Knife

by Jo Nesbo

  It was from the night of the murder.

  Roar Bohr let the air out of his lungs and leaned his rifle against the trunk of the tree.

  Was the image good enough for the person to be identified?

  He ran his left hand over his hip. Over the karambit knife.

  Think. Think, then act.

  His fingertip slid over the cold, serrated edge of the steel. Up and down. Up and down.

  * * *

  —

  “Watch out,” Harry said by way of warning.

  “What now?” Bjørn asked. Harry didn’t know if Bjørn was referring to his exclamation up at the cabin, which had turned out to be groundless.

  “Freezing rain.”

  “I can see,” Bjørn said, and braked gently before turning onto the bridge in front of them.

  It had stopped raining, but a film of ice was glinting on the road ahead of them. The road straightened out again after they crossed the river, and Bjørn accelerated. A sign. Oslo 85 kilometres. There weren’t many vehicles on the road, and if they got a bit of dry road under their tires they could be back in the city in just over an hour.

  “Are you quite sure you don’t want to issue an alert?” Bjørn asked.

  “Mm.” Harry closed his eyes. Roar Bohr had been at the cabin recently, the newspaper in the wood basket was six days old. But he wasn’t there now. No tracks in the snow outside the door. No food. Mould on the dregs of coffee in the cup on the table. The boots by the door were dry, he must have several pairs. “I called that 3-D expert, Freund. His first name’s Sigurd, by the way.”

  Bjørn chuckled. “Katrine suggested we should name the kid after the singer in Suede. Brett. Brett Bratt. What did Freund have to say?”

  “That he was going to look at the memory card, and that I could expect a response at the weekend. I explained what was on it, and he said there wasn’t much he could do about the lack of light. But by measuring the height of the doorway and the tread of the steps at Holmenkollveien he reckoned he could give me the height of the person down to the nearest centimetre. If I say that we need to bring Bohr in as a result of what we found after breaking into his cabin without a search warrant, you’d get into trouble as well, Bjørn. It makes more sense to use the fact that the height of the guy in the doorway matches Bohr’s, because there’s no way you can be linked to those images. I’ll call Kripos, explain that I’ve got pictures proving that Bohr was at the crime scene, and suggest that they search his cabin. They’ll find a broken window, but anyone could have done that.”

  Harry saw flashing blue lights at the end of the straight stretch of road in front of them. They passed a warning triangle. Bjørn slowed down.

  An articulated truck was parked by the verge on their side of the road. On the other side lay the wreckage of a car next to the crash barrier in front of the river. What had once been a car reminded Harry of a crushed tin can.

  A policeman waved them past.

  “Hang on,” Harry said, winding his window down. “That car’s got Oslo plates.”

  Bjørn stopped the Amazon next to a policeman with a face like a bulldog, a neck and arms that looked too short sticking out from his over-pumped upper body.

  “What’s happened?” Harry asked, holding up his ID.

  The policeman looked at it and nodded. “The truck driver’s being questioned, so we should know soon enough. It’s icy, so it could just be an accident.”

  “It’s a bit straight for that, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” the police officer said, composing his face into a professional sombre expression. “At worst, we have one a month. We call this stretch of road the green mile. You know, that last walk people sentenced to death in America take on their way to the chair.”

  “Mm. We’re looking for a guy who lives in Oslo, so it would be interesting to know who was driving the car.”

  The policeman took a deep breath. “To be honest, when a car weighing one thousand three hundred kilos drives at eighty or ninety kilometres an hour into the front of an almost-fifty-ton truck, seat belts and airbags aren’t a lot of use. I couldn’t tell you if my own brother had been driving that car. Or my sister, come to that. But the car’s registered to a Stein Hansen, so for the time being we’re working on the assumption that it’s him.”

  “Thanks,” Harry said, and closed the window.

  They drove on in silence.

  “You seem relieved,” Bjørn said after a while.

  “Do I?” Harry said in surprise.

  “You think it would be too easy if Bohr had got away like that, don’t you?”

  “Dying in a car crash?”

  “I mean, leaving you in this world to suffer alone every day. That wouldn’t be fair, would it? You want him to suffer the same way.”

  Harry looked out of the window. Moonlight was shining through a gap in the clouds, colouring the ice on the river silver.

  Bjørn turned the radio on.

  The Highwaymen.

  Harry listened for a while, then he got his phone out and called Kaja.

  No answer.

  Weird.

  He tried again.

  He waited until her voicemail kicked in. Her voice. The memory of Rakel’s. The bleep. Harry cleared his throat. “It’s me. Call me.”

  She probably had her headphones on, listening to loud music again.

  The wipers cleared the windshield. Over and over again. A fresh start, a blank page every three seconds. The never-ending absolution of sin.

  Two-tone yodelling and banjo music played on the radio.

  29

  Two and a half years earlier

  Roar Bohr wiped the sweat from his forehead and looked up at the sky above the desert.

  The sun had melted, that was why he couldn’t see it. It had dissolved, spreading out like a layer of golden copper across the hazy blue. And beneath it: a monk vulture, its three-metre wingspan etching a black cross on the yellow copper.

  Bohr looked around again. There were only the two of them out here. The two of them, and open, empty, stony desert, sloping hillsides and rocky outcrops. Obviously it was a breach of operational safety manuals to drive out into the field without more protection, just two men in one vehicle. But in his report he would say he judged it to be a gesture to Hala’s home village, an appeal to Afghan hearts, that Hala’s boss had driven her body home in person, with no more protection than she herself had had.

  One more month, then he’d be going home, home from his third and final tour in Afghanistan. He was longing to go home, he always longed to go home, but he wasn’t happy. Because he knew that when he got home, after just two or three weeks he would start longing to be back here again.

  But there weren’t going to be any more tours, he had applied and been accepted to fill the post of head of the NHRI in Oslo, a newly established national institute for human rights. The NHRI was subject to Parliament, but operated as an independent body. They would be investigating human rights issues, providing information and advice to the national assembly, though beyond that their remit was rather vague. But that just meant that he and the eighteen other members of staff could influence what their purpose should be. In many ways it was a sort of continuation of what he had been doing in Afghanistan, just without guns. So he was going to take the job. He wasn’t going to end up being a general, in any case. That was the sort of thing they let you know in a very respectful, discreet manner. That you weren’t one of the chosen few. But that wasn’t why he had to get away from Afghanistan.

  In his mind’s eye he could see Hala lying on the ground. She was usually dressed in Western clothes and a modest hijab, but that night she had been wearing a blue shalwar kameez tunic that was pulled up around her waist. Bohr remembered her bare hips and stomach, the skin with that glow that would slowly fade. The way the life in those beautiful, beautif
ul eyes had faded. Even when she was dead, Hala had looked like Bianca. He had noticed when she introduced herself as his interpreter, that Bianca was looking out through those eyes, that she had come back from the dead, from the river, to be with him again. But obviously Hala couldn’t know that, it wasn’t the sort of thing he could ever have explained to her. And now she was gone too.

  But he had found someone else who resembled Bianca. The head of security at the Red Cross. Kaja Solness. Maybe that was where Bianca lived now, inside her? Or in someone else. He’d have to keep his eyes open.

  “Don’t do it,” the man begged as he knelt on the ground behind the Land Rover, parked by the side of the road. His light-coloured camouflage uniform had three stripes on the chest to indicate that he was a sergeant, and on his left arm was the insignia of the Special Forces Division: a winged dagger. His hands were clasped. But perhaps that was only because his wrists were bound together with the narrow white cable ties they used on prisoners of war. A five-metre-long chain ran from the cable ties to a hook on the back of the Land Rover.

  “Let me go, Bohr. I’ve got money. An inheritance. I can keep quiet if you can. No one needs to know what’s happened, ever.”

  “And what has happened?” Bohr asked, without taking the barrel of his Colt Canada C8 from the sergeant’s forehead.

  The officer swallowed. “An Afghan woman. A Hazara. Everyone knows you and she were close, but as long as no one makes a fuss it will soon be forgotten.”

  “You shouldn’t have told anyone what you saw, Waage. That’s why I have to kill you. You wouldn’t forget. I wouldn’t forget.”

  “Two million. Two million kroner, Bohr. No, two and a half. In cash, when we get to Norway.”

  Roar Bohr started to walk towards the Land Rover.

  “No! No!” his soldier screamed. “You’re not a murderer, Bohr!”

  Bohr got in, started the engine and began to drive. He didn’t notice any resistance when the chain jerked the sergeant to his feet and he started to run after the vehicle.

  Bohr slowed down. He speeded up again whenever the chain started to slacken. He watched the sergeant as he ran along in a sort of stumbling jog with his hands held out as if in prayer.

  Forty degrees. Even at walking pace the sergeant would soon dehydrate. He wouldn’t be able to stay on his feet, he’d collapse. A farmer with a horse and cart was driving towards them on the road. As he passed them the sergeant cried out to him, begging for help, but the farmer merely bowed his turbaned head and looked down at the reins. Foreigners. Taliban. Their war wasn’t his—his war was against drought, against starvation, against the never-ending demands and torments of daily life.

  Bohr leaned forward and looked at the sky.

  The monk vulture was following them.

  No one’s prayers were granted. No one’s.

  * * *

  —

  “Sure you don’t want me to wait?” Bjørn asked.

  “Get home, they’ll be waiting,” Harry said, peering out of the car window at Kaja’s house. The lights in the living room were on.

  Harry got out and lit the cigarette he hadn’t been allowed to smoke in the car.

  “New rules with kids,” Bjørn had explained. “Katrine doesn’t want any trace of smoke anywhere.”

  “Mm. They sort of seize power the moment they become mothers, don’t they?”

  Bjørn had shrugged. “I don’t know about seizing it. Katrine pretty much had it already.”

  Harry took four deep drags. Then he pinched the cigarette out and put it back in the packet. The gate creaked when he opened it. Water dripped from the iron, it had been raining here too.

  He walked up to the door and rang the bell. Waited.

  After ten seconds of silence he tried the handle. Unlocked, like last time. With a feeling of déjà vu he went inside, past the open door to the kitchen. He saw a phone charging on the kitchen worktop. That explained why she hadn’t answered his calls. Maybe. He opened the door to the living room.

  Empty.

  He was about to call Kaja’s name when his brain registered a sound behind him, the creak of a floorboard. In the space of a nanosecond, his brain had reasoned out that it was obviously Kaja coming downstairs or out of the toilet, so it didn’t sound the alarm.

  Not until an arm was squeezing his throat and a cloth was pressed against his mouth and nose. As his brain registered the danger it sent an automatic command to take a deep breath before the cloth completely blocked the supply of air. And by the time his slower cognitive process told him that was precisely the point of the cloth, it was too late.

  30

  Harry looked around. He was in a ballroom. An orchestra was playing, a slow waltz. He caught sight of her. She was sitting at a white-clothed table under one of the crystal chandeliers. The two men in dinner jackets standing on either side of her were trying to get her attention. But her eyes were focused on him, on Harry. They were telling him to hurry up. She was wearing the black dress, the one of several black dresses that she called the black dress. And when Harry looked down at himself he saw that he was wearing the black suit, his only one, the one he wore for christenings, weddings and funerals. He put one foot in front of the other and made his way through the tables, but it went slowly, as if the room were filled with water. There must be a lot of swell on the surface, because he pulled forward, then back, and the S-shaped chandeliers were swinging in time to the waltz. Just as he got there, just as he was about to say something and let go of the table, his feet lifted from the floor and he began to rise up. She stretched out her hand towards his, but he was already out of reach, and even if she stood up from her chair and stretched towards him, she remained where she was as he rose higher and higher. And then he discovered that the water was starting to turn red, so red that she receded from view, red and warm, and the pressure in his head began to rise. He didn’t realise at first that he couldn’t breathe, of course he couldn’t, and he began to flail about, he had to get to the surface.

  “Good evening, Harry.”

  Harry opened his eyes. The light cut like a knife and he closed them again.

  “Trichloromethane. Better known as chloroform. A bit old-school, of course, but effective. We used it in E14 whenever someone needed kidnapping.”

  Harry opened his eyes a crack. A lamp was shining directly into his face.

  “You probably have a lot of questions.” The voice was coming from the darkness behind the lamp. “Like ‘What happened?’ and ‘Where am I?’ and ‘Who is he?’ ”

  They had only exchanged a few words at the funeral, but Harry still recognised the voice and the hint of rolled “r”s. “But let me answer the question you’re wondering about most, Harry: ‘What does he want with me?’ ”

  “Bohr,” Harry said hoarsely. “Where’s Kaja?”

  “Don’t worry about that, Harry.”

  Harry could tell from the acoustics that he was seated in a large room. Probably wooden walls. Not a basement, then. But it was cold and raw, as if it wasn’t in use. The smell was neutral, like in a meeting hall or open-plan office. That could make sense. His arms were taped to the armrests of the chair and his feet to the wheeled base of an office chair. No smell of paint or building work, but he saw the light reflect off transparent plastic that had been laid on the parquet floor beneath and in front of the chair.

  “Have you killed Kaja as well, Bohr?”

  “As well?”

  “Like Rakel. And the other girls you’ve got pictures of in your cabin.”

  Harry heard the other man’s footsteps behind the lamp.

  “I have a confession to make, Harry. I have killed. I didn’t think I could do it, but it turned out I was wrong.” The steps stopped. “And they say that once you’ve started…”

  Harry leaned his head back and looked up at the ceiling. One of the panels had be
en removed, and a load of severed cables were sticking out. IT stuff, presumably.

  “I heard a rumour that one of my guys in Special Forces, Waage, knew something about the murder of my interpreter, Hala. And when I checked and found out what he knew, I realised I was going to have to kill him.”

  Harry coughed. “He was on your trail. So you killed him. And now you’re planning to kill me. I have no interest in being your confessor, Bohr, so just get on with the execution.”

  “You misunderstand me, Harry.”

  “When everyone misunderstands you, Bohr, it’s time to ask yourself if you’re mad. Get on with it, you poor bastard, I’m done.”

  “You’re in a hell of a hurry.”

  “Maybe it’s better there than here. Might be more pleasant company too.”

  “You misunderstand me, Harry. Let me explain.”

  “No!” Harry tugged at the chair, but the tape held him down.

  “Listen. Please. I didn’t kill Rakel.”

  “I know you killed Rakel, Bohr. I don’t want to hear about it, and I don’t want to hear any pathetic excuses—”

  Harry stopped when Roar Bohr’s face suddenly came into view, lit up from below, like in a horror film. It took Harry a moment to realise that the light was coming from a phone on the table between them, and that it had just started to ring.

  Bohr looked at it. “Your phone, Harry. It’s Kaja Solness.”

  Bohr touched the screen, picked the phone up and held it to Harry’s ear.

  “Harry?” It was Kaja’s voice.

  Harry cleared his throat. “Where…where are you?”

  “I just got in. I saw you’d called, but I needed to eat so I went to the new restaurant around the corner and left my phone charging at home. Tell me, have you been here?”