by Jo Nesbo
For that reason it was not there they concentrated their efforts. The investigation began when they broke into his house, where they found most of what they needed to clear up all the police murders. Batons covered with blood and hair from the victims, a bayonet saw with Beate Lønn’s DNA on it, a spade smeared with soil and clay that matched the ground in Vestre Cemetery, plastic ties, police cordon tape of the same kind that had been found outside Drammen, boots that tallied with the footprint at Tryvann. They had everything. And afterwards, as Harry had so often said, but which only Bjørn Holm had experienced, the void.
Because there was suddenly nothing else.
It wasn’t like breasting a tape, drifting into a harbour or pulling into a station.
It was more like the tarmac, the bridge, the rails had disappeared. It was the end of the road, and that was where the dive into nothingness began.
Finished. He hated the word.
So, almost in desperation, he had delved even deeper into the investigation of the original murders. And had found what he had been searching for, a link between the murder of the girl at Tryvann, Judas Johansen and Valentin Gjertsen. A quarter of a fingerprint didn’t give a match, but thirty per cent probability wasn’t to be sneered at. No, it wasn’t finished. It was never finished.
‘They’re starting now.’
It was Katrine. Her lips were almost touching his ear. The organ notes soared, grew into music, music he knew. Bjørn swallowed hard.
Gunnar Hagen closed his eyes for a second and listened only to the music, not wanting to think. But thoughts came. The case was over. Everything was over. They had buried what had to be buried now. Yet there was this one matter, one he could not bury, never managed to get underground. And which he still hadn’t mentioned to anyone. He hadn’t mentioned it because it could no longer be of any use. The Swedish words Asayev had whispered in his hoarse voice the seconds he had spent with him that day at the hospital. ‘What can you offer me if I agree to testify against Isabelle Skøyen?’ and ‘I don’t know who, but I know she worked with someone high up in the police force.’
The words were dead echoes of a dead man. Unprovable claims that would be damaging rather than beneficial now that Skøyen was off the scene.
So he had kept this to himself.
Like Anton Mittet with the bloody baton.
The decision had been taken, but it still kept him awake at night.
‘I know she worked with someone high up in the police force.’
Gunnar Hagen opened his eyes again.
Slowly, he ran his eyes across the assembled congregation.
Truls Berntsen sat with the window of the Suzuki Vitara rolled down so that he could hear the organ music from the small church. The sun shone from a cloudless sky. Warm and awful. He had never liked Oppsal. Just hooligans. He had given a lot of beatings. Taken a lot of beatings. Not as bad as in Hausmanns gate of course. Luckily it had looked worse than it was. And in hospital Mikael had said it didn’t matter with people as ugly as he was and how serious could concussion be for someone who didn’t have a brain?
It was meant to be a joke, and Truls had tried with his grunted laughter to show he appreciated it, but the broken jawbone and the smashed nose had hurt too much.
He was still taking strong painkillers, he still wore big bandages around his head, and of course he was not allowed to drive, but what could he do? He couldn’t sit at home waiting for the dizziness to go and the wounds to heal. Even Megan Fox had begun to bore him and he didn’t actually have the doctor’s permission to watch TV either. So he might just as well sit here. In a car outside a church to . . . well, to do what? To show his respect for a man he had never had any respect for? An empty gesture for a sodding idiot who didn’t know what was good for him, who saved the life of the one man whose death he had everything to gain by? Truls Berntsen couldn’t bloody fathom it. He only knew he wanted to be back working as soon as he was well enough. And the town to be his again.
Rakel breathed in and out. Her fingers round the bouquet felt clammy. Stared at the door. Thought about the people sitting inside. Friends, family, acquaintances. The priest. Not that there were so many, but they were waiting. Couldn’t start without her.
‘You promise you won’t cry?’ Oleg said.
‘No,’ she said, smiled fleetingly and stroked his cheek. He had grown so tall. He was so good-looking. Towered above her. She’d had to buy a dark suit for him, and it was only when they were standing in the shop and measuring up that she realised her son was close to Harry’s one metre ninety-two. She sighed.
‘We’d better go in,’ she said, threading her arm through his.
Oleg opened the door, was given a nod by the verger inside and they began to walk up the aisle. And when Rakel saw all the faces turned to her, she felt her nervousness vanish. This had not been her idea, she had been against it, but in the end Oleg had persuaded her. He thought it was only right that it should all finish like this. That was precisely the word he had used: finish. But wasn’t it above all else a beginning? The start of a new chapter in their lives? At least that was how it felt. And suddenly this did feel right. Being here, now.
And a smile spread across her face. She smiled at all the other smiling faces. For a moment she thought that if their smiles or her own got any broader there could be a serious accident. And the notion of this, the sound of tearing faces, which ought to have made her shudder, caused bubbles of laughter in her stomach. Don’t laugh, she told herself. Not now. She noticed that Oleg, who so far had been concentrating on walking in time with the organ, sensed her mood, and she glanced at him. Met his surprised, admonitory expression. But then he had to look away; he had seen. That his mother was having a fit of the giggles. Here, now. And he found that so inappropriate that he started laughing as well.
To focus her mind on something else, on what was about to happen, on the solemnity, she fixed her gaze on the man who was waiting by the altar. Harry. In black.
He stood facing them with an idiotic grin plastered across his handsome, pug-ugly face. As tall and proud as a peacock. When he and Oleg had stood back-to-back at Gunnar Øye’s, the outfitter’s, the assistant with the tape measure had announced that only three centimetres separated them, in Harry’s favour. And the two overgrown schoolboys had high-fived as though both were satisfied with the outcome of some competition.
But now, at this moment, Harry looked very adult. The rays from the June sun falling through the stained-glass windows enveloped him in a kind of celestial light and he seemed taller than ever. And as relaxed as he had been throughout. At first she didn’t understand how he could be so relaxed after all that had happened. But gradually it had rubbed off, this calm, this unshakeable belief that everything had sorted itself out. She hadn’t been able to sleep for the first few weeks after Arnold Folkestad had come to their home, even though Harry had snuggled up close and whispered in her ear that it was over. That it had gone well. That they were out of danger. He had repeated the same words night after night like a soporific mantra, which still hadn’t been enough. But then, gradually, she had begun to believe it. And after a few more weeks to know it. Everything had sorted itself out. And she had begun to sleep. Deep sleep without any dreams she could remember, until she was woken by him slipping out of bed in the morning light, thinking as usual she didn’t notice, and as usual she pretended she didn’t notice because she knew how proud and happy he would be if he thought she had only woken up when he coughed and stood there with a breakfast tray in his hands.
Oleg had given up trying to keep in rhythm with Mendelssohn and the organist now, and it made no difference to Rakel, she had to take two steps for his one anyway. They had decided that Oleg would perform a double function. It had felt completely natural as soon as she’d thought about it. Oleg should accompany her to the altar, give her away to Harry and also be best man.
Harry didn’t have a best man. He had the witness he had first chosen, though. The chair on his side by the alt
ar was empty, but a photo of Beate Lønn had been placed on the seat.
They were there now. Harry hadn’t let her out of his sight for an instant.
She had never understood how a man with such a low resting pulse, who could go for days in his own world, almost without speaking and without any need for outside stimulation, could press a switch and was suddenly conscious of everything, every ticking second, every quivering tenth and hundredth of a second. With a calm, husky voice that in very few words could express more emotions, information, astonishment, foolishness and wisdom than all the windbags she had ever met could manage over a seven-course meal.
And then there were the eyes. Which in their own good-natured, almost bashful, way had this ability to hold your attention, to force you to be there.
Rakel Fauke was going to marry the man she loved.
Harry looked at her as she stood there. She was so beautiful he had tears in his eyes. He simply hadn’t expected this. Not that she wouldn’t be beautiful. It was obvious that Rakel Fauke would look amazing in a white bridal gown. He hadn’t expected that he would react in this way. His uppermost thoughts had been that he hoped it wouldn’t take too long and the priest wouldn’t get too spiritual or inspired. And he had imagined that as usual on occasions which called for great emotions, he would become immune, numb, a cold and slightly disappointed observer of other people’s floods of feelings and his own drought. But he had determined that at any rate he would play the role as best he could. After all, he was the one who had insisted on a church wedding. And now here he was, with tears, genuine, big, fat, salty drops, in the corners of his eyes. Harry blinked, and Rakel watched him. Met his gaze. Not with that now-I’m-looking-at-you-and-all-the-guests-can-see-I’m-looking-at-you-and-I’m-trying-to-look-as-happy-as-I-can look.
It was the look of a teammate.
Of someone saying we can nail this, you and I. Let’s do it.
Then she smiled. And Harry discovered that he was smiling too, without knowing which of them had started it. She had started shaking. She was laughing inside and filling up so fast it was only a question of time before the laughter exploded out of her. Solemnity generally had that effect on her. And on him. So, in order not to laugh, she looked over at Oleg. But she got no help there, for the boy looked as if he was going to burst into laughter as well. He just managed to restrain himself by lowering his head and firmly shutting his eyes.
What a team, Harry thought proudly and focused on the priest.
The team that had caught the Cop Killer.
Rakel had understood the text message. Don’t let Oleg see the present. Reasonable enough for Arnold Folkestad not to become suspicious. Clear enough for Rakel to understand what he wanted. The old birthday trick.
So, when he entered the house she had embraced him, grabbed what he had stuffed down his belt at the back and then backed away with her hands in front of her so that Arnold couldn’t see that she was holding something. She was holding a loaded Odessa with the safety catch off.
What was more worrying was that even Oleg had understood. He had stayed quiet, knowing he mustn’t ruin what was looming. Which could only mean that he had never fallen for the birthday trick, and he had never let on. What a team.
What a team, coaxing Arnold Folkestad into moving towards Harry and leaving Rakel behind him, so that she could step forward and, at close quarters, fire a shot through Folkestad’s temple as he was about to dispatch Harry.
An unbeatable team of champions, that’s what it was.
Harry sniffed quickly and wondered if the damned mega-tears would have the sense to stay where they were or if he would simply have to wipe them away before they slid down his cheeks.
He took a risk with the latter.
She had asked him why he’d insisted that they get married in a church. To the best of her knowledge he was about as Christian as a chemical formula. And she was the same, despite her Catholic upbringing. But Harry answered that, outside their house, he had made a promise to a fictional God that if this went well, in recompense he would succumb to this one stupid ritual act: getting married in the sight of this alleged God. And then Rakel had burst out laughing, said that this didn’t show much faith in God, it was an advanced version of bloody knuckles, boys’ stuff, that she loved him and of course they would get married in a church.
After they had freed Oleg, they had embraced one another in a kind of group hug. For one long, silent minute they had just stood there, hugging one another, stroking one another, to make sure they really were unhurt. It was as if the sound and the smell of the shot still hung in the walls, and they had to wait until it was gone before they could do anything. Afterwards Harry had told them to sit round the kitchen table, and he’d poured them a cup of coffee from the machine that was still on. And involuntarily he’d wondered: if Arnold Folkestad had succeeded in killing them all, would he have switched off the machine before he left the house?
He had sat down, taken a swig from his cup, cast a glance at the body lying on the floor in the room a few metres from them, and when he had turned back he had met the questioning look in Rakel’s eyes: why hadn’t he already rung the police?
Harry had taken another swig from his cup, nodded at the Odessa lying on the table and looked at her. She was an intelligent woman. So it was just a question of giving her a bit of time. She would reason her way through to the same conclusion. That if he picked up the phone he would be sending Oleg to prison.
And then Rakel had nodded slowly. She had understood. When the forensics people examined the gun to check if it matched the bullet that the pathologists would extract from Folkestad’s head, they would immediately link it to the murder of Gusto Hanssen, where the murder weapon was never found. After all, it wasn’t every day – or every year – that someone was killed with a 9x18mm Makarov bullet. And if they discovered it matched a weapon they could link to Oleg, he would be rearrested. And this time charged and sentenced on the basis of what to everyone in court would seem like irrefutable, damning evidence.
‘You two will have to do what you have to do,’ Oleg had said. He had long grasped the gravity of the situation.
Harry had nodded, but hadn’t taken his eyes off Rakel. There had to be total unanimity. It had to be their joint decision. As now.
The priest finished reading from the Bible, the congregation sat down again and the priest cleared his throat. Harry had asked him to keep the sermon short. He saw the priest’s lips moving, saw the composure on his face and remembered the same composure on Rakel’s that night. The composure after first shutting her eyes tight and then opening them. As though wanting to make sure this was not a nightmare you could wake up from. Then she had sighed.
‘What can we do?’ she’d asked.
‘Burn,’ Harry had answered.
‘Burn?’
Harry had nodded. Burn. What Truls Berntsen did. The difference was that burners like Berntsen did it for money. That was all.
And so they had sprung into action.
He had done what had to be done. They had done what had to be done. Oleg had driven Harry’s car from the road up to the garage while Rakel packed and tied up the body in bin bags, and Harry had made a makeshift stretcher out of a tarpaulin, rope and two aluminium pipes. After putting the body in the boot Harry had gone down to the road with the keys for the Fiat, and Harry and Oleg each drove a car to Maridalen while Rakel set about cleaning up and removing all the traces.
As they had predicted, there was no one around the Grefsenkollen mountain in the rain and darkness. Nevertheless they had taken one of the narrow paths to be sure they didn’t meet anyone.
The rain had made carrying the body a wearing, slippery business; on the other hand, Harry knew the rain would wash away their tracks and they hoped any telltale signs. They didn’t want anything to suggest that the body had been transported there.
It had taken them more than an hour to find a suitable spot, a place where people wouldn’t stumble across the body straight
away, yet where their elkhounds would find the scent before too long. Long enough for the forensic evidence to have been destroyed or at least rendered hard to identify. But too short a time for society to have wasted a great deal of resources on a manhunt. Harry almost had to laugh at himself when he realised the latter was indeed a factor. In the end he was a product of his upbringing as well, a brainwashed, herd-following, bloody Social Democrat who suffered physical pain at the thought of leaving a light on all night or discarding plastic in the countryside.
The priest finished his sermon and a girl – a friend of Oleg’s – sang from the gallery. Dylan’s ‘Boots of Spanish Leather’. Harry’s wish, Rakel’s blessing. The sermon had been more about the importance of working together in a marriage and less about being in God’s sight. And Harry had thought about how they had taken the bin bags off Arnold, placed him in a position that would seem logical for a man who had chosen the forest to fire a bullet through his temple. And Harry knew he would never ask Rakel about it, about why she had held the muzzle close to Arnold Folkestad’s right temple before firing instead of doing what nine out of ten people would have done, quickly shot him in the back of the head or the back.
It might of course have been because she had been scared the bullet would go through Folkestad and hit Harry.
But it could also have been because her lightning-fast, almost frighteningly practical brain had managed to think one stage further, about what would have to happen afterwards. There would have to be some camouflage to save them all. A circumlocution of the truth. A suicide. The woman at Harry’s side might have worked out that suicide victims don’t shoot themselves through the back of the head from a range of half a metre. But – given that Arnold Folkestad was right-handed – through the right temple.
What a woman. All the things he knew about her. All the things he didn’t know about her. That was the question he had been obliged to ask himself even after seeing her in action. After spending months with Arnold Folkestad. And more than forty years with himself. How well can you know someone?
