“That’s a hypothetical dilemma, anyway,” Mona said. “If the picture is good quality, then obviously we’d want to blow it up to a decent size. Especially if you let us have it an hour before you send it to the other papers, OK?”
Roar Bohr held his rifle, a Blaser R8 Professional, up to the window frame and peered through the Swarovski X5i sight. Their house lay on a hillside on the west side of Ring 3, just below the Smestad junction, and from the open cellar window he had a view of the residential area on the other side of the motorway as well as Smestaddammen, a small, artificial lake of shallow water that was built in the 1800s to provide the more bourgeois inhabitants of the city with ice.
The red dot in the viewfinder found and stopped on a large white swan that was gliding effortlessly across the surface of the water, as if being blown by the wind. It was between four and five hundred metres away, almost half a kilometre, well above what their American allies in the coalition forces called “maximum point-blank range.” He had the red dot on the swan’s head now. Bohr lowered the sight until the red dot lay on the water just above the swan. He focused on his breathing. Increased the pressure on the trigger. Even the greenest recruits at Rena understood that bullets flew in an arc because even the fastest bullet is affected by gravity, so obviously you have to aim higher the farther away the target is. They also knew that if the target is higher in the terrain, you have to aim even higher, because the bullet has to travel “uphill.” But they usually protested when they were told that even when the target is lower than you, you still have to aim higher — not lower — than on flat terrain.
Roar Bohr could see from the trees outside that there was no wind. The temperature was about ten degrees. The swan was moving at about one metre per second. He imagined the bullet blasting through its little head. The neck losing its tension and crumpling like a snake on top of that chalk-white swan body. It would be a demanding shot even for a sniper in the Special Forces. But no more than he and his colleagues would expect of Roar Bohr. He let the air out of his lungs and moved the sight to the small island by the bridge. That was where the female swan and her cygnets were. He scanned the island, then the rest of the lake, but saw nothing. He sighed, leaned the rifle against the wall and walked over to the chattering, hardworking printer where the end of a sheet of A4 was emerging. He had taken a screengrab of the picture that had just been published on VG’s website, and now he studied the almost-complete face that lay before him. A wide, flat nose. Thick lips with a trace of a sneer. Hair pulled back tightly, presumably gathered in a plait at the back of his neck; that was probably what gave Svein Finne those narrow eyes and an impression of hostility.
The printer squeezed out the last of the sheet with a final drawn-out groan, as if it wanted to push this terrible man away from it. A man who had just, with what seemed to be arrogant pride, confessed to the murder of Rakel Fauke. Just like the Taliban when they accepted responsibility for every bomb that went off in Afghanistan, or at least if the attack had been successful. Claimed responsibility, the way some of the troops in Afghanistan could do if the opportunity arose to steal a kill. Sometimes it was little short of grave-robbing. After chaotic engagements, Roar had witnessed soldiers claiming kills that their superior officer — after checking the footage on the helmet-cams of their own dead — then revealed to have been made by fallen soldiers.
Roar Bohr snatched the sheet of paper and went over to the other end of the large, open cellar room. He fastened it to one of the targets hanging in front of the metal box that caught the bullets. Walked back. The distance was ten and a half metres. He closed the window, which he’d had fitted with three layers of soundproof glass, and put his ear defenders on. Then he picked up the pistol, a High Standard HD 22, from next to the computer, didn’t give himself more time to aim than he could expect in a pressured situation, pointed the gun at the target and fired. Once. Twice. Three times.
Bohr removed the ear defenders, picked up the silencer and began to screw it onto the barrel of the High Standard. A silencer changed the balance, it was like training with two different weapons.
He heard the clatter of steps on the cellar stairs.
“Damn,” he muttered, closing his eyes.
He opened them again and saw Pia’s pale, tense, furious face.
“You frightened the life out of me! I thought I was alone in the house!”
“I’m sorry, Pia, I thought the same.”
“That doesn’t help, Roar! You promised there wouldn’t be any more shooting inside the house! I get back from the shops and am quietly going about my business and then... Anyway, why aren’t you at work? And why are you naked? And what’s that you’ve got on your face?”
Roar Bohr looked down. Oh yes, he was naked. He ran one finger over his face. Looked at his fingertip. Special Forces black camouflage paint.
He put his pistol down on the desk and tapped the keyboard randomly with his finger.
“Working from home.”
It was eight o’clock in the evening, and the investigative team had gathered at the Justice, the Crime Squad Unit’s regular watering hole in good times and bad. It had been Skarre’s idea to celebrate the conclusion of the case, and Katrine hadn’t managed to come up with a good argument against it. Or any explanation as to why she had gone with them. It was a tradition to celebrate victories, it bound them together as a team, and she as head of the Crime Squad Unit ought to have been the first to announce a trip to the Justice after they’d got Finne’s confession. The fact that they had snatched the solution to the case from under Kripos’s nose didn’t exactly make the victory less sweet. That had led to a half-hour phone conversation with Winter, who said that Kripos should have been responsible for questioning Finne, as the principal unit investigating the case. He had reluctantly accepted her explanation that the case was bound up with three rape accusations that fell under the remit of Oslo Police District, and that only Oslo Police District could have done the deal. It’s hard to argue against success.
So why was there something nagging at her? Everything made sense, but there was still something, what Harry used to call the single false note in a symphony orchestra. You can hear it, but you can’t figure out where it’s coming from.
“Fallen asleep, boss?”
Katrine started, and raised her beer glass towards the row of glasses held aloft by her colleagues along the table.
Everyone was there. Apart from Harry, who hadn’t answered her call. As if in response to the thought, she felt her mobile start to vibrate and eagerly pulled it out. She saw from the screen that it was Bjørn. And for a fleeting moment the heretical thought was there. That she could pretend not to have seen it. Explain later — and truthfully — that she had been inundated with calls after they issued the press release about the confession, and that she hadn’t spotted his name in the list of missed calls until later. But then, of course, her wretched mother’s instinct kicked in. She stood up, walked away from the noisy group towards the toilets and pressed Answer.
“Anything wrong?”
“No, nothing,” Bjørn said. “He’s asleep. Just wanted...”
“Just wanted?”