The three notes rang out again.
“Christ, rush hour,” Bjørn said.
“Open this one too.”
There was a whimper from the back seat and Bjørn turned to look at the baby carrier. Then the breathing settled down again and Harry saw the tension leave Bjørn’s body, and his colleague tapped at his phone.
“It says electricity usage went up by 17.5 kilowatts per hour between 20:00 and 24:00 hours. What does that mean?”
“It means that whoever killed Rakel did it at around 20:15.”
“What?”
“Recently I spoke to a guy who pulled the same trick. He ran over and killed a girl when he was drunk, put her in the car and turned up the heat to keep her body temperature up. He wanted to trick the medical officer into thinking she died later than she did, at a time when he didn’t have an illegal amount of alcohol in his blood.”
“I don’t follow you, Harry.”
“The murderer is the first person we see in the recording, the one who arrives on foot. They get to Rakel’s at 20:02, kill her with a knife from the block in the kitchen, turn up the thermostat that all the radiators on the ground floor are connected to, then leave without locking the door. Come to mine later, where I’m still so out of it I don’t notice myself being dosed up with Rohypnol. The killer plants the murder weapon between the records on my shelves, finds the keys to the Ford Escort, drives me to the scene and carries me inside. That’s why it takes so long on the video, and looks like a fat person, or someone with their coat hanging down as they go inside, hunched over. The killer is carrying me like a rucksack. ‘The way we carry anyone who’s fallen,’ as Bohr said they did in Afghanistan and Iraq. And I was put down in the pool of blood beside Rakel and left to my own devices.”
“Bloody hell.” Bjørn scratched his red beard. “But we don’t see anyone leaving the scene.”
“Because the perpetrator knew I’d be convinced I’d killed Rakel when I woke up. Which meant I’d have to find both sets of keys inside the house, with the door locked from the inside. Which would lead me to conclude that no one but me could have committed the murder.”
“A variation on the locked-room mystery?”
“Exactly.”
“So...?”
“After the murderer put me down beside Rakel, they locked the door from the inside and left the scene through one of the basement windows. That’s the only one without bars. They don’t know about the wildlife camera, but they’re lucky. The camera is activated by movement, but nothing shows up because the murderer is moving through total darkness on the far side of the drive when they leave the scene. We assumed it must have been a cat or a bird and didn’t really pay it much thought.”
“You mean it was all just... to fuck with you?”
“Manipulated into thinking I’d killed the woman I loved.”
“Christ, that’s worse than the most brutal death sentence, that’s just torture. Why...?”
“Because that’s exactly what it was. A punishment.”
“Punishment? For what?”
“For my betrayal. I realised that when I was about to kill myself and turned the radio on. ‘Farther along we’ll know more about it...’ ”
“ ‘Farther along we’ll understand why,’ ” Bjørn said, nodding slowly.
“ ‘Cheer up, my brother,’ ” Harry said. “ ‘Live in the sunshine. We’ll understand it all by and by.’ ”
“Beautiful,” Bjørn said. “A lot of people think that’s a Hank Williams song, but it was actually one of the few cover versions he ever recorded.”
Harry took out the pistol. He saw Bjørn shuffle uncomfortably in his seat.
“It’s unregistered,” Harry said as he screwed the silencer onto the barrel. “It was acquired for E14, a disbanded intelligence unit. Can’t be traced to anyone.”
“Are you thinking of...” — Bjørn nodded nervously towards Kaja’s house — “using that?”
“No,” Harry said, handing the pistol to his colleague. “I’m going in without it.”
“Why are you giving it to me?”
Harry looked at Bjørn for a long time.
“Because you killed Rakel.”
49
“When you called Øystein at the Jealousy Bar early on the night of the murder and found out that I was there, you realised I was going to be there for a while,” Harry said.
Bjørn was clutching the pistol as he stared at Harry.
“So you drove to Holmenkollen. Parked the Amazon a little way away so the neighbours or other witnesses wouldn’t see and remember the unusual car. You walked to Rakel’s house. Rang the bell. She opened the door, saw it was you, and obviously let you in. At the time you didn’t know you were being recorded by a wildlife camera, of course. Back then, all you knew was that everything was in place. There were no witnesses, nothing unforeseen had happened, the block of knives was standing where it had been the last time you visited us, when I was still living there. And I was sitting in the Jealousy Bar drinking. You grabbed the knife from the block and killed her. Efficiently and without any pleasure, you’re not a sadist. But brutally enough for me to know that she had suffered. When she was dead, you turned up the thermostat, took the knife, drove to the Jealousy, put Rohypnol in my drink while I was busy fighting with Ringdal. You bundled me into your car and drove home with me. Rohypnol works fast, I was well away by the time you parked next to the Escort in the car park behind my building. You found the keys to my flat in my pocket, pressed my hand round the knife so it had my fingerprints on it, then planted it in my flat between The Rainmakers and the Ramones, in the right place for Rakel. You searched until you found the car keys. On your way down the stairs you bumped into Gule, on his way home from work. That wasn’t part of the plan, but you improvised well. Told him you’d put me to bed and were on your way home. Back in the car park you moved me from the Amazon to the Escort, then drove it up to Rakel’s. You managed to get me out, but it took a bit of time. You carried me on your back up the steps, in through the unlocked door, and put me down in the pool of blood beside Rakel. You cleaned the scene of any evidence that you’d been there, then left the house through the basement window. Obviously the window catch couldn’t be fastened from the outside. But you’d thought about that too. I’m guessing you walked home from there. Down Holmenkollveien. Sørkedalsveien to Majorstua, maybe. Avoiding anywhere with security cameras, taxis that would need paying by card, anything that could be traced. Then you just had to wait, keeping your TETRA terminal nearby, following developments. That was why you — even though you were on paternity leave — were one of the first on the scene when there was a report that a woman’s body had been found at Rakel’s address. And you took charge. You went around the house looking for possible escape routes, something the others hadn’t thought to do seeing as the main entrance had been open when they found Rakel. You went down into the basement, put the catch back on the window, then went up into the attic for appearance’s sake, then came back and said everything was locked up. Any objections so far?”
Bjørn Holm didn’t answer. He was sitting slouched in his seat, his glassy eyes looking in Harry’s direction, but apparently unable to focus.
“You thought you were home and dry. That you’d committed the perfect crime. No one could accuse you of not being ambitious. Obviously things got a bit tricky when you realised my brain had suppressed the fact that I’d woken up in Rakel’s house. Suppressed the fact that I was convinced I must have killed her seeing as the door was locked from the inside. Suppressed the fact that I had removed any evidence that I had been there, taken down the wildlife camera and thrown the memory card away. I couldn’t remember anything. But that wasn’t going to save me. You’d hidden the murder weapon in my flat as insurance. Insurance that if I didn’t recognise my own guilt and punish myself enough, if it looked like I was going to escape, you could discreetly arrange for the police to get a search warrant and find the knife. But when you realised I couldn’t remember anything, you made sure I found the knife you’d planted. You wanted me to become my own torturer. So you gave me a new record and you knew exactly where in my record collection I’d put it, seeing as you know my system. The Ramones’ Road to Ruin was precisely that. I dare-say you didn’t take any perverse pleasure from giving it to me at the funeral, but...” Harry shrugged. “That’s what you did. And I found the knife. And I began to remember.”