by Jo Nesbo
“Can’t we talk about it? Inside?”
“Whenever I’m not sure,” Finne said, “I let my father decide.”
“Your father?”
“Yes. Fate.” He felt in his trouser pocket and pulled something out between his thumb and forefinger. Blue-grey metal. It was a dice.
“That’s your father?”
“Fate is the father of us all, Dagny. A one or a two means we get married today. Three or four that we wait until another day. Five or six means…” He leaned forward and whispered in her ear. “That you’ve betrayed me, and I’ll have to slit your throat here and now. And you’ll stand there dumb and obedient like the sacrificial lamb you are, and just let it happen. Hold out your hand.”
Finne straightened up. Dagny stared at him. There was no emotion in his eyes, or at least none that she recognised: no anger, no sympathy, no excitement, no nervousness, no amusement, no hate, no love. All she saw was will. His will. A hypnotic, commanding force that required neither reason nor logic. She wanted to scream. She wanted to run. Instead she held out her hand.
Finne shook the dice in his cupped hands. Then he quickly turned the lower hand and put it over Dagny’s palm. She felt his warm, dry, raw skin against hers and shuddered.
He took his hand away. Looked down at hers. His mouth stretched into a broad smile.
Dagny had stopped breathing again. She pulled her hand back. The dice was showing three black dots.
“See you soon, my darling,” Finne said, looking up. “My promise still holds.”
Dagny looked automatically at the sky, where the lights of the city were colouring the clouds yellow. When she looked down again Finne was gone. She heard a noise from one of the archways on the other side of the street.
She nudged the door behind her open and went inside. It was as if the organ notes from the last mass were still lingering in the large nave. She walked over to one of the two confessionals against one of the back walls and sat inside it. Pulled the curtain.
“He left,” she said.
“Where?” the voice behind the grille said.
“Don’t know. It’s too late, anyway.”
* * *
—
“Smell?” Harry said, and heard the word echo around the church. And even if he was sure they were alone in there, sitting in the back row, he lowered his voice. “He said he could smell it? And threw a dice?”
Dagny nodded and pointed at the recording device she had placed on the bench between them. “It’s all on there.”
“And he didn’t confess anything?”
“No. He just called himself a sower. You can hear for yourself.”
Harry managed to stop himself swearing and leaned back so hard against the back of the bench that the whole thing wobbled momentarily.
“What do we do now?” Dagny said.
Harry rubbed his face. How could Finne have known? Apart from him and Dagny, Kaja and Truls were the only people who knew about the plan. Maybe he had just read it from Dagny’s face and body language? That was obviously possible; fear acts as an amplifier. Either way, what they were going to do now was a bloody good question.
“I need to see him die,” Dagny said.
Harry nodded. “Finne’s old, and a lot of things can happen. I’ll let you know when he’s dead.”
Dagny shook her head. “You don’t understand. I need to be watching when he dies. If I don’t, my body won’t accept that he’s gone, and he’ll haunt me in my dreams. Like my mother.”
A single buzz announced the arrival of a text message, and Dagny pulled a shiny silver phone from her pocket.
It struck Harry that Rakel hadn’t haunted his dreams after he’d seen her dead. Not yet, at least not that he could remember when he woke up. Why not? He had dreamed that he’d seen her face, lifeless, dead, after all. And then it hit him that he wanted, he really wanted her to haunt him; sooner a death mask and maggots crawling from her mouth than this cold, empty nothingness.
“Dear God…” Dagny whispered.
Her face was lit up by the screen. Her mouth was open, her eyes wide.
The phone fell to the floor with a clatter and lay there, screen upwards. Harry bent over. The video had stopped playing, and was showing the final image, a watch with luminous red numbers. Harry pressed Play, and the clip started again. There was no sound, it was grainy and the camera was moving, but he could see that it was a close-up of a white stomach with blood pumping out of a wound. A hairy hand with a grey watch strap came into shot. It happened so fast. The hand vanished inside the wound, all the way to the screen of the watch, which activated and lit up as more blood pumped out. The camera zoomed in on the watch, then the picture froze. The clip was over. Harry tried to swallow his nausea.
“What…what was that?” Dagny stammered.
“I don’t know,” Harry said, staring at the final image of the watch. “I don’t know,” he repeated.
“I can’t…” Dagny began. “He’s going to kill me too, and you won’t be able to stop him on your own. Because you are on your own, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Harry said. “I’m on my own.”
“Then I’m going to have to look for help somewhere else. I have to think of myself.”
“Do that,” Harry said. He couldn’t tear his eyes from the frozen image. The picture quality was too poor for the stomach or hand to be used to identify anyone. But the watch was clear enough. And the time. And the date.
03:00. The night Rakel was murdered.
19
The strip of sunlight from the window was making the white papers on Katrine Bratt’s desk glow.
“Dagny Jensen says in her statement that you persuaded her to lure Svein Finne into a trap,” she said.
She looked up from the document, found the long legs that began in front of her desk and led to the man who was half lying in the chair before her. His bright blue eyes were shaded by a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses with black gaffer tape on one arm. He had been drinking. Because it wasn’t just the acrid smell of stale alcohol coming from his clothes and body, reminding her of an amalgam, old people’s homes and rotten blackberries. It was the smell of fresh alcohol on his breath, refreshing, cleansing. In short, the man sitting in front of her was an alcoholic who was partly recovering, and partly on his way towards renewed drunkenness.
“Is that right, Harry?”
“Yes,” the man said, and coughed without covering his mouth. She saw a fleck of saliva glint in the sunlight on the arm of his chair. “Have you found who sent the video?”
“Yes,” Katrine said. “A burner phone. Which is now dead and impossible to trace.”
“Svein Finne. He sent it. He’s the one filming, and it’s him sticking his hand inside her stomach.”
“Shame he didn’t use the hand with the hole in. Then we’d have definite identification.”
“It is him. You saw the time and date on the watch?”
“Yes. And obviously it’s suspicious that the date is the same as the night of the murder. But the time is an hour later than the interval in which Forensics think Rakel died.”
“The keyword there is ‘think,’ ” Harry said. “You know as well as I do that they can’t get it spot-on.”
“Can you identify the stomach as Rakel’s?”
“Come on, it’s a grainy image taken with a moving camera.”
“So it could be anyone. For all we know, it could be something Finne found online and sent to scare Dagny Jensen.”
“Let’s say that, then,” Harry said, putting his hands on the armrests and starting to get up.
“Sit down!” Katrine barked.
Harry sank back into the chair.
She sighed deeply. “Dagny has police protection.”
“Round the clock?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Anything else?”
“Yes. I’ve just been informed by the Forensic Medical Institute that Valentin Gjertsen was Svein Finne’s biological son. And that you’ve known about that for a while.”
Katrine looked for some sort of reaction, but saw nothing except her own reflection in those blue mirrored sunglasses.
“So,” she said. “You’ve decided that Svein Finne killed Rakel to avenge himself on you. You’ve ignored all protocols for police work and put another person, a rape victim, in danger in order to achieve something you’re after personally. That isn’t just gross misconduct in service, Harry, that’s a criminal offence.”
Katrine stopped. What was he looking at behind those damn sunglasses? Her? The picture hanging on the wall behind her? His own boots?
“You’re already suspended, Harry. I haven’t got many other sanctions available apart from dismissing you altogether. Or reporting you. Which would also lead to dismissal if you were found guilty. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Yes?”
“Yes, it isn’t exactly complicated. Can I go now?”
“No! Do you know what I said to Dagny Jensen when she asked for police protection? I told her she’d get it, but that the police officers who are going to protect her are only human, and they quickly lose their enthusiasm if they know that the person they’re protecting has filed a complaint against a police colleague for being overzealous. I put pressure on her, Harry, an innocent victim. For your sake! What have you got to say about that?”
Harry nodded slowly. “Well. What about: Can I go now?”
“Go?” Katrine threw her hands up. “Really? That’s all you have to say?”
“No, but it would be better if I left before I say it.”
Katrine groaned. She put her elbows on her desk, clasped her hands together and leaned her forehead against them. “Fine. GO.”
* * *
—
Harry closed his eyes. He could feel the thick birch trunk against his back and the sharp spring sun warming his face. In front of him was a simple, brown wooden cross. It had Rakel’s name on it, but nothing else, no date. The woman at the funeral parlour had called it a “temporary marker,” something they usually erected while they were waiting for the headstone to be ready, but Harry couldn’t help putting his own interpretation on it: it was only temporary because she was waiting for him.
“I’m still asleep,” Harry said. “I hope that’s OK. Because if I wake up, I’ll fall apart and then I won’t be able to catch him. And I’m going to get him, I swear. Do you remember how frightened you were of the flesh-eating zombies in Night of the Living Dead? Well…” Harry raised his hip flask. “Now I’m one of them.”
Harry took a large swig. Possibly because he was already so tranquillised that the alcohol didn’t seem to offer any further relief, he slid down the trunk until he was sitting against it, feeling the snow beneath his backside and thighs.
“By the way, there’s a rumour that you wanted me back…Was that Old Tjikko? You don’t have to answer.”
He put the flask to his lips again. Removed it. Opened his eyes.
“It’s lonely,” he said. “Before I met you I was alone a lot, but I was never lonely. Loneliness is new, loneliness is…interesting. You weren’t filling any sort of vacuum when we got together, but you left a huge, gaping hole when you went. There’s probably an argument that love is a process of loss. What do you think?”
He closed his eyes again. Listened.
The light beyond his eyelids grew weaker and the temperature dropped. Harry knew it must be a cloud passing in front of the sun, and waited for the warmth to come back as he drifted off to sleep. Until something made him stiffen. Hold his breath. Because he could hear someone else breathing. It wasn’t a cloud; someone or something was standing over him. And Harry hadn’t heard anyone coming, even though there was snow all around him. He opened his eyes.
The sunlight spread out like a halo from the silhouette in front of him.
Harry’s right hand felt inside his jacket.
“I’ve been looking for you,” the silhouette said quietly.
Harry stopped.
“You’ve found me,” Harry said. “What now?”
The silhouette moved aside, and for a moment Harry was blinded by the sun.
“Now we go back to mine,” Kaja Solness said.
* * *
—
“Thanks, but do I really need it?” Harry asked, grimacing as he smelled the tea in the bowl Kaja had handed him.
“I don’t know.” Kaja smiled. “How was the shower?”
“Lukewarm.”
“Because you were in there for three-quarters of an hour.”
“Was I?” Harry sat back on the sofa with his hands around the bowl. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine. Do the clothes fit?”
Harry looked down at the trousers and sweater.
“My brother was a bit smaller than you.” She smiled again.
“So you’ve changed your mind and want to help me after all?” Harry tasted the tea. It was bitter, and reminded him of the rosehip tea he used to be given as a child when he had a cold. He could never stand it, but his mum said it strengthened the immune system, and that one cup contained more vitamin C than forty oranges. Maybe those overdoses were the reason why he had hardly ever caught a cold since. And why he never ate oranges.
“Yes, I want to help you,” she said, sitting down on the chair opposite him. “But not with your investigation.”
“Oh?”
“Do you know, you’re showing all the classic signs of PTSD?”
Harry stared at her.
“Post-traumatic stress disorder,” Kaja said.
“I know what it is.”
“Great. But do you know what the symptoms are?”
Harry shrugged his shoulders. “Repeated experience of the trauma. Dreams, flashbacks. Limited emotional response. You become a zombie. You feel like a zombie, an outsider on happy pills, flat and with no desire to live any longer than necessary. The world feels unreal, your sensation of time changes. As a defense mechanism you fragment the trauma, only remember specific details, but keep them apart so the whole experience and context remain in the dark.”
Kaja nodded. “Don’t forget hyperactivity. Anxiety, depression. Irritability and aggressiveness. Problems sleeping. How come you know so much about it?”
“Our resident psychologist has talked me through it.”
“Ståle Aune? And he thought you didn’t have PTSD?”
“Well, he didn’t rule it out. But on the other hand, I’ve had those symptoms since I was a teenager. And because I can’t remember it ever being different, he said it might just be my personality. Or that it started when I was a boy, when my mum died. Apparently grief can easily be confused with PTSD.”
Kaja shook her head firmly. “I’ve had my share, Harry, and I know what grief is. And you remind me far too much of the soldiers I’ve seen leave Afghanistan with full-blown PTSD. Some of them were invalided out, some of them took their own lives. But you know what? The worst were the ones who came back. Who managed to slip beneath the psychologists’ radar and were left as unexploded bombs, a danger to both themselves and their fellow soldiers.”
“I haven’t been to war, I’ve just lost someone.”
“You have been to war, Harry. And you’ve been there for far too long. You’re one of the few police officers who’ve had to kill several people in the course of their duty. And if there’s one thing we learned in Afghanistan, it’s what killing someone can do to a person.”
“And I’ve seen what it doesn’t do to a person. People who shake it off as if it was nothing. Or who just wait for the next opportunity.”
“Obviously you’re right, in that we react very differently to the exp
erience of killing someone. But for vaguely normal people, the reason why they had to kill matters too. One study by RAND shows that at least 20, probably more like 30 percent of American soldiers who served in Afghanistan or Iraq had PTSD. The same goes for American soldiers in Vietnam. The equivalent figure for Allied soldiers in the Second World War seems to have been only half that. Psychologists believe that’s because the soldiers didn’t understand the wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Whereas everyone understood why Hitler had to be fought. The soldiers who’d been in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan came home to a society that didn’t organise parades, and looked at them with suspicion. And the soldiers weren’t able to fit their actions into a comprehensive narrative that justified them. That’s why it’s easier to kill for Israel. The PTSD rate there is down at 8 percent. Not because the violence is any less grotesque, but because the soldiers can tell themselves that they’re defending a small country surrounded by enemies, and because they have broad support among their own population. That gives them a simple, ethically justifiable reason for killing. What they do is necessary, meaningful.”
“Mm. You’re saying I’m traumatised, but the people I’ve killed, I’ve killed out of necessity. Yes, they come to me at night, but I still pull the trigger without hesitation. Time after time.”
“You belong to the 8 percent who get PTSD even though they have every possibility of justifying their actions,” Kaja said. “The ones who don’t do that. Who are unconsciously but actively looking for a way to blame themselves. The way you’re now trying to take the blame for—”
“OK, let’s say that, then,” Harry interrupted.
“…Rakel’s death.”
Silence fell in the living room. Harry stared out into space. Blinked over and over again.
Kaja swallowed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. At least, I didn’t mean to say it like that.”
“You’re right,” Harry said. “Apart from the business of looking for blame. It is my fault, that’s a fact. If I hadn’t killed Svein Finne’s son…”
“You were doing your job.”