by Jo Nesbo
With so much concrete evidence, the police lawyer had had no hesitation in granting Larsen a warrant to search Harry Hole’s flat, but they hadn’t found the murder weapon or anything else of interest there. Except for that fact in itself: that they hadn’t found anything of interest. Such a striking absence of incriminating evidence suggested one of two things. That the person living in the flat was a robot. Or that he knew his home would be searched and had removed anything potentially incriminating.
“Interesting,” lead investigator Ole Winter said, leaning back behind his desk as he listened to Sung-min Larsen’s minutely detailed report.
Not impressive, then, Sung-min thought. Not astonishing, not brilliant, not even so much as good police work.
Just interesting.
“So interesting that it surprises me that you haven’t reported any of this to me before now, Larsen. And that I probably wouldn’t have this information now either if I hadn’t, as lead detective, asked for it. When were you planning to share this with the rest of us who have been working on this case?”
Sung-min ran one hand over his tie and moistened his lips.
He felt like saying that here he was, serving up Harry Hole, the biggest fish around, to Kripos, neatly wrapped up with a bow. That he had single-handedly outmaneuvered the legendary detective in his own field: murder. And that was all Winter had to say, that he could have reported a bit earlier?
There were three reasons why Sung-min decided not to say this.
The first was that there were only the two of them in Winter’s office, so there was no third person whose common sense he could appeal to.
The second was that as a rule there’s nothing to be gained by contradicting your boss, whether or not there’s a third person present.
Thirdly, and most important, Winter was right.
Sung-min had delayed reporting on developments in the case. Who wouldn’t have done, when they’d got the fish on the hook, had reeled it back in close to the shore and all that remained was to get it in the net? When you knew that the murder of the decade, to be known in perpetuity as the Harry Hole case, would bear your name, and yours alone. It was the police lawyer who had mentioned it to Winter, when he congratulated him on having caught Harry Hole himself. Yes, Sung-min had to admit that he was selfish, and no, he hadn’t stood in front of an open goal looking around for a Messi he could pass the ball and the goal to, because there was no Messi on this team. If there was, it was probably him. It certainly wasn’t Winter, who was sitting there with veins throbbing in his temples and eyebrows like thunderclouds over his eyes.
Sung-min chose this response instead:
“It all happened so quickly, one thing kept leading to another, and I didn’t want to risk any delay. There wasn’t really any time to pause for breath.”
“Until now?” Winter said, leaning back in his chair and looking as if he were using the ridge of his nose to take aim at Sung-min.
“The case is solved now,” Sung-min said.
Winter let out a short, hard laugh, like a go-kart braking suddenly. “If it’s OK with you, let’s agree that it’s the lead detective who decides when the case is solved. What do you say, Larsen?”
“Of course, Winter.” Sung-min had intended to signal his submission, but realised that the older man had seen through him and decided to take offence at the fact the younger man had returned the sarcastic, drawn-out pronunciation of his surname.
“Seeing as you consider the case solved, Laaar-sen, I assume you have no objection to me taking it away from you while we tie up a few loose ends.”
“As you wish.”
Sung-min could have bitten his tongue when he saw how Winter took this arrogantly submissive, bourgeois “as you wish.”
Winter smiled. “Right now we need good heads like yours on another murder. The Lysaker case.” It was a mean, thin smile, as if his mouth wasn’t flexible enough to manage anything more expressive.
The Lysaker murder, Sung-min thought. A drug-related killing. Clearly an internal conflict between junkies. Those involved would talk at the slightest mention of a reduced sentence out of fear of being denied access to drugs. It was the lowest form of murder case, the sort of thing you left to new recruits and those of limited abilities. Winter couldn’t be serious, saying he was going to take him, the lead investigator, off the case now, right in front of the line, snatching all the honour and glory away, and for what? For playing his cards a bit too close to his chest for a little too long?
“I want a written report with all the details, Larsen. In the meantime, the others will carry on working on the lines of inquiry you’ve uncovered. Then I’ll have to see when we go public with what we’ve found out.”
Lines of inquiry you’ve uncovered? He had solved the case, for fuck’s sake!
Give me a bollocking, Sung-min thought. A reprimand. Winter couldn’t just decapitate one of his detectives like this. Until he realised that Winter not only could do it, but wanted to and was going to do it. Because it had just dawned on Sung-min what this was all about. Winter was also aware that Sung-min was the only Messi they had on the team. And that meant he was a threat to Winter as leader, now and in the future. Winter was the alpha male who had spotted that a rival was on the move. Sung-min’s solo performance had shown he was ready to challenge Winter’s authority. So Winter had decided it was best to dispatch the younger man now, before he grew any bigger and stronger.
45
Johan Krohn and his wife, Frida, had met while they were studying law at the University of Oslo. He would never know what it was about him that she had fallen for. Maybe he had just presented his own case so well that she eventually had to give in. There weren’t many other people back then who understood why pretty, sweet Frida Andresen had picked a socially inept nerd who showed little interest in anything much apart from law and chess. Johan Krohn, who was more aware than anyone that he had managed to get a girlfriend who was at least one division above him in the attractiveness league, courted her, watched over her, chased away potential rivals. In short, he clung on to her with everything he had. Even so, everyone thought it was only a matter of time until she found herself someone more exciting. But Johan was a brilliant student, and a brilliant lawyer. He became the youngest lawyer since John Christian Elden to earn the right to practise in the Supreme Court, and was offered work others his age could only dream about. His social confidence rose in line with his status and income. Suddenly new doors were open to him, and Krohn—after due consideration—walked through most of them. One of them led to a life he had missed out on in his youth, and could be summarised by the words “women,” “wine” and “song.” More precisely: women who actually became more amenable when you introduced yourself as a partner at a well-known law firm. Wine in the form of exclusive whisky from windswept places like the Hebrides and Shetland Islands, as well as cigars and—in ever greater quantity—cigarettes. He never quite got the hang of song, but there were exonerated criminals who claimed that his defense statements were more beautiful than anything that had ever come out of Frank Sinatra’s mouth.
Frida looked after the children, and managed the family’s social circle, which wouldn’t have been there if it weren’t for her, and she worked part-time as a lawyer for two cultural foundations. If Johan Krohn had gone past her in the attractiveness league table, it didn’t alter the balance in their relationship. Because that balance had always been so unequal, he so grateful for his luck, she so used to being courted, that it had become part of the DNA of their relationship, the only way they knew how to relate to each other. They showed each other respect and love, and outwardly were comfortable letting it look like it was Johan who was steering the ship. But at home neither of them was in any doubt about who decided what went where. Or where Johan Krohn should smoke his cigarettes now that he—and he was secretly rather proud of this—was addicted to nicotine.
&n
bsp; So when darkness had fallen, the children were in bed and the television news had told him what was going on in Norway and the U.S.A., he would take his cigarettes, go upstairs and out onto the terrace, which looked out upon Mærradalen and Ullern.
He leaned against the railing. The view included Hegnar Media’s office complex and part of Smestaddammen that lay just beyond. He was thinking about Alise. And how he was going to solve the matter. It had become too intense, had gone on too long, it couldn’t continue, they were going to be found out. Well, they had actually been found out long ago, the wry smiles from the other partners in the firm when they were sitting in meetings and Alise came in with a file or an important phone message for him left no room for doubt. But Frida didn’t know, and that was what he meant by being found out, as he had explained to Alise. She had taken it with almost irritating pragmatism and said he shouldn’t worry.
“Your secret’s safe with me,” she had said.
And perhaps it was this very statement that worried him.
Your secret, not ours (she was single), and with me, as if it were a legal document stored in her bank vault. Where it was safe, but only as long as she kept the vault locked. Not that he suspected that her choice of words was meant as a threat, but it still struck home. That she was protecting him. The way she might expect him to offer a protective hand to her. There was stiff competition between young, recently qualified lawyers, and the rewards for those who rose to the top were considerable, with a correspondingly merciless demise for those who sank to the bottom. Getting help to float could have a decisive effect.
“A lot on your mind?”
Johan Krohn started and dropped his cigarette, which fell like a falling star through the darkness down towards the orchard below him. It’s one thing to hear a voice behind you when you think you’re alone and unobserved. It’s something else entirely when that voice belongs to someone who doesn’t belong there, and the only way that person could have got onto the terrace on the second floor was either by flying or teleportation. The fact that the person in question is a brutal criminal who has been convicted of more assaults than anyone else in Oslo in the past thirty years only makes the situation more unexpected.
Krohn turned and saw the man leaning against the wall in the darkness on the other side of the terrace door. In the choice between “What are you doing here?” and “How did you get here?”, he found himself asking the former.
“Rolling a cigarette,” Svein Finne said, raising his hands to his mouth, and a grey tongue slipped out between his thick lips to lick the cigarette paper.
“Wh…what do you want?”
“A light,” Finne said, sticking the cigarette between his lips and looking expectantly at Krohn.
The lawyer hesitated before holding out his hand and clicking his lighter. He saw the flame tremble. Saw it get sucked into the cigarette, as the glowing strands of tobacco curled up.
“Nice house,” Finne said. “Nice view too. I used to hang out in this neighbourhood a lot, many years ago.”
For a moment Krohn imagined his client literally hanging out, floating in the air.
Finne pointed towards Mærradalen with his cigarette. “I occasionally slept in that bit of forest, along with the other homeless. And I remember one particular girl who used to walk through there, she lived on the Huseby side. Old enough for sex, obviously, but no older than fifteen, sixteen. One day I gave her a crash course in how to make love.” Finne laughed gruffly. “She was so frightened I had to comfort her afterwards, poor thing. She cried and cried, saying her father, who was a bishop, and her big brother would come and get me. I told her I wasn’t afraid of bishops or big brothers, and that she didn’t have to be either, because now she had a man of her own. And possibly a child on the way. And then I let her go. I let them go, you see. Catch and release, isn’t that what anglers call it?”
“I’m not an angler,” Krohn found himself saying.
“I’ve never killed an innocent person in my entire life,” Finne said. “You need to respect innocence in nature. Abortion…” Finne sucked so hard on his cigarette that Krohn heard the paper crackle. “Tell me, you know all about the law, is there anything that’s a worse crime against the laws of nature? Killing your own innocent offspring. Can you think of anything more perverse?”
“Can we get to the point, Finne? My wife’s waiting for me inside.”
“Of course she’s waiting for you. We’re all waiting for something. Love. Intimacy. Human contact. I waited for Dagny Jensen yesterday. No love, I’m afraid. And now it’s going to be difficult for me to get close to her again. We get lonely, don’t we? And we all need something…” He looked at his cigarette. “Something warm.”
“If you need my help, I suggest we talk about it at the office tomorrow.” Krohn realised he hadn’t struck the authoritative tone he was aiming at. “I…I’ll find time to see you whenever you like.”
“You’ll find time?” Finne let out a short laugh. “After all I’ve done for you, that feather you’ve got in your hat now, that’s all you’ve got to offer me? Your time?”
“What is it you want, Finne?”
His client took a step forward, and the light from the window fell across half his face. He ran his right hand over the red-painted railing. Krohn shuddered when he saw the red paint through the large hole in the back of Finne’s hand.
“Your wife,” Finne said. “I want her.”
Krohn felt his throat tighten.
Finne flashed him a grotesque grin. “Relax, Krohn. Even if I have to admit that I’ve thought a lot about Frida in the past few days, I’m not going to touch her. Because I don’t touch other men’s women, I want my own. As long as she’s yours, she’s safe, Krohn. But obviously you could hardly hold on to a proud, financially independent woman like Frida if she got to hear about the pretty little assistant you had with you when I was questioned. Alise. That was her name, wasn’t it?”
Johan Krohn stared. Alise? He knew about Alise?
Krohn cleared his throat. It sounded like windshield wipers on dry glass. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Finne pointed one finger towards his eye. “Eagle eyes. I’ve seen you. Watching you fucking is like watching a couple of baboons. Fast, efficient, without any great emotion. It won’t last, but you don’t want to go without it, do you? We all need warmth.”
Where? Krohn wondered. At the office? In the hotel room he sometimes booked for them? In Barcelona in October? It was impossible. When they made love it was always high up, where they knew they couldn’t be seen from the other side of the street.
“What will last, on the other hand, unless someone tells Frida about Alise, is this.” Finne jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the house. “Family. That’s the most important thing, isn’t it, Krohn?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about or what you want,” Krohn said. He had put both elbows on the railing behind him. It was supposed to convey relaxed ambivalence, but he knew he probably looked more like a boxer who was already on the ropes.
“I’ll leave Frida alone if I can have Alise,” Finne said, flicking his cigarette into the air. Its glowing tip curved through the darkness like Krohn’s a short while ago before going out in the darkness. “The police are looking for me, I can’t move as freely as I’d like. I need a little…”—he grinned again—“assistance in order to get some warmth. I want you to arrange for me to have the young lady to myself, somewhere safe.”
Krohn blinked in disbelief. “You want me to try to persuade Alise to see you alone? So you can…assault her?”
“Forget ‘try’ and ‘assault.’ You will persuade her, Krohn. And I’m going to seduce her, not assault her. I’ve never assaulted anyone, that’s all a big misunderstanding. The girls don’t always understand what’s best for them, or the task nature has set them, that’s all. But they come to their se
nses soon enough. Just as Alise will too. She’ll come to realise that if she threatens this family, for instance, she’ll have me to answer to. Hey, don’t look so glum, Krohn, you’re getting two for the price of one here: my silence, as well as the girl’s.”
Krohn stared at Finne. The words were echoing through his head. Your secret’s safe with me.
“Johan?”
Frida’s voice came from inside the house, and he heard her steps on the stairs. Then a voice whispered close to his ear, accompanied by the smell of tobacco and something rancid, bestial. “There’s a grave in Vår Frelsers Cemetery. Valentin Gjertsen. I’ll expect to hear from you within two days.”
Frida reached the top of the stairs and started to walk towards the terrace, but stopped in the light inside the door.
“Brr, it’s cold,” she said, folding her arms. “I heard voices.”
“Psychiatrists say that’s a bad sign.” Johan Krohn smiled, and began to walk towards her, but wasn’t quick enough. She had already stuck her head out of the door and was looking in both directions.
She looked up at him. “Were you talking to yourself?”
Krohn looked around the terrace. Empty. Gone.
“I was practising a defence statement,” he said. He breathed out and walked back in through the terrace door, into the warmth, into their house, into his wife’s arms. When he noticed her let go to look up at him, he kept hold of her so she couldn’t read his face, see that something was wrong. Because Johan Krohn knew that the defense speech he was thinking about would never win the case, not this one. He knew Frida and her thoughts about infidelity too well, she’d condemn him to a lifetime of loneliness, with access to the children but not to her. The fact that Svein Finne also appeared to know Frida so well only made the matter even more unsettling.