Finne held the knife up in front of him. “Don’t want to work for your food, Bruin? Feeling a bit weak tonight?”
The bear roared, as if in frustration, and Finne laughed so loud that it echoed off the rock face above them. “My grandfather was one of the men who ate your grandfather back in 1882,” Finne called. “He said it tasted terrible, even with plenty of seasoning. But I could imagine taking a bite of you all the same, Bruin, so come on! Come on, you stupid bastard!”
Finne took a step towards the bear, which backed away slightly, shifting its weight from side to side. It looked confused, almost cowed.
“I know how it feels,” Finne said. “You’ve been shut up for ages, then suddenly you get out, and there’s too much light, too little food, and you’re all alone. Not because you’ve been cast out — because you’re not like them, you’re not a herding animal, you’re the one who’s cast them out.” Finne took another step closer. “But that doesn’t mean you don’t feel lonely, does it? Spread your seed, Bruin, make others who are like you, who understand you. Who understand how to honour their father! Hah! Hah! Get lost, because there are no females in Sørkedalen. Get lost, this is my territory, you poor, starving bastard! All you’ll find here is loneliness.”
The bear pressed down on its front paws, as if it was about to stand up again but couldn’t manage it.
Finne saw it now. The bear was old. Maybe sick. And Finne detected an unmistakable smell. The smell of fear. It wasn’t the far smaller, two-legged creature in front of it that was making it frightened, but the fact that this creature wasn’t emitting the same smell. It was fearless. Crazy. Capable of anything.
“Well, old Bruin?”
The bear snarled, revealing a set of yellow teeth.
Then it turned and padded away until it was swallowed up by the darkness.
Svein Finne stood and listened to the sound of twigs snapping farther and farther away.
The bear would be back. Either when it was even hungrier, or when it had eaten and felt strong enough to conquer the territory. Tomorrow he would have to start looking for somewhere that was even less accessible, possibly somewhere with walls that could keep a bear out. But first he had to go into the city and buy a trap. And visit the grave. The herd.
Katrine couldn’t sleep. But her son was asleep in his crib over by the window, that was the important thing.
She rolled over in bed and looked directly into Bjørn’s pale face. His eyes were closed but he wasn’t snoring. And that meant he wasn’t asleep either. She studied him. His thin, reddish eyelids with their visible veins, his pale eyebrows, white skin. It was as if he’d swallowed a lit lightbulb. Inflated and illuminated from within. Plenty of people had been surprised when they got together. No one had asked straight out, obviously, but she had seen the question on their faces: what makes a beautiful, self-sufficient woman choose a less than averagely attractive man with no money? A female MP on the Justice Committee had taken her aside at a networking cocktail party for “women in important positions” and told her she thought it was great that Katrine had married a male colleague whose status was lower than hers. Katrine had replied that Bjørn was bloody good in bed, and asked the politician if she felt ashamed of having a high-status husband who earned more than her, and what did she think the chances were that her next husband would be lower-status? Katrine had no idea who the woman’s husband was, but from the look on her face she could tell that she had got pretty close to the mark. She hated those “influential women” gatherings anyway. Not because she didn’t support the cause, not because she didn’t think that true equality was something worth fighting for, but because she couldn’t summon up the forced sisterly solidarity and emotional rhetoric. Occasionally she felt like telling them to shut up and stick to asking for equal opportunities and equal pay for equal work. Sure, a change was long overdue, and not only when it came to direct sexual harassment, but also the indirect and often intangible sexual-control tactics men used. But that mustn’t be allowed to rise to the top of the agenda and draw attention away from what equality was really about. Women would only harm themselves yet again if they prioritised hurt feelings over the size of their pay packets. Because only better wages, more economic power, would make them invulnerable.
Perhaps she would have felt differently if she’d been the most vulnerable person in the bedroom. She had sought out Bjørn when she was at her weakest, her most fragile, when she needed someone who would love her unconditionally. And the slightly plump but kind and charming forensic specialist had hardly been able to believe his luck, and responded by proclaiming her his queen, almost to the point of self-negation. She had told herself that she wouldn’t exploit that, that she had seen too many people — women and men alike — turn into monsters simply because their partner invited it. And she had tried. She really had.
She had been tested before, but when the real test came along — the third person, the baby — the survival instinct that got you through the day took over and consideration for your partner had to give way.
The third person. The one you loved more than your partner.
But in Katrine’s case, the third person had been there all along.
Once. Just once she had lain like this, in this very bed with him, the third person. Listened to him breathing while an autumn storm made the windows rattle, the walls creak, and her world collapse. He belonged to someone else, she was only borrowing him, but if that was all she could get, she’d take it. Did she regret that attack of madness? Yes. Yes, of course she did. Was it the happiest moment of her life? No. It was despair and a peculiar numbness. Could the whole thing have been avoided? Definitely not.
“What are you thinking about?” Bjørn whispered.
What if she said it? What if she told him everything?
“The case,” she said.
“Oh?”
“How can you lot have absolutely nothing?”
“Like we’ve said, the perpetrator cleaned up after himself. Are you really thinking about the case, or... something else?”
Katrine couldn’t see the expression in his eyes in the darkness, but she could hear it in his voice. He had always known about the third person. Bjørn Holm was the person she had confided in back when he was just a friend and she had only just moved to Police Headquarters, when she had a hopeless, silly infatuation with Harry. It was so long ago. But she had never told him about that night.
“A married couple who live in Holmenkollen were driving home on the night of the murder,” Katrine said. “They saw an adult male walking down Holmenkollveien at quarter to midnight.”
“Which fits the presumed time of the murder, between 22:00 and 02:00,” Bjørn said.
“Sober adults in Holmenkollen drive cars. The last bus had gone, and we’ve checked the security cameras at Holmenkollen metro station. A tram arrived at twenty-five minutes to midnight, but the only person who got off was a woman. What’s a pedestrian doing out that late at night? If he was walking all the way home from a bar in the city, he’d have been walking uphill, and if he was heading back into the city, he’d have gone to the metro station, don’t you think? Unless he wanted to avoid any security cameras.”
“A man, out walking. It’s a bit thin, isn’t it? Did they give a description?”
“Just the usual. Average height, between twenty-five and sixty, unknown ethnicity, but rather dark-skinned.”
“So the reason you’ve got hung up on this is...”
“...that it’s the only lead of any value at all.”
“So you didn’t get anything useful from the neighbour?”