“Are you... are you completely certain you’d be able to catch him, then?”
“Oh, we’d get hold of him if we issued a warrant for his arrest,” Truls said. “Obviously, whether or not we’d get a conviction in a rape trial is an entirely different matter. It’s always one person’s word against another’s in cases like that, and we’d probably just have to let him go again. But obviously with a witness like you, it would be two against one. With a bit of luck.”
Dagny Jensen swallowed several times.
Truls yawned and looked at the time. “Now you’ve seen the picture, you can make your way back down to the duty officer and get the paperwork started, OK?”
“Yes,” the woman said, staring at the screen. “Yes, of course.”
15
Harry was sitting on the sofa staring at the wall. He hadn’t turned the lights on, and the falling darkness had slowly erased the contours and colours and settled like a cool cloth on his forehead. He wished it could erase him too. When you actually thought about it, life didn’t have to be that complicated. It could basically be reduced to The Clash’s binary question: should I stay or should I go? Drink? Not drink? He wanted to drown. Disappear. But he couldn’t, not quite yet.
Harry opened the present Bjørn had given him. As he had assumed, it was a vinyl album. Road to Ruin. Of the three albums Øystein resolutely claimed were the Ramones’ only really good work (here he would usually refer to Lou Reed describing the Ramones’ music as “shit”), Bjørn had managed to buy the only one Harry didn’t have. On the shelves behind him — between The Rainmakers’ first album and Rank and File’s debut — he had both Ramones and his favourite, Rocket to Russia.
Harry pulled the black vinyl disc out and put Road to Ruin on the turntable.
He spotted one track he recognised and placed the needle at the start of “I Wanna Be Sedated.”
Guitar riffs filled the room. It sounded more heavily produced and mainstream than their debut album. He liked the minimalist guitar solo, but wasn’t so sure about the modulation afterwards; it sounded suspiciously like Status Quo — style boogie at its most imbecilic. But it was performed with swaggering confidence. Like his favourite track “Rockaway Beach,” where they stood just as confidently on the shoulders of The Beach Boys, like car thieves cruising down the main street with the windows down.
While Harry was trying to work out if he actually liked “I Wanna Be Sedated” or not, and whether or not he should go to the bar, the room was lit up by the phone on the coffee table.
He peered down at the screen. Sighed. Wondered whether to answer.
“Hi, Alexandra.”
“Hi, Harry. I’ve been trying to get hold of you. You need to change the message on your voicemail.”
“You think?”
“It doesn’t even say your name. ‘Leave a message if you must.’ Just six words that sound more like a warning, followed by a bleep.”
“Sounds like it works the way it should.”
“I’ve called you a lot of times.”
“I saw, but I haven’t been... in the mood.”
“I heard.” She let out a deep sigh, and her voice suddenly sounded pained, sympathetic. “It’s just terrible.”
“Yes.”
A pause followed, like a silent intermezzo marking the transition between two acts. Because when Alexandra went on, it wasn’t in either her deep, playful voice or the pained, sympathetic one. It was her professional voice.
“I’ve found something for you.”
Harry ran his hand over his face. “OK, I’m all ears.”
It had been so long since he first contacted Alexandra Sturdza that he had given up any hope of getting anything from her. More than six months had passed since he’d gone up to the Forensic Medical Institute at Rikshospitalet, where he had been met by a young woman who had come straight from the lab, with a hard, pockmarked face, bright eyes and an almost imperceptible accent. She had taken him into her office and hung up her white lab coat as Harry asked if she could help him, kind of off the record, to compare Svein Finne’s DNA against old cases of murder and rape.
“So, Harry Hole, you want me to jump the queue for you?”
After Parliament abolished the statute of limitations for murder and rape in 2014, naturally there had been a rush of requests to apply new DNA-analysis technology to older cases, and waiting times had shot up.
Harry had considered rephrasing his request, but he could see from the look in her eyes that there was no point. “Yes.”
“Interesting. In exchange for what?”
“Exchange? Hm. What would you like?”
“A beer with Harry Hole would be a start.”
Under her coat Alexandra Sturdza was wearing black, figure-hugging clothes that emphasised a muscular body that made Harry think of cats and sports cars. But he had never really been that interested in cars, and was more of a dog person.
“If that’s what it’ll take, I’ll get you a beer. But I don’t drink. And I’m married.”
“We’ll see,” she said with a hoarse laugh. She looked like she laughed a lot, but it was strangely difficult to guess her age, she could have been anywhere from ten to twenty years younger than him. She tilted her head and looked at him. “Meet me at Revolver at eight o’clock tomorrow, and we’ll see what I’ve got for you, OK?”
She hadn’t had much. Not then, and not much since. Just enough to invite herself for a beer every now and then. But he had maintained a professional distance and made sure their meetings were short and to the point. Until Rakel threw him out and the dam had burst, carrying everything away with it, including any principles about professional distance.
Harry saw that the wall had turned another shade greyer.
“I haven’t got an exact match from a case,” Alexandra began.
Harry yawned; it was the same old story.
“But then I realised that I could compare Svein Finne’s DNA profile against all the others in the database. And I found a partial match to a murderer.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that if Svein Finne isn’t a convicted murderer, then he’s the father of one, at least.”
“Oh, shit.” Something dawned on Harry. A foreboding. “What’s the murderer’s name?”
“Valentin Gjertsen.”
A cold shiver ran down Harry’s spine. Valentin Gjertsen. Not that Harry had more faith in genes than environment, but there was a sort of logic to the fact that Svein Finne’s seed, his genes, had helped create a son who had become one of the worst killers in Norwegian criminal history.
“You sound less surprised than I thought you’d be,” Alexandra said.
“I’m less surprised than I thought I’d be,” Harry replied, rubbing his neck.
“Is that helpful?”
“Yes,” Harry said. “Yes, it’s very helpful. Thanks, Alexandra.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“Mm. Good question.”
“Do you want to come around to mine?”
“Like I said, I’m not really in the—”
“We don’t have to do anything. Maybe we could both do with someone to lie next to for a while. You remember where I live?”
Harry closed his eyes. There had been a number of beds, doorways and courtyards since the dam burst, and alcohol had laid a veil over faces, names, addresses. And right now, the image of Valentin Gjertsen was blocking out pretty much everything else from his memory.
“What the hell, Harry? You were drunk, but couldn’t you at least pretend you remember?”