by Jo Nesbo
“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“Outdated—it was never really that good anyway.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 ti
p 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 gea
r 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.
