Knife

by Jo Nesbo

  Harry closed his eyes. “That sounds like a big—”

  “Generalisation. Of course it is. Here’s another one. Women are unfaithful for different reasons than men. Maybe Rakel knew she needed to get away from you, but needed a catalyst, something to give her a push. Like a short-term fling. Then, once the fling had served its purpose and she was free from you, she finished with the other man as well. And bingo, you’ve got an infatuated, humiliated man with a motive for murder.”

  “OK,” Harry said. “But do you believe that yourself?”

  “No, but it just shows that there could be other possibilities. I certainly don’t believe the motive you’re trying to ascribe to Finne.”

  “No?”

  “The idea that he killed Rakel just because you were doing your job as a police officer? That he hates you, had made threats against you, fine. But men like Finne are driven by sexual lust, not revenge. No more than other criminals, anyway. And I’ve never felt threatened by anyone I sent to jail, no matter how loud-mouthed they were. There’s a long way between firing off a cheap threat and taking the risk of actually committing murder. I think Finne would have needed a far stronger motive to risk twelve years, possibly the rest of his life, in prison.”

  Harry sucked hard, angrily, on his cigarette. Angrily because he could feel every fibre of his being fighting against what she had said. Angrily because he knew she was right. “So what sort of revenge motive would you consider strong enough?”

  Once again, the dancing, almost childish shrug of the shoulders. “I don’t know. Something personal. Something that fits with what he’s done to you.”

  “But that’s what I’ve done. I took his freedom from him, the life he loved. So he’s taken what I loved most away from me.”

  “Rakel.” Kaja pushed her bottom lip out and nodded. “To make you live with the pain.”

  “Exactly.” Harry noticed that he had smoked the cigarette down to the filter. “You see things, Kaja. That’s really why I came.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You can tell I’m not really functioning.” Harry tried to smile. “I’ve become my own worst example of an emotion-led detective who starts with a conclusion and then looks for questions whose answers he hopes will confirm it. And that’s why I need you, Kaja.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “I’ve been suspended and am no longer allowed to work with anyone in the department. As detectives, we all need someone to bounce ideas off. Someone to offer a bit of resistance. New ideas. You used to be a murder detective, and you haven’t got anything to fill your days.”

  “No. No, Harry.”

  “Hear me out, Kaja.” Harry leaned forward. “I know you don’t owe me anything, I know I walked away from you that time. The fact that my heart was broken may have been the explanation, but that was still no excuse for me to break yours. I knew what I was doing, and I’d do the same thing again. Because I had to, because I loved Rakel. I know it’s a lot to ask, but I’m asking anyway. Because I’m going mad, Kaja. I’ve got to do something, and the only thing I can do is investigate murders. And drink. I can drink myself to death if I have to.”

  Harry saw Kaja flinch again.

  “I’m just saying it like it is,” he said. “You don’t have to reply now, all I’m asking is that you think about it. You’ve got my number. And now I’m going to leave you in peace.”

  Harry stood up.

  He pulled his boots on, walked out of the door, down to Suhms gate, down past Norabakken and Fagerborg Church, successfully passed two open pubs with their own congregations crowded around the bar, saw the entrance to Bislett Stadium, which had once had its own congregation but now seemed more like a prison, and looked up at the pointlessly clear sky above him, where he caught a glimpse of an S twinkling in the sunlight as he crossed the street. There was a shriek as a tram braked hard, echoing his own scream when he got up from the floor and one of his boots slipped on blood.

  * * *

  —

  Truls Berntsen was sitting in front of his PC watching the third episode of the first season of The Shield. He had watched the whole series twice already, and had started again. Television series were like porn films: the old, classic ones were the best. Besides, Truls was Vic Mackey. OK, not entirely, but Vic was the man Truls Berntsen would like to be: corrupt through and through, but with a moral code that made it all right. That was what was so cool. That you could be so bad, but only because of how you looked at it. From which angle. The Nazis and Communists had made their own war films, after all, and got people to cheer on their own bastards. Nothing was entirely true, and nothing was absolutely false. Point of view. That was everything. Point of view.

  The phone rang.

  That was disconcerting.

  It was Hagen who had insisted that the Crime Squad Unit should be staffed at weekends too. With just the one officer, but that suited Truls fine, he was happy to take other people’s shifts too. To start with, he had nothing better to be doing, and he needed the money and time owing for his trip to Pattaya in the autumn. And there was absolutely nothing to do, seeing as the duty officer fielded all the calls. He wasn’t entirely sure that they knew there was anyone sitting in Crime Squad at the weekend, but he had no intention of telling them.

  Which was why this call was disconcerting, seeing as the screen said it was the duty officer.

  After five rings, Truls swore quietly, turned the volume of The Shield down but left it playing, and picked up the receiver.

  “Yes?” he said, managing to make that single, positive syllable sound like a rejection.

  “Duty officer here. We’ve got a lady who needs assistance. She wants to see pictures of rapists, in connection with a rape.”

  “That’s the Vice Squad’s job.”

  “You’ve got the same pictures, and they don’t have anyone there at the weekend.”

  “Better if she comes back on Monday.”

  “Better if she sees the pictures while she remembers the face. Are you open at weekends or not?”

  “Fine,” Truls Berntsen grunted. “Bring her up, then.”

  “We’re pretty busy down here, so how about you come down and get her?”

  “I’m busy too.” Truls waited, but got no response. “OK, I’ll come down,” he sighed.

  “Good. And listen, it’s been a while since it was called the Vice Squad. It’s called the Sexual Offences Unit these days.”

  “Fuck you too,” Truls muttered, almost too quietly to be heard, then hung up and pressed Pause, making The Shield freeze just before one of Truls Berntsen’s favourite scenes, the one where Vic liquidates his police colleague Terry with a bullet just below his left eye.

  * * *

  —

  “So we’re not talking about a rape that you were subjected to, but one you’re saying you witnessed?” Truls Berntsen said, pulling an extra chair over to his desk. “You’re sure it was rape?”

  “No,” the woman said. She had introduced herself as Dagny Jensen. “But if I recognise any of the rapists in your archive, I’d be pretty sure.”

  Truls scratched his protruding Frankenstein’s-monster forehead. “So you don’t want to file a report until you’ve recognised the perpetrator?”

  “That’s right.”

  “That’s not the way we usually do things,” Truls said. “But let’s say I run a ten-minute slideshow here and now, and if we find the guy, you can go back to the duty officer to file the report and explain. I’m on my own up here and I’ve got my hands full. Deal?”

  “OK.”

  “Let’s get going. Estimated age of the rapist?”

  Just three minutes later, Dagny Jensen pointed at one of the pictures on the screen.

  “Who’s that?” He noted that she was trying to suppress a tremble in her voice.

  “The o
ne and only Svein Finne,” Truls said. “Was it him you saw?”

  “What’s he done?”

  “What hasn’t he done? Let’s see.”

  Truls typed, pressed Enter and a detailed criminal record appeared.

  He saw Dagny Jensen’s eyes move down the page, and the growing horror on her face as the monster materialised in dry police language.

  “He’s murdered women he got pregnant,” she whispered.

  “Mutilation and murder,” Truls corrected. “He’s served his time, but if there’s one man we’d be happy to receive a new report about, it’s Finne.”

  “Are you…are you completely certain you’d be able to catch him, then?”

  “Oh, we’d get hold of him if we issued a warrant for his arrest,” Truls said. “Obviously, whether or not we’d get a conviction in a rape trial is an entirely different matter. It’s always one person’s word against another’s in cases like that, and we’d probably just have to let him go again. But obviously with a witness like you, it would be two against one. With a bit of luck.”

  Dagny Jensen swallowed several times.

  Truls yawned and looked at the time. “Now you’ve seen the picture, you can make your way back down to the duty officer and get the paperwork started, OK?”

  “Yes,” the woman said, staring at the screen. “Yes, of course.”

  15

  Harry was sitting on the sofa staring at the wall. He hadn’t turned the lights on, and the falling darkness had slowly erased the contours and colours and settled like a cool cloth on his forehead. He wished it could erase him too. When you actually thought about it, life didn’t have to be that complicated. It could basically be reduced to The Clash’s binary question: should I stay or should I go? Drink? Not drink? He wanted to drown. Disappear. But he couldn’t, not quite yet.

  Harry opened the present Bjørn had given him. As he had assumed, it was a vinyl album. Road to Ruin. Of the three albums Øystein resolutely claimed were the Ramones’ only really good work (here he would usually refer to Lou Reed describing the Ramones’ music as “shit”), Bjørn had managed to buy the only one Harry didn’t have. On the shelves behind him—between The Rainmakers’ first album and Rank and File’s debut—he had both Ramones and his favourite, Rocket to Russia.

  Harry pulled the black vinyl disc out and put Road to Ruin on the turntable.

  He spotted one track he recognised and placed the needle at the start of “I Wanna Be Sedated.”

  Guitar riffs filled the room. It sounded more heavily produced and mainstream than their debut album. He liked the minimalist guitar solo, but wasn’t so sure about the modulation afterwards; it sounded suspiciously like Status Quo–style boogie at its most imbecilic. But it was performed with swaggering confidence. Like his favourite track “Rockaway Beach,” where they stood just as confidently on the shoulders of The Beach Boys, like car thieves cruising down the main street with the windows down.

  While Harry was trying to work out if he actually liked “I Wanna Be Sedated” or not, and whether or not he should go to the bar, the room was lit up by the phone on the coffee table.

  He peered down at the screen. Sighed. Wondered whether to answer.

  “Hi, Alexandra.”

  “Hi, Harry. I’ve been trying to get hold of you. You need to change the message on your voicemail.”

  “You think?”

  “It doesn’t even say your name. ‘Leave a message if you must.’ Just six words that sound more like a warning, followed by a bleep.”

  “Sounds like it works the way it should.”

  “I’ve called you a lot of times.”

  “I saw, but I haven’t been…in the mood.”

  “I heard.” She let out a deep sigh, and her voice suddenly sounded pained, sympathetic. “It’s just terrible.”

  “Yes.”

  A pause followed, like a silent intermezzo marking the transition between two acts. Because when Alexandra went on, it wasn’t in either her deep, playful voice or the pained, sympathetic one. It was her professional voice.

  “I’ve found something for you.”

  Harry ran his hand over his face. “OK, I’m all ears.”

  It had been so long since he first contacted Alexandra Sturdza that he had given up any hope of getting anything from her. More than six months had passed since he’d gone up to the Forensic Medical Institute at Rikshospitalet, where he had been met by a young woman who had come straight from the lab, with a hard, pockmarked face, bright eyes and an almost imperceptible accent. She had taken him into her office and hung up her white lab coat as Harry asked if she could help him, kind of off the record, to compare Svein Finne’s DNA against old cases of murder and rape.

  “So, Harry Hole, you want me to jump the queue for you?”

  After Parliament abolished the statute of limitations for murder and rape in 2014, naturally there had been a rush of requests to apply new DNA-analysis technology to older cases, and waiting times had shot up.

  Harry had considered rephrasing his request, but he could see from the look in her eyes that there was no point. “Yes.”

  “Interesting. In exchange for what?”

  “Exchange? Hm. What would you like?”

  “A beer with Harry Hole would be a start.”

  Under her coat Alexandra Sturdza was wearing black, figure-hugging clothes that emphasised a muscular body that made Harry think of cats and sports cars. But he had never really been that interested in cars, and was more of a dog person.

  “If that’s what it’ll take, I’ll get you a beer. But I don’t drink. And I’m married.”

  “We’ll see,” she said with a hoarse laugh. She looked like she laughed a lot, but it was strangely difficult to guess her age, she could have been anywhere from ten to twenty years younger than him. She tilted her head and looked at him. “Meet me at Revolver at eight o’clock tomorrow, and we’ll see what I’ve got for you, OK?”

  She hadn’t had much. Not then, and not much since. Just enough to invite herself for a beer every now and then. But he had maintained a professional distance and made sure their meetings were short and to the point. Until Rakel threw him out and the dam had burst, carrying everything away with it, including any principles about professional distance.

  Harry saw that the wall had turned another shade greyer.

  “I haven’t got an exact match from a case,” Alexandra began.

  Harry yawned; it was the same old story.

  “But then I realised that I could compare Svein Finne’s DNA profile against all the others in the database. And I found a partial match to a murderer.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that if Svein Finne isn’t a convicted murderer, then he’s the father of one, at least.”

  “Oh, shit.” Something dawned on Harry. A foreboding. “What’s the murderer’s name?”

  “Valentin Gjertsen.”

  A cold shiver ran down Harry’s spine. Valentin Gjertsen. Not that Harry had more faith in genes than environment, but there was a sort of logic to the fact that Svein Finne’s seed, his genes, had helped create a son who had become one of the worst killers in Norwegian criminal history.

  “You sound less surprised than I thought you’d be,” Alexandra said.

  “I’m less surprised than I thought I’d be,” Harry replied, rubbing his neck.

  “Is that helpful?”

  “Yes,” Harry said. “Yes, it’s very helpful. Thanks, Alexandra.”

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “Mm. Good question.”

  “Do you want to come around to mine?”

  “Like I said, I’m not really in the—”

  “We don’t have to do anything. Maybe we could both do with someone to lie next to for a while. You remember where I live?”

&nb
sp; Harry closed his eyes. There had been a number of beds, doorways and courtyards since the dam burst, and alcohol had laid a veil over faces, names, addresses. And right now, the image of Valentin Gjertsen was blocking out pretty much everything else from his memory.

  “What the hell, Harry? You were drunk, but couldn’t you at least pretend you remember?”

  “Grünerløkka,” Harry said. “Seilduksgata.”

  “Clever boy. An hour from now?”

  As Harry hung up and called Kaja Solness, a thought struck him. The fact that he had remembered Seilduksgata regardless of how drunk he had been…he always remembered something, his memory was never completely blank. Maybe it wasn’t the long-term effects of drinking that meant he couldn’t remember that evening at the Jealousy Bar, maybe there was something he didn’t want to remember.

  “Hello, you’ve reached Kaja’s voicemail.”

  “I’ve got the motive you were asking about,” Harry said after the bleep. “His name is Valentin Gjertsen, and it turns out that he was Svein Finne’s son. Valentin Gjertsen is dead. He was killed. By me.”

  16

  Alexandra Sturdza let out a long sound as she stretched her arms over her head so that her fingers and bare feet touched the brass bedstead at either end of the mattress. Then she rolled onto her side, pushed the duvet between her thighs and put one of the big white pillows under her head. She was grinning so much that her dark eyes almost disappeared into her hard face.

  “I’m glad you came,” she said, putting one hand on Harry’s chest.

  “Mm.” Harry was lying on his back staring into the bright light from the ceiling lamp. She had been wearing a long silk dressing gown when she opened the door for him, then took him by the hand and led him straight into the bedroom.

  “Are you feeling guilty?” she asked.

  “Always,” Harry said.

  “For being here, I mean.”

  “Not particularly. It just fits into the scale of indicators.”