Katrine looked down as she took notes.
“Valium. Stesolid. Or Rohypnol. Maybe a bit of everything.”
His voice made her think of the sound of the wheels of her grandfather’s tractor driving along a gravel track out in Sotra.
“So things might be a little unclear for me,” Finne said.
Katrine stopped writing. Unclear? She detected something metallic at the back of her throat, the taste of panic. Was he planning to withdraw his confession?
“Unless perhaps it’s just because I always get a bit confused when I get horny.”
Katrine looked up. Svein Finne caught her gaze. It felt like something was drilling into her head.
He moistened his lips. Smiled. Lowered his voice. “But I always remember the most important things. That’s why we do it, isn’t it? For the memories we can take away and use in lonely moments?”
Katrine caught sight of his right hand painting the picture for her as it moved up and down before she looked back at her notes again.
Skarre had argued that they should cuff Finne, but Katrine had objected. She said it would give him a mental advantage if he thought they were that frightened of him. That it might tempt him to toy with them. And now, one minute into the interview, that was precisely what he was doing.
Katrine leafed through the files in front of her. “If your memory isn’t great, perhaps we could talk about the three rape files I’ve got here instead. With witness statements that might help prompt your memory.”
“Touché,” Finne said, and without looking up she knew he was still smiling. “Like I said, I remember the most important details.”
“Let’s hear them.”
“I arrived at about nine o’clock in the evening. She had a stomach ache and was rather pale.”
“Hang on. How did you get in?”
“The door was open, so I went straight in. She screamed and screamed. She was so frightened. So I h-held her.”
“A stranglehold? Or by locking her arms to her sides?”
“I don’t remember.”
She knew they were proceeding too quickly, that she needed more details, but this was first and foremost about getting a confession out of him before he changed his mind. “Then what?”
“She was in so much pain. Blood was pouring out of her. I used a kn-knife...”
“Your own?”
“No, a sharper one, from a knife block.”
“Where on her body did you use it?”
“H-here.”
“The interviewee is pointing at his stomach,” Katrine said.
“Her belly button,” Finne said in an affected, childlike voice. “Her belly button.”
“Her belly button,” Katrine repeated, swallowing a surge of nausea. Swallowing the feeling of triumph. They had the confession. The rest was all icing on the cake.
“Can you describe Rakel Fauke? And the kitchen?”
“Rakel? Beautiful. Like you, K-Katrine. You’re very similar.”
“What was she wearing?”
“I don’t remember. Has anyone ever told you how similar you are? Like s-sisters.”
“Describe the kitchen.”
“A prison. Bars over the windows. You’d almost think they were frightened of something.” Finne laughed. “Shall we call it a day, Katrine?”
“What?”
“I’ve got th-things to do.”
Katrine felt a slight sense of panic. “But we’ve only just begun.”
“Headache. It’s tough, going through such traumatic things as this, I’m sure you can understand that.”
“Just tell me—”
“That wasn’t actually a question, my dear. I’m done here. If you want more, you’ll have to come down to my cell and visit me this evening. I’m fr-free then.”
“The video recording that Dagny Jensen received. Did you send it, and is it of the victim?”
“Yes.” Finne stood up.
From the corner of her eye Katrine saw that Skarre was already on his way. She held one hand up towards the window. She looked down at her folder of questions. Tried to think. She could press on. And risk the possibility that Krohn could invalidate the confession by citing unnecessarily harsh interview methods as the reason. Or she could make do with what she’d got, which was more than enough to get the prosecutor to press charges. They could get the details later, before the trial. She looked at the watch Bjørn had given her on their first anniversary.
“Interview concluded at 17:31,” she said.
When she looked up she discovered that a red-faced Gunnar Hagen had walked into the control room and was talking to Johan Krohn. Skarre came into the interview room and put cuffs on Finne to lead him back to the detention cells in the custody unit. Katrine saw Krohn shrug his shoulders as he said something, and Hagen turned even redder.
“See you, Mrs. Bratt.”
The words were spoken so close to her ear that she could feel the thin spray of saliva that accompanied them. Then Finne and Skarre were gone. She saw Krohn set off after them.
Katrine wiped her face with a tissue before going in to Hagen.
“Krohn has told VG about our horse-trading. It’s already up on their website.”
“And what did he have to say in his defense?”
“That neither party had given any sort of promise to keep it secret. Then he asked if I thought we’d entered into an agreement that didn’t hold up in daylight. Because he prefers to avoid that sort of agreement, apparently.”
“Hypocritical bastard. He just wants to show what he can do.”
“Let’s hope so.”
“What do you mean?”
“Krohn is a smart, devious defense lawyer. But there’s someone even more devious than him.”
Katrine looked at Hagen. Bit her bottom lip. “His client, you mean?”
Hagen nodded, and they both turned and looked through the open door into the corridor. They saw Finne, Skarre and Krohn waiting for the lift.
“You never call at a bad time, Krohn,” Mona Daa said, adjusting her earphone as she studied herself in the mirrored wall of the gym. “You’ll have seen that I’ve been trying to get hold of you too. Along with every other journalist in Norway, I daresay.”
“It’s a bit like that, yes. I’ll get straight to the point. We’re about to issue a press statement about the confession in which we’re considering attaching a picture of Finne that was taken just a couple of weeks ago.”
“Good, the pictures we’ve got of him must be ten years old.”
“Twenty, in fact. Finne’s condition for sending this private picture is that you make it your lead story.”
“Sorry?”
“Don’t ask me why, that’s just how he wants it.”
“I’m not in a position to be able to make that sort of promise, as you’re no doubt aware.”
“Of course I’m aware of journalistic integrity, just as I’m sure you’re aware of the value of such a picture.”
Mona tilted her head and studied her body. The wide belt she used when she was lifting weights made her penguin-shaped body (the association was possibly more the fault of her rolling gait, itself the result of a hip injury from birth) look briefly as if it was shaped like an hourglass. Occasionally, Mona suspected that the belt, which would never be used for anything except pointless weight training, was the real reason she spent so many hours on pointless weight training. Just like personal acknowledgment was a more important driving force in her work than being the watchdog of society, defending free speech, journalistic curiosity and all the other crap they trotted out each year when the Press Awards were handed out. Not that she didn’t believe in those things, but they came in second place, after standing in the spotlight, seeing your byline and measuring up against yourself. When you looked at it like that, Finne was being no more or less perverse in wanting a large picture of himself in the paper, even if it was as a serial rapist and murderer. That was what Finne had spent his life doing, after all, so perhaps it was understandable that he wanted to be a famous killer, at the very least. If people can’t be loved, it’s well known that a popular alternative is to be feared.