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Harry’s heart wouldn’t stop hammering.

He was standing with water halfway up his ankles, panting for breath. He had been running. Running through the streets of the city until there were no streets left, and then he had run out here.

That wasn’t why his heart was so out of control. That had started when he left the Justice. The paralysing cold crept up his legs, over his knees, towards his crotch.

Harry was standing in the plaza in front of the Opera House. Below him, the white marble slid into the fjord like a melting ice cap, a warning of impending disaster.

Bjørn Holm woke up. He lay still in bed, listening.

It wasn’t the baby. It wasn’t Katrine, who had come to bed and lain down behind him without wanting to talk. He opened his eyes. Saw faint light on the white bedroom ceiling. He reached out to the bedside table and saw who was calling on the screen of his mobile. Hesitated. Then he crept quietly out of bed and into the hallway. Pressed Answer.

“It’s the middle of the night,” he whispered.

“Thanks, I wasn’t sure,” Harry said drily.

“Don’t mention it. Goodnight.”

“Don’t hang up. I can’t access the files in Rakel’s case. Looks like my access code’s been blocked.”

“You’d have to talk to Katrine about that.”

“Katrine’s the boss, she has to go by the book, we both know that. But I’ve got your code, and I suppose I might be able to guess your password. Obviously you couldn’t give it to me, because that would be against regulations.”

Pause.

“But?” Bjørn sighed.

“But you could always give me a clue.”

“Harry...”

“I need this, Bjørn. I need it so fucking bad. The fact that it isn’t Finne just means that it’s someone else. Come on, Katrine needs this too, because I know that neither you nor Kripos have got a damn thing.”

“So why you, then?”

“You know why.”

“Do I?”

“Because in a world full of blind people, I’ve got the only eye.”

Another pause.

“Two letters, four numbers,” Bjørn said. “If I had to choose, I’d like to die like him. In a car, right at the start of the new year.”

He hung up.

25

“According to Professor Paul Mattiuzzi, most murderers fit into one of eight categories,” Harry said. “One: chronically aggressive individuals. People with poor impulse control who get easily frustrated, who resent authority, who convince themselves that violence is a legitimate response, and who deep down enjoy finding a way to express their anger. This is the type where you can see it coming.”

Harry put a cigarette between his lips.

“Two: controlled hostility. People who rarely give in to anger, who are emotionally rigid and appear polite and serious. They abide by rules and see themselves as upholders of justice. They can be kind in a way that people take advantage of. They’re simmering pressure cookers where you can’t see anything coming until they explode. The sort where the neighbours say he always seemed such a nice guy.”

Harry sparked his lighter, held it to his cigarette and inhaled.

“Three: the resentful. People who feel that others walk all over them, that they never get what they deserve, that it’s other people’s fault that they haven’t succeeded in life. They bear grudges, especially against people who have criticised or reprimanded them. They assume the role of victim, they’re psychologically impotent, and when they resort to violence because they can’t find other ways to control their violence, it’s usually directed towards people they hold grudges against. Four: the traumatised.”

Harry blew smoke from his mouth and nose.

“The murder is a response to a single assault on the killer’s identity that is so offensive and unbearable that it strips them of all sense of personal power. The murder is necessary if they are to protect the essence of the trauma victim’s existence or masculinity. If you’re aware of the circumstances, this type of murder can usually be both foreseen and prevented.”

Harry held the cigarette between the second knuckles of his index and middle fingers as he stood reflected in the small, half-dried-up puddle framed by brown earth and grey gravel.

“Then there are the rest. Five: obsessive and immature narcissists. Six: paranoid and jealous individuals on the verge of insanity. Seven: people well past the verge of insanity.”

Harry put the cigarette back between his lips and looked up. Let his eyes slide across the timber building. The crime scene. The morning sun was glinting off the windows. Nothing about the house looked different, just the degree of abandonment. It had been the same inside. A sort of paleness, as if the stillness had sucked the colour from the walls and curtains, the faces out of the photographs, the memories out of the books. He hadn’t seen anything he hadn’t seen last time, hadn’t thought anything he hadn’t thought then, they were back where they had ended up last night: back at the start, with the smoking ruins of buildings and hotels behind them.

“And the eighth category?” Kaja asked, wrapping her coat more tightly around her and stamping on the gravel.

“Professor Mattiuzzi calls them the ‘just plain bad and angry.’ Which is a combination of the seven others.”

“And you think the killer you’re looking for is in one of eight categories invented by some American psychologist?”

“Mm.”

“And that Svein Finne is innocent?”

“No. But of Rakel’s murder, yes.”

Harry took a deep drag on his Camel. So deep that he felt the heat of the smoke in his throat. Oddly, it hadn’t come as a shock that Finne’s confession was fake. He had had a feeling that something wasn’t right, ever since they were sitting in the bunker. That Finne had been a bit too happy with the situation. He had deliberately provoked physical violence so that, regardless of what he confessed about the murder or rapes, it could never be used in court. Had he known all along that Rakel’s murder had taken place the same night he was in the maternity unit? Had he been aware that the video clip could be misinterpreted? Or was it only later, before his interview in Police Headquarters, that he realised this irony of fate, that the circumstances were set for a tragicomedy? Harry looked over towards the kitchen window, where in April last year he and Rakel had gathered leaves and branches when they were clearing the garden. That was just after Finne had been released from prison, with a half-spoken threat to pay Harry’s family a visit. If Finne had stood on that trailer one night, he could have seen right in between the bars over the kitchen window, where he would have seen the breadboard on the wall, and could have read the writing on it if his eyesight was good enough. Finne had found out that the house was a fortress. And had hatched his plan.

Harry doubted Krohn was behind the decision to use the false confession to get rid of the rape charges. Krohn was more aware than anyone that anything he won in the short term by a maneuver of that sort was small change in comparison to the damage to the credibility that — even for a defense lawyer with a license to be manipulative — was his real stock-in-trade.