‘Here.’
‘Here?’
‘She’s sitting right in front of me.’
‘You mean... at Creatures?’
‘Yeah. Her and a whiskey sour. They took her phone, that’s why you couldn’t get her. And she came back to Laurel Canyon when she got out of Mexico. Here she is...’
Harry heard noise and laughter. And then Lucille’s voice.
‘Harry?’
‘Lucille,’ was all he was able to say.
‘Don’t go soft on me, Harry. I’ve been thinking about what my first words to you would be. And what I came up with was this.’ He heard her draw breath and then, through a mixture of laughter and tears, her quivering, whiskey-sprinkled vocal cords say, ‘You saved my life, you fool.’
54
Thursday
It was cold and the wind was blowing hard on the day Ståle Aune was buried. The hair of those in attendance was tossed this way and that, and at one point, strangely, hailstones fell from an apparently cloudless sky. Harry had shaved when he got up, and the lean face that had stared back at him from the mirror had been from a happier time. Maybe that would help. Probably not.
When he went up to the pulpit to say a few words, as Ingrid and Aurora had asked him to, he looked out over a packed church.
On the first two rows sat close family. On the row behind them, close friends, most of whom were people Harry had never met. On the row behind that again sat Mikael Bellman. Obviously Bellman was pleased that the case was solved, and the murderer Helge Forfang was behind bars, but he had kept a low profile the whole week while the newspapers had gorged on the flow of new details as the police had released them. Like Helge Forfang’s account of the murder of his own stepfather. Mona Daa and VG had set a good example though, by not publicising the video of a naked Markus Røed admitting the sexual abuse of his stepson, but merely referring to the content. But for those who did want to view it, the clip was of course available online.
Harry saw Katrine sitting next to Sung-min and Bodil Melling. She was still tired, there had been a lot of follow-up work to do and more remained. But naturally she was relieved that the killer had been caught and had confessed. During the interviews Helge Forfang had told them all they needed to know, most of which had matched Harry’s assumptions about how the murders had occurred. The motive — to take revenge on his stepfather — was obvious.
Harry had arrived at the church in Øystein’s Mercedes along with Øystein, Truls and Oleg, who had travelled all the way down from Finnmark. Truls was already back at work at Police HQ, given that he was no longer suspected of skimming, and had celebrated by buying a suit for the funeral, suspiciously like Harry’s. Øystein, for his part, claimed to have cut out dealing cocaine and wanted to make his living from behind the wheel of a vehicle. Said he had considered becoming an ambulance driver.
‘Tell you what, hard to go back when you’ve switched on that siren once and seen the traffic part like the fucking Dead Sea for Moses. Or was it the Sea of Galilee? Whatever, I’ll probably give it a miss though.’
Truls had grunted. ‘Takes a lot of courses and the like before you can become an ambulance driver.’
‘It’s not so much that,’ Øystein had replied. ‘There’re loads of drugs in those vehicles, you know, and I can’t be around that, I’m not like Keith. So, I said yes to the day shifts for a taxi company owner in Holmlia.’
Harry’s hands were shaking, causing the sheets of paper he was holding to make scratching noises. He hadn’t drunk today — on the contrary, he had emptied the rest of the Jim Beam bottle into the sink in his hotel room. He was going to be sober for the rest of his life. That was the plan. That was always the plan. On Saturday he and Gert were taking the boat to Nesodden. Harry thought about that. His hands stopped shaking. He cleared his throat.
‘Ståle Aune,’ he said, because he’d decided to begin by saying his full name. ‘Ståle Aune became the hero he never aspired to become. But which circumstances and his own courage gave him the opportunity to be at the end of his life. Naturally, he’d object to being called a hero if he was here. But he’s not. I don’t think. And anyway his objection wouldn’t meet with acceptance. When we were faced with resolving the hostage situation that all of you have read about in the papers, his was the voice that cut through the hubbub. “Don’t you all hear what I’m saying?” he shouted from his bed. “It’s simple mathematics.” Ståle Aune would claim it was pure logic, not heroism, that made him put on my clothes, take my place, take on my death sentence. The plan was for me to leave the scene with the hostage before it was discovered we’d switched places, or, if the need arose, for me to intervene should Ståle be found out. This wasn’t my plan. It was his. He asked us to do him this favour, to let him exchange his last days of pain for an exit that actually had meaning. It was a good argument. But the best thing about it was that it gave us a greater likelihood of saving the hostage if Forfang concentrated on him, and I could step in if something unforeseen occurred. Ståle left behind — like most self-sacrificing heroes — people with feelings of guilt. Myself first and foremost, as leader of the group, and the intended recipient of the poisoned chalice up there on the rooftop. Yes, I’m guilty of having cut short Ståle Aune’s life. Do I regret it? No. Because Ståle was right, it is actually simple mathematics. And I believe he died a happy man. Happy because Ståle belonged to that portion of humanity who find the deepest satisfaction in contributing to make this world a little more bearable for the rest of us.’
After the funeral, there was a wake at Schrøder’s, according to Ståle’s wishes, with sandwiches and coffee also available. The place was so packed that there was only standing room when they arrived, and Harry and his companions had to hover at the far end by the door to the toilets.
‘Forfang was out for revenge and destroyed everything standing in his way,’ Øystein said. ‘But the newspapers are still writing that he was a serial killer, and he wasn’t, was he? Harry?’
‘Mm. Not in the classic sense. They’re extremely rare.’ Harry took a sip of coffee.
‘How many have you come across?’ Oleg asked.
‘I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know?’ Truls grunted.
‘After I caught my second serial killer, I began to receive anonymous letters. People challenging me, saying they had killed. Or were going to kill. And that I wouldn’t be able to catch them. Most of them just got their kicks from writing the letters, I presume. But I don’t know if any of them took somebody’s life. Most of the deaths we discover to be murders are cleared up. But maybe they’re good, maybe they make them appear to be natural deaths or accidents.’
‘So they might have outplayed you, is that what you’re saying?’
Harry nodded. ‘Yep.’
An elderly man, clearly a little tipsy, emerged from the toilet. ‘Friends or patients?’ he asked.
Harry smiled. ‘Both.’
‘Easily done,’ the man said, walking into the crowded premises.
‘Plus he saved my life,’ Harry said under his breath. He raised his coffee cup. ‘To Ståle.’
The other three raised their glasses.
‘I was thinking about something,’ Truls said. ‘That saying you came out with, Harry. The one about if you save someone’s life, then you’re responsible for them for the rest of their life...’
‘Yeah,’ Harry said.
‘I checked. That’s no proverb. It was just something they made up in Kung Fu that was supposed to sound like ancient Chinese wisdom. That TV series from the seventies, you know.’
‘The one with David Carradine?’ Øystein asked.