by Jo Nesbo
“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 a
sked.
“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?”
