Jo Nesbo - Knife

Harry was striding down Pilestredet. His Dr. Martens boots left a black trail in the thin layer of snow that had fallen overnight. The low spring sun was doing its best to melt it before sinking behind the old four- and five-storey buildings of the city. He listened to the rhythmic scrape of the pavement against the small stones that had caught in the coarse grooves on the soles of his boots as he passed the taller modern buildings on the site of the old Rikshospitalet, where he had been born almost fifty years ago. He looked at the latest street art on the facade of Blitz, the once shabby squat that had been the citadel of punk in Oslo, where Harry had attended obscure gigs in his teens despite never being a punk. He passed the Rex Pub, where he had drunk himself senseless back when it was called something different, when the beer was cheaper, the bouncers more forgiving and it was frequented by the jazz crowd. But he hadn’t been one of them either. Or one of the born-again souls talking in tongues in the Pentecostal church on the other side of the street. He passed the Courthouse. How many murderers had he managed to get convicted in there? A lot. Not enough. Because it wasn’t the ones you caught that haunted your nightmares, it was the ones who got away, and their victims. Still, he had caught enough to get himself a name, a reputation. For better or worse. The fact that he had been directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of several colleagues was part of that reputation.

He reached Grønlandsleiret, where, sometime back in the 1970s, mono-ethnic Oslo finally collided with the rest of the world, or the other way round. Restaurants with Arabic names, shops selling imported vegetables and spices from Karachi, Somali women in hijabs going for Sunday walks with pushchairs, their men engaged in lively conversation three steps behind them. But Harry also recognised some of the pubs from back when Oslo still had a white working class and this was their neighbourhood. He passed Grønland Church and carried on towards the glass palace at the top of the park. Before pushing open the heavy metal door with a porthole in it, he turned around. He looked out across Oslo. Ugly and beautiful. Cold and hot. Some days he loved this city, and on others he hated it. But he could never abandon it. He could take a break, get away for a while, sure. But never abandon it for good. Not like she had abandoned him.

The guard let him in and he undid his jacket as he waited in front of the lifts. He felt himself start to sweat anyway. Then the tremble as one of the lift doors in front of him slid open. He realised that it wasn’t going to happen today, and turned and took the stairs to the sixth floor.

“Working on a Sunday?” Katrine Bratt said, looking up from her computer as Harry walked into her office unannounced.

“I could say the same about you.” Harry sank heavily into the chair in front of her desk.

Their eyes met.

Harry closed his, leaned his head back and stretched out his long legs, which reached all the way to the desk. The desk had come with the job she had taken over from Gunnar Hagen. She had had the walls painted a lighter colour, and the parquet floor had been polished, but apart from that the head of department’s office was the same as before. And even if Katrine Bratt was the newly appointed head of Crime Squad as well as a mother now, Harry still saw before him the wild girl who had arrived from the Bergen Police, armed with a plan, emotional baggage, a black fringe and a black leather jacket wrapped round a body that disproved the argument that there were no women in Bergen and that made Harry’s colleagues stare at her a little too long. The fact that she only had eyes for Harry had the usual paradoxical explanations. His bad reputation. The fact that he was already taken. And that he had seen her as something more than just a fellow officer.

“I could be mistaken,” Harry yawned. “But on the phone it sounded almost as if your little Toten lad was happy on paternity leave.”

“He is,” Katrine said, tapping at her computer. “How about you? Are you happy with—”

“Marital leave?”

“I was going to ask if you were happy being back in Crime Squad.”

Harry opened one eye. “Working on entry-level material?”

Katrine sighed. “It was the best Gunnar and I could get, given the circumstances, Harry. What did you expect?”

Still with one eye closed, Harry surveyed the room as he thought about what he had expected. That Katrine’s office would show more of a feminine touch? That they would give Harry the same elbow room he had had before he resigned from his post as a murder detective, started teaching at Police College, married Rakel and tried to live a peaceful, sober life? Of course they couldn’t do that. But with Gunnar Hagen’s blessing and Bjørn’s help, Katrine had literally picked him up from the gutter and given him this as a place to go to, something to think about other than Rakel, a reason not to drink himself to death. The fact that he had agreed to sit and sort out paperwork and go through cold cases merely proved that he had sunk lower than he had believed possible. Still, experience had taught him it was always possible to sink a bit lower. So Harry grunted:

“Can you lend me five hundred kroner?”

“Bloody hell, Harry.” Katrine looked at him despairingly. “Is that why you’re here? Didn’t you have enough yesterday?”

“That’s not how it works,” Harry said. “Was it you who sent Bjørn out to pick me up?”

“No.”

“So how did he find me, then?”

“Everyone knows where you spend your evenings, Harry. Even if plenty of people think it’s a bit weird to hang out in the bar you’ve only just sold.”

“They don’t usually refuse to serve a former owner.”

“Not until yesterday, maybe. According to Bjørn, the last thing the owner said to you was that you’re barred for life.”

“Really? I don’t remember that at all.”

“Let me see if I can help you there. You tried to persuade Bjørn to help you report the Jealousy to the police for the music they were playing, and then you wanted him to call Rakel and talk her round. From his phone, seeing as you’d left yours at home and weren’t actually sure if she’d answer if she saw it was you calling.”

“Bloody hell,” Harry said, covering his face with his hands as he massaged his temples.

“I’m not saying this to humiliate you, Harry, just to show you what happens when you drink.”

“Thanks a lot.” Harry folded his hands over his stomach. He saw that there was a two-hundred-kroner note lying on the edge of the desk in front of him.

“Not enough to get drunk on,” Katrine said. “But enough to help you sleep. Because that’s what you need. Sleep.”

He looked at her. Her gaze had got softer over the years, she was no longer the angry young woman who wanted to take her revenge on the world. Maybe that was thanks to other people, the team in the department, and her nine-month-old son. Sure, that sort of thing could raise awareness and make people gentler. During the vampirist case one and a half years ago, when Rakel had been in hospital and he had fallen off the wagon, Katrine had picked him up and taken him home. She had let him throw up in her otherwise spotless bathroom and granted him a few hours of carefree sleep in the bed she shared with Bjørn.

“No,” Harry said. “I don’t need sleep, I need a case.”

“You’ve got a case.”

“I need the Finne case.”

Katrine sighed. “The murders you’re referring to aren’t called the Finne case, there’s nothing to suggest that it’s him. And, as I’ve already told you, I’ve got the people I need on the case.”

“Three murders. Three unsolved murders. And you’re telling me you don’t need someone who can actually prove what you and I both know — that Finne is the man responsible?”