Krohn was so bemused that he almost hung up. But there was something about that turn of phrase. If you must. He had to, didn’t he? Yes, he had to, and he had to say enough to be sure that Hole would call him back. He swallowed.
“This is Johan Krohn. I need to ask you to keep this message between the two of us. Svein Finne is engaged in blackmail.” He swallowed again. “Of me. And my family. I... er, please, get back to me. Thanks.”
He hung up. Had he said too much? And was he doing the right thing, was asking a police officer for help the right solution? Oh, it was impossible to be sure! Well, until Hole called back, he could still change his mind, tell Hole it was the result of a misunderstanding with his client.
Krohn went into the bedroom, slipped under the covers, picked up his copy of TfR, the Norwegian legal periodical, from the bedside table and started to read.
“You said something out on the terrace,” Frida said beside him. “That you were practising a defense statement.”
“Yes,” Johan said, and saw that she had put her book down on the covers and was looking at him over her reading glasses.
“Who for?” she said. “I didn’t think you were working on a case at the moment.”
Krohn adjusted his pillow. “The defense of a decent man who’s got himself into a bit of a mess.” He let his eyes rest on his own article about double jeopardy. Obviously he knew the article backwards, but he had found that he was able to pretend he’d never read it, and could enjoy its complex but lucid legal reasoning over and over again. “It’s only a potential case at the moment. He’s being blackmailed by a bastard who wants to get hold of his mistress. If he doesn’t give in, his whole family will be taken from him.”
“Hmm,” Frida murmured. “That sounds more like a work of fiction than an actual case.”
“Let’s say it is fiction,” Krohn said. “What would you do if you were him, and you knew that a defense statement wasn’t going to save him?”
“A mistress in exchange for an entire family? That’s fairly straightforward, surely?”
“No. Because if the good guy lets the bastard rape his mistress, the bastard would have even more on him. And then the bastard would come back, demanding more and more.”
“OK,” Frida said with a slight smile. “Then I’d pay a hitman to get rid of the bastard.”
“A bit of realism, maybe?”
“I thought you said it was fiction?”
“Yes, but...”
“The mistress,” Frida said. “I’d let the bastard have the mistress.”
“Thanks,” Krohn said, staring down at the page, fully aware that even the most ingenious formulations about double jeopardy wouldn’t be able to take his mind off Svein Finne tonight. Or Alise. And when he thought of her, on her knees, looking beseechingly up at Johan Krohn with eyes full of tears because he was so big but she was still trying to fit him in her mouth, he knew that option was out of the question. Wasn’t it? What if Harry Hole couldn’t help him? No, even then, he couldn’t do that to Alise. Not only was it morally repugnant, but he loved her! Didn’t he? And now Krohn felt more of a swelling in his heart than his groin. Because what did you do if you loved someone? You took the consequences. You paid the price. If you loved someone, it didn’t matter what it cost. Those were the rules of love, and there was no room for reinterpretation. He could see it so clearly now. So clearly that he had to hurry up before doubt took hold of him again, he had to hurry to tell his wife everything. Absolutely everything about Alise. Alea iacta est. The die is cast. Krohn put the journal down and took a deep breath as he formulated the opening phrases in his head.
“I forgot to say that I caught Simon red-handed today,” Frida said. “He was sitting in his room looking at... well, you wouldn’t believe it.”
“Simon?” Krohn said, seeing their firstborn in front of him. “A porn magazine?”
“Almost,” Frida laughed. “Norway’s Laws. Your copy.”
“Oh dear,” Krohn said, as lightheartedly as he could, and swallowed. He looked at his wife as Alise’s image faded away, like in a film. Frida Andresen, now Frida Krohn. Her face was still as pure, as pretty as the first time he had seen it in the lecture hall. Her body was a bit plumper, but the extra kilos had really only given it a more feminine shape.
“I was thinking of making Thai tomorrow, the kids would like that. They’re still going on about Ko Samui. Maybe we could go back there sometime? Sun, warm weather and...” She smiled and let the rest hang in the air.
“Yes,” Johan Krohn said, and swallowed. “Maybe.”
He picked up the journal again and began to read. About double jeopardy.
47
“It was David,” the man said, in a thin, faltering junkie voice. “He hit Birger in the head with an iron bar.”
“Because Birger has stolen his heroin,” Sung-min said, and tried to stifle a yawn. “And the reason your fingerprints are on the bar is because you took it off Birger, but by then it was already too late.”
“Exactly,” the man said, looking at Sung-min as if he’d just solved a third-grade maths problem. “Can I go now?”
“You can go whenever you like, Kasko.” Sung-min gestured with one hand.
The man, who was known as Kasko because he had once sold car insurance, stood up, his legs swaying as if the floor of the Stargate bar was the lurching deck of a ship, and maneuvered towards the door where there was a newspaper cutting announcing where the cheapest beer in Oslo could be found.
“What are you doing?” Marcussen, another Kripos detective, hissed in alarm. “We could have got the whole story, all the details! We had him, damn it! Next time he might change his story. They do that, these smackheads.”
“All the more reason to let him go now,” Sung-min said, switching off the tape recorder. “Right now we’ve got a simple explanation. If we get more details, he’ll either have forgotten them, or changed them by the time he gets to the witness stand. And that’s exactly what a defense lawyer needs to sow doubt on the rest of the explanation. Shall we go?”
“No reason to hang around here,” Marcussen said, getting to his feet. Sung-min nodded and let his gaze roam over the clientele of drinkers who had been queuing up outside when he and Marcussen arrived at the bar with the earliest opening time in Oslo, seven o’clock.
“Actually, I think I’ll stay,” Sung-min said. “I haven’t had breakfast yet.”
“You want to eat here?”
Sung-min knew what his colleague meant. He and Stargate didn’t really go together. They hadn’t done, anyway. But who knew, maybe he’d have to lower his standards? Downgrade his expectations. This was as good a place to start as any.
Once Marcussen had gone, Sung-min picked up the newspaper that was lying on the next table.
Nothing on the front page about the Rakel Fauke case.
And nothing about the accident on Highway 287.
Which must mean that neither Ole Winter nor Katrine Bratt had gone public with the news that Harry Hole was involved.
In Ole Winter’s case, that was presumably because he wanted time to add a sheen of teamwork to what had been Sung-min’s deductions. Trivial double-checking that would only confirm what Sung-min had already ascertained, but that Winter could later claim was a team victory under his wise leadership.
Sung-min had read Machiavelli’s The Prince when he realised he didn’t understand political game-playing and power strategies. One of Machiavelli’s pieces of advice to a ruler who wanted to stay in power was to ally himself to and give support to weaker players in the country, those who weren’t in a position to threaten him and who would therefore be happy with the status quo. But any stronger potential opponents had to be weakened by all means available. What applied in Italian city states in the 1500s evidently also applied within Kripos.