Bjørn’s mouth opened and closed.
“But then a couple of real flies appeared in the ointment,” Harry said. “I found the memory card containing the recordings from the wildlife camera. You realised there was a serious danger that you could be identified and uncovered. You asked if the contents had been copied before you told me to hand the card over to you. I thought you were asking because it would be easier to send the contents by Dropbox. But you just wanted to make sure that you were getting the only copy in existence, and could destroy or modify the recordings so that you couldn’t be recognised. When, to your relief, you saw that the recordings didn’t reveal much, you sent the card on to a 3-D expert, but without your name being involved. In hindsight it’s easy to see that I should have asked myself why you didn’t just ask me to send it straight to him in the first place.”
Harry looked at the pistol. Bjørn wasn’t holding it by the handle with his finger on the trigger, but by the trigger guard, like it was a piece of evidence that he didn’t want to leave any fingerprints on.
“Have you...” Bjørn’s voice sounded like a sleepwalker’s, as if his mouth were full of cotton wool. “Have you got some sort of recording device?”
Harry shook his head.
“Not that it matters,” Bjørn said with a resigned smile. “How... how did you figure it out?”
“The thing that always bound us together, Bjørn. Music.”
“Music?”
“Just before I drove into the truck, I turned the radio on and heard Hank Williams and those violins. It should have been playing hard rock. Someone had changed the channel. Someone other than me had used the car. And when I was in the river I realised something else, that there was something about the seat. It wasn’t until I got to Bohr’s cabin that I had time to figure it out. It was the first time I got in the car after Rakel’s death, when I was about to drive to the old bunkers in Nordstrand. I felt it then as well, that something wasn’t right. I even bit my false finger, the way I do when I can’t quite remember something. Now I know it was the back of the seat. When I got in the car, I had to adjust it, raise it. Sometimes I had to adjust it when Rakel and I were sharing the car, but why would I have to adjust the seat of a car that no one but me drives? And who do I know who has the seat pushed so far back that he’s almost lying down?”
Bjørn didn’t answer. There was that same, distant look in his eyes, as if he were listening to something going on inside his own head.
Bjørn Holm looked at Harry, saw his mouth move, registered the words, but they didn’t sound the way they ought to. He felt almost like he was drunk, watching a film, was underwater. But this was happening, it was real, only there was a filter over it, as if it didn’t really concern him. Not anymore.
He had known it ever since he heard dead Harry’s voice on the phone. That he had been found out. And that it was a relief. Yes, it was. Because if it had been torture for Harry to think he had killed Rakel, it had been hell for Bjørn. Because he not only thought, but knew he had killed Rakel. And he remembered almost every detail of the murder, reliving it practically every moment, without pause, like a monotonous, throbbing bass drum against his temple. And with each beat came the same shock: no, it isn’t a dream, I did it! I did what I dreamed about, what I planned, what I was convinced would somehow bring balance back to a world that’s spun out of control. Killing what Harry Hole loved more than anything, the way Harry had killed — ruined — the only thing Bjørn cherished.
Of course Bjørn had been aware that Katrine was attracted to Harry; no one who had worked closely with the pair of them could have failed to notice. She hadn’t denied it, but claimed she and Harry had never got it together, had never so much as kissed each other. And Bjørn had believed her. Because he was naive? Maybe. But primarily because he wanted to believe her. Besides, that was all a long time ago, and now she was with Bjørn. Or so he had thought.
When was the first time he had suspected anything?
Was it when he had suggested to Katrine that Harry should be one of the baby’s godparents and she had rejected the idea out of hand? She had no better explanation than the fact that Harry was an unstable person who she didn’t want having any responsibility for little Gert’s upbringing. As if the role of godparent was anything but a gesture from the parents to a friend or relative. And she had hardly any relatives, and Harry was one of the few friends they had in common.
But Harry and Rakel had come to the christening as ordinary guests. And Harry had been the same as usual, had stood in a corner, talking without any enthusiasm to anyone who went over to him, glancing at the time and looking at regular intervals at Rakel, who was deep in conversation with different people, and every half an hour he signalled to Bjørn that he was going outside for a cigarette. It was Rakel who had reinforced Bjørn’s suspicions. He had seen her face twitch when she saw the baby, heard the slight tremble in her voice when she dutifully told the parents what a miraculous child they had produced. And, not least, the pained look on her face when Katrine had passed the baby to her to hold while she sorted something out. He had seen Rakel turn her back on Harry so that he couldn’t see her or the child’s faces.
Three weeks later he had the answer.
He had used a cotton bud to take a sample of the child’s saliva. He’d sent it to the Forensic Medical Institute, without specifying which case it related to, just that it was a DNA test subject to the usual oath of confidentiality covering paternity tests. He had been sitting in his office in the Criminal Forensics Unit in Bryn when he read the results that showed there was no way he could be Gert’s father. But the woman he had spoken to, the new Romanian one, said they’d found a match with someone else in the database. The father was Harry Hole.
Rakel had known. Katrine knew, of course. Harry too. Maybe not Harry, actually. He wasn’t a good actor. Just a betrayer. A false friend.
The three of them against him. Of those three, there was only one he couldn’t live without. Katrine.
Could Katrine live without him?
Of course she could.
Because what was Bjørn? A plump, pale, harmless forensics expert who knew a bit too much about music and film, and who in a few years would be an overweight, pale, harmless forensics expert who knew even more about music and film. Who at some point had swapped his Rasta hat for a flat cap and had bought plenty of flannel shirts. Who had been convinced that these were personal choices, things that said something about personal development, about an awareness that only he had reached, because of course we’re all special. Right up until he looked around at a Bon Iver concert and saw a thousand copies of himself, and realised that he belonged to a group, a group of people who more than any other — at least in theory — hate everything about belonging to a group. He was a hipster.