Maybe. Maybe not.
Twenty-five years’ experience as a murder detective had taught Harry that the chain of events was almost always more complicated and incomprehensible than it seemed at first.
But that the motive was almost always as simple and obvious as it seemed at first glance.
Peter Ringdal had been in love with Rakel. Hadn’t Harry seen the desire in his eyes the first time he came to view the Jealousy? Maybe he had been viewing Rakel as well. Love and murder. The classic combination. When Rakel rejected Ringdal in her home, maybe she told him she was going to take Harry back. And we’re all stuck in our ways. Bed-hoppers, thieves, drunks, murderers. We repeat our sins and hope for forgiveness, from God, other people, ourselves. So Peter Ringdal had killed Rakel Fauke the way he killed his ex-wife, Andrea Klitchkova.
Harry had originally been thinking along different lines. That it was the same person who had been there earlier that evening, that the murder had happened then, and then the perpetrator — who knew Rakel would be alone — had come back later to clean up. From the images on the wildlife camera they had seen Rakel in the doorway when she opened the door, but not the second time. Could that be because she was already dead. Maybe the murderer had taken her keys, let himself in, cleaned up and then left the keys behind when he left the house? Or had the murderer sent someone else to clean up after him? Harry had a vague notion that the silhouettes of the two visitors couldn’t belong to the same person. Either way, Harry had rejected that theory because the Forensic Medical Institute’s written report had been so certain about the time of the murder, that because of the temperature of the body and the room, the murder must have taken place after the first visit. In other words, while the second visitor was there.
Harry heard the needle of the record player bump gently against the label, as if to point out discreetly that the record needed to be turned over. His brain was suggesting more loud, numbing hard rock, but he resisted, the way he routinely resisted the same bastard brain’s suggestion to have a drink, just a sip, a few drops. Time to go to bed. And if he managed to get some sleep, that would be a bonus. He lifted the record from the deck without touching the grooves, without leaving any fingerprints. Ringdal had forgotten to clean the glass in the dishwasher. Odd, really. Harry slid the album into the inner sleeve, then the cover. He ran his finger over the spines of his records. Alphabetical by artist’s name, then chronologically by date of acquisition. He inserted his hand between the eponymous albums The Rainmakers and Ramones to make space for the new acquisition. He caught sight of something tucked between the albums. He pushed them aside a bit harder to see better. Shut his eyes. His heart began to beat faster, as if it had understood something his brain hadn’t yet taken in.
His phone rang.
Harry answered.
“It’s Alexandra. I’ve done a first sweep and I can already see differences in the DNA profiles that mean the blood on this Ringdal guy’s sweater can’t possibly be Rakel’s.”
“Mm.”
“And it doesn’t match yours either. And the blood on your jeans isn’t yours either.”
Silence.
“Harry?”
“Yes.”
“Is something wrong?”
“I don’t know. I suppose it must be blood from his nose on his sweater and my jeans, then. We’ve still got fingerprints tying him to the scene. And Rakel’s scarf in the drawer in his home, it smells of her, it’s bound to have her DNA on it. Hair, sweat, skin.”
“OK. But there’s a difference between the DNA profiles of the blood on the sweater and on your trousers as well.”
“Are you saying that the blood on the sweater doesn’t belong to Rakel, me or Ringdal?”
“It’s a possibility.”
Harry realised she was giving him time to figure out the other possibilities for himself. The other possibility. It was a matter of logic.
“The blood on my trousers isn’t Ringdal’s. And you began by saying it wasn’t mine. So whose is it, then?”
“I don’t know,” Alexandra said. “But...”
“But?” Harry stared in between the records. He knew what she was going to say. There were no longer any loose stones warning of a landslide. That had already happened. The whole mountainside had given way.
“So far, the blood on your trousers doesn’t show any deviation from Rakel’s DNA,” Alexandra said. “Obviously there’s a lot of work left before we get to the 99.999 percent probability that we count as a complete match, but we’re already up to 82 percent.”
Eighty percent. Four out of five.
“Of course,” Harry said. “I was wearing the trousers when I was at the scene after Rakel was found. I knelt down beside her body. There was a pool of blood there.”
“That explains that, if it really is Rakel’s blood on your trousers. Do you want me to carry on with the analysis that could rule out the possibility that the blood on the sweater is Rakel’s?”
“No, there’s no need,” Harry said. “Thanks, Alexandra. I owe you one.”
“OK. You’re sure everything’s OK? You sound so—”
“Yes,” Harry interrupted. “Thanks, and goodnight.” He ended the call.
There had been a pool of blood. He had knelt down. But that wasn’t what had triggered the scream inside Harry’s head, the landslide that was already starting to bury him. Because he hadn’t been wearing those trousers when he was in Rakel’s house with the crime-scene investigators, he had left them in the laundry basket the morning after the night she was murdered. That much he did remember. Until now, his memory had been as blank as a crystal ball when it came to that night, from the time he walked into the Jealousy Bar at seven in the evening until the time the woman collecting for charity rang on the door and woke him the next day. But images were starting to appear, connect, become a sequence. A film with him in the lead role. And what was screaming inside his head, in a trembling, broken voice, was his own voice, the soundtrack from Rakel’s living room. He had been there on the night of the murder.
And squeezed between The Rainmakers and the Ramones lay the knife Rakel had loved. A Tojiro knife with an oak handle and a white guard of water-buffalo horn. The blade was smeared with something that could only be blood.
35
Ståle Aune was dreaming. At least, he assumed it was a dream. The siren that had been cutting through the air had stopped abruptly, and now he could hear the distant rumble of bombers as he ran through the empty street to the air-raid shelter. He was late, everyone else had got inside long before, and now he could see that a man in uniform was closing the metal door at the end of the street. He could hear himself panting for breath, he should have tried to lose some weight. But on the other hand, it was only a dream, everyone knew Norway wasn’t at war. But perhaps we’ve been attacked suddenly? Ståle reached the door and discovered that the opening was much smaller than he had thought. “Come on!” the man in uniform yelled. Ståle tried to get in, but it was impossible, all he could do was get his shoulder and one foot inside. “Get in or get lost, I have to close the door!” Ståle kept pushing. And now he was stuck, he couldn’t get in or out. The air-raid siren started to blare again. Damn. But he could comfort himself with the fact that all the evidence suggested that this was a dream, nothing more.