“To check how late you thought you’d be?”
“No later than necessary. I can’t just leave, though.”
“No, of course not, I get that. Who else is there?”
“Who? The team who worked on the case, of course.”
“Just them? No... outsiders?”
Katrine straightened up. Bjørn was a kind and cautious man. A man who was liked by everyone because he also had charm and a quiet, solid air of confidence. But even if it wasn’t something she and Bjørn Holm ever talked about, she was in no doubt that he asked himself at regular intervals how on earth he had ended up with a girl half the men — and a few of the women — in Crime Squad had their eye on, at least until she became their boss. One of the reasons why he had never raised the subject was probably that he knew there were few things as unsexy as an insecure and chronically jealous partner. And he had managed to hide it, even when she had dumped him eighteen months ago and they spent a short time apart before getting back together again. But it was hard to maintain the pretense in the long run, and she had begun to notice that something had changed between them over the past few months. Maybe it was because he was at home with the baby, maybe it was simply lack of sleep. Or maybe she was just a bit oversensitive after everything she’d had to deal with in the previous six months.
“Just us,” she said. “I’ll be home before ten.”
“Stay longer, I just wanted to check.”
“Before ten,” she repeated, and looked over towards the door. At the tall man who was standing among the other clientele, looking around him.
She ended the call.
He was trying to appear relaxed, but she could see the tension in his body, the hunted look in his eyes. Then he caught sight of her, and she saw the way his shoulders relaxed.
“Harry!” she said. “You came.” She gave him a hug. Used the short embrace to breathe in the smell that was simultaneously so familiar and so strange. And she was struck once again that the best thing about Harry Hole was that he smelled so good. Not good like perfume or meadows and woodland. Sometimes he smelled of stale drink, and occasionally she detected an acrid note of sweat. But taken as a whole, he smelled good, in some indefinable way. It was the smell of him. Surely that wasn’t something she needed to feel guilty for thinking, was it?
Magnus Skarre came over to them, slightly glassy-eyed and with a blissful grin on his face.
“They reckon it’s my round.” He put one hand on each of their shoulders. “Beer, Harry? I heard you were the one who managed to get Finne. Yeah! Ha!”
“Just Coke,” Harry said, discreetly shrugging off Skarre’s hand.
Skarre went off to the bar.
“So you’re back on the wagon again,” Katrine said.
Harry nodded. “For a while.”
“Why do you think he confessed?”
“Finne?”
“Obviously I know it’s because he gets a reduced sentence by confessing, and he realised we had a solid case against him with that video clip he sent. And of course he avoided being charged with rape, but is that all?”
“How do you mean?”
“Don’t you think it could also be what we all want, what we feel a need for — to confess our sins?”
Harry looked at her. Moistened his lips. “No,” he said.
Katrine noticed a man in a smart jacket and blue shirt leaning over their table, and someone pointed towards her and Harry. The man nodded and set off towards them.
“Journalist alert,” Katrine sighed.
“Jon Morten Melhus,” the man said. “I’ve been trying to contact you all evening, Bratt.”
Katrine looked at him more closely. Journalists weren’t usually this polite.
“In the end I got hold of someone else at Police Headquarters, explained why I was calling, and was told that I would probably find you here.”
No one at Police Headquarters would tell a random caller where she was.
“I’m a surgeon at Ullevål Hospital. I called because we had a rather dramatic occurrence a while back. Complications arose during a birth and we had to perform an emergency caesarean. The mother had a man with her who said he was the child’s father, something the woman confirmed. And at first it looked as though he was going to be useful. When the mother found out that we needed to perform the caesarean she was extremely worried, and the man sat with her, stroking her forehead, comforting her and promising that it would all be very quick. And it’s true, it doesn’t usually take more than five minutes to get the baby out. But I remember it because I overheard him saying: ‘A knife in your stomach. Then it’s all over.’ Not an inaccurate description, but a somewhat unusual choice of words. I didn’t think any more about it at the time, seeing as he kissed her immediately afterwards. What was more unusual was that he wiped her lips after kissing her. And that he filmed as we performed the caesarean. But what was most unusual was that he suddenly pushed his way to the woman and wanted to remove the baby himself. When we tried to stop him, he inserted his hand right into the incision we had made.”
Katrine grimaced.
“Damn,” Harry said quietly. “Damn, damn.”
Katrine looked at him. Something was slowly dawning on her, but first and foremost she was confused.
“We managed to drag him away and perform the remainder of the operation,” Melhus said. “Fortunately there were no signs of infection in the mother.”
“Svein Finne. It was Svein Finne.”
Melhus looked at Harry and slowly nodded. “But he gave us a different name.”
“Of course,” Harry said. “But you saw the picture of him that VG published this afternoon.”
“Yes, and I’ve no doubt at all that it was the same man. Especially not after I noticed the painting on the wall in the background. The photograph was taken in the waiting room of our maternity unit.”
“So why so late reporting the incident, and why to me personally?” Katrine asked.
Melhus looked momentarily confused. “I’m not reporting it.”
“No?”
“No. It isn’t unusual for people to behave in unpredictable ways under the mental and physical stress of a complicated birth. And he definitely didn’t give the impression that he wanted to harm the mother, he was just entirely focused on the child. It all calmed down and everything was fine, like I said. He even cut the umbilical cord.”
“With a knife,” Harry said.
“That’s right.”
Katrine frowned. “What is it, Harry? What have you realised that I haven’t quite got my head around yet?”
“The date and time,” Harry said, still looking at Melhus. “You’ve read about the murder, and you’ve come to tell us that Svein Finne has an alibi. He was in the maternity unit that night.”
“We’re in something of a grey area here when it comes to the Hippocratic Oath, which is why I wanted to talk to you in person, Bratt.” Melhus looked at Katrine with the professionally sympathetic expression of someone who has been trained to pass on bad news. “I’ve spoken to the midwife, and she says this man was present from the time the mother was admitted around 21:30, until the birth was over at five the following morning.”
Katrine put one hand over her face.
From the table came the sound of happy laughter, followed by the clink of beer glasses. Someone must just have told a well-received joke.
Part 2
24
It was just before midnight when VG published the news that the police had released Svein Finne, “the Fiancé.”
Johan Krohn declared to the same paper that his client’s confession still stood, but that the police had, of their own volition, concluded that in all likelihood it did not relate to Rakel Fauke, but to another offence in which his client may have harmed a mother in childbirth and her baby. There were witnesses, and even video evidence, but no report had been filed about the incident. But the confession had been provided, his client had kept his side of the deal, and Krohn warned the police of the consequences if they didn’t keep their side and drop the charges in relation to the vague and groundless accusations of rape.