Then the red dot was there again, on his face this time. It slid over his furrowed cheek, up to his eye. She could see the red dot on the white of his eye. And perhaps Finne saw it too. Either way, he whispered something that she didn’t hear until he repeated it.
“Help.”
Alise knew what was coming, closed her eyes and managed to put one protective hand in front of her face before she heard the sound again, more like a whip crack this time. And then, with a long delay, as if the shot had been fired from a long way away, the same rolling thunder.
Roar Bohr looked through the sniper sight.
The last headshot had thrown the target backwards, then he had slid sideways off the bench and was now lying on the gravel path. He moved the sight. Saw the young woman running along the path towards Hegnar Media, saw her throw her arms around a man who was hurrying towards her. Then the man took out a phone and started tapping at it, as if he knew exactly what he should do. Which he probably did, but what did Bohr know?
No more than he wanted to know.
No more than Harry Hole had told him twenty-four hours ago.
That he had found the man Bohr had been looking for all these years.
In a conversation with what Harry said was an extremely reliable source, Svein Finne had claimed to have raped Bishop Bohr’s daughter many years ago in Mærradalen.
The case had long since passed the statute of limitations, of course.
But Harry had what he called a “solution.”
And he had told Bohr all he needed to know, and no more. Just like when he was in E14. Two o’clock by Smestaddammen, on the same bench that Harry and Pia had sat on.
Roar Bohr moved the sight, and from the other side of the lake he saw a woman walking away quickly. As far as he could tell, she seemed to be the only other witness. He closed the basement window and put the rifle down. Looked at the time. He had promised Harry Hole that it would be done within two minutes of the target arriving, and he had stuck to that, even if he had given in to the temptation of letting Svein Finne have a little foretaste of his impending death when he exposed himself. But he had used so-called frangible bullets, bullets with no lead that disintegrate and stay inside the body of the target. Not because he needed them to in order to be fatal, but because the police’s ballistics experts wouldn’t have a projectile that could be matched to a weapon, or any point of impact in the ground that would enable them to work out where the shots had been fired from. In short, they would be left standing there, looking up helplessly at a hillside covered with something like a thousand houses, and with absolutely no idea where they should start looking.
It was done. He had shot the mink. He had finally avenged Bianca.
Roar felt ecstatic. Yes, that was the only way he could describe it. He locked the rifle away in the gun cabinet, then went and had a shower. On the way he stopped and pulled his phone from his pocket. Called a number. Pia answered on the second ring.
“Is anything wrong?”
“No.” Roar Bohr smiled. “I just wondered if you’d like to go out for dinner this evening?”
“Out for dinner?”
“It’s been ages since we last did that. I’ve heard good things about Lofoten, that fish restaurant on Tjuvholmen.”
He heard her hesitation. Suspicion. He followed her train of thought on towards the same why not? that he had thought.
“OK,” she said. “Are you going—”
“Yes, I’ll book a table. How does eight o’clock sound?”
“Great,” Pia said. “That all sounds great.”
They hung up, and Roar Bohr undressed, got in the shower and turned the water on. Warm water. He wanted to have a warm shower.
Dagny Jensen left the park the same way she had come. She thought about how she really felt. She had been sitting too far away to see any of the details on the other side of the lake, but she had seen enough. Yes, she had let herself be persuaded by Harry Hole’s almost hypnotic request, but this time he hadn’t deceived her, he had kept his promise. Svein Finne was out of her life. Dagny thought about Hole’s deep, hoarse voice on the phone, when he had told her what was going to happen, and why she must never, ever tell anyone. And even if she had already felt a peculiar excitement, and knew she wasn’t going to be able to resist, she had asked why, and if he thought she was the sort of person who would allow themselves to be entertained by a public execution.
“I don’t know what entertains you,” he had replied. “But you said it wasn’t enough for you to see him dead for him not to haunt you. You needed to see him die. I owe you that much, after everything I’ve put you through. Take it or leave it.”
Dagny thought about her mother’s funeral, the young female priest who had said that no one knew for certain what lay beyond the threshold of death, just that those who crossed it never came back.
But Dagny Jensen knew now. She knew that Finne was dead. And how she really felt.
She didn’t feel brilliant.
But she did feel better.
Katrine Bratt was sitting behind the desk, looking around.
She had packed the last of the things she wanted to take home. Bjørn’s parents were in the flat looking after Gert, and she knew that any good mother would probably have wanted to get home as quickly as she could. But Katrine wanted to wait a little longer. Catch her breath. Stretch this pause from the suffocating grief, the unanswered questions, the nagging suspicions.
The grief was easier to deal with when she was alone. When she didn’t feel she was being watched, didn’t have to stop herself from laughing at something Gert did, or from saying something wrong, like she was looking forward to spring or something. Not that Bjørn’s parents reacted — they were sensible, they understood. They were wonderful people, actually. But she clearly wasn’t. The grief was there, but she was able to chase it away when no one else was there to remind her constantly that Bjørn was dead. That Harry was dead.
The unspoken suspicion she knew they must be feeling, but didn’t show. That she, one way or another, must be the reason why Bjørn had taken his own life. But she knew she wasn’t. On the other hand, though: Should she have realised something was wrong with Bjørn when he had gone completely to pieces when he heard that Harry was dead? Should she have known that it was more than that, that Bjørn was struggling with something bigger, a deep depression he had managed to fend off and keep hidden until Harry’s death came along. Not just the drop that made his cup overflow, but burst the entire dam. What do we really know about the people we share our beds, our lives with? Even less than we know about ourselves. Katrine found it an unpalatable idea, but the impressions we have of the people around us are precisely that: impressions.
She had raised the alarm when Bjørn handed Gert over without wanting to talk to her.
Katrine had just got home from the terrible press conference with Ole Winter, to an empty flat and no message saying where Bjørn and Gert were, when someone rang the front doorbell. She had picked up the entryphone and heard Gert crying, and opened the door to the flat in case Bjørn had forgotten his keys, then pressed the button to open the door down on the street. But she hadn’t heard the whirr of the lock, just the baby crying close to the microphone. After saying Bjørn’s name several times without getting any response, she had gone downstairs.
The Maxi-Cosi baby carrier with Gert in it was sitting on the pavement right outside the door.
Katrine had looked up and down Nordahl Bruns gate, but couldn’t see any sign of Bjørn. Nor had she seen anyone in any of the darkened doorways on the other side of the street, although that didn’t necessarily mean there was no one there, of course. And then a random thought occurred to her: that it hadn’t been Bjørn who rang the bell.