Knife

by Jo Nesbo

  “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 h
alf 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.