He ran, but stopped when he reached the gate. From where he was standing, at the top of the sloping cemetery, he immediately caught sight of the lonely figure standing in front of the grave. His head was bowed, and a long, thick Native American plait was hanging down his back.
Harry clasped the butt of the pistol in his coat pocket and started walking. Not fast, not slow. He stopped when he was three metres from the man’s back.
“What do you want?”
The sound of the man’s voice made Harry shiver. The last time he had heard Svein Finne’s gravelly, resounding priest’s voice they had been sitting in a cell in Ila Prison, when Harry was trying to get help to catch the man who was now lying in the grave in front of them. Back then Harry had had no idea that Valentin Gjertsen was Svein Finne’s son. In hindsight, he couldn’t help thinking he should have suspected something. Should have realised that such sick, violent fantasies must have come from the same source, one way or another.
“Svein Finne,” Harry said, and heard his voice shake. “You’re under arrest.”
He didn’t hear Finne laugh, just saw his shoulders move. “That seems to be your standard line whenever you see me, Hole.”
“Put your hands behind your back.”
Finne let out a deep sigh. He put his hands behind his back with a nonchalant gesture, as if it made his posture more comfortable.
“I’m going to put handcuffs on you. And before you think of doing anything stupid, you should know that I’ve got a pistol aimed at the base of your spine.”
“You’d shoot me in the base of the spine, Hole?” Finne turned his head and grinned. Those brown eyes. The thick, wet lips. Harry breathed through his nose. Cold. He needed to stay cold now, not think about her. Think about what he was going to do, nothing else. Simple, practical things.
“Because you think I’m more frightened of being paralysed than of dying?”
Harry took a deep breath in an attempt to stop himself trembling. “Because I want a confession before you die.”
“Like you got from my boy? And then you shot him?”
“I had to shoot him because he was resisting arrest.”
“Yes, I daresay that’s how you choose to remember it. That’s probably how you remember shooting me too.”
Harry saw the hole in Svein Finne’s palm, like Torghatten, the mountain with a hole you can see daylight through. From a bullet fired during an arrest early in Harry’s police career. But it was the other hand that caught his attention. The grey watchstrap around his wrist. Without lowering the pistol, he grabbed Finne’s wrist with his free hand and turned it over. Pressed the face of the watch. Red numbers indicating the time and date lit up.
The click of the handcuffs sounded like a damp kiss in the empty cemetery.
Harry turned the ignition key counterclockwise, and the engine died.
“A beautiful morning,” Finne said, looking through the Escort’s windshield down at the fjord below them. “But why aren’t we at Police Headquarters?”
“I was thinking of giving you a choice,” Harry said. “You can give me a confession here and now, and we can drive back down for breakfast and a warm cell in Police Headquarters. Or you can deny it, and you and I can take a little walk into that wartime bunker.”
“Ha! I like you, Hole. I really do. I hate you as a person, but I like your personality.” Finne moistened his lips. “And I confess, obviously. She—”
“Wait until I start recording,” Harry said, fishing his phone out of his coat pocket.
“...was a willing participant.” Finne shrugged his shoulders. “I think she might even have enjoyed it more than me.”
Harry swallowed. Closed his eyes for a moment. “Enjoyed having a knife stuck in her stomach?”
“A knife?” Finne turned in his seat and looked at Harry. “I took her by the railings, right behind where you arrested me. Of course I know it’s against the law to fuck in a cemetery, but given the way she insisted on getting more, I think it’s only reasonable for her to pay most of the fine. Has she really filed a complaint? I suppose she regretted her ungodly behaviour. Yes, that wouldn’t surprise me. Unless perhaps she actually believes what she’s saying. Shame can make us distort anything. Do you know, there was a psychologist in prison who tried to tell me about Nathanson’s Compass of Shame. That I was so ashamed at having killed the girl, like you claimed I had, that I had to flee the shame altogether by denying it had ever happened. That’s what’s going on here. Dagny feels so ashamed of how much she enjoyed what happened in the cemetery that her memory has turned it into rape. Does that sound familiar, Hole?”
Harry was about to answer when a wave of nausea rose up inside him. Shame. Repression.
The handcuffs rattled as Finne leaned forward in his seat. “Either way, you know what it’s like with rape cases, where it’s one person’s word against another’s, with no witnesses or forensic evidence. I’ll get off, Hole. Is that what this is about? You know the only way you can get me locked up for rape is by forcing a confession out of me? Sorry, Hole. But, like I said, I confess to fucking in a public place, so at least you’ve got something you can pin on me. Are you still offering breakfast?”
“Did I say something wrong?” Finne laughed as he stumbled through the muddy snow. He fell to his knees, and Harry pulled him up and shoved him towards the bunkers.
Harry was crouched down in front of the wooden bench. On the floor in front of him was everything he had found when he searched Svein Finne. A dice made of blue-grey metal. A couple of hundred-kroner notes and some coins, but no bus or tram tickets. A knife in a sheath. The knife had a brown wooden shaft, a short blade. Sharp. Could that be the murder weapon? There were no traces of blood on it. Harry looked up. He had removed one of the planks covering the gun slits to let some light into the bunker. Joggers occasionally ran past along the path just outside, but there wouldn’t be any until the snow had gone completely. No one would hear Svein Finne’s screams.
“Nice knife,” Harry said.
“I collect knives,” Finne said. “I had twenty-six that you seized from me, do you remember? I never got them back.” The light of the low morning sun was striking Svein Finne’s face and muscular upper body. Not the pumped-up version jailbirds get from repetitive weightlifting in a cramped gym, but the wiry, fit sort. A ballet dancer’s body, Harry thought. Or Iggy Pop’s. Clean. Finne was sitting on the bench with his hands cuffed round the backrest. Harry had removed his shoes as well, but had let him keep his trousers.
“I remember the knives,” Harry said. “What’s the dice for?”
“To make the difficult decisions in life.”
“Luke Rhinehart,” Harry said. “So you’ve read The Dice Man.”
“I don’t read, Hole. But you can keep the dice, a gift from me to you. Let fate decide when you don’t know what to do. You’ll find it very liberating, believe me.”
“So fate is more liberating than deciding for yourself?”
“Of course. Imagine that you feel like killing someone, but can’t make yourself do it. So you need help. From fate. And if the dice tells you to kill, fate bears the responsibility; it liberates you and your free will. Do you see? All it takes is a throw of the dice.”