THE HARRY HOLE SERIES
The Bat
Cockroaches
The Redbreast
Nemesis
The Devil’s Star
The Redeemer
The Snowman
The Leopard
Phantom
Police
STANDALONE CRIME
Headhunters
The Son
Blood on Snow
Midnight Sun
Translated from the Norwegian
by Neil Smith
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Epub ISBN: 9781473547094
Version 1.0
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Harvill Secker
20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,
London SW1V 2SA
Harvill Secker is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
Copyright © Jo Nesbo 2017
Published by agreement with Salomonsson Agency
English translation copyright © Neil Smith 2017
Extract from Macbeth copyright © Jo Nesbo 2018
Jo Nesbo has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published by Harvill Secker in 2017
First published with the title TØRST in Norway by H. Aschehoug & Co. (W. Nygaard), Oslo in 2017
penguin.co.uk/vintage
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
HE STARED INTO the white nothingness.
The way he had done for almost three years.
No one saw him, and he saw no one. Apart from each time the door opened and enough steam was sucked out for him to be able to glimpse a naked man for a brief moment before the door closed and everything was shrouded in fog.
The baths would be closing soon. He was alone.
He wrapped the white towelling bathrobe more tightly around him, got up from the wooden bench and walked out, past the empty swimming pool and into the changing room.
No trickling showers, no conversations in Turkish, no bare feet padding across the tiled floor. He looked at himself in the mirror. Ran a finger along the scar that was still visible after the last operation. It had taken him time to get used to his new face. His finger carried on down his throat, across his chest, and came to a halt at the start of the tattoo.
He removed the padlock from his locker, pulled on his trousers and put his coat on over the still damp bathrobe. Tied his shoelaces. He made sure he was definitely alone before going over to a locker with a coded padlock, one with a splash of blue paint on it. He turned the lock until it read 0999. Removed the lock and opened the door. Took a moment to admire the big, beautiful revolver that lay inside before taking hold of the red hilt and putting it in his coat pocket. Then he removed the envelope and opened it. A key. An address, and some more detailed information.
There was one more thing in the locker.
Painted black, made of iron.
He held it up against the light with one hand, looking at the wrought ironwork with fascination.
He would have to clean it, scrub it, but he already felt aroused at the thought of using it.
Three years. Three years in a white nothingness, in a desert of empty days.
Now it was time. Time he drank from the well of life again.
Time he returned.
Harry woke with a start. Stared out at the semi-darkness of the bedroom. It was him again, he was back, he was here.
‘Nightmare, darling?’ The whispered voice by his side was warm and soothing.
He turned towards her. Her brown eyes studied his. And the apparition faded and disappeared.
‘I’m here,’ Rakel said.
‘And here I am,’ he said.
‘Who was it this time?’
‘No one,’ he lied, and touched her cheek. ‘Go back to sleep.’
Harry closed his eyes. Waited until he was sure she had closed hers before opening his again. He studied her face. He had seen him in a forest this time. Moorland, wreathed in white fog that swirled around them. He had raised his hand and pointed something towards Harry. He could just make out the demonic, tattooed face on his naked chest. Then the fog had grown thicker, and he was gone. Gone again.
‘And here I am,’ Harry Hole whispered.
THE JEALOUSY BAR was almost empty, but even so it was hard to breathe.
Mehmet Kalak looked at the man and woman standing at the bar as he poured wine into their glasses. Four customers. The third was a guy sitting on his own at a table, taking tiny little sips of beer, and the fourth was just a pair of cowboy boots sticking out from one of the booths, where the darkness occasionally gave way to the glow from the screen of a phone. Four customers at half past eleven on a September evening in the best bar district in Grünerløkka. Terrible, and it couldn’t go on like this. Sometimes he asked himself why he’d left his job as bar manager at the hippest hotel in the city to go it alone and take over this rundown bar with its pissed-up clientele. Possibly because he thought that by jacking up the prices he could replace the old customers with the ones everyone wanted: the neighbourhood’s affluent, trouble-free young adults. Possibly because he needed somewhere to work himself to death after breaking up with his girlfriend. Possibly because the offer from loan shark Danial Banks had looked favourable after the bank rejected his application. Or possibly just because at the Jealousy Bar he was the one who picked the music, not some damn hotel manager who only knew one tune: the ringing of the cash register. Getting rid of the old clientele had been easy – they had long since settled in at a cheap bar three blocks away. But it turned out to be a whole lot harder to attract new customers. Maybe he would have to reconsider the whole concept. Maybe one big television screen on which he showed Turkish football wasn’t enough to merit the description ‘sports bar’. And maybe he’d have to change the music and go for reliable classics like U2 and Springsteen for the guys, Coldplay for the girls.
‘Well, I haven’t been on that many Tinder dates,’ Geir said, putting his glass of white wine back down on the bar. ‘But I’ve worked out that there’s a lot of strange people out there.’
‘Have you?’ the woman said, stifling a yawn. She had short fair hair. Slim. Mid-thirties, Mehmet thought. Quick, slightly stressed movements. Tired eyes. Works too hard and goes to the gym in the hope that it will give her the advantage she’s never had. Mehmet watched Geir raise his glass with three fingers round the stem, the same way as the woman. On his countless Tinder hook-ups he had always ordered the same thing as his dates, regardless of whether it was whiskey or green tea. Keen to signal that they were a match on that point too.
Geir coughed. Six minutes had passed since she had walked into the bar, and Mehmet knew that this was when he would make his move.
‘You’re more beautiful than your profile picture, Elise,’ Geir said.
‘So you said, but thanks again.’
Mehmet polished a glass and pretended not to listen.
‘So tell me, Elise, what do you want from life?’
She gave a rather resigned little smile. ‘A man who doesn’t just judge by appearances.’
‘I couldn’t agree more, Elise, it’s what’s inside that counts.’
‘That was a joke. I look better in my profile picture, and, to be honest, so do you, Geir.’
‘Ha ha,’ Geir said, and stared down into his wine glass, slightly deflated. ‘I suppose most people pick a flattering picture. So you’re looking for a man. What sort of man?’
‘One who’d like to stay at home with three kids.’ She glanced at the time.
‘Ha ha.’ Sweat hadn’t just broken out on Geir’s forehead, but all over his large, close-shaven head. And soon rings of sweat would appear under the arms of his black slim-fit shirt, an odd choice given that Geir was neither slim nor fit. He toyed with his glass. ‘That’s exactly my kind of humour, Elise. A dog is family enough for me for the time being. Do you like animals?’
Tanrim, Mehmet thought. Why doesn’t he just give up?
‘If I meet the right person, I can feel it, here … and here.’ He grinned, lowered his voice and pointed towards his crotch. ‘But obviously you have to find out if that’s right. What do you say, Elise?’
Mehmet shuddered. Geir had gone all-in, and his self-esteem was about to take another beating.
The woman pushed her wine glass aside, leaned forward slightly, and Mehmet had to strain to hear. ‘Can you promise me something, Geir?’
‘Of course.’ His voice and the look in his eyes were as eager as a dog’s.
‘That when I walk out of here in a moment, you’ll never try to contact me again?’
Mehmet had to admire Geir for managing to summon up a smile. ‘Of course.’
The woman leaned back again. ‘It’s not that you seem like a stalker, Geir, but I’ve had a couple of bad experiences. One guy started following me. He threatened the people I was with as well. I hope you can understand my being a bit cautious.’
‘I understand.’ Geir raised his glass and emptied it. ‘Like I said, there’s a lot of strange people out there. But don’t worry, you’re pretty safe. Statistically speaking, the chances of getting murdered are four times greater for a man than a woman.’
‘Thanks for the wine, Geir.’
‘If one of the three of us –’
Mehmet hurried to look away when Geir pointed to him.
‘– was going to get murdered tonight, the likelihood of it being you is one in eight. No, hang on, you have to divide that by …’
She stood up. ‘I hope you figure it out. Have a good life.’
Geir stared at her wine glass for a while after she left, nodded in time to ‘Fix You’, as if to convince Mehmet and anyone else watching that he had already shaken the experience off, she had been nothing more than a three-minute-long pop song, and just as forgettable. Then he stood up and left. Mehmet looked round. The cowboy boots and the guy who had been dragging out his beer were both gone too. He was alone. And the oxygen was back. He used his mobile phone to change the playlist. To his playlist. Bad Company. Given that the group contained members of Free, Mott the Hoople and King Crimson, there was no way it was ever going to be bad. And with Paul Rodgers on vocals, there was no way it could fail. Mehmet turned the volume up until the glasses behind the bar started to rattle against each other.
Elise walked down Thorvald Meyers gate, past plain four-storey buildings that had once housed the working classes in a poor part of a poor city, but where one square metre now cost as much as in London or Stockholm. September in Oslo. The darkness was back at last, and the drawn-out, annoyingly light summer nights were long gone, with all the hysterical, cheerful, stupid self-expression of summer. In September Oslo reverted to its true self: melancholic, reserved, efficient. A solid facade, but not without its dark corners and secrets. Much like her, apparently. She quickened her pace; there was rain in the air, mist, the spray when God sneezed, as one of her dates had put it in an attempt to be poetic. She was going to give up Tinder. Tomorrow. Enough was enough. Enough randy men whose way of looking at her made her feel like a whore when she met them in bars. Enough crazy psychopaths and stalkers who stuck like mud, sucking time, energy and security from her. Enough pathetic losers who made her feel like she was one of them.
They said Internet dating was the cool way to meet new people, that it was nothing to be ashamed of any more, that everyone was doing it. But that wasn’t true. People met each other at work, in classrooms, through friends, at the gym, in cafes, on planes, buses, trains. They met each other the way they were supposed to meet each other, when they were relaxed, no pressure, and afterwards they could cling to the romantic illusion of innocence, purity and quirks of fate. She wanted that illusion. She was going to delete her profile. She’d told herself that before, but this time it was definitely going to happen, that very night.
She crossed Sofienberggata and fished out the key to unlock the gate next to the greengrocer’s. She pushed the gate open and stepped into the darkness of the archway. And stopped dead.
There were two of them.
It took a moment or two for her eyes to get used to the darkness, and for her to see what they were holding in their hands. Both men had undone their trousers and had their cocks out.
She jerked back. Didn’t look round, just prayed that there was no one standing behind her.
‘Fucksorry.’ The combination of oath and apology was uttered by a young voice. Nineteen, twenty, Elise guessed. Not sober.
‘Duh,’ the other one said, ‘you’re pissing all over my shoes!’
‘I was startled!’
Elise pulled her coat more tightly around her and walked past the young men, who had turned back to face the wall again. ‘This isn’t a public toilet,’ she said.
‘Sorry, we were desperate. It won’t happen again.’
Geir hurried over Schleppegrells gate. Thinking hard. It was wrong that two men and one woman gave the woman a one in eight chance of being murdered, the calculation was much more complicated than that. Everything was always much more complicated.
He had just passed Romsdalsgata when something made him turn round. There was a man walking fifty metres behind him. He wasn’t sure, but wasn’t it the same guy who had been standing on the other side of the street looking at a window display when Geir emerged from the Jealousy Bar? Geir sped up, heading east, towards Dælenenga and the chocolate factory; there was no one out on the streets here, just a bus which was evidently running ahead of schedule and was waiting at a bus stop. Geir glanced back. The man was still there, still the same distance. Geir was frightened of dark-skinned people, always had been, but he couldn’t see this guy properly. They were on their way out of the white, gentrified neighbourhood, heading towards an area with far more social housing and immigrants. Geir could see the door of his own apartment block one hundred metres away. But when he looked back he saw that the guy had started running, and the thought that he had a Somali, thoroughly traumatised from Mogadishu, on his heels made him break into a run. Geir hadn’t run for years, and each time his heels hit the tarmac a jolt ran through his brain and jogged his sight. He reached the door, got the key in the lock at the first attempt, threw himself inside and slammed the heavy wooden door behind him. He leaned against the damp wood and stared out through the glass in the top part of the door. He couldn’t see anyone out in the street. Perhaps it wasn’t a Somali. Geir couldn’t help laughing. It was ridiculous how jumpy you got just because you’d been talking about murder. And what had Elise said about that stalker?
Geir was still out of breath when he unlocked the door to his flat. He got a beer from the fridge, noticed that the kitchen window facing the street was open, and closed it. Then he went into the study and switched the lamp on.
He pressed one of the keys of the PC in front of him, and the twenty-inch screen lit up.
He typed in ‘Pornhub’, then ‘french’ in the search box. He looked through the thumbnails until he found a woman who at least had the same hairstyle and colouring as Elise. The walls of the flat were thin, so he plugged his headphones into the PC before double-clicking the picture, undoing his trousers and pushing them down his thighs. The woman actually resembled Elise so little that Geir shut his eyes instead and concentrated on her groaning while he tried to conjure up the image of Elise’s small, tight little mouth, the scornful look in her eyes, her sober but still sexy blouse. There was no way he could ever have had her. Never. Except this way.
Geir stopped. Opened his eyes. Let go of his cock as the hairs on the back of his neck stood up in the cold breeze from behind. From the door he knew he had closed properly. He raised his hand to pull off the headphones, but knew it was already too late.
Elise put the security chain on the door, kicked her shoes off in the hallway and, as always, ran her hand over the photograph of herself and her niece Ingvild that was stuck to one side of the mirror. It was a ritual she didn’t quite understand, except that it clearly fulfilled some deep-rooted human need, the same way as stories about what happens to us after death. She went into the living room and lay down on the sofa in her small but cosy two-room flat; at least she owned it. She checked her phone. One text from work – tomorrow morning’s meeting had been cancelled. She hadn’t told the guy she had met this evening that she worked as a lawyer, specialising in rape cases. And that his statistics about men being more likely to be murdered only told half the story. In sexually motivated murders, the victim was four times more likely to be a woman. That was one of the reasons why the first thing she did when she bought the flat was change the locks and have a security chain fitted, a rare concept in Norway, and one she still fumbled with every time she used it. She went onto Tinder. She had matched with three of the men she had right-swiped earlier that evening. Oh, this was what was so nice about it. Not meeting them, but knowing that they were out there, and that they wanted her. Should she allow herself one last flirtation by message, one last virtual threesome with her last two strangers before deleting her account and the app for good?
No. Delete it at once.
She went into the menu, clicked the relevant option and was asked if she was really sure she wanted to delete her account?
Elise looked at her index finger. It was trembling. God, had she become addicted? Addicted to being told that someone – someone who had no real idea of who she was or what she was like, but still someone – wanted her, just the way she was? Well, the way she was in her profile picture, anyway. Completely addicted, or only a bit? Presumably she’d find out if she just deleted her account and promised to go a month without Tinder. One month, and if she couldn’t manage that, then there was something seriously wrong with her. The trembling finger moved closer to the delete button. But, if she was addicted, was that such a bad thing? We all need to feel that we’ve got someone, that someone’s got us. She had read that babies could die if they didn’t get a minimum of skin-to-skin contact. She doubted that was true, but, on the other hand, what was the point of living if it was just her, doing a job that was eating her up and with friends she socialised with mostly out of a sense of duty, if she was honest, because her fear of loneliness worried her more than their tedious moaning about their children and husbands, or the absence of one or other of these? And perhaps the right man for her was on Tinder right now? So, OK, one last go. The first picture popped up and she swiped left. Onto the scrapheap, to I-don’t-want-you. Same thing with the second one. And the third.
Her mind started to wander. She had attended a lecture where a psychologist who had been in close contact with some of the worst criminals in the country had said that men killed for sex, money and power, and women as a result of jealousy and fear.
She stopped swiping left. There was something vaguely familiar about the thin face in the picture, even though it was dark and slightly out of focus. That had happened before, seeing as Tinder matched people who were geographically close to each other. And, according to Tinder, this man was less than a kilometre away, so for all she knew he could be in the same block. The fact that the picture was out of focus meant that he hadn’t studied the online advice about Tinder tactics, and that in itself was a plus. The message was a very basic ‘hi’. No attempt to stand out. It may not have been particularly imaginative, but it did at least display a certain confidence. Yes, she would definitely have been pleased if a man came up to her at a party and just said ‘hi’ with a calm, steady gaze that said ‘shall we take this any further?’ She swiped right. To I’m-curious-about-you.
And heard the happy bleep from her iPhone that told her she had another match.
Geir was breathing hard through his nose.
He pulled his trousers up and slowly spun his chair round.
The light from the computer screen was the only one in the room, and illuminated just the torso and hands of the person who was standing behind him. He couldn’t see a face, just the white hands holding something out towards him. A black leather strap. With a loop at one end.
The figure took a step closer and Geir pulled back automatically.
‘Do you know what the only thing I find more disgusting than you is?’ the voice whispered in the darkness as the hands pulled at the leather strap.
Geir swallowed.
‘The dog,’ the voice said. ‘That bloody dog, which you promised you’d do everything to look after. Which shits on the kitchen floor because no one can be bothered to take it outside.’
Geir coughed. ‘Kari, please …’
‘Take it out. And don’t touch me when you come to bed.’
Geir took the dog leash, and the door slammed behind her.
He was left sitting in the darkness, blinking.
Nine, he thought. Two men and one woman, one murder. The chances of the woman being the murder victim is one in nine, not one in eight.
Mehmet drove the old BMW out of the streets of the city centre, up towards Kjelsås, towards the villas, fjord views and fresher air. He turned into his silent, sleeping street. Discovered that there was a black Audi R8 parked in front of the garage by the house. Mehmet slowed down. Briefly considered accelerating and just driving on. He knew that would only be putting it off. On the other hand, that was exactly what he needed. A delay. But Banks would find him again, and perhaps now was the right time. It was dark and quiet, no witnesses. Mehmet pulled up by the pavement. Opened the glove compartment. Looked at what he had been keeping in there for the past few days, specifically in case this situation arose. Mehmet put it in his jacket pocket and took a deep breath. Then he got out of the car and started to walk towards the house.
The door of the Audi opened and Danial Banks got out. When Mehmet had met him at the Pearl of India restaurant, he knew that the Pakistani first name and English surname were probably just as fake as the signature on the dubious contract they had signed. But the cash in the case he had pushed across the table had been real enough.
The gravel in front of the garage crunched beneath Mehmet’s shoes.
‘Nice house,’ Danial Banks said, leaning against the R8 with his arms folded. ‘Wasn’t your bank prepared to take it as collateral?’
‘I’m only renting,’ Mehmet said. ‘The basement.’
‘That’s bad news for me,’ Banks said. He was much shorter than Mehmet, but it didn’t feel like it as he stood there squeezing the biceps inside his smart jacket. ‘Because burning it down won’t help either of us if you don’t get anything from the insurance to repay your debt, will it?’
‘No, I don’t suppose it would.’
‘Bad news for you, too, because that means I’m going to have to use the more painful methods instead. Do you want to know what they are?’
‘Don’t you want to know if I can pay first?’
Banks shook his head and pulled something from his pocket. ‘The instalment was due three days ago, and I told you punctuality was crucial. And so that all my clients, not just you, know that that sort of thing isn’t tolerated, I can’t make any exceptions.’ He held the object up in the light of the lamp on the garage. Mehmet gasped for breath.
‘I know it isn’t very original,’ Banks said, tilting his head and looking at the pliers. ‘But it works.’
‘But—’
‘You can choose which finger. Most people prefer the left little finger.’
Mehmet felt it coming. The anger. And he felt his chest expand as he filled his lungs with air. ‘I’ve got a better solution, Banks.’
‘Oh?’
‘I know it isn’t very original,’ Mehmet said, sticking his right hand in his jacket pocket. Pulled it out. Held it out towards Banks, clutching it with both hands. ‘But it works.’
Banks stared at him in surprise. Nodded slowly.
‘You’re right there,’ Banks said, taking the bundle of notes Mehmet was holding out to him and pulling the elastic band off.
‘That covers the repayment and the interest, down to the last krone,’ Mehmet said. ‘But feel free to count it.’
Ping.
A match on Tinder.
The triumphant sound your phone makes when someone you’ve already swiped right on swipes your picture right as well.
Elise’s head was spinning, her heart was racing.
She knew it was the familiar response to the sound of Tinder’s matchmaking: increased heart rate as a consequence of excitement. That it released a whole load of happy chemicals that you could become addicted to. But that wasn’t why her heart was galloping. It was because the ping hadn’t come from her phone.
But the ping had rung out at the very moment she’d swiped right on a picture. The picture of a person who, according to Tinder, was less than a kilometre away from her.
She stared at the closed bedroom door. Swallowed.
The sound must have come from one of the neighbouring apartments. There were lots of single people living in the block, lots of potential Tinder users. And everything was quiet now, even on the floor below where the girls had been having a party when she went out earlier that evening. But there was only one way to get rid of imaginary monsters. By checking.
Elise got up from the sofa and walked the four steps over to the bedroom door. Hesitated. A couple of assault cases from work swirled through her head.
Then she pulled herself together and opened the door.
She found herself standing in the doorway gasping for air. Because there wasn’t any. None that she could breathe.
The light above the bed was switched on, and the first thing she saw was the soles of a pair of cowboy boots sticking off the end of the bed. Jeans and a pair of long legs, crossed. The man lying there was like the photograph, half in darkness, half out of focus. But he had unbuttoned his shirt to reveal his bare chest. And on his chest was a drawing or a tattoo of a face. That was what caught her eye now. The silently screaming face. As if it were held tight and was trying to pull free. Elise couldn’t bring herself to scream either.
As the person on the bed sat up, the light from his mobile phone fell across his face.
‘So we meet again, Elise,’ he whispered.
And the voice made her realise why the profile picture had seemed familiar to her. His hair was a different colour. And his face must have been operated on – she could see the scars left by stitches.
He raised his hand and shoved something into his mouth.
Elise stared at him as she backed away. Then she spun round, got some air into her lungs, and knew she had to use it to run, not scream. The front door was only five steps away, six at most. She heard the bed creak, but he had further to run. If she could just get out into the stairwell she’d be able to scream and get some help. She made it to the hallway and reached the door, tugged the handle down and pushed, but the door wouldn’t open properly.
The security chain. She tried to pull the door closed, to grab the chain, but it was all taking too long, like a bad dream, and she knew it was too late. Something was pressed over her mouth and she was dragged backwards. In desperation she stuck her hand through the opening above the security chain, grabbed hold of the door frame outside, tried to scream, but the huge nicotine-stinking hand was clamped tightly over her mouth. Then she was yanked free and the door slammed shut in front of her. The voice whispered in her ear: ‘Didn’t you like me? You don’t look as good as your profile picture either, baby. We just need to get to know each other better, we didn’t have a chance for that last t-time.’
The voice. And that last, solitary stammer. She’d heard it once before. She tried to kick and tear herself free, but he had her in a vice-like grip. He dragged her over to the hall mirror. Rested his head on her shoulder.
‘It wasn’t your fault I was found guilty, Elise, the evidence was overwhelming. That’s not why I’m here. Would you believe me if I said it is a coincidence?’ Then he grinned. Elise stared into his mouth. His teeth looked like they were made of iron, black and rusty, with sharp spikes in both upper and lower jaw, like a bear trap.
It creaked gently when he opened his mouth – was it spring-loaded?
She remembered the details of the case now. The photographs from the scene. And knew she would soon be dead.
Then he bit.
Elise Hermansen tried to scream into his hand as she saw the blood spraying from her own throat.
He raised his head again. Looked into the mirror. Her blood was running from his eyebrows, from his hair and down over his chin.
‘I’d call that a m-match, baby,’ he whispered. Then he bit again.
She felt dizzy. He wasn’t holding her so tightly now, he didn’t need to, because a paralysing chill, an alien darkness was moving slowly over her, into her. She pulled one hand free and reached towards the photograph on the side of the mirror. Tried to touch it, but her fingertips couldn’t reach.
THE SHARP AFTERNOON light reached through the living-room windows and out into the hallway.
Detective Inspector Katrine Bratt was standing in front of the mirror, silent and thoughtful, looking at the photograph that was stuck to the frame. It showed a woman and a young girl sitting on a rock hugging each other, both with wet hair and wrapped in big towels. As if they had just gone swimming in a rather too chilly Norwegian summer and were trying to keep warm by clinging to one another. But now there was something separating them. A dark streak of blood had run down the mirror and across the photograph, right between the two smiling faces. Katrine Bratt didn’t have children. She may have wished that she had in the past, but not now. Now she was a newly single career woman, and she was happy with that. Wasn’t she?
She heard a low cough and looked up. Met the gaze of a deeply scarred face with a prominent brow and a remarkably high hairline. Truls Berntsen.
‘What is it, Constable?’ she said. Saw his face cloud over at her deliberate reminder that he was still a constable after fifteen years in the force, and for that and several other reasons would never have been allowed to apply to become a detective with Crime Squad if it hadn’t been for the fact that Truls Berntsen had been transferred there by his childhood friend, Police Chief Mikael Bellman.
Berntsen shrugged. ‘Nothing much, you’re in charge of the investigation.’ He looked at her with a cold, doggy look that was simultaneously submissive and hostile.
‘Talk to the neighbours,’ Bratt said. ‘Start with the floor below. We’re especially interested in anything they heard or saw yesterday and last night. But seeing as Elise Hermansen lived alone, we also want to know what sort of men she used to hang out with.’
‘So you think it was a man, and that they already knew each other?’ Only now did she see the young man, the lad standing next to Berntsen. An open face. Fair hair. Handsome. ‘Anders Wyller. This is my first day.’ His voice was high, and he was smiling with his eyes, which Katrine took to mean that he was confident of charming those around him. His references from his boss at Tromsø Police Station had looked pretty much like a declaration of love. But, to be fair, he had the CV to match. Top grades from Police College two years ago, and good results as a detective constable in Tromsø.
‘Go and make a start, Berntsen,’ Katrine said.
She took his shuffling feet to be a passive protest at being ordered about by a younger, female boss.
‘Welcome,’ she said, holding her hand out to Wyller. ‘Sorry we weren’t there to say hello on your first day.’
‘The dead take priority over the living,’ the young man said. Katrine recognised the quote as one of Harry Hole’s, saw that Wyller was looking at her hand, and realised that she was still wearing a pair of latex gloves.
‘I haven’t touched anything disgusting,’ she said.
He smiled. White teeth. Ten bonus points.
‘I’m allergic to latex,’ he said
Twenty penalty points.
‘OK, Wyller,’ Katrine Bratt said, still holding her hand out. ‘These gloves are powder-free and low in allergens and endotoxins, and if you’re going to work in Crime Squad, you’re going to be wearing them pretty often. But obviously we could always get you a transfer to Financial Crime or …’
‘I’d rather not,’ he laughed and grasped her hand. She could feel the warmth through the latex.
‘My name’s Katrine Bratt, and I’m lead detective on this case.’
‘I know. You worked in the Harry Hole group.’
‘The Harry Hole group?’
‘The boiler room.’
Katrine nodded. She had never thought of it as the Harry Hole group, the little gang of three detectives who had been thrown together to work on the cop murder cases … But the name was fitting enough. Since then Harry had withdrawn to lecture at Police College, Bjørn had moved to work in Forensics out at Bryn, and she had come to Crime Squad where she was now a detective inspector.
Wyller’s eyes were shining, and he was still smiling. ‘Shame Harry Hole isn’t—’
‘Shame we haven’t got time to talk right now, Wyller, but we’ve got a murder to investigate. Go with Berntsen, and listen and learn.’
Anders Wyller gave her a wry smile. ‘You’re saying Constable Berntsen has a lot to teach me?’
Bratt raised an eyebrow. Young, self-assured, fearless. All good, but she hoped to God that he wasn’t another Harry Hole wannabe.
Truls Berntsen pressed the doorbell with his thumb and heard it ring inside the flat, noted that he ought to stop biting his nails, and let go.
When he had gone to see Mikael and asked to be transferred to Crime Squad, Mikael had asked why. And Truls had given an honest answer: he wanted to sit a bit higher up the food chain, but without having to wear himself out making an effort. Any other police chief would have thrown Truls out on his ear, but this one couldn’t. They had too much dirt on each other. When they were young they were connected by something approaching friendship, then a sort of symbiotic relationship, like a suckerfish and a shark. But now they were bound together by their sins and a mutual assurance of silence. That meant Truls Berntsen didn’t even have to try to pretend when he presented his request.
But he had started to wonder how sensible that request had been. Crime Squad had two categories of job: detectives and analysts. And when the head of Crime Squad, Gunnar Hagen, had told Truls he could choose for himself what he wanted to be, Truls had realised that he was hardly going to be expected to shoulder much responsibility. Which in and of itself suited him fine. But he had to admit that it had stung when Detective Inspector Katrine Bratt had shown him round the unit, all the time addressing him as ‘Constable’, and taking extra care to explain to him how the coffee machine worked.
The door opened. Three young girls were standing there looking at him with horrified expressions on their faces. They had evidently heard what had happened.
‘Police,’ he said, holding up his ID. ‘I’ve got some questions. Did you hear anything between—’
‘—questions we wondered if you could help us with,’ a voice said behind him. The new guy. Wyller. Truls saw some of the horror fall away from the girls’ faces, and they almost brightened up.
‘Of course,’ the one who had opened the door said. ‘Do you know who … who did … it?’
‘Obviously we can’t say anything about that,’ Truls said.
‘But what we can say,’ Wyller said, ‘is that there are no grounds for you to be scared. Am I right in thinking that you’re students sharing this flat?’
‘Yes,’ they replied in chorus, as if they all wanted to be first.
‘May we come in?’ Wyller said, with a smile as white as Mikael Bellman’s, Truls noted.
The girls led them into the living room, and two of them began quickly clearing beer bottles and glasses from the table and left the room.
‘We had a bit of a party here last night,’ the door-opener said sheepishly. ‘It’s terrible.’
Truls wasn’t sure if she meant the fact that their neighbour had been murdered, or that they had been having a party when it happened.
‘Did you hear anything last night between ten o’clock and midnight?’ Truls asked.
The girl shook her head.
‘Did Else—’
‘Elise,’ Wyller corrected as he pulled out a notepad and pen. It occurred to Truls that perhaps he ought to have done the same.
Truls cleared his throat. ‘Did your neighbour have a boyfriend, someone who used to spend much time here?’
‘I don’t know,’ the girl said.
‘Thanks, that’s all,’ Truls said, turning towards the door as the other two girls came back.
‘Perhaps we should hear what you have to say as well,’ Wyller said. ‘Your friend says she didn’t hear anything yesterday, and that she isn’t aware of anyone Elise Hermansen saw regularly, or even recently. Do either of you have anything to add to that?’
The two girls looked at each other before turning towards him and shaking their blonde heads at the same time. Truls could see the way all their attention was focused on the young detective. It didn’t bother him, he’d had a lot of training in being overlooked. He was used to that little pang in his chest, like the time in high school in Manglerud when Ulla finally looked at him, but only to ask if he knew where Mikael was. And – seeing as this was before the days of mobile phones – if he could give Mikael a message. On one occasion Truls replied that that might be difficult seeing as Mikael had gone camping with a girlfriend. Not that the bit about camping was true, but because just for once he wanted to see the same pain, his own pain, reflected in her eyes.
‘When did you last see Elise?’ Wyller asked.
The three girls looked at each other again. ‘We didn’t see her, but …’
One of them giggled, then clapped her hand to her mouth when she realised how inappropriate that was. The girl who had opened the door to them cleared her throat. ‘Enrique rang this morning and said he and Alfa stopped for a pee down in the archway on their way home.’
‘They’re, like, really stupid,’ the tallest of them said.
‘They were just a bit drunk,’ the third one said. She giggled again.
The girl who had opened the door shot the other two a pull-yourselves-together look. ‘Whatever. A woman walked in while they were standing there, and they called to say sorry in case their behaviour made us look bad.’
‘Which was pretty considerate of them,’ Wyller said. ‘And they think this woman was …?’
‘They know. They read online that ‘a woman in her thirties’ had been murdered, and saw the picture of the front of our building, so they googled and found a photo of her in one of the online papers.’
Truls grunted. He hated journalists. Fucking scavengers, the lot of them. He went over to the window and looked down at the street. And there they were, on the other side of the police cordon, with the long lenses of their cameras that made Truls think of vultures’ beaks when they held them in front of their faces in the hope of getting a glimpse of the body when it was carried out. Beside the waiting ambulance stood a guy in a Rasta hat with green, yellow and red stripes, talking to his white-clad colleagues. Bjørn Holm, from the Criminal Forensics Unit. He nodded to his people, then disappeared back inside the building again. There was something hunched, huddled about Holm’s posture, as if he had stomach ache, and Truls wondered if it had anything to do with the rumours that the fish-eyed, moon-faced bumpkin had recently been dumped by Katrine Bratt. Good. Someone else could experience what it felt like to be ripped to shreds. Wyller’s high-pitched voice buzzed in the background: ‘So their names are Enrique and …?’
‘No, no!’ The girls laughed. ‘Henrik. And Alf.’
Truls caught Wyller’s eye and nodded towards the door.
‘Thanks a lot, girls, that’s all,’ Wyller said. ‘By the way, I’d better get some phone numbers.’
The girls looked at him with a mixture of fear and delight.
‘For Henrik and Alf,’ he added with a wry smile.
Katrine was standing in the bedroom behind the forensics medical officer, who was crouched by the bed. Elise Hermansen was lying on her back on top of the duvet. But the blood on her blouse was distributed in a way that showed she had been standing upright when the blood gushed out. She had probably been standing in front of the mirror in the hallway, where the rug was so drenched in blood that it had stuck to the parquet floor underneath. The trail of blood between the hall and the bedroom, and its limited quantity, indicated that her heart had probably stopped beating out in the hallway. Based on body temperature and rigor mortis, the forensics officer had estimated the time of death at between 2300 hours and one o’clock in the morning, and that the cause of death was probably loss of blood after her carotid artery was punctured by one or more of the incisions on the side of her throat, just above the left shoulder.
Her trousers and knickers were pulled down to her ankles.
‘I’ve scraped and cut her nails, but I can’t see any traces of skin with the naked eye,’ the forensics officer said.
‘When did you lot start doing Forensics’ work for them?’ Katrine asked.
‘When Bjørn told us to,’ she replied. ‘He asked so nicely.’
‘Really? Any other injuries?’
‘She’s got a scratch on her lower left arm, and a splinter of wood on the inside of her left middle finger.’
‘Any signs of sexual assault?’
‘No visible sign of violence to the genitals, but there’s this …’ She held a magnifying glass above the body’s stomach. Katrine looked through it and saw a thin, shiny line. ‘Could be saliva, her own or someone else’s, but it looks more like precum or semen.’
‘Let’s hope so,’ Katrine said.
‘Let’s hope she was sexually assaulted?’ Bjørn Holm had walked in and was standing behind her.
‘If she was, all the evidence suggests that it happened post-mortem,’ Katrine said without turning round. ‘So she was already gone by then. And I’d really like some semen.’
‘I was joking,’ Bjørn said quietly in his amiable Toten dialect.
Katrine closed her eyes. Of course he knew that semen was the ultimate ‘open sesame’ in a case like this. And of course he was only joking, trying to lighten the weird, wounded atmosphere that had existed between them in the three months that had passed since she had moved out. She was trying, too. She just couldn’t quite manage it.
The forensics officer looked up at them. ‘I’m done here,’ she said, adjusting her hijab.
‘The ambulance is here – I’ll get my people to take the body down,’ Bjørn said. ‘Thanks for your help, Zahra.’
The forensics officer nodded and hurried out, as if she had also noticed the strained atmosphere.
‘Well?’ Katrine said, forcing herself to look at Bjørn. Forcing herself to ignore the sombre look in his eyes that was more sad than pleading.
‘There’s not much to say,’ he said, scratching the bushy red beard that stuck out below his Rasta hat.
Katrine waited, hoping that they were still talking about the murder.
‘She doesn’t seem to have been particularly bothered about housework. We’ve found hairs from a whole load of people – mainly men – and it’s hardly likely that they were all here last night.’
‘She was a lawyer,’ Katrine said. ‘A single woman with a demanding job like that might not prioritise cleaning as highly as you.’
He smiled briefly without responding. And Katrine recognised the pang of the guilty conscience he always managed to give her. Obviously they had never argued about cleaning, Bjørn had always been too quick to deal with the washing-up, sweeping the steps, putting the clothes in the machine, cleaning the bath and airing the sheets, without any reproach or discussion. Like everything else. Not one single damn argument during the whole year they had lived together, he always wriggled out of them. And whenever she let him down or just couldn’t be bothered, he was there, attentive, sacrificial, inexhaustible, like some fucking irritating robot who made her feel more like a pea-brained princess the higher he built her pedestal.
‘How do you know that the hairs come from men?’ she sighed.
‘A single woman with a demanding job …’ Bjørn said without looking at her.
Katrine folded her arms. ‘What are you trying to say, Bjørn?’
‘What?’ His pale face flushed lightly and his eyes bulged more than usual.
‘That I’m easy? OK, if you really want to know, I—’
‘No!’ Bjørn held his hands up as if to defend himself. ‘I didn’t mean it like that. It was just a bad joke.’
Katrine knew she ought to feel pity. And she did, to an extent. Just not the sort of pity that makes you want to give someone a hug. This particular type of pity was more like derision, the sort of derision that made her want to slap him, humiliate him. And that was why she had walked out on him – because she didn’t want to see Bjørn Holm, a perfectly good man, humiliated. Katrine Bratt took a deep breath.
‘So, men?’
‘Most of the hairs are short,’ Bjørn said. ‘We’ll have to wait and see if the analysis confirms that. We’ve certainly got enough DNA to keep the National Forensic Lab busy for a while.’
‘OK,’ Katrine said, turning back towards the body. ‘Any ideas about what he could have stabbed her with? Or hacked, seeing as there’s a whole load of incisions close together.’
‘It’s not very easy to see, but they form a pattern,’ he said. ‘Two patterns, in fact.’
‘Oh?’
Bjørn went over to the body and pointed towards the woman’s neck, beneath her short blonde hair. ‘Do you see that the incisions form two small, overlapping ovals, one here – and one here?’
Katrine tilted her head. ‘Now that you mention it …’
‘Like bite marks.’
‘Oh, fuck,’ Katrine blurted out. ‘An animal?’
‘Who knows? But imagine a fold of skin being pulled out and pressed together when upper and lower jaws meet. That would leave a mark like this …’ Bjørn pulled a piece of semi-transparent paper from his pocket and Katrine instantly recognised it as the wrapper of the packed lunch he took to work each day. ‘Looks like it matches the bite of someone from Toten, anyway.’
‘Human teeth can’t have done that to her neck.’
‘Agreed. But the pattern is human.’
Katrine moistened her lips. ‘There are people who file their teeth to make them sharper.’
‘If it was teeth, we may find saliva around the wounds. Either way, if they were standing on the rug in the hallway when he bit her, the bite marks indicate that he was standing behind her, and that he’s taller than her.’
‘The forensics officer didn’t find anything under her nails, so I reckon he was holding her tight,’ Katrine said. ‘A strong man of average or above average height, with the teeth of a predator.’
They stood in silence, looking at the body. Like a young couple in an art gallery contemplating opinions with which to impress other people, Katrine thought. The only difference was that Bjørn never tried to impress people. She was the one who did that.
Katrine heard steps in the hall. ‘No more people in here now!’ she called.
‘Just wanted to let you know there were only people at home in two of the flats, and none of them saw or heard anything.’ Wyller’s high-pitched voice. ‘But I’ve just spoken to two lads who saw Elise Hermansen when she came home. They say she was alone.’
‘And these lads are …?’
‘No criminal record, and they had a taxi receipt to prove that they left here just after 11.30. They said she walked in on them while they were urinating in the archway. Shall I bring them in for questioning?’
‘It wasn’t them, but yes.’
‘OK.’
Wyller’s steps receded.
‘She returned home alone and there are no signs of a break-in,’ Bjørn said. ‘Do you think she let him in voluntarily?’
‘Not unless she knew him well.’
‘No?’
‘Elise was a lawyer, she knew the risks, and that security chain on the door looks pretty new. I think she was a careful young woman.’ Katrine crouched down beside the body. Looked at the splinter of wood sticking out of Elise’s middle finger. And the scratch on her lower arm.
‘A lawyer,’ Bjørn said. ‘Where?’
‘Hollumsen & Skiri. They were the ones who called the police when she didn’t show up at a hearing and wasn’t answering her phone. It’s not exactly unusual for lawyers to be the victims of attacks.’
‘Do you think …?’
‘No, like I said, I don’t think she let anyone in. But …’ Katrine frowned. ‘Do you agree that this splinter looks pinkish white?’
Bjørn leaned over her. ‘White, certainly.’
‘Pinkish white,’ Katrine said, standing up. ‘Come with me.’