Jo Nesbo - Knife

It was done. He had shot the mink. He had finally avenged Bianca.

Roar felt ecstatic. Yes, that was the only way he could describe it. He locked the rifle away in the gun cabinet, then went and had a shower. On the way he stopped and pulled his phone from his pocket. Called a number. Pia answered on the second ring.

“Is anything wrong?”

“No.” Roar Bohr smiled. “I just wondered if you’d like to go out for dinner this evening?”

“Out for dinner?”

“It’s been ages since we last did that. I’ve heard good things about Lofoten, that fish restaurant on Tjuvholmen.”

He heard her hesitation. Suspicion. He followed her train of thought on towards the same why not? that he had thought.

“OK,” she said. “Are you going—”

“Yes, I’ll book a table. How does eight o’clock sound?”

“Great,” Pia said. “That all sounds great.”

They hung up, and Roar Bohr undressed, got in the shower and turned the water on. Warm water. He wanted to have a warm shower.

Dagny Jensen left the park the same way she had come. She thought about how she really felt. She had been sitting too far away to see any of the details on the other side of the lake, but she had seen enough. Yes, she had let herself be persuaded by Harry Hole’s almost hypnotic request, but this time he hadn’t deceived her, he had kept his promise. Svein Finne was out of her life. Dagny thought about Hole’s deep, hoarse voice on the phone, when he had told her what was going to happen, and why she must never, ever tell anyone. And even if she had already felt a peculiar excitement, and knew she wasn’t going to be able to resist, she had asked why, and if he thought she was the sort of person who would allow themselves to be entertained by a public execution.

“I don’t know what entertains you,” he had replied. “But you said it wasn’t enough for you to see him dead for him not to haunt you. You needed to see him die . I owe you that much, after everything I’ve put you through. Take it or leave it.”

Dagny thought about her mother’s funeral, the young female priest who had said that no one knew for certain what lay beyond the threshold of death, just that those who crossed it never came back.

But Dagny Jensen knew now. She knew that Finne was dead. And how she really felt.

She didn’t feel brilliant.

But she did feel better.

Katrine Bratt was sitting behind the desk, looking around.

She had packed the last of the things she wanted to take home. Bjørn’s parents were in the flat looking after Gert, and she knew that any good mother would probably have wanted to get home as quickly as she could. But Katrine wanted to wait a little longer. Catch her breath. Stretch this pause from the suffocating grief, the unanswered questions, the nagging suspicions.

The grief was easier to deal with when she was alone. When she didn’t feel she was being watched, didn’t have to stop herself from laughing at something Gert did, or from saying something wrong, like she was looking forward to spring or something. Not that Bjørn’s parents reacted — they were sensible, they understood. They were wonderful people, actually. But she clearly wasn’t. The grief was there, but she was able to chase it away when no one else was there to remind her constantly that Bjørn was dead. That Harry was dead.

The unspoken suspicion she knew they must be feeling, but didn’t show. That she, one way or another, must be the reason why Bjørn had taken his own life. But she knew she wasn’t. On the other hand, though: Should she have realised something was wrong with Bjørn when he had gone completely to pieces when he heard that Harry was dead? Should she have known that it was more than that, that Bjørn was struggling with something bigger, a deep depression he had managed to fend off and keep hidden until Harry’s death came along. Not just the drop that made his cup overflow, but burst the entire dam. What do we really know about the people we share our beds, our lives with? Even less than we know about ourselves. Katrine found it an unpalatable idea, but the impressions we have of the people around us are precisely that: impressions.

She had raised the alarm when Bjørn handed Gert over without wanting to talk to her.

Katrine had just got home from the terrible press conference with Ole Winter, to an empty flat and no message saying where Bjørn and Gert were, when someone rang the front doorbell. She had picked up the entryphone and heard Gert crying, and opened the door to the flat in case Bjørn had forgotten his keys, then pressed the button to open the door down on the street. But she hadn’t heard the whirr of the lock, just the baby crying close to the microphone. After saying Bjørn’s name several times without getting any response, she had gone downstairs.

The Maxi-Cosi baby carrier with Gert in it was sitting on the pavement right outside the door.

Katrine had looked up and down Nordahl Bruns gate, but couldn’t see any sign of Bjørn. Nor had she seen anyone in any of the darkened doorways on the other side of the street, although that didn’t necessarily mean there was no one there, of course. And then a random thought occurred to her: that it hadn’t been Bjørn who rang the bell.

She had taken Gert up to the flat and called Bjørn’s number, only to be told that his phone was switched off or out of reach of the network. She realised something was wrong and called Bjørn’s parents. And it was the fact that she had instinctively called them rather than any of Bjørn’s friends or workmates, who, after all, lived in the city, that made her realise that she was worried.

His parents had reassured her, saying that he was bound to get in touch with a good explanation, but Katrine could hear from Bjørn’s mother’s voice that she too was concerned. Perhaps she too had noticed that Bjørn didn’t seem to have been himself recently.

You might think that a murder detective would eventually come to accept that there are some things, some questions you will never get an answer to, and you just have to move on. But some of them never managed that. Like Harry. Like her. Katrine didn’t know if this was an advantage or a hindrance from a professional perspective, but one thing was certain: for life outside of work it was nothing but a disadvantage. She was already dreading the weeks and months of sleepless nights that lay ahead of her. Not because of Gert. You could set your watch by when he slept and woke up. It was the restless, compulsive activity of her brain in the darkness that would stop her sleeping.

Katrine zipped up the bag containing the case files and papers she needed to take home, walked towards the door, turned out the light and was about to leave her office when the phone on her desk started to ring.

She picked it up.

“It’s Sung-min Larsen.”

“Great,” Katrine said, in a toneless voice. Not that she meant that it wasn’t great, but if this phone call meant he had decided to accept her offer of a job in Crime Squad, the timing wasn’t exactly good.

“I’m calling because... Is now a good time, by the way?”

Katrine looked out of the window, towards Botsparken. Bare trees, brown, withered grass. It wouldn’t be long before the trees grew leaves and blossoms, before the grass turned green. And then, after that, it would be summer. Or so they said.

“Yes,” she said, and heard that she still wasn’t managing to sound enthusiastic.

“I’ve just experienced a remarkable coincidence,” Larsen said. “Earlier today I received information that sheds new light on the Rakel Fauke case. And I’ve just had a phone call from Johan Krohn, Sv—”

“I know who Krohn is.”

“He says he’s at Smestaddammen, where he and his assistant had arranged to meet his client, Svein Finne. And that Svein Finne has just been shot and killed.”