Knife

by Jo Nesbo

  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. “F
ortunately 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.

  Part 2

  24

  It was just before midnight when VG published the news that the police had released Svein Finne, “the Fiancé.”

  Johan Krohn declared to the same paper that his client’s confession still stood, but that the police had, of their own volition, concluded that in all likelihood it did not relate to Rakel Fauke, but to another offence in which his client may have harmed a mother in childbirth and her baby. There were witnesses, and even video evidence, but no report had been filed about the incident. But the confession had been provided, his client had kept his side of the deal, and Krohn warned the police of the consequences if they didn’t keep their side and drop the charges in relation to the vague and groundless accusations of rape.

  * * *

  —

  Harry’s heart wouldn’t stop hammering.

  He was standing with water halfway up his ankles, panting for breath. He had been running. Running through the streets of the city until there were no streets left, and then he had run out here.

  That wasn’t why his heart was so out of control. That had started when he left the Justice. The paralysing cold crept up his legs, over his knees, towards his crotch.

  Harry was standing in the plaza in front of the Opera House. Below him, the white marble slid into the fjord like a melting ice cap, a warning of impending disaster.

  * * *

  —

  Bjørn Holm woke up. He lay still in bed, listening.

  It wasn’t the baby. It wasn’t Katrine, who had come to bed and lain down behind him without wanting to talk. He opened his eyes. Saw faint light on the white bedroom ceiling. He reached out to the bedside table and saw who was calling on the screen of his mobile. Hesitated. Then he crept quietly out of bed and into the hallway. Pressed Answer.

  “It’s the middle of the night,” he whispered.

  “Thanks, I wasn’t sure,” Harry said drily.

  “Don’t mention it. Goodnight.”

  “Don’t hang up. I can’t access the files in Rakel’s case. Looks like my access code’s been blocked.”

  “You’d have to talk to Katrine about that.”

  “Katrine’s the boss, she has to go by the book, we both know that. But I’ve got your code, and I suppose I might be able to guess your password. Obviously you couldn’t give it to me, because that would be against regulations.”

  Pause.

  “But?” Bjørn sighed.

  “But you could always give me a clue.”

  “Harry…”

  “I need this, Bjørn. I need it so fucking bad. The fact that it isn’t Finne just means that it’s someone else. Come on, Katrine needs this too, because I know that neither you nor Kripos have got a damn thing.”

  “So why you, then?”

  “You know why.”

  “Do I?”

  “Because in a world full of blind people, I’ve got the only eye.”

  Another pause.

  “Two letters, four numbers,” Bjørn said. “If I had to choose, I’d like to die like him. In a car, right at the start of the new year.”

  He hung up.

  25

  “According to Professor Paul Mattiuzzi, most murderers fit into one of eight categories,” Harry said. “One: chronically aggressive individuals. People with poor impulse control who get easily frustrated, who resent authority, who convince themselves that violence is a legitimate response, and who deep down enjoy finding a way to express their anger. This is the type where you can see it coming.”

  Harry put a cigarette between his lips.

  “Two: controlled hostility. People who rarely give in to anger, who are emotionally rigid and appear polite and serious. They abide by rules and see themselves as upholders of justice. They can be kind in a way that people take advantage of. They’re simmering pressure cookers where you can’t see anything coming until they explode. The sort where the neighbours say he always seemed such a nice guy.”

  Harry sparked his lighter, held it to his cigarette and inhaled.

  “Three: the resentful. People who feel that others walk all over them, that they never get what they deserve, that it’s other people’s fault that they haven’t succeeded in life. They bear grudges, especially against people who have criticised or reprimanded them. They assume the role of victim, they’re psychologically impotent, and when they resort to violence because they can’t find other ways to control their violence, it’s usually directed towards people they hold grudges against. Four: the traumatised.”

  Harry blew smoke from his mouth and nose.

  “The murder is a response to a single assault on the killer’s identity that is so offensive and unbearable that it strips them of all sense of personal power. The murder is necessary if they are to protect the essence of the trauma victim’s existence or masculinity. If you’re aware of the circumstances, this type of murder can usually be both foreseen and prevented.”

  Harry held the cigarette between the second knuckles of his index and middle fingers as he stood reflected in the small, half-dried-up puddle framed by brown earth and grey gravel.

  “Then there are the rest. Five: obsessive and immature narcissists. Six: paranoid and jealous individuals on the verge of insanity. Seven: people well past the verge of insanity.”

  Harry put the cigarette back between his lips and looked up. Let his eyes slide across the timber building. The crime scene. The morning sun was glinting off the windows. Nothing about the house looked different, just the degree of abandonment. It had been the same inside. A sort of paleness, as if the stillness had sucked the colour from the walls and curtains, the faces out of the photographs, the memories out of the books. He hadn’t seen anything he hadn’t seen last time, hadn’t thought anything he hadn’t thought then, they were back where they had ended up last night: back at the sta
rt, with the smoking ruins of buildings and hotels behind them.

  “And the eighth category?” Kaja asked, wrapping her coat more tightly around her and stamping on the gravel.

  “Professor Mattiuzzi calls them the ‘just plain bad and angry.’ Which is a combination of the seven others.”

  “And you think the killer you’re looking for is in one of eight categories invented by some American psychologist?”

  “Mm.”

  “And that Svein Finne is innocent?”

  “No. But of Rakel’s murder, yes.”

  Harry took a deep drag on his Camel. So deep that he felt the heat of the smoke in his throat. Oddly, it hadn’t come as a shock that Finne’s confession was fake. He had had a feeling that something wasn’t right, ever since they were sitting in the bunker. That Finne had been a bit too happy with the situation. He had deliberately provoked physical violence so that, regardless of what he confessed about the murder or rapes, it could never be used in court. Had he known all along that Rakel’s murder had taken place the same night he was in the maternity unit? Had he been aware that the video clip could be misinterpreted? Or was it only later, before his interview in Police Headquarters, that he realised this irony of fate, that the circumstances were set for a tragicomedy? Harry looked over towards the kitchen window, where in April last year he and Rakel had gathered leaves and branches when they were clearing the garden. That was just after Finne had been released from prison, with a half-spoken threat to pay Harry’s family a visit. If Finne had stood on that trailer one night, he could have seen right in between the bars over the kitchen window, where he would have seen the breadboard on the wall, and could have read the writing on it if his eyesight was good enough. Finne had found out that the house was a fortress. And had hatched his plan.

  Harry doubted Krohn was behind the decision to use the false confession to get rid of the rape charges. Krohn was more aware than anyone that anything he won in the short term by a maneuver of that sort was small change in comparison to the damage to the credibility that—even for a defense lawyer with a license to be manipulative—was his real stock-in-trade.