Outside the door, Katrine saw the muscular frame of Kari Beal. She was one of three officers who were working shifts to protect Dagny Jensen.
“Dagny—” Katrine began.
“Jensen,” the woman interrupted. “Miss Jensen.” Then she covered her face with her hands and started to cry. “He’s free forever, and you can’t protect me for that long. But he... he’ll watch me like... like a farmer watching a pregnant cow!”
Her crying turned to hiccoughing sobs, and Katrine wondered what she ought to do. Should she go around her desk and try to comfort the woman, or leave her be? Do nothing. See if it blew over. If it went away.
Katrine cleared her throat. “We’re looking at the possibility of charging Finne for the rapes anyway. To get him behind bars.”
“You’ll never manage that, he’s got that lawyer. And he’s smarter than all of you, anyone can see that!”
“He may be smarter, but he’s on the wrong side.”
“And you’re on the right side? Harry Hole’s side?”
Katrine didn’t answer.
“You persuaded me not to press charges,” Dagny said.
Katrine opened her desk drawer and handed Dagny a tissue. “Obviously it’s up to you if you want to change your mind, Miss Jensen. If you want to file a formal complaint against Hole for claiming to be a police officer on active duty and for the way he put you in danger, I’m sure he would be dismissed and charged to your full satisfaction.”
Katrine saw from Dagny Jensen’s expression that that had come out rather sharper than she intended.
“You don’t know, Bratt.” Dagny wiped the makeup running from her eyes. “You don’t know what it’s like, bearing a child that you don’t want...”
“We can help arrange an appointment to see a doctor who—”
“Let me finish!”
Katrine closed her mouth.
“Sorry,” Dagny whispered. “I’m just so exhausted. I was going to say that you don’t know how it feels...” She took a deep, trembling breath. “...to still want the baby anyway.”
In the silence that followed, Katrine could hear footsteps hurrying up and down the corridor outside her office. But they had been moving faster yesterday. Tired feet.
“Don’t I?” Katrine said.
“What?”
“Nothing. Of course I can’t know how you feel. Look, I want to get Finne as much as you. And we will. The fact that he tricked us with that deal won’t stop us. That’s a promise.”
“The last time I got a promise like that from a police officer, it came from Harry Hole.”
“This is a promise from me. From this office. This building. This city.”
Dagny Jensen put the tissue down on the desk and stood up.
“Thanks.”
When she had gone, it struck Katrine that she had never heard a single syllable express so much and yet so little. So much resignation. So little hope.
Harry stared at the memory card he had put down on the bar counter in front of him.
“What can you see?” Øystein Eikeland asked. He was playing Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly. According to Øystein, that was where the bar was at its lowest for old men who wanted to overcome their prejudices against hip-hop.
“Night recordings,” Harry said.
“Now you sound like St. Thomas when he puts a cassette to his ear and says he can hear it. You’ve seen the documentary?”
“No. Good?”
“Good music. And a few interesting clips and interviews. Way too long, though. Looks like they had too much footage and couldn’t manage to focus.”
“Same here,” Harry said, turning the memory card over.
“Direction is everything.”
Harry nodded slowly.
“I’ve got a dishwasher to empty,” Øystein said, and disappeared into the back room.
Harry closed his eyes. The music. The references. The memories. Prince. Marvin Gaye. Chick Corea. Vinyl records, the scratch of a needle, Rakel lying on the sofa at Holmenkollveien, sleepy, smiling as he whispers: “Listen now, this bit...”
Perhaps she had been lying on the sofa when he arrived.
Who was he?
Maybe it wasn’t a he; not even that much was possible to determine from the recordings.
But the first person, who had arrived on foot at eight o’clock and left again half an hour later, that had been a man, Harry was fairly certain of that. And he hadn’t been expected. She had opened the door and stood there for two or three seconds instead of letting him in at once. Perhaps he had asked if he could come in, and she had let him in without hesitation. So she had known him well. How well? So well that he had let himself out just under half an hour later. Perhaps that visit had nothing to do with the murder, but Harry couldn’t help the questions from popping up: What can a man and a woman do in just under half an hour? Why had the lights in the kitchen and living room been dimmed when he left? Bloody hell, he didn’t have time to let his thoughts wander off in that direction now. So he hurried on instead.
The car that had arrived three hours later.
It had parked right in front of the steps. Why? A shorter walk to the house, less chance of being seen. Yes, that fitted with the fact that the automatic light inside the car was switched off.
But there was slightly too much of a gap between the car arriving and the front door of the house opening.
Perhaps the driver had been looking for something inside the car.
Gloves. A cloth to wipe fingerprints off with. Perhaps he checked that the safety was on on the pistol he was going to threaten her with. Because obviously he wasn’t going to kill her with that; ballistics analysis can identify the pistol, which identifies the owner. He would use a knife he found at the scene. The perfect knife, the one the murderer already knew he would find in the knife block on the kitchen counter.
Or had he improvised in there, had the knife at the scene been a matter of chance?
The thought had struck Harry because it seemed careless to spend so long in the car in front of the steps. Rakel could have woken up and become alarmed, the neighbours could have chanced to look out of their windows. And when the man finally opened the front door and enough light filtered out for them to see the silhouette of an oddly hunched figure disappear inside, what was that? Someone who was intoxicated? That might fit with the clumsy parking, and the fact that he had taken so long getting to the door, but not the light inside the car and the clean crime scene.
A mixture of planning, intoxication and chance?
The person in question had been in there for almost three hours, from just before midnight until around half past two in the morning. Given the Forensic Department’s estimate of the time of death, he had been in there for a long time after committing the murder, and had taken plenty of time to clean up.
Could it be the same person who was there earlier that evening, and he had come back later in his car?
No.
The images had been too poor to see anything clearly, but there was something about the shape — the person who had been hunched over when he went in had looked broader. But, on the other hand, that could be thanks to a change of clothes, or even a shadow.
The person who had come out at 02:23 had stood for a couple of seconds in the doorway, and had looked as if he were swaying. Injured? Intoxicated? Momentary dizziness?
He had got in the car, the lights had come on, then gone off again. He had walked around behind the wildlife camera. End of recording.
Harry rubbed the memory card, hoping that a genie might appear.
He was thinking about this wrong. All wrong! Damn, damn.