Jo Nesbo - Police

‘She would have been.’

‘If you hadn’t raped her before she had a chance?’

‘If I’d been there.’

‘You admitted just now that you’d been there that night, Valentin.’

‘To get you to describe the rape in a bit more detail. It’s pretty boring sitting in a cell, you know. You have to. . spice up the day as best you can.’

Silence.

Then Valentin’s high-pitched laughter. Katrine shuddered and pulled her cardigan tighter around her.

‘You look like someone’s pissed. . what is that expression, Officer?’

Katrine closed her eyes and recalled his face.

‘Let’s put the Otta case to one side for a moment. What about the girl in Maridalen, Valentin?’

‘What about her?’

‘It was you, wasn’t it?’

Loud laughter this time. ‘You’ll have to practise that one a bit harder, Officer. The confrontation stage of the interview has to have a punch like a piledriver, not a pat on the head.’

Katrine could hear that Valentin’s vocabulary extended beyond that of most inmates.

‘So you deny it?’

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘No.’

Katrine could hear the quivering excitement as the policeman took a deep breath and said with hard-won composure: ‘Does that mean. . that you admit committing the rape and murder in Maridalen in September?’ At least he was experienced enough to specify what he hoped Valentin would answer yes to, so that the defence counsel couldn’t claim afterwards that the accused had misunderstood which case they were actually talking about. But she also heard the merriment in the interviewee’s voice as he answered:

‘It means I don’t need to deny it.’

‘What the h-’

‘It starts with an “a” and finishes in an “i”.’

Short pause.

‘How can you tell me off the top of your head that you’ve definitely got an alibi for that night, Valentin? It’s quite a long time ago.’

‘Because I was thinking about it when he told me. What I was doing at that very moment.’

‘Who told you what?’

‘The guy who raped the girl.’

Long pause.

‘Are you messing us about, Valentin?’

‘What do you think, Officer Zachrisson?’

‘What makes you think that’s my name?’

‘Snarliveien 41. Am I right?’

Another pause. More laughter and Valentin’s voice. ‘In your porridge, that’s what it is. You look like someone’s pissed in your porridge.’

‘Where did you find out about the rape?’

‘This is a prison for pervs, Officer. What do you think we talk about? Thank you for sharing that with me, as we say. He didn’t think he was giving that much away, but I read the papers, and I remember the case well.’

‘So who was it, Valentin?’

‘So when will it be, Zachrisson?’

‘When?’

‘When can I count on being let out if I grass?’

Katrine felt an urge to fast-forward, past the repeated pauses.

‘I’ll be back in a while.’

A chair scraped. A door was closed gently.

Katrine waited. She heard the man inhaling and exhaling. And felt something strange. She was having difficulty breathing. It was as if his breathing in the speakers was sucking the life out of her sitting room.

The policeman could hardly have been away for more than a couple of minutes, but it felt like half an hour.

‘OK,’ he said with a scrape of the chair again.

‘That was quick. And my sentence will be commuted as well?’

‘You know we’re not responsible for sentencing, Valentin. But we’ll talk to a judge, all right? So who’s your alibi and who raped the girl?’

‘I was at home all night. I was with my landlady and unless she’s suffering from Alzheimer’s she’ll confirm that.’

‘How come you can remember just like that?’

‘I have a thing about noting dates of rapes. If you don’t find the lucky man at once I know that sooner or later you’ll come asking me where I was.’

‘I see. And now for the sixty-four thousand dollar question. Who did it?’

The answer was articulated slowly and with overly precise diction. ‘Ju-das Jo-hansen. An old acquaintance of the police, as they say.’

‘Judas Johansen?’

‘You work in Vice and you don’t recognise the name of a notorious rapist, Zachrisson?’

The sound of shuffling feet. ‘What makes you think I don’t recognise the name?’

‘Your expression is as blank as outer space, Zachrisson. Johansen is the greatest rapist talent since. . well, since me. And there’s a murderer inside him. He doesn’t know that yet himself, but it’s just a question of time before the murderer wakes up, believe me.’

Katrine imagined she heard the clunk of the salivating policeman’s jaw as it fell. She listened to the crackling silence. She thought she could hear the officer’s pulse racing, the sweat springing from his brow as he tried to rein in the excitement and the nerves now that he knew he was close to the moment, the great breakthrough, the feather in the detective’s cap.

‘How, how-’ Zachrisson stammered, but was interrupted by a howl which was distorted in the speakers and which Katrine eventually realised was laughter. Valentin’s laughter. The shrill howls mutated gradually into long, gasping sobs.

‘I’m pulling your leg, Zachrisson. Judas Johansen is a homo. He’s in the cell next to me.’

‘What?’

‘Do you want to hear a story that’s much more interesting than the one you came up with? Judas fucked a young lad and they were caught red-handed, so to speak, by the mother. Unfortunately for Judas the boy was still in the closet and the family was of the rich, conservative variety. So they reported Judas for rape. Judas! Who’d never hurt a fly. Or is it a flea? Fly, flea. Fly. Flea. Anyway, what do you think about taking up that case if you get a tip-off? I can tell you a thing or two about what the lad’s been up to since then. I take it the offer of time off is still on the table?’

Chair legs scraped on the floor. The bang of a chair falling backwards. A click and silence. The tape recorder had been switched off.

Katrine sat staring at the computer screen. Noticed that darkness had fallen outside. The cod heads had gone cold.

‘Yes, yes, yes,’ Anton Mittet said. ‘He spoke !’

Anton Mittet was standing in the corridor with the phone to his ear while checking the ID cards of two doctors who had arrived. Their faces showed a mixture of surprise and annoyance. Surely he could remember them?

Anton waved them through and they hurried in to the patient.

‘But what did he say?’ Gunnar Hagen asked on the phone.

‘She only heard him mumble something, not what he said.’

‘Is he awake now?’

‘No, there was just some mumbling and then he was gone again. But the doctors say he could wake up at any moment.’

‘I see,’ Hagen said. ‘Keep me posted, OK? Ring any time. Whenever.’

‘OK.’

‘Good. Good. The hospital has standing orders to contact me as well, as far as that goes, but. . yes, well, they have their own things to think about.’

‘Of course.’

‘Yes, they do, don’t they?’

‘Yes, they do.’

‘Yes.’

Anton listened to the silence. Was there something Gunnar Hagen wanted to say?

The head of Crime Squad rang off.

Katrine landed at gardermoen at half past nine, got on the airport express, let it take her right through Oslo. Or, to be precise, beneath Oslo. She had lived here, but the few glimpses she caught of the town didn’t evoke any sentimentality. A half-hearted skyline. Low, good-natured, soft, snowy ridges, tamed countryside. Inside the train, closed, expressionless faces, none of the spontaneous, casual communication between strangers she was used to in Bergen. Then there was a signal failure on one of the world’s most expensive lines and the train came to a standstill in the pitch-black tunnel.