by Jo Nesbo
‘And?’ For the first time she could hear signs of genuine interest in Hagen’s voice.
‘He had an alibi for all three cases,’ Katrine said, and she felt rather than heard the air go out of the balloon she had inflated for him.
‘I see. Any other amusing stories from Bergen you think I should hear today?’
‘There’s more,’ Katrine said.
‘I have a meeting in—’
‘I checked the man’s alibi. It’s the same for all three cases. A witness who confirmed he was at home. The witness was a young lady who at that time was regarded as reliable. No record, no connection with the suspect, apart from them lodging in the same house. But if you follow the link to her name into the future, interesting things happen.’
‘Such as?’
‘Such as embezzlement, drug dealing and forging documents. If you look a bit more closely at the interviews she’s been summoned to since then, there’s a common theme running through them. Guess what it is.’
‘False statements.’
‘Unfortunately, we’re not in the habit of looking at old cases in a new light. At least not cases that are as old and complex as the Maridalen and Tryvann ones.’
‘What’s the woman’s name, for goodness’ sake?’ The interest was back in his voice.
‘Irja Jacobsen.’
‘Have you got an address for her?’
‘Yes. She’s in the police registration system, the national register and a couple of others—’
‘Well, for goodness’ sake, let’s get her in now!’
‘—such as the missing persons register.’
There was a long silence coming from Oslo. Katrine felt like going for a walk, down to the fishing boats in Bryggen, buying a bag of cod heads, heading home to her flat in Møhlenpris and slowly making dinner and watching Breaking Bad while, hopefully, it started to rain again.
‘Great,’ Hagen said. ‘Well, at least you’ve given us something to get our teeth into. What’s the name of the guy?’
‘Valentin Gjertsen.’
‘And where is he?’
‘That’s the point,’ Katrine Bratt said, and could hear she was repeating herself. Her fingers flitted across the keyboard. ‘I can’t find him.’
‘Is he missing too?’
‘He’s not on the missing persons list. And that’s strange because it’s as if he’s vanished off the face of the earth. No known address, no registered phones, no use of credit card, not even a registered bank account. Didn’t vote at the last election, hasn’t caught a train or a plane in the last year.’
‘Have you tried Google?’
Katrine laughed until she realised Hagen wasn’t joking.
‘Relax,’ she said. ‘I’ll find him.’
They rang off. And Katrine got up, put on her jacket and started to hurry; clouds were already on their way across the island of Askøy. She was about to switch off her computer when she remembered something. Something Harry Hole had once said to her. About how often you forget to check the patently obvious. She typed quickly. Waited for the page to come up.
She noticed heads turn in the open-plan office as she let rip with a few Bergen oaths. But she couldn’t be bothered to reassure them that this was not a psychosis in full bloom. As usual, Harry had been right.
She picked up the phone and pressed redial. Gunnar Hagen answered on the second ring.
‘Thought you had a meeting,’ Katrine said.
‘Postponed. I’m detailing people to find this Valentin Gjertsen.’
‘You don’t need to. I’ve just found him.’
‘Oh?’
‘It’s not so weird that he’s vanished off the face of the earth. In fact he has vanished off the face of the earth, I think.’
‘Are you saying . . .?’
‘He’s dead, yes. It’s in black and white in the national register. Sorry for this ditsiness from Bergen. I’ll go home and eat fish heads in shame.’
By the time she put down the receiver, it was raining.
Anton Mittet looked up from his cup of coffee as Gunnar Hagen rushed into the almost deserted canteen on the sixth floor of Police HQ. Anton had been staring at the view for some time. Thinking. Of how it could have been. And reflecting on the fact that he had stopped thinking about how it could be. Perhaps this was what it was like getting old. He had lifted the cards he had been dealt, he had seen them. You didn’t get new ones. So all that was left was to play the ones you had as well as you could. And dream about the cards you might have been given.
‘Sorry I’m late, Anton,’ Gunnar Hagen said, slumping down in the chair opposite him. ‘A hare-brained call from Bergen. How’s it going?’
Anton shrugged. ‘Don’t stop working. I watch the young ’uns passing me on the way up. I try to give them some advice, but they don’t see any reason to listen to a middle-aged man who hasn’t made it. They seem to think life’s a red carpet rolled out just for them.’
‘And at home?’ Hagen asked.
Anton repeated the shrug. ‘Fine. Wife moans that I work too hard. But when I’m at home she moans just as much. Sound familiar?’
Hagen made a non-committal sound that could have meant whatever the listener wanted it to mean.
‘Do you remember your wedding day?’
‘Yes,’ Hagen said, casting a discreet glance at the clock. Not because he didn’t know what the time was, but to give Anton a hint.
‘The worst thing is that you really mean it when you’re standing up there saying yes for all eternity.’ Anton gave a hollow laugh and shook his head.
‘Was there something specific you wanted to talk to me about?’ Hagen asked.
‘Yes.’ Anton ran a forefinger down his nose. ‘There was a nurse there while I was on duty last night. He seemed a bit fishy. Dunno exactly what it was, but you know old hands like us notice these things. So I checked up on him. Turns out he was involved in some murder case several years ago. He was released, eliminated from inquiries. But nevertheless.’
‘I see.’
‘Thought it best to talk to you about it. You could talk to hospital management. Perhaps get him discreetly moved.’
‘I’ll take care of the matter.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Thank you. Well done, Anton.’
Anton Mittet half bowed. He was happy to hear Hagen thanking him. Happy because the monk-like Crime Squad boss was the only man in the force he felt any sort of gratitude towards. It had been Hagen who had saved Anton’s skin after the Case. He had rung the Police Commissioner in Drammen and said they were being too hard on Anton and that if they didn’t need his experience in Drammen they did at Police HQ in Oslo. And that was what had happened. Anton had worked on the first floor in Grønland, but lived in Drammen, which was the condition that Laura had set. And as Anton Mittet caught the lift down to the first floor, he could feel he had more of a spring in his step, a straighter back and even a smile on his lips. And he felt, yes he did, this could be the beginning of something good. He would buy some flowers for . . . He deliberated. For Laura.
Katrine stared out of the window as she tapped in the number. Her flat was on what Norwegians called the high ground floor. It was high enough for her not to see people passing outside, low enough to see the tops of their opened umbrellas. And behind the raindrops trembling on the windowpane in the gusting wind she could see Puddefjord Bridge linking the town with a hole in the mountain on the Laksevåg side. But right now she was looking at the fifty-inch TV screen, where a chemistry teacher and cancer victim was cooking up methamphetamine. Which she found strangely entertaining. She had bought the TV under her personal slogan, why should single men have the biggest TVs? And had her DVDs arranged and categorised according to highly subjective criteria under the Marantz player. The first and second places, furthest to the left on the classics shelf, were taken by Sunset Boulevard and Singin’ in the Rain while more recent films on the shelf beneath had a surprising new leader: Toy Story 3. Shelf number three
was devoted to the CDs that for sentimental reasons she hadn’t given to the Salvation Army even though she had copied them onto her hard drive. She had narrow taste in music: exclusively glam rock and progressive pop, preferably British and often of the androgynous variety: David Bowie, Sparks, Mott the Hoople, Steve Harley, Marc Bolan, Small Faces, Roxy Music, with Suede as a contemporary bookend.
The chemistry teacher was having one of the recurrent arguing-with-the-wife scenes. Katrine put the DVD player on fast forward while ringing Beate.
‘Lønn.’ The voice was high-pitched, girlish almost. And the response revealed no more than was necessary. In Norway, didn’t answering with the surname imply there was a bigger family, that you had to specify which Lønn you wanted? However, in this case, Lønn was just Beate Lønn, the widow, and her son.
‘Katrine here.’
‘Katrine! It’s been a long time. What are you doing?’
‘Watching TV. And you?’
‘Being beaten at Monopoly by this young man. Comfort eating. Pizza.’
Katrine racked her brain. How old was her son now? Old enough to beat his mum at Monopoly anyway. Another reminder how terrifyingly fast time went. Katrine was about to add she was comfort eating as well. Cod heads. But remembered it had become a cliché among women, a kind of ironic, quasi-depressed phrase single girls were expected to use rather than telling it like it was: that she didn’t think she could live without total freedom. Over the years she had sometimes thought she should contact Beate just for a chat. Chat the way she used to do with Harry. She and Beate were both unattached police officers in their thirties, they had grown up with policemen as fathers, they were of above-average intelligence, realists without illusions or even the desire for a prince on a white charger. Well, maybe the horse, if it would take them where they wanted to go.
They could have had so much to talk about.
But she had never got round to ringing. Unless it was about work, of course.
They were similar in that respect as well.
‘I’m ringing about one Valentin Gjertsen,’ Katrine said. ‘Deceased sex offender. Do you know anything about him?’
‘Hang on,’ Beate said.
Katrine could hear a flurry of fingers on a keyboard and noted another thing they had in common. They were always online.
‘Ah, him,’ Beate said. ‘I’ve seen him a few times.’
Katrine realised that Beate had his picture on the screen. They said that Beate Lønn’s fusiform gyrus, the part of the brain that recognises faces, contained all the people she had ever met. In her case, the line ‘I never forget a face’ was quite literally true. It was said she had been examined by brain researchers as she was one of the thirty-odd people in the world who were known to have this ability.
‘He was questioned about the Tryvann and Maridalen cases,’ Katrine said.
‘Yes, I can recall that vaguely,’ Beate said. ‘But I seem to remember he had alibis for both.’
‘One of the people in the house where he lived swore he’d been at home on the nights in question. What I’m wondering is if you took his DNA?’
‘I can’t imagine we would do that if he had an alibi. In those days, analysing DNA was a complicated and expensive process. At most it would have been done for prime suspects, and only then if we had nothing else.’
‘I know, but once you got your own DNA-testing department at the Institute you started checking the DNA on cold cases, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, we did, but in fact there were no biological traces at Maridalen or Tryvann. And if I’m not mistaken, Valentin Gjertsen received his punishment, with interest.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes, he was killed.’
‘I knew he was dead, but not . . .’
‘Yes, indeed. While serving his sentence at Ila. He was found in his cell. Beaten to a pulp. Inmates don’t like people who’ve molested small girls. The guilty party was never caught. Not certain anyone tried hard to find out who it was anyway.’
Silence.
‘Sorry I couldn’t help,’ Beate said. ‘And he’s got me playing Try Your Luck now, so . . .’
‘Let’s hope it turns,’ Katrine said.
‘What?’
‘Your luck.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Just one last thing,’ Katrine said. ‘I’d like to have a chat with Irja Jacobsen, the woman who gave Valentin his alibi. She’s down as a missing person. But I’ve been doing some research.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘No changes of address, tax payments, social security payments or credit card purchases. No trips or mobile phone calls. If there’s so little activity, a person generally falls into one of two categories. The most common is they’re dead. But then I found something. Lotto. She’d registered for a flutter. Twenty kroner.’
‘She played lotto?’
‘Maybe she was hoping her luck would turn. Anyway, it means she belongs to the second category.’
‘Which is?’
‘Those actively trying not to be found.’
‘And now you want me to help you find her?’
‘I’ve got her last known address in Oslo and the address of the kiosk where she filled in the numbers. And I know she was on drugs.’
‘OK,’ Beate said. ‘I’ll check with our undercover guys.’
‘Thanks.’
‘OK.’
Pause.
‘Anything else?’
‘No. Yes. What do you think of Singin’ in the Rain?’
‘I don’t like musicals. Why?’
‘Soulmates are hard to find, don’t you think?’
Beate chuckled. ‘True. Let’s talk about that sometime.’
They hung up.
Anton was sitting with his arms crossed. Listening to the silence. He looked down the corridor.
Mona was in with the patient now, and soon she would be coming out. And giving him that mischievous smile. Perhaps laying a hand on his shoulder. Caressing his hair. Maybe a fleeting kiss, letting him feel her tongue, which always tasted of mint, and then she would be off down the corridor. Wiggling her voluptuous bottom in that teasing way. Perhaps she didn’t mean to do it, but he liked to think she did. That she tightened her muscles, rolled her hips, strutted her stuff for him, for Anton Mittet. Yes, he had a lot to be grateful for, as they said.
He looked at his watch. Soon be change of shift. Was about to yawn when he heard a cry.
That was enough for him to jump to his feet. He tore open the door. Scanned the room from left to right, confirmed that Mona and the patient were the only two there.
Mona was standing beside the bed with her mouth open. She hadn’t looked up from the patient.
‘Is he . . .?’ Anton started to say, but he didn’t complete the sentence when he heard it was still there. The sound of the heart monitor was so piercing – and the silence was otherwise so total – he could hear the short, regular beeps from the corridor.
Mona’s fingertips rested on the point where the collarbone meets the sternum, what Laura called the ‘jewel pit’ because that was where it lay, the gold heart he had given Laura on one of the wedding anniversaries they had marked in their own way. Perhaps that was also where women’s real hearts rose when they were scared, worked up or out of breath, for Laura put her fingers in exactly the same place. And it was as though this spot, so like Laura’s, held his full attention. Even when Mona beamed at him and whispered, as if frightened to wake the patient, the words seemed to come from somewhere else.
‘He spoke. He spoke.’
It took Katrine no more than three minutes to slip through the familiar back alleys into the Oslo Police District system, but it was harder to find the interview tapes of the rape case at the Otta Hotel. The imposed digitalisation of all sound and film recordings was already well under way but it was a different matter with the indexing. Katrine had tried all the search words she could think of – Valentin Gjertsen, Otta Hotel, rape and so on – with no luck, and had almost give
n up when a man’s high-pitched voice filled the room.
‘She was asking for it, wasn’t she?’
Katrine felt an electric shock go through her body, like when she and her father had been sitting in the boat and he calmly announced he had a bite. She didn’t know why, she only knew this was the voice. This was him.
‘Interesting,’ said another voice. Low, almost ingratiating. The voice of a policeman pushing for a result. ‘What makes you say that?’
‘They do ask for it, don’t they? In some way or another. And afterwards they’re ashamed and report you to the police. But you know all that.’
‘So this girl at the Otta Hotel, she was asking for it, is that what you’re saying?’
‘She would have been.’
‘If you hadn’t raped her before she had a chance?’
‘If I’d been there.’
‘You admitted just now that you’d been there that night, Valentin.’
‘To get you to describe the rape in a bit more detail. It’s pretty boring sitting in a cell, you know. You have to . . . spice up the day as best you can.’
Silence.
Then Valentin’s high-pitched laughter. Katrine shuddered and pulled her cardigan tighter around her.
‘You look like someone’s pissed . . . what is that expression, Officer?’
Katrine closed her eyes and recalled his face.
‘Let’s put the Otta case to one side for a moment. What about the girl in Maridalen, Valentin?’
‘What about her?’
‘It was you, wasn’t it?’
Loud laughter this time. ‘You’ll have to practise that one a bit harder, Officer. The confrontation stage of the interview has to have a punch like a piledriver, not a pat on the head.’
Katrine could hear that Valentin’s vocabulary extended beyond that of most inmates.
‘So you deny it?’
‘No.’
‘No?’
‘No.’
Katrine could hear the quivering excitement as the policeman took a deep breath and said with hard-won composure: ‘Does that mean . . . that you admit committing the rape and murder in Maridalen in September?’ At least he was experienced enough to specify what he hoped Valentin would answer yes to, so that the defence counsel couldn’t claim afterwards that the accused had misunderstood which case they were actually talking about. But she also heard the merriment in the interviewee’s voice as he answered: