The two younger men left the room at a signal from Røed.
‘Have you seen War Remains, Johan? No? Fucking great VR game, but you can’t shoot anyone in it. This here is a sort of copy the developer wants me to invest in...’ Røed nodded in the direction of the TV screen while he lifted a carafe and poured whiskey into two crystal rocks glasses. ‘They’re trying to retain the magic of War Remains, but make it so you can — what would you say? — influence the course of history. After all, that’s what we want, right?’
‘I’m driving,’ Krohn said, raising a palm to the glass Røed was holding out to him.
Røed looked at Krohn for a moment as if he didn’t understand the objection. Then he sneezed powerfully, sank down onto a leather Barcelona chair, and placed both glasses on the table in front of him.
‘Whose apartment is this?’ Krohn asked, as he settled into one of the other chairs. And immediately regretted the question. As a lawyer it was often safest not knowing more than you needed to.
‘Mine,’ Røed replied. ‘I use it as... you know, a retreat.’
Markus Røed’s shrug and scampish smile told Krohn the rest. He’d had other clients with similar apartments. And during an extramarital liaison, which had fortunately come to an end when he realised what he was in danger of losing, he had himself considered buying what a colleague called a bachelor pad for non-bachelors.
‘So what happens now?’ Røed asked.
‘Now Susanne has been identified, and murder has been established as the cause, the investigation will enter a new phase. You need to be prepared to be called in for fresh interviews.’
‘In other words, there’ll be even more focus on me.’
‘Unless the police find something at the crime scene that rules you out. We can always hope for that.’
‘I thought you might say something like that. But I can’t just sit here hoping any longer, Johan. You do know Barbell Properties has lost three big contracts in the last fortnight? They offered some flimsy excuses, about waiting for higher bids and so on — no one dares say right out that it’s down to these articles in Dagbladet about me and the girls, that they don’t want to be associated with a possible murder, or are afraid I’ll be put away and Barbell Properties will go under. If I sit idly by hoping that a gang of public-sector, underpaid knucklehead cops will get the job done, then Barbell Properties might go bust long before they’ve turned up something that gets me off the hook. We need to be proactive, Johan. We need to show the public that I’m innocent. Or at least that I believe it serves my interest for the truth to come out.’
‘So?’
‘We need to hire our own investigators. First-rate ones. In the best-case scenario they find the killer. But failing that, it still shows the public that I’m actually trying to uncover the truth.’
Johan Krohn nodded. ‘Let me play devil’s advocate here, no pun intended.’
‘Go on,’ Røed said, and sneezed.
‘Firstly, the best detectives are already working for Kripos, as they pay better than the Crime Squad. And even if they were to say yes to quitting a secure career to take on a short-term assignment like this, they’d still have to give three months’ notice, plus they’d have an obligation of confidentiality covering what they know about these missing persons cases. Which in effect renders them useless to us. Secondly, the optics would be pretty bad. An investigation being bankrolled by a millionaire? You’d be doing yourself a disservice. Should your investigators uncover so-called facts that clear you, this information would automatically be questioned, something which would not have happened if the police had uncovered the same facts.’
‘Ah.’ Røed smiled, wiping his nose with a tissue. ‘I love value for money. You’re good, you’ve pointed out the problems. And now you’re going to show me that you’re the best and tell me how we solve those problems.’
Johan Krohn straightened up in his chair. ‘Thank you for the vote of confidence, but there’s the rub.’
‘Meaning?’
‘You mentioned finding the best, and there is one person who is perhaps the best. His previous results certainly point to it.’
‘But?’
‘But he’s no longer on the force.’
‘From what you’ve told me that ought to be an advantage.’
‘What I mean is that he’s no longer in the police for the wrong reasons.’
‘Which are?’
‘Where do I begin? Disloyalty. Gross negligence in the line of duty. Intoxicated on the job, clearly an alcoholic. Several cases of violence. Substance abuse. He’s responsible, although not convicted, for the death of at least one colleague. In short, he’s probably got more crimes on his conscience than most of the criminals he’s hauled in. Plus, he’s supposed to be a nightmare to work with.’
‘That’s a lot. So why are you bringing him up if he’s so impossible?’
‘Because he’s the best. And because he could be useful with regard to the second part of what you were saying, about showing the public you’re trying to unearth the truth.’
‘OK...?’
‘The cases he’s solved have made him one of the few detectives with a public profile of sorts. And an image as uncompromising, someone with don’t-give-a-damn integrity. Overblown, of course, but people like those kind of myths. And for our purposes that image could allay suspicions of his investigation being bought and paid for.’
‘You’re worth every penny, Johan Krohn.’ Røed grinned. ‘He’s the man we want!’
‘The problem—’
‘No! Just up the offer until he says yes.’
‘—is that no one seems to know exactly where he is.’
Røed raised his whiskey glass without drinking, just frowned down at it. ‘What do you mean by “exactly”?’
‘Sometimes in an official capacity I run into Katrine Bratt, the head of Crime Squad where he worked, and when I asked, she said the last time he gave a sign of life was from a big city, but she didn’t know where he was in that city or what he was doing there. She didn’t sound too optimistic on his behalf, let’s put it that way.’
‘Hey! Don’t back out now that you’ve sold me on the guy, Johan! It’s him we want, I can feel it. So find him.’
Krohn sighed. Again regretted opening his mouth. Being the show-off he was he had of course walked right into the classic prove-you’re-the-best trap that Markus Røed probably used every single day. But with his leg stuck in the trap it was too late to turn. Some calls would need to be made. He worked out the time difference. OK, he may as well get right on it.
3
Saturday
Alexandra Sturdza studied her face in the mirror above the sink while routinely and thoroughly washing her hands, as though it were a living person and not a corpse she would soon touch. Her face was hard, pockmarked. Her hair — pulled back and tied in a tight bun — was jet black, but she knew the first grey hairs were in store — her Romanian mother had already got them in her early thirties. Norwegian men said her brown eyes ‘flashed’, especially when any of them tried to imitate her almost imperceptible accent. Or when they joked about her homeland, a place some of them clearly thought was a big joke, and she told them she came from Timişoara, the first city in Europe to install electric street lighting, in 1884, two generations before Oslo. When she came to Norway as a twenty-year-old, she had learned Norwegian in six months while working three jobs, which she had reduced to two while studying chemistry at NTNU, and now just one, at the Forensic Medical Institute while also concentrating on what would be her doctoral thesis on DNA analysis. She had at times — although not that often — wondered what it was that made her so obviously attractive to men. It couldn’t be her face and direct — at times harsh — manner. Nor her intellect and CV, which men seemed to perceive as more threatening than stimulating. She sighed. A man had once told her that her body was a cross between a tiger and a Lamborghini. Odd how so cheesy a comment could sound totally wrong or completely acceptable, yes, wonderful even, depending on who said it. She turned off the tap and went into the autopsy room.