The hidden camera.
Harry heard someone clear their throat quietly and turned around.
The man standing in the doorway was large and rectangular, with a head that looked like it had been cut from granite and drawn with a ruler. A hairless cranium with a straight chin, straight mouth, straight nose and straight narrow eyes under a pair of straight eyebrows. Blue jeans, a smart jacket and a shirt with no tie. There was no expression in his grey eyes, but his voice and the way he dragged the words out — as if he were enjoying them, had been waiting for the chance to say them — expressed everything his eyes were hiding.
“I’m sorry for your loss, but I’m going to have to ask you to leave the scene, Hole.”
Harry met Ole Winter’s gaze, noting that Kripos’s senior inspector had used an expression directly translated from English, as if Norwegian didn’t have a perfectly adequate way of expressing sympathy. And that he hadn’t even allowed himself a full stop after his expression of sympathy before throwing Harry out, just a quick comma. Harry didn’t answer, merely turned and looked at Rakel again.
“That means now, Hole.”
“Mm. As far as I’m aware, the task of Kripos is to assist Oslo Police District, not to issue—”
“And now Kripos is helping to keep the partner of the victim away from the crime scene. You can act like a professional and do as I say, or I can get a couple of uniforms to help you out.”
Harry knew Ole Winter wouldn’t have any objection to that, letting two officers lead Harry out to a police car in full view of his colleagues, neighbours, and the media vultures who were standing down at the road photographing everything they could. Ole Winter was a couple of years older than Harry and they had worked on either side of the fence as homicide detectives for twenty-five years, Harry with the Oslo Police District and Winter in the specialist national unit, Kripos, which assisted local police departments in serious criminal cases such as murder. And which occasionally, because of its superior resources and competence, took over the investigations altogether. Harry assumed that his own Chief of Police, Gunnar Hagen, had taken the decision to bring Kripos in. A perfectly valid decision, given that the victim’s partner was employed in the Crime Squad Unit at Police Headquarters in Oslo. But also a somewhat sensitive decision given that there was always an unspoken rivalry between the two largest murder investigation units in the country. What wasn’t unspoken, however, was Ole Winter’s opinion that Harry Hole was seriously overrated, that his legendary status owed more to the sensational nature of the cases he had solved than the factual quality of his detective work. And that Ole Winter — even though he was the undisputed star of Kripos — was undervalued, at least outside the inner circle. And that his triumphs never got the same headlines as Hole’s, because serious police work rarely did, while an alcoholic loose cannon with one single lucid moment of inspiration always did.
Harry pulled out his packet of Camels, stuck a cigarette between his lips and took out his lighter.
“I’m going, Winter.”
He walked past the other man, went down the steps and out onto the drive before needing to steady himself. He stopped, and went to light the cigarette, but was so blinded by tears that he couldn’t see either lighter or cigarette.
“Here.”
Harry heard Bjørn’s voice, blinked quickly several times and sucked in the flame from the lighter Bjørn was holding up to the cigarette. Harry inhaled hard. Coughed, then inhaled again.
“Thanks. Have you been thrown out too?”
“No, my work’s as good for Kripos as it is for the Oslo Police District.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be on paternity leave?”
“Katrine called. The lad’s probably sitting on her lap behind her desk running Crime Squad right now.” Bjørn Holm’s crooked smile vanished as soon as it appeared. “Sorry, Harry, I’m babbling.”
“Mm.” The wind tugged at the smoke as Harry exhaled. “So, you’re finished with the garden?”
Stay in investigation mode, stay sedated.
“Yes,” Bjørn Holm said. “There was a frost on Saturday night, so the gravel was harder. If there was anyone here, or any vehicles, they haven’t left much evidence.”
“Saturday night? You’re saying that’s when it happened?”
“She’s cold, and when I bent her arm it felt as if the rigor mortis was already starting to ease.”
“At least twenty-four hours, then.”
“Yes. But the medical officer should be here anytime. Are you OK, Harry?”
Harry had started to retch, but nodded and swallowed the stinging bile. He would manage. He would manage. Stay asleep.
“The knife wounds, do you have any idea of what sort of knife was used?”
“I’d say a small- to medium-sized blade. No bruising on the side of the wound, so either he didn’t stab very deep or the knife doesn’t have much of a shaft.”
“The blood. He went deep.”
“Yes.”
Harry sucked desperately at the cigarette, which was already close to the filter. A tall young man in a Burberry jacket and suit was walking up the drive towards them.
“Katrine said it was someone from Rakel’s work who called it in,” Harry said. “Do you know any more than that?”
“Just that it was her boss,” Bjørn said. “Rakel didn’t show up for an important meeting, and they couldn’t get hold of her. He thought something might be wrong.”
“Mm. Is it normal to call the police when one of your staff doesn’t show up for a meeting?”
“I don’t know, Harry. He said it wasn’t like Rakel not to turn up, or at least not to call beforehand. And obviously they knew that she lived alone.”
Harry nodded slowly. They knew more than that. They knew she had recently thrown her husband out. A man with a reputation for being unstable. He dropped the cigarette and heard it hiss on the grit as he ground his heel on it.
The young man had reached them. He was in his thirties, thin, upright, with Asian features. The suit looked tailor-made, the shirt chalk-white and freshly ironed, the tie neatly knotted. His thick black hair was cut short, in a style that could have been discreet if it hadn’t been so calculatedly classic. Kripos detective Sung-min Larsen smelled vaguely of something Harry assumed was expensive. At Kripos he was apparently known as the Nikkei Index, despite the fact that his first name — Sung-min, which Harry had come across several times when he was in Hong Kong — was Korean rather than Japanese. He had graduated from Police College the first year Harry had been lecturing there, but Harry could still remember him from his lectures on criminal investigation, mostly because of those white shirts and his quiet demeanour, the wry smiles when Harry — still an inexperienced lecturer — felt he was on shaky ground, and also his exam results, which had evidently been the highest grades ever achieved at Police College.
“I’m sorry, Hole,” Sung-min Larsen said. “My deepest condolences.” He was almost as tall as Harry.
“Thanks, Larsen.” Harry nodded to the notepad the Kripos detective was holding. “Been talking to the neighbours?”
“That’s right.”
“Anything of interest?” Harry looked round. There was plenty of space between the houses up here in fashionable Holmenkollen. Tall hedges and ranks of fir trees.
For a moment, Sung-min Larsen seemed to ponder whether this was information he could share with the Oslo Police District. Unless the problem was that Harry was the victim’s husband.
“Your neighbour, Wenche Angondora Syvertsen, says she didn’t hear or see anything unusual on Saturday night. I asked if she sleeps with the window open, and she said she did. But she also said she was able to do that because familiar sounds don’t wake her up. Like her husband’s car, the neighbours’ cars, the dustcart. And she pointed out that Rakel Fauke’s house has thick timber walls.”