Knife

by Jo Nesbo

  “No,” Bohr said. “Not like that. Rakel was my younger sister. Just like Hala. They were Bianca. And I’ve lost them all.”

  “What is it you want, Bohr?”

  “I want to help you, Harry. When you find him, I want to help you.”

  “Help me how?”

  Bohr held up his cigarette. “Killing someone is like smoking. You cough, you don’t want to, you don’t think you’ll ever be able to do it. And deep down I never believed the guys in Special Forces who said that killing an enemy is the ultimate kick. If Rakel’s murderer is killed after he’s been arrested, you need to be beyond all suspicion.”

  “I pass the death sentence, and you’re offering to be the executioner?”

  “Oh, we’ve already passed judgement, Harry. Hatred is burning us to our foundations. We’re aware of it, but we’re already alight, and it’s too late to stop it.” Bohr tossed the cigarette butt on the ground. “Shall I drive you home?”

  “I’ll walk,” Harry said. “I need to air out the chloroform. Just two questions. When your wife and I were sitting by Smestaddammen, you aimed at us with a laser sight. Why, and how did you know that’s where we would go?”

  Bohr smiled. “I didn’t know. I often sit in the basement keeping watch. I make sure the mink don’t take any more cygnets from the two swans who live there. Then the pair of you showed up.”

  “Mm.”

  “The second question?”

  “How did you get me out of the car and up all those stairs this evening?”

  “The way we carry anyone who’s fallen. Like a rucksack. That’s the easiest way.”

  Harry nodded. “I suppose it is.”

  Bohr stood up. “You know how to get hold of me, Harry.”

  * * *

  —

  Harry walked past City Hall, crossed Stortingsgata and stopped in front of the National Theatre. He noted that he had walked past three open, lively bars without much difficulty. He got his phone out. A message from Oleg.

  Anything new? Head above water?

  Harry decided to call after he’d spoken to Kaja. She answered on the first ring.

  “Harry?” He could hear the concern in her voice.

  “I’ve been speaking to Bohr,” he said.

  “I knew something was going on!”

  “He’s innocent.”

  “Really?” He heard the sound of a duvet scraping the phone as she rolled over. “What does that mean?”

  “That means we’re back at square one. I can give you a full report first thing tomorrow, OK?”

  “Harry?”

  “Yes.”

  “I was worried.”

  “I noticed.”

  “And now I feel a bit lonely.”

  A pause.

  “Harry?”

  “Mm.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “I know.”

  He ended the call. Tapped O for Oleg. Just as he was about to press the Call button he hesitated. He clicked the message symbol instead and typed: Call you tomorrow.

  31

  Harry was lying on his back on top of the duvet, almost fully dressed. His Dr. Martens boots were standing on the floor beside the bed, his coat draped over the chair. Kaja was lying under the duvet, but right beside him with her head on his arm.

  “You feel exactly the same,” she said, running her hand over his sweater. “All these years, and nothing’s changed. It’s not fair.”

  “I’ve started to smell of BO,” he said.

  She stuck her face into his armpit and sniffed. “Rubbish, you smell good, you smell of Harry.”

  “That’s the left one. It’s the right one that’s changed. Maybe it’s age.”

  Kaja laughed quietly. “You know research has shown that it’s a myth that old people smell worse? According to a Japanese study, the aroma component 2-nonenal is only found in people over forty, but in blind tests the sweat of older people was found to smell better than people in their thirties.”

  “Bloody hell,” Harry said. “You’ve just theorised away the fact that I smell like shit on the other side.”

  Kaja laughed. The soft laugh he had been longing for. Her laughter.

  “So tell me,” she said. “You and Bohr.”

  Harry was granted a cigarette and started at the beginning. He told her about Roar Bohr’s cabin, and how Bohr had overpowered him in the room below them. About coming to in the empty premises that used to belong to E14, and his conversation with Bohr. He repeated it more or less in detail, minus the last part. The offer to carry out the execution.

  Oddly, Kaja didn’t seem particularly shocked that Bohr had executed one of his own soldiers. Or that he had kept watch over her both in Kabul and here in Oslo.

  “I thought you might freak out a bit when I told you you’d been under observation without knowing it.”

  She shook her head and borrowed his cigarette. “I never saw him, but sometimes I just had a feeling. You see, when Bohr found out I’d lost my older brother the same way he lost his younger sister, he started to treat me a bit like a surrogate younger sister. It was only little things, like the fact that I got a bit more backup than the others when I went out on jobs beyond the secure zones. I pretended never to notice. And being watched is something you get used to.”

  “Do you?”

  “Oh, yes.” She put the cigarette back between his lips. “When I was working in Basra, there were mostly British people in the coalition forces around the hotel where the Red Cross team were living. And the British are different, you know. The Americans work broadly, they sweep streets and talk about ‘snake procedure’ when they’re out to get someone; they go straight forward and literally smash through walls that are in their way. They claim it’s quicker as well as more terrifying, which shouldn’t be undervalued. Whereas the British…”—she traced her fingers across his chest—“they sneak along by the walls, they’re invisible. There was a curfew after eight o’clock, but sometimes we used to go out onto the hotel roof outside the bar. We never saw them, but occasionally I would see a couple of red dots on the person I was standing next to. And he saw the same on me. Like a discreet message from the Brits that they were there. And that we should go back inside. It made me feel safer.”

  “Mm.” Harry took a drag on his cigarette. “Who was he?”

  “Who?”

  “The guy you saw the dots on.”

  Kaja smiled. But her eyes looked sad. “Anton. He was with the ICRC. Most people don’t realise it, but there are two Red Crosses. There’s the IFRC, who are regular health workers under the command of the UN. And then there’s the ICRC, which mostly consists of Swiss nationals and has its headquarters outside the UN building in Geneva. They’re the Red Cross equivalent of the Marines and Special Forces. You don’t often hear about them, but they’re the first in and the last out. They do everything the UN can’t do because of safety considerations. It’s the ICRC who go around at night counting bodies, that sort of thing. ICRC staff keep a low profile, but you can recognise them by the fact their shirts are more expensive and they exude a feeling that they’re a bit superior to the rest of us.”

  “Because they are?”

  Kaja took a deep breath. “Yes. But they’re just as liable to die of shrapnel from a mine.”

  “Mm. Did you love him?”

  “Are you jealous?”

  “No.”

  “I was jealous.”

  “Of Rakel?”

  “I hated her.”

  “She hadn’t done anything wrong.”

  “That was probably why.” Kaja laughed. “You left me because of her, that’s all the reason a woman needs to hate someone, Harry.”

  “I didn’t leave you, Kaja. You and I were two people with broken hearts who were able to comfort each other for a while. And
when I left Oslo, I was running away from both of you.”

  “But you said you loved her. And when you came back to Oslo the second time, it was because of her, not me.”

  “It was because of Oleg, he was in trouble. But yes, I always loved Rakel.”

  “Even when she didn’t want you?”

  “Especially when she didn’t want me. That seems to be how we’re made, doesn’t it?”

  Kaja’s four fingers began to retreat.

  “Love’s complicated,” she said, curling up closer and laying her head on his chest.

  “Love’s the root of everything,” Harry said. “Good and bad. Good and evil.”

  She looked up at him. “What are you thinking about?”

  “Was I thinking about something?”

  “Yes.”

  Harry shook his head. “Just a story about roots.”

  “Come on. Your turn to talk.”

  “OK. Have you heard about Old Tjikko?”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a pine tree. One time Rakel, Oleg and I drove to Fulufjället in Sweden because Oleg had learned in school that’s where Old Tjikko, the oldest tree in the world, was growing—it was almost ten thousand years old. In the car Rakel explained that the tree was born back when human beings first invented agriculture and Britain was still part of the continent. When we reached the mountain, we discovered to our disappointment that Old Tjikko was a scruffy, windblown, rather small spruce tree. We were told by a ranger that the tree itself is only a few hundred years old, and that it was one of several trees, and that the root system that these trees had grown from was the part that was ten thousand years old. Oleg was sad, he’d been looking forward to telling the rest of the class that he’d seen the world’s oldest tree. And of course we couldn’t even see the roots of the scrappy little tree. So I told him that he’d be able to tell his teacher that roots aren’t a proper tree, and that the world’s oldest known tree is in the White Mountains in California and is five thousand years old. That cheered Oleg up, and he ran the whole way down because he couldn’t wait to get home and lord it over his classmates. When we went to bed that night, Rakel curled up next to me and told me she loved me, and that our love was like that root system. The trees might rot, get struck by lightning, we might argue, I might get drunk. But no one, not us or anyone else, could touch the part that was underground. That would always be there, and a new tree would always emerge and grow.”

  They lay in silence in the darkness.

  “I can barely hear your heartbeat,” Kaja said.

  “Her half,” Harry said. “It’s supposed to stop once the other half is gone.”

  Kaja suddenly lay on top of him.

  “I want to smell your right armpit,” she said.

  He let her. She lay there with her cheek close to his, and he felt the warmth of her body through her washed-out pyjamas and his own clothes.

  “Maybe you need to take your jeans off for me to be able to smell it,” she whispered with her lips close to his ear.

  “Kaja…”

  “Don’t, Harry. You need it. I need it. Like you said. Comfort.” She moved just enough to make room for her hand.

  Harry grabbed it. “It’s too soon, Kaja.”

  “Think about her while you do it. I mean it. Just do it. Think about Rakel.”

  Harry swallowed.

  He let go of her hand. Closed his eyes.

  It was like slipping into a warm bath with his suit on and his phone in his pocket: completely wrong, and completely wonderful.

  She kissed him. He opened his eyes again, looked directly into hers. For a moment it was as if they were watching each other, like two animals that had run into each other in the forest and had to figure out if the other was friend or foe. Then he returned her kiss. She undressed him, then herself, and sat on top of him. Gripped his cock. She didn’t move her hand, just held him hard. Possibly fascinated to feel the blood throb in his erection, the way he could feel it. Then—without any further ado—she guided him inside her.

  They found each other’s rhythm, remembered it. Slow, heavy. Harry saw her rocking above him in the thin red glow from the clock radio. He ran his hand over what he thought was a necklace shaped like a symbol or sign, but which turned out to be a tattoo, a sort of S with two dots under it, and something that made him think of Fred Flintstone in his car. Kaja’s moaning grew louder, she wanted to speed up, but Harry didn’t let her, he held her down. She let out an angry cry, but let him lead the dance. He closed his eyes and looked for Rakel. He found Alexandra. He found Katrine. But he couldn’t find Rakel. Not until Kaja stiffened, her moaning stopped, he opened his eyes and saw the red light running down her face and upper body. Her eyes were fixed on the wall, her mouth was open as if in a mute scream, and her sharp, wet teeth were glinting.

  And his half a heartbeat.

  32

  “Sleep well?” Kaja asked, handing Harry one of the two steaming cups of coffee and creeping back into bed beside him. Light from the pale sun was filtering through the curtains that were swaying gently in front of the open window. The morning air still had a chill to it, and Kaja shivered happily as she stuck a pair of ice-cold feet between his legs.

  Harry pondered. Yes, damn it, he had slept well. No nightmares that he could remember. No withdrawal symptoms he couldn’t suppress. No sudden visions or signs of a panic attack.

  “Looks that way,” Harry said, sitting up in bed and taking a sip. “You?”

  “Like a log. The idea of you being here works well for me. But it did last time too, of course.”

  Harry stared into space and nodded. “What do you say, shall we give it another go? Start again on a new page.” He turned around and saw from the look of astonishment on her face that she had misunderstood. “OK, we haven’t got any suspects lined up,” he said quickly. “So where do we start?”

  Her face tightened, in an unspoken “you couldn’t even leave Rakel alone for five minutes after we woke up together?”

  He saw Kaja compose herself, then clear her throat. “Well, Rakel had told Bohr about the threats that had been made against her because of your work. But we also know that in nine out of ten murders committed in the home, the murderer is someone known to the victim. So it was someone she knew. Or someone who knows you.”

  “The first list is a long one. The second one very short.”

  “Which men did she know, apart from Bohr and other people from work?”

  “She knew my colleagues. And…no.”

  “What?”

  “She helped out when I owned the Jealousy Bar. Ringdal, the guy who took it over, wanted her to carry on. She said no, but that’s hardly a motive for murder.”

  “Is it worth considering that it could be a woman?”

  “Fifteen percent probability.”

  “Statistically, yes, but think about it. Jealousy?”

  Harry shook his head.

  They heard a phone vibrate in the room. Kaja leaned over her side of the bed, fished the mobile from Harry’s pocket, looked at the screen and pressed Answer.

  “He’s a bit busy right now, in bed with Kaja, so please keep it short.”

  She handed the phone to a resigned-looking Harry. He looked at the screen.

  “Yes?”

  “Not that it’s any of my business, but who’s Kaja?” Alexandra’s voice sounded ice-cold.

  “Sometimes I find myself wondering the same thing,” Harry said, watching Kaja as she slipped out of bed, took off her pyjamas and went into the bathroom. “What is it?”

  “What is it?” Alexandra mimicked. “I thought I might let you know about the last DNA report we sent the investigating team.”

  “Oh?”

  “But now I’m not so sure.”

  “Because I’m in Kaja’s bed?”

  �
�You admit it!” Alexandra exclaimed.

  “ ‘Admit’ is the wrong word, but yes. I’m sorry if you think that sucks, but I’m just a booty call to you, so you’ll get over it pretty quickly.”

  “No more booty calls from me, pretty boy.”

  “OK, I’ll have to try to live with that.”

  “You could at least try to sound a bit sad.”

  “Listen, Alexandra, I haven’t been anything but sad for several months, and I don’t feel up to playing this sort of game right now. Are you going to tell me about the report or not?”

  A pause. Harry heard the sound of the shower in the bathroom.

  Alexandra sighed. “We’ve analysed anything that might be thought to contain DNA from the scene, and obviously there are loads of matches with the police officers we’ve got in the database. You, Oleg, the investigating officers.”

  “Did they really manage to contaminate the crime scene?”

  “Not too much, but this was a very thorough search for evidence, Harry. From the whole house, including the basement. We brought in so much that the team at the scene gave us a list of what to prioritise. That’s why this has only just cropped up. The unwashed glasses and cutlery in the dishwasher were some way down the list.”

  “What’s cropped up?”

  “DNA from an unknown individual in dried saliva on the edge of the glass.”

  “Male?”

  “Yes. And they said there were fingerprints on the glass as well.”

  “Fingerprints? Then they’ll have pictures.” Harry swung his legs out of bed. “Alexandra, you’re a good friend, thanks!”

  “Friend,” she snorted. “Who wants to be friends?”

  “Will you call me when you’ve got anything else?”

  “I’ll call when I’ve got a well-hung man in my bed, that’s what I’m going to do.” She ended the call.

  Harry got dressed, took his cup of coffee, coat and boots down to the living room, opened Kaja’s laptop and logged into the investigation section of the Oslo Police District website. He found images of the glass in the final report, among the pictures of the contents of the dishwasher. Two plates and four glasses. That meant that the glass had probably been used not long before the murder. Rakel never let things sit in the dishwasher for more than a couple of days, and if it was still less than half full she would sometimes take things out again and wash them by hand.