by Jo Nesbo
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 bonfi
res.
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:
