Jo Nesbo - Police

Harry rang off, and at that moment Karsten Kaspersen came in through the door.

‘I found some iodine and cotton. And tweezers as well. So we can pull out the splinters.’

‘Thanks, Kaspersen, but the splinters are more or less holding me together, so just leave the stuff on the table.’

‘But, heck, you-’

Harry waved the protesting Kaspersen out while calling Bellman. Was put through to his voicemail. Swore. Searched for Ulla Bellman, found a landline number in Høyenhall. And then heard a gentle, melodic voice articulate the surname.

‘Harry Hole here. Is your husband there?’

‘No, he just went out.’

‘This is pretty important. Where is he?’

‘He didn’t say.’

‘When-?’

‘He didn’t say.’

‘If-’

‘-he turns up I’ll tell him to call you, Harry Hole.’

‘Thank you.’

He hung up.

Forced himself to wait. Wait while sitting with his elbows on the table and his head in his hands, listening to blood dripping onto unmarked tests. Counted the drips as if they were ticking seconds.

The forest. The forest. There’s no metro in the forest. And the acoustics. He had sounded as if he was outside, not inside.

When Harry had called Arnold that night Arnold had claimed he was at home.

Yet Harry had heard the metro in the background.

There could of course have been relatively innocent reasons for Arnold Folkestad lying about where he was. A female acquaintance he wanted to keep quiet, for example. And it could have been a coincidence that when Harry rang, the young girl was being dug up in Vestre Cemetery. Close to where the metro passes by. Coincidences. But enough to cause other things to surface. The statistic.

Harry glanced at his watch again.

Thought about Rakel and Oleg. They were at home.

Home. Where he would have been. Where he should have been. Where he would never be. Not completely, not fully, not the way he wanted to be. Because it was true, he didn’t have it in him. Instead he had this otherness in him, like a flesh-eating bacterium, which consumed everything else in his life, which not even alcohol could keep down and which he still, after all these years, didn’t completely understand. Only that in some way or other it had to be similar to what Arnold Folkestad had. An imperative so strong and all-encompassing that it could almost justify all it destroyed. Then — at long last — she rang.

‘He ordered quite a few surgical instruments and items of clothing some weeks ago. You don’t need any kind of special authorisation to do that.’

‘Anything else?’

‘No, he doesn’t seem to have been online much. Seems to have been quite cautious in fact.’

‘Anything else?’

‘I checked whether he’d had any physical injuries or anything like that. And some hospital records came up. From several years ago.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes. He was admitted with what the doctor said in his report was a beating, but the patient claimed he fell down the stairs. The doctor rejected this as a cause and referred to the widespread injuries all over his body. He wrote that the patient was a police officer and would have to judge for himself what should be reported. He also wrote that his knee would never completely recover.’

‘So he was beaten up. What about the crime scenes and the cop killer?’

‘I didn’t find any links there, though it looks as if he worked on some of the original murder cases when he was at Kripos. And I did find a link with one of the victims.’

‘Oh?’

‘René Kalsnes. At first he just cropped up by chance, but then I refined the search. These two had quite a lot to do with each other. Flights abroad with Folkestad paying for both of them, double rooms and suites registered in both their names in a variety of European cities. Jewellery I doubt Folkestad would have worn, but he bought it in Barcelona and Rome. In short, looks like the two of them-’

‘-were lovers,’ Harry said.

‘I’d say more like secret lovers,’ Katrine said. ‘When they travelled from Norway they sat in different rows, sometimes even on different flights. And when they stayed at hotels in Norway it was always in single rooms.’

‘Arnold was a policeman,’ Harry said. ‘He thought it was safest to stay in the closet.’

‘But he wasn’t the only person wooing this René with weekends away and endless gifts.’

‘I’m sure he wasn’t. And what is equally sure is that the previous investigation teams should have seen this.’

‘Now you’re being harsh, Harry. They didn’t have my search engines.’

Harry ran a hand carefully over his face. ‘Maybe not. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m being unfair when I think the murder of a promiscuous gay man didn’t arouse in the detectives involved an urge to graft for a result.’

‘Yes, you are.’

‘Fine. Anything else?’

‘Not for the moment.’

‘OK.’

He slipped the phone into his pocket. Glanced at his watch.

A sentence uttered by Arnold Folkestad ran through his mind.

Anyone who doesn’t dare to stand up for justice should have a guilty conscience .

Was that what Folkestad was doing with these revenge murders? Standing up for justice?

And what had he said when they spoke about Silje Gravseng’s mental state? ‘I have some experience of OCD.’ Meaning he knew what it was like to stop at nothing.

The man had been sitting opposite Harry and spelling it out for him.

Bjørn rang after seven minutes.

‘They’ve checked Truls Berntsen’s line and no one has rung tonight.’

‘Mm. So Folkestad went straight to Berntsen’s place and picked him up. What about Folkestad’s phone?’

‘It’s switched on and can be located in the area round Slemdalsveien, Chateau Neuf and-’

‘Shit,’ Harry said. ‘Hang up and ring his number.’

Harry waited for a few seconds. Then he heard a vibration somewhere. It came from one of the desk drawers. Harry pulled at them. Locked. Apart from the bottom one, the deepest. A display shone up at him. Harry took the phone and accepted the call.

‘Found it,’ he said.

‘Hello?’

‘Harry, Bjørn. Folkestad’s smart. He left the phone registered in his name here. I’d guess it was here when all the murders were committed.’

‘So that no one at the phone company would be able to go back and reconstruct his movements.’

‘And as evidence that he’s been working here as usual if he should need an alibi. Since it isn’t even locked up, my guess is we won’t find anything revealing on the phone.’

‘You mean he’s got another one?’

‘Pay as you go, bought with cash, perhaps in someone else’s name. That’s how he calls the victims.’

‘And as the phone’s there tonight. .’

‘He’s been out and about, yes.’

‘But if he needs to use the phone as an alibi, it’s strange he hasn’t taken it. Taken it home. If the signals show it’s been at PHS all night-’

‘It won’t work as a plausible alibi. There is another possibility.’

‘What’s that?’

‘He hasn’t finished tonight’s work yet.’

‘Oh Christ. Do you think-?’

‘I don’t think anything. I can’t get hold of Bellman. Could you ring Hagen, explain the situation and ask if he would authorise the mobil-isation of Delta? To raid Folkestad’s home address.’

‘You think he’s at home?’

‘No. But we-’

‘-start searching where there is light,’ Bjørn completed.

Harry hung up again. Closed his eyes. The whistling in his ears had almost gone. Instead there was another noise. Ticking. The seconds being counted down. Shit! He pressed his knuckles against his eyes.

Could anyone else have received an anonymous call today? Who? And where from? From a pay-as-you-go phone. Or a payphone. Or a large switchboard where the number didn’t come up.