by Jo Nesbo
The glass containing the fingerprints was one of the ones Rakel had bought from a small glassworks in Nittedal, run by a Syrian family who had come to Norway as refugees. Rakel had liked the blue-tinted glasses and wanted to help the family, so she had suggested the Jealousy Bar should buy a load, saying they’d give the bar a distinctive quality. But before Harry had time to make a decision he had been thrown out of both the house in Holmenkollen and ownership of the bar. Rakel had kept the glasses in a cupboard in the living-room section of the large, open space. Not the first place a killer would look for a glass if he wanted a drink after the murder. The report also said that Rakel’s own fingerprints had been found on the glass. So she had given this person something to drink, had handed him the glass. Water, probably, because according to the report there were no traces of anything else. And Rakel hadn’t drunk anything herself; there was only one of the blue-tinted glasses in the dishwasher.
Harry rubbed his face.
So she had known whoever had arrived well enough to let him in, but not so well as to use one of the IKEA glasses from the kitchen cupboard above the tap when he asked for a glass of water. She had made more of an effort. A lover? A new date, if so, because the cupboard containing those glasses was a bit of a detour. And he hadn’t been there before. When Harry had checked the rest of the recordings from the wildlife camera, Rakel was the only person seen coming and going, she hadn’t had any visitors at all. It must be him. Harry thought about the person Rakel had seemed surprised to see but had still let in a few seconds later. The report said that no matching fingerprints had been found in the database. So, not an active police officer—at least, not one who had worked at the scene—and not a known felon. Someone who hadn’t been in the house much, seeing as this was the only print he had left.
Whoever had lifted the fingerprint from the glass had used the old method: coloured powder spread evenly over the surface with a brush or magnet. Harry could see prints from five fingers. In the middle of the glass, four prints in a pattern that indicated that the four fingers, with the little finger at the bottom, had been pointing to the left. At the bottom of the glass was the print from the thumb. Rakel’s, from when she handed him the glass with her right hand. Harry looked further down the report and found confirmation of what he already knew: the prints were from Rakel’s right hand and the unknown man’s left hand. Harry’s brain sounded the alarm when it detected the same creaking on the floor as the previous evening.
“Made you jump!” Kaja laughed as she padded barefoot into the living room wearing a worn blue dressing gown that was far too big for her. Her father’s. Or her older brother’s. “I’ve only got enough breakfast for one, but we can go out and—”
“Don’t worry,” Harry said, closing the laptop. “I need to get home and change clothes.” He stood up and kissed her forehead. “Nice tattoo, by the way.”
“Do you think? I seem to remember that you don’t like tattoos?”
“Really?”
She smiled. “You said that human beings are by definition idiots, and therefore shouldn’t inscribe anything in either stone or skin, and should only use water-soluble paint. That we needed to be able to erase the past and forget who we used to be.”
“Christ. Did I say that?”
“A blank page, you said. The freedom to become someone new, something better. That tattoos define you, force you to stick to old values and opinions. You used the example of having a tattoo of Jesus on your chest, which would then be an incentive to cling to old superstitions, because the tattoo would look ridiculous on an atheist.”
“Not bad. I’m impressed you remember that.”
“You’re a thoughtful man with many peculiar ideas, Harry.”
“I used to be better, maybe I should have had them tattooed.” Harry rubbed the back of his neck. The alarm didn’t want to stop, like an old-style car alarm that kept blaring outside the bedroom window, waiting for someone to come and turn it off. Had something other than a creaking floorboard set it off?
Kaja followed him into the hallway as he put his boots on.
“You know what?” she said when he was about to open the door. “You look like you’ve decided to survive.”
“What?”
“When I saw you at the church, you looked like you were waiting for the first decent excuse to die.”
* * *
—
Katrine looked at the screen of her phone to see who was calling. She hesitated, looked at the heap of reports on her desk and sighed.
“Good morning, Mona. So you’re working on a Sunday?”
“ISB,” Mona Daa said.
“Sorry?”
“In the same boat. Text speak.”
“Yes, I’m at work. Without trucks, Norway stops.”
“Sorry?”
“Old saying. Without women…Never mind, how can I help VG?”
“An update on the Rakel case.”
“That’s what we have press conferences for.”
“And it’s getting to be quite a while since you last had one of those. And Anders seems—”
“The fact that you’re living with a forensics officer doesn’t mean you can jump the queue, Mona.”
“No, it puts me at the back of the queue. Because you’re all so terrified it’ll look like I’m getting special treatment. What I was about to say is that Anders obviously isn’t saying anything, but he seems moody. Which I interpret as meaning that you’re treading water.”
“Investigations are never treading water,” Katrine said, massaging her forehead with her free hand. Dear God, she was tired. “We and Kripos are working systematically and tirelessly. Every line of inquiry that doesn’t take us closer to our goal takes us closer to our goal.”
“Great, but I think I’ve had that quote from you before, Bratt. Have you got anything a bit more sexy?”
“Sexy?” Katrine felt something come loose, something that had been threatening to come out for a long time. “OK, here’s sexy. Rakel Fauke was a wonderful person. And that’s more than I can say about you and your colleagues. If you can’t keep the day of rest sacred, then at least try to keep her memory and whatever remnants of integrity you’ve got left sacred, you fucking bitch. There, is that sexy enough for you?”
In the seconds that followed, Katrine was as speechless at what she had just said as Mona Daa.
“Do you want me to quote you on that?” Mona asked.
Katrine leaned back in her chair and cursed silently. “I don’t know, what do you think?”
“Bearing in mind future cooperation,” Mona said, “I think this conversation never happened.”
“Thanks.”
They hung up, and Katrine leaned her head on the cool desktop. It was too much. The responsibility. The headlines. The impatience of the people on the top floor. The baby. Bjørn. The uncertainty. The certainty. Certainty about so much, about knowing she was at work because she didn’t want to be at home, with them. And it was too little. She could read as many reports as she liked, her own and those from Winter and Kripos, but it didn’t help. Because Mona Daa was right: they were treading water.
* * *
—
Harry stopped abruptly in the middle of Stensparken. He had taken a slight detour to give himself time to think, but had forgotten it was Sunday. Angry barking competed with the excited cries of children, which in turn competed with the shouted commands of the owners of the dogs and children. Yet all this hadn’t managed to drown out the alarm that wouldn’t stop ringing. Until he suddenly remembered. Because he did remember. Remembered where he had seen a left hand holding a glass of water.
* * *
—
“What do you think about the fact that you can get sent to prison for ordering a sex doll in the shape of a child?” Øystein Eikeland asked as he leafed through the newspaper on the cou
nter in the Jealousy Bar. “I mean, it’s disgusting, but thoughts ought to be free, surely?”
“There have to be boundaries for disgusting things,” Ringdal said, then licked a finger and went on counting the notes from the till. “We had a good night last night, Eikeland.”
“It says here that experts disagree about whether messing about with child sex dolls increases the likelihood of assaults on children.”
“But we’re not getting enough babes. Maybe we should advertise cheaper drinks for ladies under thirty-five.”
“If that’s the case, why don’t parents get sent to prison for buying toy guns for their kids and teaching them to carry out school massacres?”
Ringdal put a glass under the tap. “Are you a pedophile, Eikeland?”
Øystein Eikeland stared out into space. “I’ve considered it, naturally. Just out of curiosity, you know? But no, no tingling anywhere. What about you?”
Ringdal filled the glass. “I can assure you that I’m an extremely normal man, Eikeland.”
“What does that mean?”
“What does what mean?”
“Extremely normal. It sounds kind of creepy.”
“Extremely normal means I like babes above legal age. Just like our male clientele.” Ringdal raised his glass. “And that’s why I’ve employed a new bartender.”
Øystein’s mouth fell open.
“She’ll be in addition to the two of us,” Ringdal said. “So we can have a bit more time off. Rotate the team, so to speak. Mourinho-style.” He drank.
“Firstly, it was Sir Alex who introduced the rotation system. Secondly, José Moronho is a pompous jerk who may have won a few titles with the most expensive players in the world, but like most people he’s been deceived by the comments of so-called experts into believing that his own unique gifts were the cause. Even if all research shows that it’s a myth that the coach has anything to do with a football team’s results. The team with the highest-paid players wins, it’s as easy as that. So if you want the Jealousy to come top of the bar league in Grünerløkka, all you have to do is increase my wages, Ringdal. Simple as that.”
“You’re entertaining, I’ll give you that, Eikeland. That must be why the customers seem to like you. But I don’t think it would do any harm to mix things up a bit.”
Øystein flashed his brown stumps of teeth in a grin. “Mix bad teeth with big tits? She’s got big tits, hasn’t she?”
“Well…”
“You’re an idiot, Ringdal.”
“Careful now, Eikeland. Your position here isn’t that secure.”
“You need to decide what sort of bar this is going to be. A place with integrity and self-respect, or Hooters?”
“If that’s the choice, I’d—”
“Don’t answer until you’ve added this to your tactical considerations, Moronho. According to statistics from the porn website Pornhub, the customers of the future—aged between eighteen and twenty-four—are almost 20 percent less likely to search for tits than any other group. While those who are closest to dying, the ones between fifty-five and sixty-four, are most likely to search for your big-titted ladies. Tits are on the way out, Ringdal.”
“What about bad teeth?” Harry asked.
They turned towards the new arrival.
“Perhaps you could get me something to drink, Ringdal?”
Ringdal shook his head. “It’s not time yet.”
“I don’t want anything strong, just—”
“No beer or wine served before twelve on Sundays, Hole. We’d like to keep our license.”
“…a glass of water,” Harry said, finishing his sentence.
“Oh,” Ringdal said, putting a clean glass under the tap and turning it on.
“You said you asked Rakel if she wanted to carry on working for the Jealousy,” Harry said. “But you’re not in her email folder or in the list of calls made to her phone in the past few months.”
“No?” Ringdal said, handing the glass to Harry.
“So I was just wondering where, when and how you were in contact with her?”
“You were wondering? Or the police?”
“Does that make any difference to your answer?”
Ringdal stuck his bottom lip out and tilted his head. “No. Because I can’t actually remember.”
“You can’t remember if you met her in person or if you sent an email?”
“No, actually.”
“Or if it was recent or a long time ago?”
“I’m sure you can appreciate that sometimes there are gaps in our memories.”
“You don’t drink,” Harry said, raising the glass of water to his lips.
“And I have busy days when I meet a lot of people and there’s a lot going on, Harry. Speaking of which…”
“You’re short of time now?” Harry looked around the empty bar.
“Before it happens, Harry, that’s when you should be busy. Preparation is everything. That stops you having to improvise. A good plan has nothing but advantages. Have you?”
“Have I what? Got a plan?”
“Think about it, Harry. It pays off. Now, if you’ll excuse us…”
When they saw the front door close behind Harry, Øystein looked around automatically—and in vain—for Harry’s empty glass.
“He must be desperate,” Ringdal said, nodding towards the newspaper in front of Øystein. “They’re saying the police haven’t got anything new. And everyone knows what they do then.”
“What do they do then?” Øystein asked as he stopped looking.
“They go back to their old lines of inquiry. The ones they’ve already dismissed.”
It took a while for Øystein to realise what Ringdal meant. Harry wasn’t desperate because the police didn’t have anything. Harry was desperate because the police would be looking more closely at their previous lines of inquiry. Such as Harry’s alibi.
* * *
—
The Criminal Forensics Unit laboratory out in Bryn was almost deserted. But two men were bent over a computer screen in the fingerprint lab.
“It’s a match,” Bjørn Holm concluded, and straightened up. “The same prints as the blue-tinted glass in Rakel’s house.”
“Ringdal was there,” Harry said, studying the marks on the glass from the Jealousy.
“Looks that way.”
“Apart from the people coming and going on the night of the murder, no one apart from Rakel had entered or left the house in several weeks. No one.”
“Right. So this Ringdal guy could have been the first one. The one who arrived earlier that evening and then left again.”
Harry nodded. “Of course. He could have paid her an unannounced visit, and drank a glass of water while he asked Rakel if she wanted to carry on working for the Jealousy. She said no, and he left. That would all fit with the recordings. What doesn’t fit is Ringdal saying he can’t remember. Of course you remember if you visited a woman somewhere you find out two days later in the paper was the scene of a murder just hours after you were there.”
“Maybe he’s lying because he doesn’t want to become a suspect. If he was alone with Rakel on the night of the murder, he’d obviously have a lot to explain. And even if he knows he’s innocent, he may be aware that he can’t prove it, and stands to risk both being held in custody and being the subject of unwelcome media attention. You’ll have to confront him with the evidence and see if that jogs his memory.”
“Mm. Unless perhaps we should hold our cards closer to our chest until we’ve got more.”
“Not we, Harry. This is your thing. Like Ringdal, I’m aiming for a strategy of not getting involved.”
“Sounds like you think he’s innocent.”
“I’ll leave the thinking to you. But I’m on paternity leave, and I’d like to have a job to
come back to afterwards.”
Harry nodded. “You’re right, it’s very selfish of me to expect that people who don’t owe me anything should risk everything to help me.”
A subdued whimper came from the pram. Bjørn looked at the time, pulled his sweater up and pulled out a baby’s bottle. He had told Harry about the trick of squeezing the bottle between two rolls of fat under a tight sweater as a way of keeping it at around body temperature.
“Ah, I’ve just realised which musician Ringdal reminds me of,” Harry said as he watched the little boy with his three comically large fair curls suck and chew on the teat. “Paul Simon.”
“Paul Frederic Simon?” Bjørn exclaimed. “You just realised?”
“It’s your son’s fault. He looks like Art Garfunkel.”
Harry was expecting Bjørn to look up and say something about that being an insult, but he just sat there with his head bowed, concentrating on the feed. Perhaps he was contemplating where Art Garfunkel was on his barometer of musical taste.
“Thanks again, Bjørn,” Harry said, doing his coat up. “I’d better get going.”
“That thing you said about me not owing you anything,” Bjørn said, without looking up. “That isn’t true.”
“I don’t know what it could be.”
“If it hadn’t been for you, I’d never have met Katrine.”
“Of course you would.”
“You were the one who guided her into my arms. She could see what happened in the relationships you were in, so you represented everything she didn’t want in a man. And I was as far from you as she could get. So in a way, you were my matchmaker, Harry.” Bjørn looked up with a broad smile and moist eyes.
“Oh, shit,” Harry said. “Is this that famous paternal sensitivity talking?”
