Anne Holt - 1222

‘Is something wrong?’ whispered Geir.

‘No,’ I said, meeting his gaze. ‘But I need a place where I can be alone. The office? I have to have space and time to think. OK?’

‘Of course,’ he said, pushing my chair towards the reception desk.

I didn’t protest, and my hands rested idly on my lap.

Logic, I thought.

How I was going to be able to think logically and systematically in the chaos of impressions we had all had to deal with, I didn’t know. I only knew that I had to start somewhere.

Geir had wheeled me back to the office. The flip chart was still there, and Magnus’s red sketch of Roar Hanson’s body was still hanging from the pale brown wooden blinds. The big hole in his stomach looked like a gaping mouth. A small Cupid’s bow cut into the top of the oval, where the marker pen had caught and come off the paper.

Despite the fact that I had no basis on which to draw one single conclusion, I had decided we were dealing with just one perpetrator. I felt it was out of the question that two murderers entirely independent of one another should strike in the situation in which we found ourselves, with such a limited number of people and over a period of two days. And yet the difference in method was worrying. I was still not completely convinced that Magnus’s theory about a frozen spike was correct, but it would probably serve as a starting point for the time being. However, it was difficult to understand why someone would use an icicle when he or she obviously had access to a gun. Earlier I had guessed that Cato Hammer had been killed with a revolver, but of course it could just as easily have been a heavy-calibre pistol.

The Kurds had guns. I hadn’t seen his, but the movement of his hand towards the shoulder holster had been unmistakable. She definitely had a revolver. Therefore, I ought to suspect both of them. For some reason I couldn’t keep them in focus; their faces slid away every time I tried to add them to the overview of possible perpetrators I had set up in my mind’s eye.

I used to call it intuition in the old days.

It could no longer be trusted, of course.

I wheeled my chair over to the flip chart. The pen was lying on the metal lip below the paper, and I slowly took off the cap. Cato Hammer, I wrote at the top of the page.

The name told me everything and nothing. Red letters against cheap greyish paper. I tried to see past my own slanting handwriting. A name is an icon. A brief expression of the person who bears it.

I used to be able to do this. Once upon a time I was good.

I wrote Roar Hanson under the name of the other priest. Four letters in each forename. Roar and Cato. Six letters in each surname. Hanson and Hammer.

Coincidences. I wasn’t looking for coincidences. I was looking for connections.

Both were priests. They had been at college together. They were the same age. They had worked together in the past, and they were working together now. Or rather: their involvement in the church commission wasn’t actually a job, I supposed. More of a project, presumably. Cato Hammer was an outgoing person, known all over the country. Fat, jovial and a football fan. Roar Hanson was anonymous and grey, about as exciting as a grand master in chess.

I tore off the sheet of paper. Wrote the names again, this time with Roar Hanson at the top.

I had to start with the person I knew best.

I hadn’t exchanged a word with Cato Hammer. All I knew about the man was what I had read or seen on TV. Most public figures turn into paper dolls on the way from reality to representation in the tabloids. Knowing this should of course have stopped me disliking Hammer. But as I’ve said: I’m not particularly bothered about becoming a better person. Although I have to say that I knew Roar Hanson slightly better. If it hadn’t been for Adrian’s constant interruptions, I would have known even more. I felt a surge of adrenalin at the thought; I could have shaken him like a rag.

Forget Adrian, I tried to tell myself.

Roar Hanson had definitely found something out. Or rather, he thought he had found something out. The man had been walking around like a living ghost, stooping and almost transparent with despair. Of course I had no way of knowing if he was right in his assumptions about who had shot Cato Hammer. It would have been considerably easier if we had been allowed to complete our conversations; he had been on the point of sharing his suspicions with me on two occasions.

I refused to think about Adrian.

The boy was lost anyway. He wasn’t my problem.

Someone knocked on the door.

I didn’t want any visitors. Didn’t need them.

‘Come in,’ I said.

‘Is this where you’re sitting?’ Magnus asked rhetorically, settling himself down on the office chair behind the cluttered desk without asking if it was OK.

‘Yes, I’m sitting here – it’s all I can do.’

He looked curiously at the flip chart.

‘Can I join in?’ he asked.

‘With what?’

‘With this… thought game. Because that’s what you’re doing, isn’t it? Thinking?’

I sighed. A little too loudly. A little too demonstratively.

‘Hanne Wilhelmsen, my good friend.’

His voice had changed character. It had greater depth without sounding contrived, as if there were another man hidden inside that short body. I didn’t understand him. He called me his good friend, even though he didn’t know me. The constant switching between joker and omniscient sage, doctor and clown, wag and sharp observer was beginning to erode the sympathy I definitely felt for the man.

‘Hanne Wilhelmsen,’ he repeated, clasping his chubby hands at the back of his neck.

The odour of sweat hit my nostrils. It was more difficult to handle now I was clean. He smiled, as if he understood without letting it bother him. At any rate, he didn’t lower his arms.

‘You can’t quite make up your mind,’ he said, not taking his eyes off me. ‘On the one hand, you find it difficult to dislike me. My whole… appearance stops you from feeling sorry for me. People, by which I mean people in general, are sympathetic towards those of us who suffer the brutal and unpredictable caprices of nature. To dislike me would be to lose the illusion of being a good person, more than anything. Believe me, I have understood this ever since I was a little boy. To be honest, I have exploited it. A great deal.’

He beamed. An entire finger could have fitted between his front teeth.

‘You and I are basically very similar,’ he went on. ‘We are both different from other people, albeit in different ways. What separates us…’

Finally he unclasped his hands and leaned forward.

‘Do you know what my father used to do when I was growing up?’

I had no idea what old Streng used to do when Magnus was growing up. The need to know didn’t feel all that compelling.

‘Every evening after I’d had my bath and before bedtime, he used to take me into his office. Every single evening. I would be wearing my pyjamas. Striped flannel pyjamas with sleeves and legs that my mother had shortened. Turned up, I think they say. Always flannel pyjamas. With blue and white stripes. He was a man of the old school, my father. A giant of a man. A real outdoor type. I would curl up on his knee while he leafed through his books. He would show me animals. Ants busily building their anthills. Elephants in Thailand with enormous logs perfectly balanced above their jaws. Hunting lions and grotesque hyenas, cleaning up the savannah and disposing of infectious corpses. Hummingbirds hovering over the most fantastic flowers.’