hopelessly. Because deep down she had a feeling it was just Hole. Him and her. That was what Hole had tried to tell her with that look. And after he had left, she had checked on the Internet and found confirmation of what she thought she’d read in the papers. That Harry Hole was a famous police officer and the husband of the poor woman who had recently been murdered. With a knife. That explained the look in his eyes, of something broken, the cracked mirror. But it was too late now. She had set this in motion herself, and she could have stopped it. But she hadn’t been able to. No, she probably wasn’t lying to herself any less than Hole had done. She had seen his pistol.

She was freezing, she should have worn warmer clothes. Dagny looked at the time again.

“Is it me you’re waiting for?”

Her heart stopped.

How in all the world had he managed to sneak right up on her without her seeing him coming?

She nodded.

“Are we alone?”

Dagny nodded again.

“Really? No one else has come to celebrate our marital covenant?”

Dagny opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out.

Svein Finne smiled. His thick, wet lips curled against his yellow teeth. “You need to breathe, darling. We don’t want our child to suffer brain damage from lack of oxygen, do we?”

Dagny did as he said. Breathed. “We need to talk,” she said in a shaky voice. “I think I’m pregnant.”

“Of course you are.”

Dagny only just managed to stop herself from pulling back when he raised his arm — and for a moment she saw the light from the lamp above the church door shine through the hole in his hand before he held it, warm and dry, against her cheek. She remembered to breathe, and swallowed. “We need to talk about practical matters. Can we go in?”

“In?”

“Inside the church. It’s cold out here.”

“Of course. We’re getting married, after all. No time to lose.” He ran his hand down the side of her neck. She had taped the tiny microphone onto her bra, between the cups, inside her thin sweater and coat. Hole had said they couldn’t be sure of getting a decent recording until she got him into the church, where they would be free of the background noise of the city, and where she would also have a reason to take off the sound-muffling coat. He wouldn’t be able to escape in there, and they would grab Finne as soon as they had enough evidence to get him charged.

“Shall we go in, then?” Dagny said, pulling away from his hand. She put her hands in her coat pockets and managed to summon up a visible shiver.

Finne didn’t move. He closed his eyes, leaned his head back and sniffed. “I smell something,” he said.

“Smell?”

He opened his eyes and looked at her again.

“I smell sorrow, Dagny. Desperation. Pain.”

This time Dagny didn’t have to pretend to shiver.

“You didn’t smell like that last time,” he said. “Have you had a visit?”

“A visit?” She tried to laugh, but all that emerged was a coughing sound. “Who from?”

“I don’t know. But there’s something familiar about that smell. Let me search my memory...” He put his finger under his chin. Frowned. Studied her. “Dagny, don’t tell me you’ve... You haven’t... have you, Dagny?”

“Have I what?” She tried to fend off the panic that was creeping up on her.

He shook his head sadly. “Do you read the Bible, Dagny? You know the parable of the sower? His seed is the word. The promise. And if the seed doesn’t take root, Satan will come and devour it. Satan will take away faith. Will take our child, Dagny. Because I am the sower. The question is, have you met Satan?”

Dagny swallowed, moved her head, wasn’t sure if she was nodding or shaking it.

Svein Finne sighed. “You and I, we conceived a child together in a precious moment of love. But perhaps you regret that now, perhaps you just don’t want a child. But you can’t go through with the cold-blooded murder of it as long as you know that it’s a real love-child, so you’re trying to find something that would make it possible for you to get rid of it.” He was talking loudly, and his soft lips were forming the words very clearly. Like an actor on stage, she thought. Using volume and diction so that every word was audible, even in the back row. “So you’re lying to your own conscience, Dagny. You tell yourself that that wasn’t what happened, that I didn’t want it, he forced himself on me. And you tell yourself that you can get the police to believe that. Because that man, that Satan, has told you that I have served time for other supposed rapes.”

“You’re wrong,” Dagny said, giving up any attempt to control the tremor in her voice. “Aren’t we going inside?” She could hear herself pleading.

Finne tilted his head to one side. Like a bird looking at its prey before it strikes. Almost contemplatively, as if it hasn’t quite decided whether or not to let its prey live. “A marital vow is a serious thing, Dagny. I don’t want you to enter into it lightly or act too hastily. And you seem... uncertain. Perhaps we should wait a little?”

“Can’t we talk about it? Inside?”

“Whenever I’m not sure,” Finne said, “I let my father decide.”

“Your father?”

“Yes. Fate.” He felt in his trouser pocket and pulled something out between his thumb and forefinger. Blue-grey metal. It was a dice.

“That’s your father?”

“Fate is the father of us all, Dagny. A one or a two means we get married today. Three or four that we wait until another day. Five or six means...” He leaned forward and whispered in her ear. “That you’ve betrayed me, and I’ll have to slit your throat here and now. And you’ll stand there dumb and obedient like the sacrificial lamb you are, and just let it happen. Hold out your hand.”

Finne straightened up. Dagny stared at him. There was no emotion in his eyes, or at least none that she recognised: no anger, no sympathy, no excitement, no nervousness, no amusement, no hate, no love. All she saw was will. His will. A hypnotic, commanding force that required neither reason nor logic. She wanted to scream. She wanted to run. Instead she held out her hand.

Finne shook the dice in his cupped hands. Then he quickly turned the lower hand and put it over Dagny’s palm. She felt his warm, dry, raw skin against hers and shuddered.

He took his hand away. Looked down at hers. His mouth stretched into a broad smile.

Dagny had stopped breathing again. She pulled her hand back. The dice was showing three black dots.

“See you soon, my darling,” Finne said, looking up. “My promise still holds.”

Dagny looked automatically at the sky, where the lights of the city were colouring the clouds yellow. When she looked down again Finne was gone. She heard a noise from one of the archways on the other side of the street.

She nudged the door behind her open and went inside. It was as if the organ notes from the last mass were still lingering in the large nave. She walked over to one of the two confessionals against one of the back walls and sat inside it. Pulled the curtain.

“He left,” she said.

“Where?” the voice behind the grille said.

“Don’t know. It’s too late, anyway.”

“Smell?” Harry said, and heard the word echo around the church. And even if he was sure they were alone in there, sitting in the back row, he lowered his voice. “He said he could smell it? And threw a dice?”

Dagny nodded and pointed at the recording device she had placed on the bench between them. “It’s all on there.”

“And he didn’t confess anything?”

“No. He just called himself a sower. You can hear for yourself.”

Harry managed to stop himself swearing and leaned back so hard against the back of the bench that the whole thing wobbled momentarily.

“What do we do now?” Dagny said.

Harry rubbed his face. How could Finne have known? Apart from him and Dagny, Kaja and Truls were the only people who knew about the plan. Maybe he had just read it from Dagny’s face and body language? That was obviously possible; fear acts as an amplifier. Either way, what they were going to do now was a bloody good question.

“I need to see him die,” Dagny said.

Harry nodded. “Finne’s old, and a lot of things can happen. I’ll let you know when he’s dead.”

Dagny shook her head. “You don’t understand. I need to be watching when he dies. If I don’t, my body won’t accept that he’s gone, and he’ll haunt me in my dreams. Like my mother.”

A single buzz announced the arrival of a text message, and Dagny pulled a shiny silver phone from her pocket.

It struck Harry that Rakel hadn’t haunted his dreams after he’d seen her dead. Not yet, at least not that he could remember when he woke up. Why not? He had dreamed that he’d seen her face, lifeless, dead, after all. And then it hit him that he wanted, he really wanted her to haunt him; sooner a death mask and maggots crawling from her mouth than this cold, empty nothingness.

“Dear God...” Dagny whispered.

Her face was lit up by the screen. Her mouth was open, her eyes wide.

The phone fell to the floor with a clatter and lay there, screen upwards. Harry bent over. The video had stopped playing, and was showing the final image, a watch with luminous red numbers. Harry pressed Play, and the clip started again. There was no sound, it was grainy and the camera was moving, but he could see that it was a close-up of a white stomach with blood pumping out of a wound. A hairy hand with a grey watch strap came into shot. It happened so fast. The hand vanished inside the wound, all the way to the screen of the watch, which activated and lit up as more blood pumped out. The camera zoomed in on the watch, then the picture froze. The clip was over. Harry tried to swallow his nausea.

“What... what was that?” Dagny stammered.

“I don’t know,” Harry said, staring at the final image of the watch. “I don’t know,” he repeated.

“I can’t...” Dagny began. “He’s going to kill me too, and you won’t be able to stop him on your own. Because you are on your own, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Harry said. “I’m on my own.”

“Then I’m going to have to look for help somewhere else. I have to think of myself.”

“Do that,” Harry said. He couldn’t tear his eyes from the frozen image. The picture quality was too poor for the stomach or hand to be used to identify anyone. But the watch was clear enough. And the time. And the date.

03:00. The night Rakel was murdered.

19

The strip of sunlight from the window was making the white papers on Katrine Bratt’s desk glow.

“Dagny Jensen says in her statement that you persuaded her to lure Svein Finne into a trap,” she said.

She looked up from the document, found the long legs that began in front of her desk and led to the man who was half lying in the chair before her. His bright blue eyes were shaded by a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses with black gaffer tape on one arm. He had been drinking. Because it wasn’t just the acrid smell of stale alcohol coming from his clothes and body, reminding her of an amalgam, old people’s homes and rotten blackberries. It was the smell of fresh alcohol on his breath, refreshing, cleansing. In short, the man sitting in front of her was an alcoholic who was partly recovering, and partly on his way towards renewed drunkenness.

“Is that right, Harry?”

“Yes,” the man said, and coughed without covering his mouth. She saw a fleck of saliva glint in the sunlight on the arm of his chair. “Have you found who sent the video?”

“Yes,” Katrine said. “A burner phone. Which is now dead and impossible to trace.”

“Svein Finne. He sent it. He’s the one filming, and it’s him sticking his hand inside her stomach.”

“Shame he didn’t use the hand with the hole in. Then we’d have definite identification.”

“It is him. You saw the time and date on the watch?”

“Yes. And obviously it’s suspicious that the date is the same as the night of the murder. But the time is an hour later than the interval in which Forensics think Rakel died.”

“The keyword there is ‘think,’ ” Harry said. “You know as well as I do that they can’t get it spot-on.”

“Can you identify the stomach as Rakel’s?”

“Come on, it’s a grainy image taken with a moving camera.”

“So it could be anyone. For all we know, it could be something Finne found online and sent to scare Dagny Jensen.”

“Let’s say that, then,” Harry said, putting his hands on the armrests and starting to get up.

“Sit down!” Katrine barked.

Harry sank back into the chair.

She sighed deeply. “Dagny has police protection.”

“Round the clock?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Anything else?”

“Yes. I’ve just been informed by the Forensic Medical Institute that Valentin Gjertsen was Svein Finne’s biological son. And that you’ve known about that for a while.”

Katrine looked for some sort of reaction, but saw nothing except her own reflection in those blue mirrored sunglasses.

“So,” she said. “You’ve decided that Svein Finne killed Rakel to avenge himself on you. You’ve ignored all protocols for police work and put another person, a rape victim, in danger in order to achieve something you’re after personally. That isn’t just gross misconduct in service, Harry, that’s a criminal offence.”

Katrine stopped. What was he looking at behind those damn sunglasses? Her? The picture hanging on the wall behind her? His own boots?

“You’re already suspended, Harry. I haven’t got many other sanctions available apart from dismissing you altogether. Or reporting you. Which would also lead to dismissal if you were found guilty. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes, it isn’t exactly complicated. Can I go now?”

“No! Do you know what I said to Dagny Jensen when she asked for police protection? I told her she’d get it, but that the police officers who are going to protect her are only human, and they quickly lose their enthusiasm if they know that the person they’re protecting has filed a complaint against a police colleague for being overzealous. I put pressure on her, Harry, an innocent victim. For your sake! What have you got to say about that?”

Harry nodded slowly. “Well. What about: Can I go now?”

“Go?” Katrine threw her hands up. “Really? That’s all you have to say?”

“No, but it would be better if I left before I say it.”

Katrine groaned. She put her elbows on her desk, clasped her hands together and leaned her forehead against them. “Fine. GO.”

Harry closed his eyes. He could feel the thick birch trunk against his back and the sharp spring sun warming his face. In front of him was a simple, brown wooden cross. It had Rakel’s name on it, but nothing else, no date. The woman at the funeral parlour had called it a “temporary marker,” something they usually erected while they were waiting for the headstone to be ready, but Harry couldn’t help putting his own interpretation on it: it was only temporary because she was waiting for him.

“I’m still asleep,” Harry said. “I hope that’s OK. Because if I wake up, I’ll fall apart and then I won’t be able to catch him. And I’m going to get him, I swear. Do you remember how frightened you were of the flesh-eating zombies in Night of the Living Dead? Well...” Harry raised his hip flask. “Now I’m one of them.”

Harry took a large swig. Possibly because he was already so tranquillised that the alcohol didn’t seem to offer any further relief, he slid down the trunk until he was sitting against it, feeling the snow beneath his backside and thighs.

“By the way, there’s a rumour that you wanted me back... Was that Old Tjikko? You don’t have to answer.”

He put the flask to his lips again. Removed it. Opened his eyes.

“It’s lonely,” he said. “Before I met you I was alone a lot, but I was never lonely. Loneliness is new, loneliness is... interesting. You weren’t filling any sort of vacuum when we got together, but you left a huge, gaping hole when you went. There’s probably an argument that love is a process of loss. What do you think?”

He closed his eyes again. Listened.

The light beyond his eyelids grew weaker and the temperature dropped. Harry knew it must be a cloud passing in front of the sun, and waited for the warmth to come back as he drifted off to sleep. Until something made him stiffen. Hold his breath. Because he could hear someone else breathing. It wasn’t a cloud; someone or something was standing over him. And Harry hadn’t heard anyone coming, even though there was snow all around him. He opened his eyes.

The sunlight spread out like a halo from the silhouette in front of him.

Harry’s right hand felt inside his jacket.

“I’ve been looking for you,” the silhouette said quietly.

Harry stopped.

“You’ve found me,” Harry said. “What now?”

The silhouette moved aside, and for a moment Harry was blinded by the sun.

“Now we go back to mine,” Kaja Solness said.

“Thanks, but do I really need it?” Harry asked, grimacing as he smelled the tea in the bowl Kaja had handed him.

“I don’t know.” Kaja smiled. “How was the shower?”

“Lukewarm.”

“Because you were in there for three-quarters of an hour.”

“Was I?” Harry sat back on the sofa with his hands around the bowl. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine. Do the clothes fit?”

Harry looked down at the trousers and sweater.

“My brother was a bit smaller than you.” She smiled again.

“So you’ve changed your mind and want to help me after all?” Harry tasted the tea. It was bitter, and reminded him of the rosehip tea he used to be given as a child when he had a cold. He could never stand it, but his mum said it strengthened the immune system, and that one cup contained more vitamin C than forty oranges. Maybe those overdoses were the reason why he had hardly ever caught a cold since. And why he never ate oranges.

“Yes, I want to help you,” she said, sitting down on the chair opposite him. “But not with your investigation.”

“Oh?”

“Do you know, you’re showing all the classic signs of PTSD?”

Harry stared at her.

“Post-traumatic stress disorder,” Kaja said.

“I know what it is.”

“Great. But do you know what the symptoms are?”

Harry shrugged his shoulders. “Repeated experience of the trauma. Dreams, flashbacks. Limited emotional response. You become a zombie. You feel like a zombie, an outsider on happy pills, flat and with no desire to live any longer than necessary. The world feels unreal, your sensation of time changes. As a defense mechanism you fragment the trauma, only remember specific details, but keep them apart so the whole experience and context remain in the dark.”

Kaja nodded. “Don’t forget hyperactivity. Anxiety, depression. Irritability and aggressiveness. Problems sleeping. How come you know so much about it?”

“Our resident psychologist has talked me through it.”

“Ståle Aune? And he thought you didn’t have PTSD?”

“Well, he didn’t rule it out. But on the other hand, I’ve had those symptoms since I was a teenager. And because I can’t remember it ever being different, he said it might just be my personality. Or that it started when I was a boy, when my mum died. Apparently grief can easily be confused with PTSD.”

Kaja shook her head firmly. “I’ve had my share, Harry, and I know what grief is. And you remind me far too much of the soldiers I’ve seen leave Afghanistan with full-blown PTSD. Some of them were invalided out, some of them took their own lives. But you know what? The worst were the ones who came back. Who managed to slip beneath the psychologists’ radar and were left as unexploded bombs, a danger to both themselves and their fellow soldiers.”

“I haven’t been to war, I’ve just lost someone.”

“You have been to war, Harry. And you’ve been there for far too long. You’re one of the few police officers who’ve had to kill several people in the course of their duty. And if there’s one thing we learned in Afghanistan, it’s what killing someone can do to a person.”

“And I’ve seen what it doesn’t do to a person. People who shake it off as if it was nothing. Or who just wait for the next opportunity.”

“Obviously you’re right, in that we react very differently to the experience of killing someone. But for vaguely normal people, the reason why they had to kill matters too. One study by RAND shows that at least 20, probably more like 30 percent of American soldiers who served in Afghanistan or Iraq had PTSD. The same goes for American soldiers in Vietnam. The equivalent figure for Allied soldiers in the Second World War seems to have been only half that. Psychologists believe that’s because the soldiers didn’t understand the wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Whereas everyone understood why Hitler had to be fought. The soldiers who’d been in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan came home to a society that didn’t organise parades, and looked at them with suspicion. And the soldiers weren’t able to fit their actions into a comprehensive narrative that justified them. That’s why it’s easier to kill for Israel. The PTSD rate there is down at 8 percent. Not because the violence is any less grotesque, but because the soldiers can tell themselves that they’re defending a small country surrounded by enemies, and because they have broad support among their own population. That gives them a simple, ethically justifiable reason for killing. What they do is necessary, meaningful.”

“Mm. You’re saying I’m traumatised, but the people I’ve killed, I’ve killed out of necessity. Yes, they come to me at night, but I still pull the trigger without hesitation. Time after time.”

“You belong to the 8 percent who get PTSD even though they have every possibility of justifying their actions,” Kaja said. “The ones who don’t do that. Who are unconsciously but actively looking for a way to blame themselves. The way you’re now trying to take the blame for—”

“OK, let’s say that, then,” Harry interrupted.

“...Rakel’s death.”

Silence fell in the living room. Harry stared out into space. Blinked over and over again.

Kaja swallowed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. At least, I didn’t mean to say it like that.”

“You’re right,” Harry said. “Apart from the business of looking for blame. It is my fault, that’s a fact. If I hadn’t killed Svein Finne’s son...”

“You were doing your job.”

“...Rakel would still be alive.”

“I know people who specialise in PTSD. You need help, Harry.”

“Yes. Help to catch Finne.”

“That’s not your biggest problem.”

“Yes, it is.”

Kaja sighed. “How long did you have to look for his son before you found him?”

“Who’s counting? I found him.”

“No one catches Finne, he’s like a ghost.”

Harry looked up.

“I worked in Vice within the Crime Squad Unit,” Kaja said. “I’ve read the reports about Svein Finne, they were on the syllabus.”

“A ghost,” Harry said.

“What?”

“That’s what we’re all looking for.” He got to his feet. “Thanks for the hot water. And the tip-off.”

“Tip-off?”

The old man was staring at the blue dress that was swaying and drifting in the current of the river. Life as a dance performed by mayflies. You stand in a room full of testosterone and perfume, moving your feet in time to the music and smiling at the prettiest one because you think she’s meant for you. Until you ask her to dance and she says no and looks over your shoulder at the other guy, the guy who isn’t you. Then, once you’ve patched up your broken heart, you adjust your expectations and ask the next prettiest to dance. Then the third. Until you get to the one who says yes. And if you’re lucky, and you dance well together, you ask her for the next dance as well. And the next. Until the evening is over and you ask if she wants to spend eternity with you.

“Yes, darling, but we’re mayflies,” she says, and dies.

And then comes night, real night, and the only thing you’ve got is a memory, a blue dress waving enticingly, and the promise that it won’t be more than a day until you can follow her. The blue dress is the only thing that makes it possible to dream that you will one day dance again.

“I’d like a wildlife camera.”

The deep, hoarse voice came from the other side of the counter.

The old man turned round. It was a tall man. Broad-shouldered but thin.

“We’ve got several different types...” Alf said.

“I know, I bought one here a while back. I’d like the fancy sort this time. The one that sends messages to your phone when someone’s there. The sort that can be hidden.”

“I get you. Let me just get one I think would do the job.”

The old man’s son-in-law went off to the shelves of wildlife cameras and the tall man turned and met the old man’s gaze. The old man remembered the face, not only because he had seen it in the shop before, but because he hadn’t been able to figure out if it belonged to a herbivore or a carnivore. Odd, because there was no doubt now. The man was a carnivore. But there was something else familiar about that look. The old man strained his eyes. Alf came back, and the tall man turned back towards the counter.

“When this camera detects movement in front of the lens, it takes an image and sends it directly to the phone number you install...”

“Thanks, I’ll take it.”

When the tall man had left the shop, the old man looked back at the television screen. One day all the blue dresses would be torn to pieces and drift away, the memories would let go and disappear. He saw the scars of loss and resignation in his own eyes in the mirror every day. That was what he had recognised in the tall man’s expression. Loss. But not resignation. Not yet.

Harry heard the gravel crunch beneath his boots and thought that this was what happened when you got old, you spent more and more time in cemeteries. Got to know your future neighbours in the place you’d be spending eternity. He stopped in front of the small, black stone. Crouched down, dug a hole in the snow and put the vase of white lilies in it. He packed the snow around it and arranged the stems. He stepped back to make sure it looked right. He looked up and surveyed the ranks of headstones. If the rule was that you were buried in the cemetery closest to your home, Harry would end up here somewhere, not next to Rakel, who lay in Voksen Cemetery. It had taken him seven minutes to get here from his flat — three and a half if he hurried, but he had taken his time. Burial plots were only left alone for twenty years; after that new coffins could be buried in the same plot, alongside the ones that were already there. So if fate was so inclined, they could be reunited in death. Harry shivered in his coat as a cold shudder ran through his body. He looked at the time. Then hurried towards the exit.

“How are you doing?”

“Fine,” Oleg said.

“Fine?”

“Up and down.”

“Mm.” Harry pressed the phone closer to his ear, as if to reduce the distance between them, between a flat on Sofies gate where Bruce Springsteen was singing “Stray Bullet” in the evening darkness, and the house two thousand kilometres farther north where Oleg had a view of the Air Force base and Porsanger Fjord. “I’m calling to tell you to be careful.”

“Careful?”

Harry told him about Svein Finne. “If Finne is out for revenge for me killing his son, that means you could be in danger too.”

“I’m coming to Oslo,” Oleg said firmly.

“No!”

“No? If he killed Mum, am I supposed to just sit here and—”

“Firstly, Crime Squad wouldn’t let you anywhere near the investigation. Just think what a defense lawyer could do to a case in which you, the victim’s son, had taken part. And secondly, it’s likely that he picked your mother rather than you because you’re well outside his normal territory.”

“I’m coming.”

“Listen! If he comes after you, I want you up there for two reasons. He won’t drive two thousand kilometres by car, so he’d have to fly. To a small airport where you’ll be able to give them pictures of him. Svein Finne isn’t the sort of person it’s easy to ignore in a small place. With you where you are, we’re increasing the chances of catching him. OK?”

“But—”

“Reason number two. Imagine that you’re not there when he arrives. And finds Helga at home on her own.”

Silence. Just Springsteen and a piano.

Oleg cleared his throat. “You’ll keep me orientated as things progress?”

“Orientated. OK?”

After they hung up, Harry sat and stared at the phone where he’d put it down on the coffee table. The Boss was in the middle of another track that hadn’t made it onto The River album, “The Man Who Got Away.”

Like hell. Not this time.

The phone lay cold and dead on the table.

When it was half past eleven, he couldn’t sit still any longer.

He put his boots on, grabbed his phone and went out into the hallway. His car keys weren’t on the dresser where he usually kept them, so he hunted through all his trouser and jacket pockets until he found them in the bloody jeans he’d tossed in the laundry basket. He went down to his Ford Escort, got in, adjusted the seat, turned the key in the ignition and reached automatically for the radio, but changed his mind. He had it tuned to Stone Hard FM because they didn’t talk and played nothing but brain-dead, pain-numbing hard rock twenty-four hours a day, but he didn’t need anything pain-numbing right now. He needed pain. So he drove in silence through the drowsy streets of Oslo city centre, and up into the hills that wound past Sjømannsskolen to Nordstrand. He pulled over to the side of the road, took his flashlight from the glove compartment, got out and looked down at the Oslo Fjord as it lay bathed in moonlight, black and copper-smooth towards the south, towards Denmark and the open sea. He opened the boot and took out the crowbar. He stood and looked at it for a moment. There was something that wasn’t right, something he hadn’t thought of, but it was so small, like a fragment floating across his retina, and now he’d forgotten it. He tried biting his false finger, and shivered when his teeth came into contact with the titanium. But it didn’t help, it was gone, like a dream slipping helplessly out of mind.

Harry waded through the snow to the edge of the hill, to the old bunkers where he, Øystein and Tresko used to come and drink themselves stupid while their contemporaries were celebrating graduation, National Day, Midsummer and whatever the fuck else they used to celebrate.

The council had padlocked the doors after a series of articles in one of the city’s papers. It wasn’t that they hadn’t known that the bunkers were used by drug addicts and prostitutes, and there had been pictures published before. Pictures of young people injecting heroin into arms covered in scars, and foreign women in slutty outfits lying on filthy mattresses. What made them react this time was one single picture. It wasn’t even particularly brutal. A young man sitting on a mattress with a user’s accessories beside him. He was staring into the camera with puppy-dog eyes. The shock factor was that he looked like an ordinary Norwegian youth: blue-eyed, with a traditional sweater and short, neat hair. You could have imagined it was taken one Easter holiday at his family’s cabin. The next day the council had put locks on all the doors, and set up signs warning about trespassing and saying the bunkers were regularly patrolled. Harry knew that was an empty threat — the Chief of Police didn’t even have enough money and people to investigate break-ins where things were actually stolen.

He inserted the crowbar into the crack in the door.

He had to use the whole of his weight before the lock gave way.

Harry stepped inside. The only sound breaking the silence was the echo of dripping from deep inside the darkness, which made Harry think of the sonar pulse from a submarine. Tresko had said he’d downloaded a soundtrack of sonar pulses from the net, put it on a loop and used it to get to sleep. Said the feeling of being underwater made him calm.

Harry could only identify three ingredients in the stench: piss, petrol and wet concrete. He switched the flashlight on and walked farther in. The beam found a wooden bench that looked like it had been stolen from the surrounding parkland, and a mattress that was black with damp and mould. Planks had been nailed over the horizontal firing slits facing the fjord.

It was — as he had thought — the perfect place.

And he couldn’t help himself.

He turned the flashlight off.

Closed his eyes. He wanted to try out the feeling now, in advance.

He tried to see it in front of him, but the images wouldn’t come.

Why not? Maybe he needed to feed the hate.

He thought about Rakel. Rakel on the stone floor. Svein Finne over her. Feed the hate.

And then it came.

Harry screamed out loud into the darkness and opened his eyes.

What the hell was going on, why was his brain storing these images of himself covered in blood?

Svein Finne woke up at the sound of a branch snapping.

He was wide awake in an instant, staring up into the darkness and the roof of his two-man tent.

Had they found him? Here, so far from the nearest buildings, in dense pine forest in such rough terrain that even dogs would have trouble getting through it?

He listened. Tried to identify what it could be from the sounds. A snort. Not human. Heavy steps on the forest floor. So heavy that he could feel a slight vibration through the ground. A large animal. An elk, perhaps. When he was young, Svein Finne had often gone off into the forest, taking his tent with him, and would spend the night in Maridalen or Sørkedalen. The Oslo forests were vast, and provided freedom and refuge for a young lad who often got in trouble, didn’t fit in, who people tended either to avoid or wanted to bully. People often reacted like that when there was something they were afraid of. Svein Finne hadn’t been able to understand how they knew. He kept it hidden from them, after all. He only revealed who he was to a very few people. And he could understand that they got scared. He felt more at home out here in the forest with the animals than in the city that lay just a couple of hours’ walk away. And there were more animals here, right on their doorstep, than most of the people in Oslo knew. Deer, hares, pine martens. Foxes, of course; they thrived on human waste. The occasional red deer. One moonlit night he’d watched a lynx sneak past on the other side of a lake. And birds. Ospreys. Tawny owls and boreal owls. He hadn’t seen any of the goshawks and sparrowhawks that had been common here when he was growing up. But a buzzard had drifted past between the trees above him.

The elk had come closer. It had stopped breaking branches now. Elk break branches. A snout pressed against the tent, sniffed up and down. A snout that was sniffing for food. In the middle of the night. It wasn’t an elk.

Finne rolled over in his sleeping bag, grabbed his flashlight and hit the snout with it. It disappeared and he heard a deep sniff outside. Then the snout was back, and this time it pressed so hard against the tent that when Finne switched his flashlight quickly on and off again, he was able to see what it was. He had seen the outline of the big head and jaw. There was a scratching sound of claws tearing at the fabric of the tent. Finne was as quick as lightning, grabbing the handle of the knife he always kept by the side of the underlay, pulled the zip down and rolled out of the tent, making sure he didn’t have his back to the animal. He had set up camp on a few square metres of snow-free ground on a slope, in front of a large rock that divided the meltwater so that it ran down either side of the tent, and now he tumbled naked down the slope. He felt no pain as twigs and stones cut into his skin, just heard the cracking of the undergrowth as the bear came after him. It had noticed his flight, and its hunting instincts had kicked in, and Svein Finne knew that no one could outrun a bear, not on this terrain. But he had no intention of trying to do that. Nor of lying down and pretending to be dead, the way some people say is a good strategy if you run into a bear. A bear that had just emerged from hibernation is desperate from starvation and would be more than happy to eat even a corpse. Fucking idiots. Finne reached the bottom of the slope, found his feet, pressed his back against a thick tree trunk and straightened up. He switched the flashlight on and aimed it at the noises coming towards him.

The animal stopped abruptly when the light shone in its eyes. Blinded, it stood up on its hind legs and flailed at the air with its paws. It was a brown bear. About two metres tall. Could have been bigger, Finne thought, as he gripped the sheath between his teeth and drew the puukko knife. Grandfather Finne had said the last bear to be caught in the forests around Oslo — in 1882, by forest ranger Kjelsås, next to a fallen tree in Grønnvollia below Opkuven — had been almost two and a half metres tall.

The bear fell onto all fours. Its skin was hanging loose around it. It was panting hard, swinging its head from side to side, looking alternately into the forest and towards the light, as if it couldn’t decide.

Finne held the knife up in front of him. “Don’t want to work for your food, Bruin? Feeling a bit weak tonight?”

The bear roared, as if in frustration, and Finne laughed so loud that it echoed off the rock face above them. “My grandfather was one of the men who ate your grandfather back in 1882,” Finne called. “He said it tasted terrible, even with plenty of seasoning. But I could imagine taking a bite of you all the same, Bruin, so come on! Come on, you stupid bastard!”

Finne took a step towards the bear, which backed away slightly, shifting its weight from side to side. It looked confused, almost cowed.

“I know how it feels,” Finne said. “You’ve been shut up for ages, then suddenly you get out, and there’s too much light, too little food, and you’re all alone. Not because you’ve been cast out — because you’re not like them, you’re not a herding animal, you’re the one who’s cast them out.” Finne took another step closer. “But that doesn’t mean you don’t feel lonely, does it? Spread your seed, Bruin, make others who are like you, who understand you. Who understand how to honour their father! Hah! Hah! Get lost, because there are no females in Sørkedalen. Get lost, this is my territory, you poor, starving bastard! All you’ll find here is loneliness.”

The bear pressed down on its front paws, as if it was about to stand up again but couldn’t manage it.

Finne saw it now. The bear was old. Maybe sick. And Finne detected an unmistakable smell. The smell of fear. It wasn’t the far smaller, two-legged creature in front of it that was making it frightened, but the fact that this creature wasn’t emitting the same smell. It was fearless. Crazy. Capable of anything.

“Well, old Bruin?”

The bear snarled, revealing a set of yellow teeth.

Then it turned and padded away until it was swallowed up by the darkness.

Svein Finne stood and listened to the sound of twigs snapping farther and farther away.

The bear would be back. Either when it was even hungrier, or when it had eaten and felt strong enough to conquer the territory. Tomorrow he would have to start looking for somewhere that was even less accessible, possibly somewhere with walls that could keep a bear out. But first he had to go into the city and buy a trap. And visit the grave. The herd.

Katrine couldn’t sleep. But her son was asleep in his crib over by the window, that was the important thing.

She rolled over in bed and looked directly into Bjørn’s pale face. His eyes were closed but he wasn’t snoring. And that meant he wasn’t asleep either. She studied him. His thin, reddish eyelids with their visible veins, his pale eyebrows, white skin. It was as if he’d swallowed a lit lightbulb. Inflated and illuminated from within. Plenty of people had been surprised when they got together. No one had asked straight out, obviously, but she had seen the question on their faces: what makes a beautiful, self-sufficient woman choose a less than averagely attractive man with no money? A female MP on the Justice Committee had taken her aside at a networking cocktail party for “women in important positions” and told her she thought it was great that Katrine had married a male colleague whose status was lower than hers. Katrine had replied that Bjørn was bloody good in bed, and asked the politician if she felt ashamed of having a high-status husband who earned more than her, and what did she think the chances were that her next husband would be lower-status? Katrine had no idea who the woman’s husband was, but from the look on her face she could tell that she had got pretty close to the mark. She hated those “influential women” gatherings anyway. Not because she didn’t support the cause, not because she didn’t think that true equality was something worth fighting for, but because she couldn’t summon up the forced sisterly solidarity and emotional rhetoric. Occasionally she felt like telling them to shut up and stick to asking for equal opportunities and equal pay for equal work. Sure, a change was long overdue, and not only when it came to direct sexual harassment, but also the indirect and often intangible sexual-control tactics men used. But that mustn’t be allowed to rise to the top of the agenda and draw attention away from what equality was really about. Women would only harm themselves yet again if they prioritised hurt feelings over the size of their pay packets. Because only better wages, more economic power, would make them invulnerable.

Perhaps she would have felt differently if she’d been the most vulnerable person in the bedroom. She had sought out Bjørn when she was at her weakest, her most fragile, when she needed someone who would love her unconditionally. And the slightly plump but kind and charming forensic specialist had hardly been able to believe his luck, and responded by proclaiming her his queen, almost to the point of self-negation. She had told herself that she wouldn’t exploit that, that she had seen too many people — women and men alike — turn into monsters simply because their partner invited it. And she had tried. She really had.

She had been tested before, but when the real test came along — the third person, the baby — the survival instinct that got you through the day took over and consideration for your partner had to give way.

The third person. The one you loved more than your partner.

But in Katrine’s case, the third person had been there all along.

Once. Just once she had lain like this, in this very bed with him, the third person. Listened to him breathing while an autumn storm made the windows rattle, the walls creak, and her world collapse. He belonged to someone else, she was only borrowing him, but if that was all she could get, she’d take it. Did she regret that attack of madness? Yes. Yes, of course she did. Was it the happiest moment of her life? No. It was despair and a peculiar numbness. Could the whole thing have been avoided? Definitely not.

“What are you thinking about?” Bjørn whispered.

What if she said it? What if she told him everything?

“The case,” she said.

“Oh?”

“How can you lot have absolutely nothing?”

“Like we’ve said, the perpetrator cleaned up after himself. Are you really thinking about the case, or... something else?”

Katrine couldn’t see the expression in his eyes in the darkness, but she could hear it in his voice. He had always known about the third person. Bjørn Holm was the person she had confided in back when he was just a friend and she had only just moved to Police Headquarters, when she had a hopeless, silly infatuation with Harry. It was so long ago. But she had never told him about that night.

“A married couple who live in Holmenkollen were driving home on the night of the murder,” Katrine said. “They saw an adult male walking down Holmenkollveien at quarter to midnight.”

“Which fits the presumed time of the murder, between 22:00 and 02:00,” Bjørn said.

“Sober adults in Holmenkollen drive cars. The last bus had gone, and we’ve checked the security cameras at Holmenkollen metro station. A tram arrived at twenty-five minutes to midnight, but the only person who got off was a woman. What’s a pedestrian doing out that late at night? If he was walking all the way home from a bar in the city, he’d have been walking uphill, and if he was heading back into the city, he’d have gone to the metro station, don’t you think? Unless he wanted to avoid any security cameras.”

“A man, out walking. It’s a bit thin, isn’t it? Did they give a description?”

“Just the usual. Average height, between twenty-five and sixty, unknown ethnicity, but rather dark-skinned.”

“So the reason you’ve got hung up on this is...”

“...that it’s the only lead of any value at all.”

“So you didn’t get anything useful from the neighbour?”

“Mrs. Syvertsen? Her bedroom is at the back of the house, and the window was open. But she says she slept like a baby all night.”

Like an ironic response, a tentative whimpering sound came from the crib. They looked at each other and almost started to laugh.

Katrine turned away from them and pressed her ear down into the pillow, but couldn’t shut out two further whines, then the usual pause before the siren started. She felt the mattress move as Bjørn rolled out of bed.

She wasn’t thinking about the baby. She wasn’t thinking about Harry. And she wasn’t thinking about the case. She was thinking about sleep. A mammal’s deep sleep, the sort with both sides of the brain switched off.

Kaja ran her hand over the rough, hard grip of the pistol. She had switched off all sources of noise in the living room and was listening to the silence. He was out there, she had heard him. She had got hold of the pistol after what happened to Hala in Kabul.

Hala and Kaja had been two of the nine women in the group of twenty-three people who shared the same living quarters, most of them employed by the Red Crescent or Red Cross, but a few held civilian positions in the peacekeeping forces. Hala was an unusual person with an unusual background, but what really set her apart from the others in the building was that she wasn’t foreign but Afghan. The building wasn’t far from the Kabul Serena Hotel and Afghan Presidential Palace. The Taliban attack on the Serena had demonstrated that nowhere in Kabul was completely safe, but everything was relative, and they had felt protected by the security guard behind the tall railings. In the afternoons, Hala and Kaja would go up onto the flat roof and fly the kite they had bought at the Strand Bazaar for a dollar or two. Kaja had assumed it was just a romantic cliché from a best-selling book — the idea that the kites in the skies above Kabul were a symbol that the city was free from the Taliban regime, which had banned kite-flying in the nineties because it took people’s time and attention away from prayer. But at the weekends now there were hundreds, thousands of kites in the air. And according to Hala, the colours of the kites were even brighter than they were before the Taliban, because of the new ink that had come onto the market. Hala had known just how they had to work together when they flew the kite — one steering it, the other watching the line — otherwise they wouldn’t stay clear of other kites that were looking for a fight, trying to cut their line or kite with their own lines, which had slivers of glass attached to them. It wasn’t hard to see the parallels with the West’s self-imposed mission in Afghanistan, but it was still a game. If they lost a kite, they just sent up another one. And even more beautiful than the kites in the sky was the glow in Hala’s beautiful eyes when she looked up at them.

It was past midnight, and Kaja had heard sirens and seen blue police lights from the living-room window. She was already worried because Hala hadn’t come home, so she got dressed and went outside. The police cars were parked by an alley. There was no cordon, and a crowd of onlookers had already gathered. Young Afghan men in leather jackets, copies of Gucci and Armani, were pretty much the only people on the streets at that time of night. How many crime scenes had Kaja attended as a detective in the Crime Squad Unit? Even so, she still woke up from nightmares about that night. The knife had cut large flaps in Hala’s shalwar kameez, baring the skin beneath, and her head was bent back at an impossible angle, as if her neck was broken, making the wound in her neck gape open, and Kaja could see right into the pink, already-dry innards. When she crouched over the body, a swarm of sandflies had emerged from the wound, like an evil spirit emerging from a lamp, and Kaja had flailed her arms about her.

The post-mortem revealed that Hala had had intercourse right before the murder, and even if the physical evidence couldn’t rule out the possibility that it had been voluntary, they all assumed — given the circumstances and the fact that she was a single young woman who followed the strict rules of the Hazaras — that it was rape. The police never found the perpetrator or perpetrators. People said that the risk of being raped in the street in Kabul was a fraction of the risk of being blown up by an IED. And even if the number of rapes had risen since the fall of the Taliban, the police had a theory that the Taliban were behind the attack, to show what would happen to Afghan women who worked for ISAF, Resolute Force and other Western organisations. Despite that, the rape and murder in Kabul had frightened the other women in the group. Kaja had taught them how to handle a gun. And in a strange way, this pistol — which was passed around like a baton whenever one of them had to go out after dark — brought them together as a team. A kite team.

Kaja felt the weight of the pistol. When she was in the police, holding a loaded pistol had always filled her with a mixture of fear and security. In Afghanistan she had started to think of it as a necessary tool, something you valued having. Like the knife. It was Anton who had taught her to use it. Who had taught her that even in the Red Cross — at least, in his Red Cross — you defended your own life if necessary by killing. She remembered that the first time she met Anton she had thought that the refined, almost jovial, tall blond Swiss man — who was far too handsome — wasn’t for her. She had been wrong. And right. But when it came to Hala’s murder, she wasn’t wrong, only right.

It wasn’t the Taliban who had been behind it.

She knew who it was, but had no evidence.

Kaja squeezed her hand tightly round the handle. Listened. Breathed. Waited. Numb. That was what was so strange: her heart was pounding as if she were on the brink of panic, but at the same time she felt completely indifferent. Scared of dying, but not particularly interested in living. Even so, she had got through the debriefing with the psychologist when they stopped in Tallinn on the way home. And sailed under the radar.

20

Harry woke up, and everything was the same. A few seconds passed before he remembered, realised it wasn’t a nightmare, and the clenched fist hit him in the guts. He rolled onto his side and stared at the picture on the table. Rakel, Oleg and himself, smiling, sitting on a boulder surrounded by autumn leaves, on one of those hikes Rakel was so keen on, and which Harry suspected that he had rather started to enjoy. And for the first time he thought the thought: if this was the start of a day that was only going to get worse, how many more days could he handle? He was in the process of giving himself an answer when he realised he hadn’t been woken by the alarm clock. His phone, lying next to the picture, was vibrating almost silently, like the buzz of a hummingbird. He grabbed it.

It was a text message containing a picture.

Harry’s heart began to beat faster.

He tapped the screen twice with his finger, and it felt as if his heart had stopped.

Svein Finne, “the Fiancé,” was standing with his head bowed, facing the camera, his eyes focused a little way above it. The sky above his head had a reddish glow.

Harry leapt out of bed, picked up his trousers from the floor and pulled them on. Yanked on a T-shirt on his way to the door, pulled on his coat and boots and rushed out into the stairwell. He stuck his hands in his pockets to check that everything he had put in them the previous evening was still there: car keys, handcuffs and the Heckler & Koch pistol.

He burst out of the door, breathed in the cold morning air and jumped in the Escort that was parked on the edge of the pavement. Three and a half minutes if he ran. But he needed the car for part two. Harry quietly cursed the starter motor when it failed to work the first time. It would be game over at the next MOT. He turned the key again and pressed the accelerator. There! Harry skidded up the wet cobbles of Stensberggata, almost deserted so early in the morning. How long did people stand at graves? He cut across the beginnings of the morning rush on Ullevålsveien and parked on the pavement on Akersbakken right in front of the north gate to Vår Frelsers Cemetery. He left the car unlocked with its police badge clearly visible on the dashboard.

He ran, but stopped when he reached the gate. From where he was standing, at the top of the sloping cemetery, he immediately caught sight of the lonely figure standing in front of the grave. His head was bowed, and a long, thick Native American plait was hanging down his back.

Harry clasped the butt of the pistol in his coat pocket and started walking. Not fast, not slow. He stopped when he was three metres from the man’s back.

“What do you want?”

The sound of the man’s voice made Harry shiver. The last time he had heard Svein Finne’s gravelly, resounding priest’s voice they had been sitting in a cell in Ila Prison, when Harry was trying to get help to catch the man who was now lying in the grave in front of them. Back then Harry had had no idea that Valentin Gjertsen was Svein Finne’s son. In hindsight, he couldn’t help thinking he should have suspected something. Should have realised that such sick, violent fantasies must have come from the same source, one way or another.

“Svein Finne,” Harry said, and heard his voice shake. “You’re under arrest.”

He didn’t hear Finne laugh, just saw his shoulders move. “That seems to be your standard line whenever you see me, Hole.”

“Put your hands behind your back.”

Finne let out a deep sigh. He put his hands behind his back with a nonchalant gesture, as if it made his posture more comfortable.

“I’m going to put handcuffs on you. And before you think of doing anything stupid, you should know that I’ve got a pistol aimed at the base of your spine.”

“You’d shoot me in the base of the spine, Hole?” Finne turned his head and grinned. Those brown eyes. The thick, wet lips. Harry breathed through his nose. Cold. He needed to stay cold now, not think about her. Think about what he was going to do, nothing else. Simple, practical things.

“Because you think I’m more frightened of being paralysed than of dying?”

Harry took a deep breath in an attempt to stop himself trembling. “Because I want a confession before you die.”

“Like you got from my boy? And then you shot him?”

“I had to shoot him because he was resisting arrest.”

“Yes, I daresay that’s how you choose to remember it. That’s probably how you remember shooting me too.”

Harry saw the hole in Svein Finne’s palm, like Torghatten, the mountain with a hole you can see daylight through. From a bullet fired during an arrest early in Harry’s police career. But it was the other hand that caught his attention. The grey watchstrap around his wrist. Without lowering the pistol, he grabbed Finne’s wrist with his free hand and turned it over. Pressed the face of the watch. Red numbers indicating the time and date lit up.

The click of the handcuffs sounded like a damp kiss in the empty cemetery.

Harry turned the ignition key counterclockwise, and the engine died.

“A beautiful morning,” Finne said, looking through the Escort’s windshield down at the fjord below them. “But why aren’t we at Police Headquarters?”

“I was thinking of giving you a choice,” Harry said. “You can give me a confession here and now, and we can drive back down for breakfast and a warm cell in Police Headquarters. Or you can deny it, and you and I can take a little walk into that wartime bunker.”

“Ha! I like you, Hole. I really do. I hate you as a person, but I like your personality.” Finne moistened his lips. “And I confess, obviously. She—”

“Wait until I start recording,” Harry said, fishing his phone out of his coat pocket.

“...was a willing participant.” Finne shrugged his shoulders. “I think she might even have enjoyed it more than me.”

Harry swallowed. Closed his eyes for a moment. “Enjoyed having a knife stuck in her stomach?”

“A knife?” Finne turned in his seat and looked at Harry. “I took her by the railings, right behind where you arrested me. Of course I know it’s against the law to fuck in a cemetery, but given the way she insisted on getting more, I think it’s only reasonable for her to pay most of the fine. Has she really filed a complaint? I suppose she regretted her ungodly behaviour. Yes, that wouldn’t surprise me. Unless perhaps she actually believes what she’s saying. Shame can make us distort anything. Do you know, there was a psychologist in prison who tried to tell me about Nathanson’s Compass of Shame. That I was so ashamed at having killed the girl, like you claimed I had, that I had to flee the shame altogether by denying it had ever happened. That’s what’s going on here. Dagny feels so ashamed of how much she enjoyed what happened in the cemetery that her memory has turned it into rape. Does that sound familiar, Hole?”

Harry was about to answer when a wave of nausea rose up inside him. Shame. Repression.

The handcuffs rattled as Finne leaned forward in his seat. “Either way, you know what it’s like with rape cases, where it’s one person’s word against another’s, with no witnesses or forensic evidence. I’ll get off, Hole. Is that what this is about? You know the only way you can get me locked up for rape is by forcing a confession out of me? Sorry, Hole. But, like I said, I confess to fucking in a public place, so at least you’ve got something you can pin on me. Are you still offering breakfast?”

“Did I say something wrong?” Finne laughed as he stumbled through the muddy snow. He fell to his knees, and Harry pulled him up and shoved him towards the bunkers.

Harry was crouched down in front of the wooden bench. On the floor in front of him was everything he had found when he searched Svein Finne. A dice made of blue-grey metal. A couple of hundred-kroner notes and some coins, but no bus or tram tickets. A knife in a sheath. The knife had a brown wooden shaft, a short blade. Sharp. Could that be the murder weapon? There were no traces of blood on it. Harry looked up. He had removed one of the planks covering the gun slits to let some light into the bunker. Joggers occasionally ran past along the path just outside, but there wouldn’t be any until the snow had gone completely. No one would hear Svein Finne’s screams.

“Nice knife,” Harry said.

“I collect knives,” Finne said. “I had twenty-six that you seized from me, do you remember? I never got them back.” The light of the low morning sun was striking Svein Finne’s face and muscular upper body. Not the pumped-up version jailbirds get from repetitive weightlifting in a cramped gym, but the wiry, fit sort. A ballet dancer’s body, Harry thought. Or Iggy Pop’s. Clean. Finne was sitting on the bench with his hands cuffed round the backrest. Harry had removed his shoes as well, but had let him keep his trousers.

“I remember the knives,” Harry said. “What’s the dice for?”

“To make the difficult decisions in life.”

“Luke Rhinehart,” Harry said. “So you’ve read The Dice Man.”

“I don’t read, Hole. But you can keep the dice, a gift from me to you. Let fate decide when you don’t know what to do. You’ll find it very liberating, believe me.”

“So fate is more liberating than deciding for yourself?”

“Of course. Imagine that you feel like killing someone, but can’t make yourself do it. So you need help. From fate. And if the dice tells you to kill, fate bears the responsibility; it liberates you and your free will. Do you see? All it takes is a throw of the dice.”

Harry checked the recording was working before he put the phone down on the bench. He took a deep breath. “Did you throw the dice before you murdered Rakel Fauke?”

“Who’s Rakel Fauke?”

“My wife,” Harry said. “The murder took place in the kitchen of our home in Holmenkollen ten days ago.” He saw something begin to dance in Finne’s eyes.

“My condolences.”

“Shut up and talk.”

“Or else?” Finne sighed as if he were bored. “Are you going to get the car battery and use it on my testicles?”

“Using car batteries to torture someone is a myth,” Harry said. “They don’t have enough power.”

“How do you know that?”

“I read up about torture methods online last night,” Harry said, running the sharp edge of the knife against the skin of his thumb. “Apparently it isn’t the pain itself that makes people confess, but the fear of pain. But obviously the fear needs to be well founded — the torturer has to convince the victim that the pain he is willing to inflict is only limited by the torturer’s imagination. And if there’s one thing I’ve got right now, Finne, it’s imagination.”

Svein Finne moistened his thick lips. “I see. You want the details?”

“All of them.”

“The only detail I have for you is that I didn’t do it.”

Harry clenched his fist around the handle of the knife and punched. He felt the cartilage in the other man’s nose break, felt the blow in his own knuckles and the warm blood on the back of his hand. Finne’s eyes filled with tears of pain and his lips parted. Revealed his big, yellow teeth in a broad grin. “Everybody kills, Hole.” His priest’s voice had a different, more nasal tone now. “You, your colleagues, your neighbour. Just not me. I create new life, I repair what you destroy. I populate the world with myself, with people who want good.” He tilted his head. “I don’t understand why people make the effort to raise something that isn’t theirs. Like you and your bastard son. Oleg, that’s his name, isn’t it? Is that because your sperm’s too weak, Hole? Or didn’t you fuck Rakel well enough for her to want to give birth to your children?”

Harry punched again. Hit the same place. He wondered if the crisp crunching sound came from Finne’s nose or was just in his own head. Finne leaned his head back and grinned up at the roof. “More!”

Harry was sitting on the floor with his back against the concrete wall, listening to the sound of his own deep breathing and the wheezing sound from the bench. He had wound Finne’s shirt around his hand, but the pain told him that the skin on at least one of his knuckles was broken. How long had they been at it? How long was it going to take? On the website about torture it had said that no one, absolutely no one, could hold out against torture in the long run, that they would tell you what you want, or possibly what they think you want. Svein Finne had merely repeated the same word: more. And had got what he asked for.

“Knives.” The voice was no longer recognisable as Finne’s. And when Harry looked up, he didn’t recognise the man either. The swelling on his face had made his eyes close, and the blood was hanging off him like a dripping red beard. “People use knives.”

“Knives?” Harry repeated in a whisper.

“People have been sticking knives in each other since the Stone Age, Hole. Fear of them is embedded in our genes. The thought that something can penetrate your skin, get inside, destroy what’s inside you, that which is you. Show them a knife and they’ll do whatever you want.”

“Who does what you want?”

Finne cleared his throat and spat red saliva on the floor between them. “Everyone. Women, men. You. Me. In Rwanda, the Tutsis were offered the chance to buy bullets so they could be shot rather than hacked to death with machetes. And you know what? They paid up.”

“OK, I’ve got a knife,” Harry said, nodding towards the knife on the floor between them.

“And where are you going to stick it?”

“I was thinking the same place you stabbed my wife. In the stomach.”

“A bad bluff, Hole. If you stab me in the stomach I won’t be able to talk, and I’d bleed to death before you got your confession.”

Harry didn’t answer.

“Actually, hang on,” Finne said, straightening his bloody head. “Could it be that you, who have done your research into torture, are conducting this ineffective boxing match because deep down you don’t really want a confession?” He sniffed the air. “Yes, that’s it. You don’t want me to confess, so you have an excuse to kill me. In fact, you’d have to kill me in order to get justice. You just needed a precursor to the killing. So you can tell yourself you tried, that this wasn’t what you wanted. That you’re not like the murderers who do it just because they like it.” Finne’s laughter turned into a gurgling cough. “Yes, I lied. I am a murderer, me too. Because killing someone is fantastic, isn’t it, Hole? Seeing a child come into the world, knowing that it’s your own creation, can only be outshone by one thing: removing someone from the world. Terminating a life, assuming the role of fate, being someone’s dice. Then you’re God, Hole, and you can deny it as much as you like, but that’s precisely the feeling you’ve got right now. It’s good, isn’t it?”

Harry stood up.

“So I’m sorry to have to spoil this execution, Hole, but I hereby declare: mea culpa, Hole. I murdered your wife, Rakel Fauke.”

Harry froze. Finne looked up at the roof.

“With a knife,” he whispered. “But not the one you’re holding in your hand. She was screaming when she died. She was screaming your name. Haarr-y. Haarr-yy...”

Harry felt a different type of rage hit him. The cold sort, the sort that made him calm. And crazy. Which he had feared might come, and which mustn’t be allowed to take over.

“Why?” Harry asked. His voice was suddenly relaxed. His breathing normal.

“Why?”

“The motive?”

“That’s obvious, surely? The same as yours now, Hole. Revenge. We’re engaged in a classic blood feud. You killed my son, I kill your wife. That’s what we do, that’s what separates us from the animals: we take revenge. It’s rational, but we don’t even have to think about whether it makes sense, we just know that it feels good. Isn’t that what it feels like for you right now, Hole? You’re making your own pain into someone else’s. Someone you can convince yourself is responsible for the fact that you’re in pain.”

“Prove it.”

“Prove what?”

“That you killed her. Tell me something you couldn’t have known about the murder or crime scene.”

“To Harri. With an ‘i.’ ”

Harry blinked.

“From Oleg,” Finne went on. “Branded into a breadboard hanging on the wall between the top cupboards and the coffee machine.”

The only sound in the silence that followed was the metronome-like dripping.

“There’s your confession,” Finne said, coughing and spitting again. “That gives you two options. You can take me into custody and get me convicted under Norwegian law. That’s what a policeman would do. Or you can do what us murderers do.”

Harry nodded. Crouched down again. Picked up the dice. He cupped his hands and shook it before letting it roll across the concrete floor. He looked at it thoughtfully. Put the dice in his pocket, grasped the knife and stood up. The sunlight shining in between the planks glinted off the blade. He stopped behind Finne, put his left arm around his forehead and locked his head to his chest.

“Hole?” The voice was slightly higher now. “Hole, don’t...” Finne jerked at the cuffs, and Harry could feel his body trembling.

Finally, a sign of angst in the face of death.

Harry breathed out and dropped the knife into his coat pocket. Still holding Finne’s head tight, he pulled a handkerchief from his trouser pocket and wiped Finne’s face with it. He wiped the blood from around his nose, mouth and chin. Finne sniffed and cursed, but didn’t try to struggle. Harry tore two strips off the handkerchief and stuck them in his nostrils. Then he put the handkerchief back in his pocket, walked around the bench and looked at the result. Finne was panting as if he’d just run the 400 metres. Because Harry had mostly had Finne’s T-shirt wrapped round his fist when he hit him, there were no cuts, just swelling and the nosebleed.

Harry went outside and put some snow in the T-shirt, then went back inside and held it to Finne’s face.

“Trying to make me presentable so you can claim this never happened?” Finne said. He had already calmed down.

“It’s probably too late for that,” Harry said. “But whatever punishment they give me will be based on the amount of damage, so let’s call it damage limitation. And you provoked me because you wanted me to hit you.”

“I did, did I?”

“Of course. You wanted to get some physical evidence to prove to your lawyer that you were assaulted when the police were questioning you. Because any judge would refuse to allow the police to present evidence acquired using unlawful means. That’s why you confessed. Because you assumed the confession would get you out of here but still wouldn’t cost you anything later.”

“Maybe. At least you’re not thinking of killing me.”

“No?”

“You’d already have done it by now. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe you haven’t got it in you after all.”

“You’re suggesting I should?”

“Like you said yourself, it’s too late now, an ice pack isn’t going to fix this. I’ll end up walking free.”

Harry picked his phone up from the bench. Switched the recording off and called Bjørn Holm.

“Hello?”

“It’s Harry. I’ve got Svein Finne. He’s just confessed to me that he murdered Rakel, and I’ve got it recorded.”

Harry heard a baby crying in the pause that followed.

“Really?” Bjørn said slowly.

“Really. I want you to come and arrest him.”

“What? Didn’t you say you’ve already arrested him?”

“Not arrested, no,” Harry said, and looked at Finne. “I’m suspended, aren’t I, so right now I’m just a private citizen holding another private citizen here against his will. Finne can always file a complaint, but I’m pretty sure I’d be treated fairly leniently given the fact he murdered my wife. The important thing now is that he’s arrested and questioned properly by the police.”

“I get it. Where are you?”

“The German bunkers above Sjømannsskolen. Finne’s sitting cuffed to a bench in here.”

“I see. What about you?”

“Mm.”

“No, Harry.”

“No what?”

“I don’t want to have to carry you out of some bar later tonight.”

“I’ll send the audio file to your email address.”

Mona Daa stopped in the doorway of her editor’s office. He was talking on the phone.

“They’ve arrested someone for Rakel Fauke’s murder,” she said loudly.

“I’ve got to go,” the editor said, then hung up without waiting for a response and looked up. “Are you on it, Daa?”

“It’s already written,” Mona said.

“Get it out there! Has anyone else published it yet?”

“We got notification five minutes ago, there’s a press conference at four o’clock. What I wanted to talk to you about is whether or not we should name the suspect.”

“Did they give his name in the announcement?”

“Of course not.”

“So how have you got it?”

“Because I’m one of your best reporters.”

“In five minutes?”

“OK, the best.”

“So who is it?”

“Svein Finne. Previous convictions for assault and rape, and a criminal record as long as a plague year. Do we publish his name?”

The editor ran his hand over his thinning hair. “Hm. Tricky.”

Mona was well aware of the dilemma. Under paragraph 4.7 of the Ethical Code of Practice for the Norwegian Press, the press agreed to deal sensitively with the publication of names in criminal cases, especially during the early stages of an investigation. Any identification had to be justifiable on grounds of public interest. On the other hand, her paper, VG, had published the name of a professor whose offense was that he had sent inappropriate text messages to women. Everyone had agreed that the man was a pig, but as far as they were aware no laws had been broken, and it was hard to claim that the public needed to know the professor’s name. In Finne’s case they could obviously justify publication of his name by saying the public needed to know who they should be looking out for. On the other hand, was there any possibility of what the code called “imminent danger of offenses against innocent people, with serious and repeated criminal acts,” as long as Finne was in custody?

“We’ll hold back his name,” the editor said. “But include his criminal record and say that VG knows who he is. Then at least we’ll get a gold star from the Press Association.”

“That’s how I’ve already written it, so it’s ready to go. We’ve also managed to get hold of a new, previously unpublished picture of Rakel as well.”

“Fantastic.”

Her editor wasn’t wrong. After a week and a half of intense press coverage of the murder, their choice of pictures was getting pretty repetitive.

“But maybe run a picture of the husband, the policeman, under the headline.”

Mona blinked. “You mean Harry Hole, right under Suspect Arrested for Rakel’s Murder? Isn’t that a bit misleading?”

The editor shrugged. “They’ll find out soon enough when they read the article.”

Mona nodded slowly. The shock effect of Harry Hole’s familiar, ruggedly attractive face below that sort of headline would obviously get more clicks than another picture of Rakel. And their readers would forgive them the ostensibly unintentional misunderstanding; they always did. Nobody wanted to be properly deceived, but people had nothing against being misled in an entertaining way. So why did Mona dislike this part of the job so much, when she loved the rest of it?

“Mona?”

“Will do,” she said, pushing herself off the door frame. “This is going to be big.”

21

Katrine Bratt stifled a yawn and hoped that none of the three other people around the table in the Chief of Police’s office had noticed. Yesterday had been a very long day, after the press conference about the arrest in Rakel’s case. And when she finally got home and went to bed, her son had kept her up most of the night.

But there was a chance that today wasn’t going to turn into a marathon. Because Svein Finne’s name hadn’t been made public in the media, a vacuum had arisen, the eye of the storm in which — for the moment, at least — things really were calm. But it was still too early in the morning to say what the day would bring.

“Thanks for agreeing to see us at such short notice,” Johan Krohn said.

“No problem,” Police Chief Gunnar Hagen said with a nod.

“Great. Then I’ll get straight to the point.”

The standard phrase of a man who feels at home “getting to the point,” Katrine thought. Because even if Krohn evidently enjoyed the limelight, he was first and foremost a nerd. A now-renowned defense lawyer, almost fifty years old, who still looked like a boy, someone who used to be bullied and now wore his professional reputation and freshly won confidence like a suit of armour. Katrine had read about the bullying in a magazine interview. It hadn’t been the same getting-beaten-up-in-every-break that Katrine had experienced growing up, but low-level teasing and withheld invitations to birthday parties and games, the sort of bullying that every celebrity now claimed to have suffered, to be applauded for their openness. Krohn had said he had come forward to make it easier for other smart kids suffering the same thing. Katrine found it odd that the sought-after lawyer’s desire for justice was balanced by his lack of empathy.

OK, Katrine knew she was being unfair. They were — as they were now — on opposite sides of the table, and it wasn’t Krohn’s job to feel empathy for the victims. Perhaps it was a prerequisite for the judicial system that defense lawyers had the capacity to switch off their sympathy for the victim and only focus on what was best for their clients. The way it had been a prerequisite for Krohn’s personal success. That was probably why it bothered her. That, and the fact that she had lost too many cases against him.

Krohn glanced at the Patek Philippe watch on his left wrist as he held his right hand out to the young woman sitting beside him wearing a discreet but ridiculously expensive Hermès outfit and presumably equipped with top grades from law school. Katrine realised that the dry Danish pastries she’d salvaged from a meeting yesterday weren’t going to be eaten today either.

As if it was a carefully practised move, like a nurse passing a surgeon a scalpel, the young woman placed a yellow folder in Krohn’s hand.

“This case has obviously attracted a lot of media attention,” Krohn said. “Something that does no favours either to you or my client.”

But it does favour you, Katrine thought, wondering if she was expected to pour coffee for the visitors and the Chief of Police.

“So I assume it’s in everyone’s interests for us to come to an agreement as quickly as possible.” Krohn opened the folder, but didn’t look down at it. Katrine didn’t know if it was true or just a myth that Krohn had a perfect photographic memory, and that his party trick at law school had been to ask fellow students to give him a page number between 1 and 3,760, and then he would proceed to recite the entire contents of that page of Norwegian law. Nerd parties. The only type of party Katrine had been invited to when she was a student. Because she was pretty but still an outsider, with her leather clothes and punk hair. She didn’t hang out with punks, and she didn’t hang out with straight, well-dressed students. So the staring-at-their-shoes gang had invited her into the warm. But she had turned them down, she didn’t want to fulfill the classic “pretty girl teams up with attractive but socially inadequate nerds” role. Katrine Bratt had had enough to deal with. More than enough. She had been bombarded with psychiatric diagnoses. But somehow she had coped.

“In the wake of my client being arrested on suspicion of the murder of Rakel Fauke, three accusations of rape have come to light,” Krohn said. “One of these is from a heroin addict who has already received rape victim’s compensation twice before on, frankly, very thin grounds, and without any conviction on either of those occasions. The second has, as I understand it, today asked to withdraw her accusation. The third, Dagny Jensen, has no case as long as there is no forensic evidence, and my client’s explanation is that intercourse was entirely consensual. Even a man with a previous conviction must have the right to a sex life without being an open target for the police and any woman who feels guilty afterwards?”

Katrine looked for signs of a reaction from the young woman next to Krohn, but saw nothing.

“We know how much of the police’s resources get swallowed up by such ambiguous rape cases, and here we have three of them,” Krohn went on, with his eyes focused on a point in front of him, as if an invisible script was hanging in the air. “Now it isn’t my job to defend the interests of society, but in this specific instance I believe that our interests might coincide. My client has declared himself willing to confess to murder, if no rape charges are brought. And this is a murder investigation in which I understand that all you have is” — Krohn looked down at his papers as if he needed to check that what he was about to say really was true — “a breadboard, a confession acquired under torture, and a video clip that could be of anyone, possibly taken from a film.” Krohn looked up again with a questioning expression.

Gunnar Hagen looked at Katrine.

Katrine cleared her throat. “Coffee?”

“No, thanks.” Krohn scratched — or perhaps smoothed — one eyebrow carefully with his forefinger. “My client would also — assuming we can reach an agreement — consider withdrawing his charge against Inspector Harry Hole for unlawful imprisonment and physical assault.”

“The title of inspector is irrelevant under current circumstances,” Hagen muttered. “Harry Hole was acting as a private citizen. If any of our officers broke Norwegian law while on duty, I would report them myself.”

“Of course,” Krohn replied. “I certainly don’t mean to call the integrity of the police into question, I merely wish to suggest that it looks unseemly.”

“Then you’re no doubt also aware that it isn’t normal practice for the Norwegian police to engage in the sort of horse-trading you’re suggesting. Negotiations for a reduced sentence, of course. But writing off the accusation of rape...”

“I appreciate that you might have objections, but can I remind you that my client is well over seventy years old, and that in the event of a guilty verdict the likelihood is that he would die in prison. I can’t honestly see that it makes a great deal of difference if at that point he is in there for murder or rape. So instead of clinging to principles that don’t benefit anyone, how about asking the people who have accused my client of rape what they would prefer: that Svein Finne dies in a cell sometime within the next twelve years, or that they see him on the street again in four years? As far as compensation for the rape victims is concerned, I’m sure my client and the supposed victims could reach a suitable settlement outside of the legal process.”

Krohn passed the folder back to the female solicitor, and Katrine saw her glance up at him with a mixture of fear and infatuation. She was fairly certain the pair of them had made use of the law firm’s dark leather furniture after office hours.

“Thank you,” Hagen said, standing up and holding his hand across the table. “You’ll be hearing from us soon.”

Katrine stood up and shook Krohn’s surprisingly clammy and soft hand. “And how is your client taking it?”

Krohn looked at her seriously. “Naturally, he’s taking it very hard.”

Katrine knew she shouldn’t, but couldn’t help herself. “Perhaps you could take him one of these pastries, to cheer him up? They’ll only be thrown away otherwise.”

Krohn looked at her for a moment before turning back towards the Chief of Police. “Well, I hope to hear from you later today.”

Katrine noted that Krohn’s female appendage was wearing such a tight skirt that she had to take at least three steps for each of his as they walked out of the Police Chief’s office. She briefly considered the possible consequences of throwing the Danish pastries at them out of the sixth-floor window as they left Police Headquarters.

“Well?” Gunnar Hagen said when the door had closed behind the visitors.

“Why are defense lawyers always presented as the lone defenders of justice?”

Hagen murmured, “They’re the necessary counterweight to the police, Katrine, and objectivity has never been your strong suit. Or self-control.”

“Self-control?”

“Cheer him up?”

Katrine shrugged. “What do you think about his proposal?”

Hagen rubbed his chin. “It’s problematic. But of course the pressure in the Rakel Fauke case is growing by the day, and if we failed to get Finne convicted it would be the defeat of the decade. But on the other hand, there’s all the reports of rapists going free over the past few years, and we’d be dropping three cases... What do you think, Katrine?”

“I hate the guy, but his proposal makes sense. I think we should be pragmatic and look at the bigger picture. Let me talk to the women who have reported him.”

“OK.” Hagen cleared his throat tentatively. “Talking about objectivity...”

“Yes?”

“Your attitude isn’t in any way affected by the fact that it would mean Harry going free as well?”

“What?”

“You’ve worked closely together, and...”

“And?”

“And I’m not blind, Katrine.”

Katrine walked over to the window and looked down at the path that led away from Police Headquarters, through Botsparken, where the snow was finally in full retreat, and down towards the sluggish traffic at Grønlandsleiret.

“Have you ever done anything you regretted, Gunnar? I mean, really regretted?”

“Hm. Are we still talking professionally?”

“Not necessarily.”

“Is there something you want to tell me?”

Katrine thought about how liberating it would be to tell someone. That someone knew. She had thought that the burden, the secret, would become easier to bear with time, but it was the other way around, it felt heavier with each passing day.

“I understand him,” she said quietly.

“Krohn?”

“No, Svein Finne. I understand that he wants to confess.”

22

Dagny Jensen put her palms down on the cold desk and looked at the dark-haired police officer sitting at the school desk in front of her. It was break time, and in the playground outside the windows she could hear the pupils shouting and laughing. “I appreciate that this isn’t an easy decision,” the woman said. She had introduced herself as Katrine Bratt, head of the Crime Squad Unit of the Oslo Police District.

“It sounds like the decision has already been made for me,” Dagny said.

“Naturally we can’t force you to retract an accusation,” Bratt said.

“But that’s exactly what you’re doing in practice,” Dagny said. “You’re handing the responsibility for him being convicted of murder over to me.”

The police officer looked down at the desk.

“Do you know what the main purpose of the Norwegian education system is?” Dagny said. “To teach the pupils to become responsible citizens. That it’s a responsibility as much as a privilege. Of course I’ll retract the accusation if it means Svein Finne can be locked up for the rest of his life.”

“When it comes to rape victims’ compensation...”

“I don’t want any money. I just want to forget it.” Dagny looked at her watch. Four minutes until the next lesson started. She was happy. Yes, she was — even after ten years teaching she was still happy, happy to be able to give young people something she genuinely thought would help them to have a better future. It felt meaningful, in a relatively straightforward way. And that was basically all she wanted. That, and to forget. “Can you promise me that you’ll get him convicted?”

“I promise,” the police officer said, and stood up.

“Harry Hole,” Dagny said. “What’s going to happen to him?”

“I don’t know, but hopefully Finne’s lawyer will drop the charge of kidnapping.”

“Hopefully?”

“What he did was obviously unlawful, and not how a police officer is supposed to act,” Katrine said. “But he sacrificed himself to make sure Finne was caught.”

“Like he sacrificed me, so he could get his own personal vengeance?”

“As I said, I can’t defend Harry Hole’s behaviour in this matter, but the fact remains that without him Svein Finne would probably have been able to go on terrorising you and other women.”

Dagny nodded slowly.

“I need to get back and prepare for an interview. Thank you for agreeing to help us. I promise you won’t regret it.”

23

“No, you’re not disturbing me at all, Mrs. Bratt,” Johan Krohn said, holding the phone between his ear and shoulder as he buttoned his shirt. “So all three accusations have been dropped?”

“How soon can you and Finne be ready for questioning?”

Johan Krohn enjoyed hearing her rolling Bergen “r”s. Bratt’s accent wasn’t strong, but there was still a trace of it there. Like a skirt that was long but not too long. He liked Katrine Bratt. She was pretty, smart and she offered some resistance. The fact that she had a wedding ring on her finger didn’t have to mean that much. He himself was living proof of that. And he found it rather exciting that she sounded so nervous. The same nervousness a buyer feels after he hands over the money and is waiting for the dealer to give him the bag of dope. Krohn went over to the window, put his thumb and forefinger between the slats of the blind, opened up a gap and looked down at Rozenkrantz’ gate, six floors below the law firm’s offices. It was only just after three o’clock, but in Oslo that meant rush hour. Unless you worked in law. Krohn sometimes wondered what would happen when the oil ran out and the Norwegian people had to face up to the demands of the real world again. The optimist in him said things would be fine, that people adapt to new situations quicker than you think, you just had to look at countries that had been at war. The realist in him said that in a country without any tradition of innovation and advanced thinking, there would be a slippery slope straight back to where Norway had come from: the bottom division of European economies.

“We can be there in two hours,” Krohn said.

“Great,” Bratt said.

“See you then, Mrs. Bratt.”

Krohn ended the call and stood for a moment, uncertain where to put his mobile.

“Here,” a voice said from the darkness over by the Chesterfield sofa. He walked over to her and took his trousers.

“Well?”

“They’ve taken the bait,” Krohn said, checking there were no stains on his trousers before putting them on.

“Is it bait? As in, they’re on the hook?”

“Don’t ask me, I’m just following my client’s instructions for the time being.”

“But you think there’s a hook there?”

Krohn shrugged his shoulders and looked around for his shoes. “From yourself shall you know others, I suppose.”

He sat down at the sturdy desk made of Quercus velutina, black oak, that he had inherited from his father. Called one of the numbers he had on speed dial.

“Mona Daa.” The energetic voice of VG’s crime reporter crackled across the room from the speaker.

“Good afternoon, Miss Daa. This is Johan Krohn. Ordinarily you call me, but I thought I’d be a bit proactive this time. I’ve got something I think might warrant an article in your paper.”

“Is it about Svein Finne?”

“Yes. I’ve just received confirmation from the Oslo Police that they’re dropping their investigation into the baseless accusations of rape that have been tossed about in the chaos surrounding the accusation of murder.”

“And I can quote you on that?”

“You can quote me as confirming the rumours that have spread about it, which I presume are the reason you’ve called me.”

A pause.

“I understand, but I can’t write that, Krohn.”

“Then say that I’ve made it public to preempt the rumours. Whether or not you’ve heard the rumours is irrelevant.”

Another pause.

“Fine,” Daa said. “Can you give me any details about—”

“No!” Krohn interrupted. “You can have more this evening. And hold off publishing anything until after five o’clock today.”

“Cards on the table, Krohn. If I can have an exclusive on this—”

“This is all yours, my dear. Speak later.”

“Just one last thing. How did you get my number? It’s not available anywhere.”

“Like I said, you’ve called my mobile before, so your number appeared on the screen.”

“So you stored it?”

“Yes, I suppose I must have.” He ended the call and turned towards the leather sofa. “Alise, my little friend, if you could put your blouse back on, we’ve got some work to do.”

Bjørn Holm was standing on the pavement outside the Jealousy Bar in Grünerløkka. He opened the door and could tell by the music streaming out that he was probably going to find him here. He pulled the pram behind him into the almost empty bar. It was a medium-sized English-style pub with simple wooden tables in front of a long bar, with booths along the walls. It was only five o’clock; it would get busier later in the evening. During the brief period that Øystein Eikeland and Harry had run the bar, they had managed to achieve something rare: a pub where people came to listen to the music being played on the sound system. There was no fancy DJ, just track after track, chosen according to the themed evenings announced on the weekly list on the door. Bjørn had been allowed to act as a consultant on the country evenings and Elvis evenings. And — most memorably — when they were putting together the playlist of “songs that were at least forty years old by artists and bands from American states beginning with M.”

Harry was sitting at the bar with his head bowed, his back to Bjørn. Behind the bar, Øystein Eikeland raised a half-litre glass towards the new arrival. That didn’t bode well. But Harry was at least sitting upright.

“Minimum age is twenty, mate!” Øystein called above the music: “Good Time Charlie’s Got The Blues,” early seventies, Danny O’Keefe’s only real hit. Not typical Harry music, but a typical track for Harry to brush the dust off and play at the Jealousy Bar.

“Even when accompanied by an adult?” Bjørn asked, parking the pram in front of one of the booths.

“Since when have you been an adult, Holm?” Øystein put his glass down.

Bjørn smiled. “You become an adult the moment you see your kid for the first time and realise he’s utterly helpless. And is going to need a fuckload of adult help. Same as this guy.” Bjørn put his hand on Harry’s shoulder. He noticed that Harry was sitting with his head bowed, reading on his mobile.

“Have you seen VG’s headline about the arrest?” Harry asked, picking up a cup in front of him. Coffee, Bjørn noted.

“Yes. They’ve used a picture of you.”

“I don’t give a damn about that. Look at what they’ve just published.” Harry held his phone up for Bjørn to read.

“They’re saying we’ve done a deal,” Bjørn said. “Murder in exchange for rape. OK, it’s not common, but it does happen.”

“But it doesn’t usually appear in the press,” Harry said. “And, if it does, not until after the bear has been shot.”

“You don’t think it’s been shot?”

“If you do a deal with the devil, you need to ask yourself why the devil thinks it’s a good deal.”

“Aren’t you being a bit paranoid now?”

“I’m just hoping we get a confession in a proper police interview. The things I recorded in the bunker would be torn apart by a defense lawyer like Krohn.”

“Now that the press have published this, he’ll have to confess. If not, we’ll charge him for the rape. Katrine’s interviewing him right now.”

“Mm.” Harry tapped at his phone and raised it to his ear. “I need to update Oleg. What are you doing here, anyway?”

“I... er... promised Katrine that I’d check to make sure everything was OK with you. You weren’t at home and you weren’t at Schrøder’s. To be honest, I thought you were barred from here for life after last time...”

“Yes, but that idiot’s not working until this evening.” Harry nodded towards the pram. “Can I take a look?”

“He tends to notice people and wake up.”

“OK.” Harry lowered his phone. “Engaged. Any suggestions for next Thursday’s playlist?”

“Theme?”

“Cover versions that are better than the original.”

“Joe Cocker and ‘A Little—’ ”

“Already on it. What about Francis and the Lights’ version of ‘Can’t Tell Me Nothing?’ ”

“Kanye West? Are you ill, Harry?”

“OK. A Hank Williams song, then?”

“Are you mad? No one does Hank better than Hank.”

“What about Beck’s version of ‘Your Cheatin’ Heart’?”

“Do you want me to punch you?”

Harry and Øystein laughed, and Bjørn realised they were teasing him.

Harry put his arm round Bjørn’s shoulders. “I miss you. Can’t the two of us solve a really gruesome murder together soon?”

Bjørn nodded as he looked at Harry’s smiling face in astonishment. The unnaturally intense glow in his eyes. Maybe he really had snapped? Maybe grief had finally tipped him over the edge. Then it was as if Harry’s smile suddenly shattered, like the morning ice in October, and Bjørn found himself looking into the black depths of desperate pain again. As if Harry had merely wanted to taste happiness. And had spat it out again.

“Yes,” Bjørn said quietly. “I’m sure we can manage that.”

Katrine stared at the red light above the microphone that indicated that recording was under way. She knew that if she raised her eyes she would see those of Svein Finne, “the Fiancé.” And she didn’t want to do that — not because it might influence her, but because it might influence him. They had discussed whether to use a male interviewer, given Finne’s warped attitude to women. But when they read through the transcripts of previous interviews with Finne, he seemed to open up more for female interviewers. She didn’t know if that had been with or without eye contact.

She had put on a blouse that shouldn’t seem provocative, or give the impression that she was afraid of him looking at her. She glanced over at the control room, where an officer was taking care of the recording equipment. In there with him were Magnus Skarre from the investigative team, and Johan Krohn, who somewhat reluctantly had left the interview room after Finne himself had asked to talk to Katrine alone.

Katrine gave a brief nod to the officer, who nodded back. She read out the case number, her own and Finne’s names, the location, date and time. It was a hangover from the time when audio tapes could go astray, but it also served as a reminder that the formal part of the interview had begun.

“Yes,” Finne replied with a slight smile and exaggeratedly clear diction when Katrine asked if he had been made aware of his rights, and the fact that the interview was being recorded.

“Let’s begin with the evening of the tenth of March and early morning of the eleventh of March,” Katrine said. “Hereafter referred to as the night of the murder. What happened?”

“I’d taken some pills,” Finne said.

Katrine looked down as she took notes.

“Valium. Stesolid. Or Rohypnol. Maybe a bit of everything.”

His voice made her think of the sound of the wheels of her grandfather’s tractor driving along a gravel track out in Sotra.

“So things might be a little unclear for me,” Finne said.

Katrine stopped writing. Unclear? She detected something metallic at the back of her throat, the taste of panic. Was he planning to withdraw his confession?

“Unless perhaps it’s just because I always get a bit confused when I get horny.”

Katrine looked up. Svein Finne caught her gaze. It felt like something was drilling into her head.

He moistened his lips. Smiled. Lowered his voice. “But I always remember the most important things. That’s why we do it, isn’t it? For the memories we can take away and use in lonely moments?”

Katrine caught sight of his right hand painting the picture for her as it moved up and down before she looked back at her notes again.

Skarre had argued that they should cuff Finne, but Katrine had objected. She said it would give him a mental advantage if he thought they were that frightened of him. That it might tempt him to toy with them. And now, one minute into the interview, that was precisely what he was doing.

Katrine leafed through the files in front of her. “If your memory isn’t great, perhaps we could talk about the three rape files I’ve got here instead. With witness statements that might help prompt your memory.”

“Touché,” Finne said, and without looking up she knew he was still smiling. “Like I said, I remember the most important details.”

“Let’s hear them.”

“I arrived at about nine o’clock in the evening. She had a stomach ache and was rather pale.”

“Hang on. How did you get in?”

“The door was open, so I went straight in. She screamed and screamed. She was so frightened. So I h-held her.”

“A stranglehold? Or by locking her arms to her sides?”

“I don’t remember.”

She knew they were proceeding too quickly, that she needed more details, but this was first and foremost about getting a confession out of him before he changed his mind. “Then what?”

“She was in so much pain. Blood was pouring out of her. I used a kn-knife...”

“Your own?”

“No, a sharper one, from a knife block.”

“Where on her body did you use it?”

“H-here.”

“The interviewee is pointing at his stomach,” Katrine said.

“Her belly button,” Finne said in an affected, childlike voice. “Her belly button.”

“Her belly button,” Katrine repeated, swallowing a surge of nausea. Swallowing the feeling of triumph. They had the confession. The rest was all icing on the cake.

“Can you describe Rakel Fauke? And the kitchen?”

“Rakel? Beautiful. Like you, K-Katrine. You’re very similar.”

“What was she wearing?”

“I don’t remember. Has anyone ever told you how similar you are? Like s-sisters.”

“Describe the kitchen.”

“A prison. Bars over the windows. You’d almost think they were frightened of something.” Finne laughed. “Shall we call it a day, Katrine?”

“What?”

“I’ve got th-things to do.”

Katrine felt a slight sense of panic. “But we’ve only just begun.”

“Headache. It’s tough, going through such traumatic things as this, I’m sure you can understand that.”

“Just tell me—”

“That wasn’t actually a question, my dear. I’m done here. If you want more, you’ll have to come down to my cell and visit me this evening. I’m fr-free then.”

“The video recording that Dagny Jensen received. Did you send it, and is it of the victim?”

“Yes.” Finne stood up.

From the corner of her eye Katrine saw that Skarre was already on his way. She held one hand up towards the window. She looked down at her folder of questions. Tried to think. She could press on. And risk the possibility that Krohn could invalidate the confession by citing unnecessarily harsh interview methods as the reason. Or she could make do with what she’d got, which was more than enough to get the prosecutor to press charges. They could get the details later, before the trial. She looked at the watch Bjørn had given her on their first anniversary.

“Interview concluded at 17:31,” she said.

When she looked up she discovered that a red-faced Gunnar Hagen had walked into the control room and was talking to Johan Krohn. Skarre came into the interview room and put cuffs on Finne to lead him back to the detention cells in the custody unit. Katrine saw Krohn shrug his shoulders as he said something, and Hagen turned even redder.

“See you, Mrs. Bratt.”

The words were spoken so close to her ear that she could feel the thin spray of saliva that accompanied them. Then Finne and Skarre were gone. She saw Krohn set off after them.

Katrine wiped her face with a tissue before going in to Hagen.

“Krohn has told VG about our horse-trading. It’s already up on their website.”

“And what did he have to say in his defense?”

“That neither party had given any sort of promise to keep it secret. Then he asked if I thought we’d entered into an agreement that didn’t hold up in daylight. Because he prefers to avoid that sort of agreement, apparently.”

“Hypocritical bastard. He just wants to show what he can do.”

“Let’s hope so.”

“What do you mean?”

“Krohn is a smart, devious defense lawyer. But there’s someone even more devious than him.”

Katrine looked at Hagen. Bit her bottom lip. “His client, you mean?”

Hagen nodded, and they both turned and looked through the open door into the corridor. They saw Finne, Skarre and Krohn waiting for the lift.

“You never call at a bad time, Krohn,” Mona Daa said, adjusting her earphone as she studied herself in the mirrored wall of the gym. “You’ll have seen that I’ve been trying to get hold of you too. Along with every other journalist in Norway, I daresay.”

“It’s a bit like that, yes. I’ll get straight to the point. We’re about to issue a press statement about the confession in which we’re considering attaching a picture of Finne that was taken just a couple of weeks ago.”

“Good, the pictures we’ve got of him must be ten years old.”

“Twenty, in fact. Finne’s condition for sending this private picture is that you make it your lead story.”

“Sorry?”

“Don’t ask me why, that’s just how he wants it.”

“I’m not in a position to be able to make that sort of promise, as you’re no doubt aware.”

“Of course I’m aware of journalistic integrity, just as I’m sure you’re aware of the value of such a picture.”

Mona tilted her head and studied her body. The wide belt she used when she was lifting weights made her penguin-shaped body (the association was possibly more the fault of her rolling gait, itself the result of a hip injury from birth) look briefly as if it was shaped like an hourglass. Occasionally, Mona suspected that the belt, which would never be used for anything except pointless weight training, was the real reason she spent so many hours on pointless weight training. Just like personal acknowledgment was a more important driving force in her work than being the watchdog of society, defending free speech, journalistic curiosity and all the other crap they trotted out each year when the Press Awards were handed out. Not that she didn’t believe in those things, but they came in second place, after standing in the spotlight, seeing your byline and measuring up against yourself. When you looked at it like that, Finne was being no more or less perverse in wanting a large picture of himself in the paper, even if it was as a serial rapist and murderer. That was what Finne had spent his life doing, after all, so perhaps it was understandable that he wanted to be a famous killer, at the very least. If people can’t be loved, it’s well known that a popular alternative is to be feared.

“That’s a hypothetical dilemma, anyway,” Mona said. “If the picture is good quality, then obviously we’d want to blow it up to a decent size. Especially if you let us have it an hour before you send it to the other papers, OK?”

Roar Bohr held his rifle, a Blaser R8 Professional, up to the window frame and peered through the Swarovski X5i sight. Their house lay on a hillside on the west side of Ring 3, just below the Smestad junction, and from the open cellar window he had a view of the residential area on the other side of the motorway as well as Smestaddammen, a small, artificial lake of shallow water that was built in the 1800s to provide the more bourgeois inhabitants of the city with ice.

The red dot in the viewfinder found and stopped on a large white swan that was gliding effortlessly across the surface of the water, as if being blown by the wind. It was between four and five hundred metres away, almost half a kilometre, well above what their American allies in the coalition forces called “maximum point-blank range.” He had the red dot on the swan’s head now. Bohr lowered the sight until the red dot lay on the water just above the swan. He focused on his breathing. Increased the pressure on the trigger. Even the greenest recruits at Rena understood that bullets flew in an arc because even the fastest bullet is affected by gravity, so obviously you have to aim higher the farther away the target is. They also knew that if the target is higher in the terrain, you have to aim even higher, because the bullet has to travel “uphill.” But they usually protested when they were told that even when the target is lower than you, you still have to aim higher — not lower — than on flat terrain.

Roar Bohr could see from the trees outside that there was no wind. The temperature was about ten degrees. The swan was moving at about one metre per second. He imagined the bullet blasting through its little head. The neck losing its tension and crumpling like a snake on top of that chalk-white swan body. It would be a demanding shot even for a sniper in the Special Forces. But no more than he and his colleagues would expect of Roar Bohr. He let the air out of his lungs and moved the sight to the small island by the bridge. That was where the female swan and her cygnets were. He scanned the island, then the rest of the lake, but saw nothing. He sighed, leaned the rifle against the wall and walked over to the chattering, hardworking printer where the end of a sheet of A4 was emerging. He had taken a screengrab of the picture that had just been published on VG’s website, and now he studied the almost-complete face that lay before him. A wide, flat nose. Thick lips with a trace of a sneer. Hair pulled back tightly, presumably gathered in a plait at the back of his neck; that was probably what gave Svein Finne those narrow eyes and an impression of hostility.

The printer squeezed out the last of the sheet with a final drawn-out groan, as if it wanted to push this terrible man away from it. A man who had just, with what seemed to be arrogant pride, confessed to the murder of Rakel Fauke. Just like the Taliban when they accepted responsibility for every bomb that went off in Afghanistan, or at least if the attack had been successful. Claimed responsibility, the way some of the troops in Afghanistan could do if the opportunity arose to steal a kill. Sometimes it was little short of grave-robbing. After chaotic engagements, Roar had witnessed soldiers claiming kills that their superior officer — after checking the footage on the helmet-cams of their own dead — then revealed to have been made by fallen soldiers.

Roar Bohr snatched the sheet of paper and went over to the other end of the large, open cellar room. He fastened it to one of the targets hanging in front of the metal box that caught the bullets. Walked back. The distance was ten and a half metres. He closed the window, which he’d had fitted with three layers of soundproof glass, and put his ear defenders on. Then he picked up the pistol, a High Standard HD 22, from next to the computer, didn’t give himself more time to aim than he could expect in a pressured situation, pointed the gun at the target and fired. Once. Twice. Three times.

Bohr removed the ear defenders, picked up the silencer and began to screw it onto the barrel of the High Standard. A silencer changed the balance, it was like training with two different weapons.

He heard the clatter of steps on the cellar stairs.

“Damn,” he muttered, closing his eyes.

He opened them again and saw Pia’s pale, tense, furious face.

“You frightened the life out of me! I thought I was alone in the house!”

“I’m sorry, Pia, I thought the same.”

“That doesn’t help, Roar! You promised there wouldn’t be any more shooting inside the house! I get back from the shops and am quietly going about my business and then... Anyway, why aren’t you at work? And why are you naked? And what’s that you’ve got on your face?”

Roar Bohr looked down. Oh yes, he was naked. He ran one finger over his face. Looked at his fingertip. Special Forces black camouflage paint.

He put his pistol down on the desk and tapped the keyboard randomly with his finger.

“Working from home.”

It was eight o’clock in the evening, and the investigative team had gathered at the Justice, the Crime Squad Unit’s regular watering hole in good times and bad. It had been Skarre’s idea to celebrate the conclusion of the case, and Katrine hadn’t managed to come up with a good argument against it. Or any explanation as to why she had gone with them. It was a tradition to celebrate victories, it bound them together as a team, and she as head of the Crime Squad Unit ought to have been the first to announce a trip to the Justice after they’d got Finne’s confession. The fact that they had snatched the solution to the case from under Kripos’s nose didn’t exactly make the victory less sweet. That had led to a half-hour phone conversation with Winter, who said that Kripos should have been responsible for questioning Finne, as the principal unit investigating the case. He had reluctantly accepted her explanation that the case was bound up with three rape accusations that fell under the remit of Oslo Police District, and that only Oslo Police District could have done the deal. It’s hard to argue against success.

So why was there something nagging at her? Everything made sense, but there was still something, what Harry used to call the single false note in a symphony orchestra. You can hear it, but you can’t figure out where it’s coming from.

“Fallen asleep, boss?”

Katrine started, and raised her beer glass towards the row of glasses held aloft by her colleagues along the table.

Everyone was there. Apart from Harry, who hadn’t answered her call. As if in response to the thought, she felt her mobile start to vibrate and eagerly pulled it out. She saw from the screen that it was Bjørn. And for a fleeting moment the heretical thought was there. That she could pretend not to have seen it. Explain later — and truthfully — that she had been inundated with calls after they issued the press release about the confession, and that she hadn’t spotted his name in the list of missed calls until later. But then, of course, her wretched mother’s instinct kicked in. She stood up, walked away from the noisy group towards the toilets and pressed Answer.

“Anything wrong?”

“No, nothing,” Bjørn said. “He’s asleep. Just wanted...”

“Just wanted?”

“To check how late you thought you’d be?”

“No later than necessary. I can’t just leave, though.”

“No, of course not, I get that. Who else is there?”

“Who? The team who worked on the case, of course.”

“Just them? No... outsiders?”

Katrine straightened up. Bjørn was a kind and cautious man. A man who was liked by everyone because he also had charm and a quiet, solid air of confidence. But even if it wasn’t something she and Bjørn Holm ever talked about, she was in no doubt that he asked himself at regular intervals how on earth he had ended up with a girl half the men — and a few of the women — in Crime Squad had their eye on, at least until she became their boss. One of the reasons why he had never raised the subject was probably that he knew there were few things as unsexy as an insecure and chronically jealous partner. And he had managed to hide it, even when she had dumped him eighteen months ago and they spent a short time apart before getting back together again. But it was hard to maintain the pretense in the long run, and she had begun to notice that something had changed between them over the past few months. Maybe it was because he was at home with the baby, maybe it was simply lack of sleep. Or maybe she was just a bit oversensitive after everything she’d had to deal with in the previous six months.

“Just us,” she said. “I’ll be home before ten.”

“Stay longer, I just wanted to check.”

“Before ten,” she repeated, and looked over towards the door. At the tall man who was standing among the other clientele, looking around him.

She ended the call.

He was trying to appear relaxed, but she could see the tension in his body, the hunted look in his eyes. Then he caught sight of her, and she saw the way his shoulders relaxed.

“Harry!” she said. “You came.” She gave him a hug. Used the short embrace to breathe in the smell that was simultaneously so familiar and so strange. And she was struck once again that the best thing about Harry Hole was that he smelled so good. Not good like perfume or meadows and woodland. Sometimes he smelled of stale drink, and occasionally she detected an acrid note of sweat. But taken as a whole, he smelled good, in some indefinable way. It was the smell of him. Surely that wasn’t something she needed to feel guilty for thinking, was it?

Magnus Skarre came over to them, slightly glassy-eyed and with a blissful grin on his face.

“They reckon it’s my round.” He put one hand on each of their shoulders. “Beer, Harry? I heard you were the one who managed to get Finne. Yeah! Ha!”

“Just Coke,” Harry said, discreetly shrugging off Skarre’s hand.

Skarre went off to the bar.

“So you’re back on the wagon again,” Katrine said.

Harry nodded. “For a while.”

“Why do you think he confessed?”

“Finne?”

“Obviously I know it’s because he gets a reduced sentence by confessing, and he realised we had a solid case against him with that video clip he sent. And of course he avoided being charged with rape, but is that all?”

“How do you mean?”

“Don’t you think it could also be what we all want, what we feel a need for — to confess our sins?”

Harry looked at her. Moistened his lips. “No,” he said.

Katrine noticed a man in a smart jacket and blue shirt leaning over their table, and someone pointed towards her and Harry. The man nodded and set off towards them.

“Journalist alert,” Katrine sighed.

“Jon Morten Melhus,” the man said. “I’ve been trying to contact you all evening, Bratt.”

Katrine looked at him more closely. Journalists weren’t usually this polite.

“In the end I got hold of someone else at Police Headquarters, explained why I was calling, and was told that I would probably find you here.”

No one at Police Headquarters would tell a random caller where she was.

“I’m a surgeon at Ullevål Hospital. I called because we had a rather dramatic occurrence a while back. Complications arose during a birth and we had to perform an emergency caesarean. The mother had a man with her who said he was the child’s father, something the woman confirmed. And at first it looked as though he was going to be useful. When the mother found out that we needed to perform the caesarean she was extremely worried, and the man sat with her, stroking her forehead, comforting her and promising that it would all be very quick. And it’s true, it doesn’t usually take more than five minutes to get the baby out. But I remember it because I overheard him saying: ‘A knife in your stomach. Then it’s all over.’ Not an inaccurate description, but a somewhat unusual choice of words. I didn’t think any more about it at the time, seeing as he kissed her immediately afterwards. What was more unusual was that he wiped her lips after kissing her. And that he filmed as we performed the caesarean. But what was most unusual was that he suddenly pushed his way to the woman and wanted to remove the baby himself. When we tried to stop him, he inserted his hand right into the incision we had made.”

Katrine grimaced.

“Damn,” Harry said quietly. “Damn, damn.”

Katrine looked at him. Something was slowly dawning on her, but first and foremost she was confused.

“We managed to drag him away and perform the remainder of the operation,” Melhus said. “Fortunately there were no signs of infection in the mother.”

“Svein Finne. It was Svein Finne.”

Melhus looked at Harry and slowly nodded. “But he gave us a different name.”

“Of course,” Harry said. “But you saw the picture of him that VG published this afternoon.”

“Yes, and I’ve no doubt at all that it was the same man. Especially not after I noticed the painting on the wall in the background. The photograph was taken in the waiting room of our maternity unit.”

“So why so late reporting the incident, and why to me personally?” Katrine asked.

Melhus looked momentarily confused. “I’m not reporting it.”

“No?”

“No. It isn’t unusual for people to behave in unpredictable ways under the mental and physical stress of a complicated birth. And he definitely didn’t give the impression that he wanted to harm the mother, he was just entirely focused on the child. It all calmed down and everything was fine, like I said. He even cut the umbilical cord.”

“With a knife,” Harry said.

“That’s right.”

Katrine frowned. “What is it, Harry? What have you realised that I haven’t quite got my head around yet?”

“The date and time,” Harry said, still looking at Melhus. “You’ve read about the murder, and you’ve come to tell us that Svein Finne has an alibi. He was in the maternity unit that night.”

“We’re in something of a grey area here when it comes to the Hippocratic Oath, which is why I wanted to talk to you in person, Bratt.” Melhus looked at Katrine with the professionally sympathetic expression of someone who has been trained to pass on bad news. “I’ve spoken to the midwife, and she says this man was present from the time the mother was admitted around 21:30, until the birth was over at five the following morning.”

Katrine put one hand over her face.

From the table came the sound of happy laughter, followed by the clink of beer glasses. Someone must just have told a well-received joke.