by Jo Nesbo
Silence settled on the office for a few moments.
“Have you spoken to anyone else about this?”
“No. Like I said, Sonia and I kept to ourselves. I told the others I had warned her about both types of mine. They didn’t think it odd, they knew how selfless Sonia was. During the memorial service in the camp, Anton told me he thought that Sonia’s desire to be accepted, to be loved, had led to her demise. I’ve thought about that since then, how dangerous it can be for us, this longing to be loved. I’m the only person who knows what really happened. And now you.” Kaja smiled. With small, pointed teeth. As if they were two teenagers sharing a secret, Erland thought.
“What consequences did Sonia’s death have for you?”
“I got Anton back.”
“You got Anton back. Was that all?”
“Yes.”
“Why do you think you got back together with someone who had betrayed you like that?”
“I wanted him close so I could see him suffer. See him mourn his loss, devoured by it the way I had been. I held on to him for a while, then I told him I didn’t love him anymore and left him.”
“You’d got your revenge?”
“Yes. And it had also dawned on me why I had actually wanted him in the first place.”
“And that was?”
“Because he was married and unavailable. And because he was tall and fair-haired. He reminded me of someone I used to love.”
Erland noted that this was evidently also important, but it was something they would have to come back to at a later stage of the therapy.
“Let’s get back to the trauma, Kaja. You said you felt guilty. Can I ask what might sound like the same question, even though it isn’t: Do you regret it?”
Kaja put one finger under her chin, as if to show him she was thinking about it.
“Yes,” she said. “But at the same time it gave me a strange sense of relief. I felt better.”
“You felt better after Sonia died?”
“I felt better after I’d killed Sonia.”
Erland Madsen made a note. Felt better after killing. “Can you describe what you mean by that?”
“Free. I felt free. Killing someone was like crossing some sort of border. You think there’s a fence, some sort of wall, but when you cross it you realise that it’s just a line someone’s drawn on a map. Sonia and I, we had both crossed a boundary. She was dead, and I was free. But first and foremost, I felt better because the man who had betrayed me was suffering.”
“You’re talking about Anton?”
“Yes. He was suffering, so I didn’t have to. Anton was my Jesus. My personal Jesus.”
“In what way?”
“I crucified him so he could take on my suffering, the way we did with Jesus. Because Jesus didn’t put himself on the cross, we hung him up there, that’s the whole point. We achieved salvation and eternal life by killing Jesus. God couldn’t do much, God didn’t sacrifice his son. If it’s true that God gave us free will, then we killed Jesus against God’s will. And the day we realise that, that we defied God’s will, that’s the day we set ourselves free, Madsen. And then everything can happen.”
Kaja Solness laughed, and Erland Madsen tried in vain to formulate a question. Instead he sat there looking at the peculiar glint in her eyes.
“My question is,” she said, “if it was so liberating last time, should I try it again? Should I crucify the real Jesus? Or am I just mad?”
Erland Madsen moistened his lips. “Who’s the real Jesus?”
“You didn’t answer my question. Have you got an answer for me, Doctor?”
“That depends what you’re really asking.”
Kaja smiled and let out a deep sigh. “Quite true,” she said, then looked at the watch on her slender wrist. “Looks like we’re out of time.”
After she had gone, Erland Madsen sat there looking at his notes. He wrote at the bottom of the page: NB! Dig deeper into this next time. What does “better after killing someone” mean?
* * *
—
Two days later Torill passed on a phone message she had received at the reception desk. A Kaja Solness had said they could cancel her next appointment, that she wouldn’t be coming back, and that she’d found a solution to her problem.
44
Alexandra Sturdza was sitting at one of the window tables in the empty canteen at the Rikshospital. In front of her lay a cup of black coffee and another long day at work. She had worked until midnight the previous day, slept for five hours, and needed all the stimulants she could get.
The sun was on its way up. This city was like the sort of woman who could be dazzlingly beautiful in the right light, only to look so ordinary a moment later that she becomes utterly unremarkable, even ugly. But right now, at this early hour of the morning, before the average Norwegian got to work, Oslo was hers, like a secret lover she was sharing a stolen hour with. And it was a rendezvous with someone who was still unfamiliar and exciting.
The hills to the east lay in shadow, while those to the west were bathed in soft light. The buildings in the city centre down by the fjord were black silhouettes behind black silhouettes, like a cemetery at sunrise. Just a few glass buildings were lit up, like silver-coloured fish beneath the dark surface of the water. And the sea glinted between islands and skerries that would soon be green. How she longed for spring! They called March the first month of spring here, even if everyone knew it was still winter. Washed-out, cold, with isolated, sudden bursts of warm passion. April was at best a deceitful flirt. May was the first month you could rely on. May. Alexandra wanted a May. She knew that on the occasions when she had had a man like that, a warm, gentle man who gave her all she could ask for, even in suitable doses, she just became spoiled and demanding and ended up betraying him with June or, even worse, July, who was completely unreliable. How about a good, grown-up man like August next time, one with a bit of grey in his hair and a marriage and family behind him? Yes, she would have welcomed someone like that. So how come she had ended up falling in love with November? A gloomy, dark, rain-drenched man with prospects of getting even darker, who was either so quiet that you couldn’t even hear any birds, or felt like he was going to tear the roof off your house with his crazy, rumbling autumn gales. Sure, he rewarded you with sunny days of unexpected warmth that you valued all the more as a result, revealing a strangely beautiful, ruined, ravaged landscape where a few buildings were still standing. Solid and unshakeable, like the bedrock itself, which you knew would still be standing on the last day of the month, and where Alexandra—in the absence of anything better—had sought refuge from time to time. But something better would surely have to come along soon. She stretched and tried to yawn the tiredness out of her body. It must be spring soon. May.
“Miss Sturdza?”
She spun round in surprise. It wasn’t just the time of the encounter that was un-Norwegian, but the mode of address. And, sure enough, the man standing there wasn’t quite Norwegian. Or rather, he didn’t look Norwegian. Not only did he have Asiatic features, but his outfit—suit, crisp white shirt and a tie with a tie clip—definitely wasn’t usual work attire for a Norwegian. Unless the Norwegian in question was one of those overconfident idiots with a job description ending in “agent” or “broker,” which was usually one of the first things they told you if you met them in a bar, where they tried to look like they’d just come from the office because they had to work so hard. That, at least, was the signal they hoped to give off. And when they “revealed” their job after discreetly maneuvering the conversation to a place where it wasn’t utterly ridiculous to mention it, they did so with feigned embarrassment, as if she had just uncovered some fucking crown prince in disguise.
“Sung-min Larsen,” the man said. “I’m a detective at Kripos. Can I sit down?”
Well. Alexandra studied him. Tall. He w
ent to the gym. Not too much, everything in proportion, he was aware of the cosmetic value, but enjoyed the exercise itself. Like her. Brown eyes, of course. A little over thirty? No ring. Kripos. Yes, she’d heard a couple of the girls mention his name, that odd combination of Asian and Norwegian. Strange that she’d never met him before. At that moment the sun reached the canteen window of the Rikshospital, lit up Sung-min Larsen’s face and warmed one of Alexandra’s cheeks with surprising intensity. Miss Sturdza. Perhaps spring was coming early this year? Without putting her cup down she pushed a chair out with her foot.
“Be my guest.”
“Thanks.”
As he leaned forward to sit down, he instinctively put his hand over his tie, even though he was wearing a tie clip. There was something familiar about the clip, something that reminded her of her childhood. She remembered what it was. The bird-like logo of the Romanian airline, TAROM.
“Are you a pilot, Larsen?”
“My father was,” he said.
“My uncle was too,” she said. “He flew IAR-93 fighters.”
“Really? Produced in Romania.”
“You know the plane?”
“No, I just remember that they were the only Communist planes that weren’t made in the Soviet Union in the seventies.”
“Communist planes?”
Larsen gave a wry smile. “The sort my father was supposed to shoot down if they came too close.”
“The Cold War. So you dreamed of becoming a pilot yourself?”
He looked surprised. Something about him told her that didn’t happen very often.
“It’s fairly unusual to know about IAR-93s and wear a TAROM tie clip,” she added.
“I applied to the Air Force,” he admitted.
“But didn’t get in?”
“I would have got in,” he said with such natural confidence that she didn’t doubt it. “But my back was too long. I couldn’t fit in the cockpit of the fighters.”
“You could have flown other things. Transport planes, helicopters.”
“I suppose so,” he said.
Your father, she thought. He flew fighters. You couldn’t be happy being a lesser version of him, someone lower down on the uncomplicated pilots’ hierarchy than your father. Sooner something else altogether. So he was an alpha male. Someone who might not have got to where he was going, but was on the way. Like her.
“I’m investigating a murder…” he said, and she realised from his quick glance that the introduction was intended as a warning. “I’ve got some questions about a Harry Hole.”
It felt like the sun outside had gone behind a cloud, as if Alexandra’s heart had stopped.
“From the call log on his phone I see that the two of you have called each other several times in the past few weeks, the past few days.”
“Hole?” she said, as if she needed to dig the name out, and saw from the look on his face how fake it sounded. “Yes, we’ve talked on the phone. He’s a detective.”
“Maybe you’ve done more than talked?”
“More?” She tried to raise an eyebrow, but wasn’t sure if she managed it, it felt like all the muscles in her face were out of control. “What makes you think that?”
“Two things,” Larsen said. “That you instinctively pretended not to remember his name even though you’ve spoken to him six times and called his number twelve times in the past three weeks, two of them on the evening before Rakel Fauke was found murdered. And that during those same three weeks, his phone has been tracked to base stations that overlap with your home address.”
He said this without aggression, suspicion or anything else that gave her any sense of manipulation or game-playing. Or rather, he said it as if the game was already over, like a croupier who had no stake in the game reading out the number before raking in the chips.
“We’re…we were lovers,” she said. And realised when she heard herself say it that that’s exactly how it was. That they had been lovers, no more, no less. And that it was over.
But the second implication only dawned on her when Sung-min Larsen said: “Before we go on, I ought to advise you to consider if you’d like a lawyer present.”
She must have looked aghast, because Larsen hurried to add: “You’re not suspected of anything, this isn’t an official interview, and I’m primarily trying to get information about Harry Hole, not you.”
“So why would I need a lawyer?”
“For advice not to talk to me, seeing as your close relationship to Harry Hole could potentially connect you to a murder.”
“You mean I might have murdered his wife?”
“No.”
“Ah! You think I murdered her out of jealousy.”
“Like I said, no.”
“I told you we weren’t seeing each other anymore.”
“I don’t think you’ve killed anyone. But I’m cautioning you because the answers you give could lead to you being suspected of having helped him to avoid being charged with the murder of his wife.”
Alexandra realised that she had made the most classic of all drama-queen gestures, and had clutched the string of pearls that she was actually wearing.
“So,” Sung-min Larsen said, lowering his voice when the first of the Norwegian early birds entered the canteen. “Shall we continue this conversation?”
He had informed her that she could have a lawyer present, even if it would make his job more complicated. He would have lowered his voice out of consideration to her even if they’d been alone in the room. Maybe he could be trusted. Alexandra looked into his warm brown eyes. She let her hand fall. Straightened her back, pushing—perhaps unconsciously—her breasts forward.
“I’ve got nothing to hide,” she said.
Again, that half-smile of his. She realised she was already looking forward to seeing the rest of it.
* * *
—
Sung-min looked at the time. Four o’clock. He needed to take Kasparov to an appointment at the vet’s, so this summons to Winter’s office was doubly inconvenient.
But he was finished with the investigation. He didn’t have absolutely everything, but he had all he needed.
Firstly, he had proved that Hole’s alibi—provided by his neighbour, Gule—was worthless. The reconstruction had proved that he couldn’t possibly have heard if Hole was in his flat, or if he had arrived or then left. Hole had evidently also thought about this, because Gule had said he had been there asking exactly the same questions.
Secondly, the 3-D expert, Freund, had completed his analysis. There wasn’t much to be gleaned from the hunched figure who had stumbled into Rakel’s house at almost half past eleven on the night of the murder. The figure looked twice as fat as Harry Hole, but Freund said that was probably because he was leaning forward and his coat was hanging down in front of him. His posture also made it impossible to determine his height. But when he came out again three hours later, at half past two in the morning, he was clearly more sober, was standing upright in the doorway, showing his true, slim self, and he was the same height as Harry Hole, around 1.92 metres. He had got into a Ford Escort before remembering to remove his wildlife camera, then he drove away.
Thirdly, he had got hold of a final, decisive piece of evidence from Alexandra Sturdza.
There had been a look of quiet despair on that hard but lively face when he told her about the evidence they had against Harry Hole. And gradually a look of resignation. In the end he had seen her let go of the man she claimed to have already given up. Then he had gently prepared her for some even worse news. And told her that Hole was dead. That he had taken his own life. That—looking at the situation as a whole—perhaps it was for the best. At that point there had been tears in her dark eyes, and he had considered putting his hand on hers as it lay motionless and dead on the table. Just a gentle, comforting touch, then tak
e his hand away again. But he hadn’t. Perhaps she sensed his half-intention, because the next time she lifted her coffee cup, she did so with her left hand, leaving her right motionless, like an invitation.
Then she had told him—as far as he could judge—everything. And that reinforced Sung-min’s suspicion that Hole had committed the murder when he was drunk and lost his temper, and that he had forgotten large parts of it and had spent the last days of his life investigating himself, hence the business with Gule.
A tear had trickled down one of Alexandra’s cheeks, and Sung-min had passed her his handkerchief. He had seen her surprise, presumably because she wasn’t used to Norwegian men carrying freshly ironed handkerchiefs.
They had left the canteen, which was starting to fill up, and went to the Forensic Medical Institute laboratory, where she showed him the bloodstained trousers Hole had given her. She told him that the analysis was almost finished, and that there was a more than 90 percent probability that the blood was Rakel Fauke’s. She had repeated Harry’s explanation as to how the blood had got there, that he had knelt down beside the body after Rakel had been found, and that his trousers had come into contact with the pool of blood.
“That’s not correct,” Sung-min had said. “He wasn’t wearing those trousers when he was at the scene.”
“How do you know that?”
“I was there. I spoke to him.”
“And you remember what sort of trousers he was wearing?”
Sung-min suppressed a spontaneous “of course” and made do with a simple “yes.”
So he had all he needed. Motive, opportunity, and forensic evidence that placed the suspect at the scene at the time of the crime. He had considered contacting someone else who, according to Harry Hole’s call log, he had spoken to several times, a Kaja Solness, but decided it wasn’t a priority seeing as their interaction hadn’t started until after the murder. The important thing now was to find one of the pieces that were missing. Because even if he had everything he needed, he didn’t have everything. He didn’t have the murder weapon.
