Jo Nesbo - Knife

“You’ve got your case, Harry. Solve that one, and leave me to run things here.”

“My case isn’t even a case, it’s a domestic murder where the husband has confessed and we’ve got both a motive and forensic evidence.”

“He could suddenly withdraw his confession, so we need a lot more flesh on those bones.”

“It’s the sort of case you could have given to Wyller or Skarre or one of the juniors. Finne is a sexual predator and serial killer, and I’m the only detective you’ve got with specialist experience of that type of case, for fuck’s sake.”

“No, Harry! And that’s my final word on the subject.”

“But why?”

“Why? Look at yourself! If you were running Crime Squad, would you send a drunk, unstable detective to talk to our already skeptical colleagues in Copenhagen and Stockholm who have pretty much already made up their minds that the same man isn’t behind the murders in their cities? You see serial killers everywhere because your brain is programmed to see serial killers.”

“That may well be true, but it is Finne. It’s got all the characteristic—”

“Enough! You’ve got to let go of this obsession, Harry.”

“Obsession?”

“Bjørn told me you were babbling about Finne the whole time when you were drinking, saying you have to get him before he gets you.”

“When I was drinking ? Say it like it is: when I was drunk. Drunk .” Harry reached for the money and tucked it into his trouser pocket. “Have a good Sunday.”

“Where are you going?”

“Somewhere I can properly observe the day of rest.”

“You’ve got stones in your shoes, so pick your feet up properly when you walk across my parquet floor.”

Harry hurried down Grønlandsleiret towards Olympen and Pigalle. Not his first choices of watering hole, but they were nearest. There was so little traffic on the main street in Grønland that he was able to cross the road on a red light, checking his mobile at the same time. He wondered if he should return Alexandra’s call but decided against it. He didn’t have the nerve. He saw from the call log that he had tried to call Rakel six times between six and eight o’clock the previous evening. He shuddered. Call rejected , it said. Sometimes technological language could be unnecessarily precise.

As Harry reached the opposite pavement he felt a sudden pain in his chest and his heart started to race, as if it had lost the spring that checked its speed. He had time to think heart attack , then it was gone. It wouldn’t be the worst way to go. A pain in the chest. Down on his knees. Head hitting the pavement. The End. A few more days of drinking at this rate and it really wouldn’t be that unrealistic either. Harry kept walking. He had caught a tiny glimpse. He had seen more now than when it happened earlier that afternoon. But it had slipped away, like a dream once you’ve woken up.

Harry stopped outside Olympen and looked inside. It had once been one of the roughest bars in Oslo, but had been given such a thorough makeover that Harry hesitated to go in. He checked out the new clientele. A mix of hipsters and smartly dressed couples, as well as families with young children, time-poor but with enough money to shell out for Sunday lunch at a restaurant.

He stuck his hand tentatively into his pocket. Found the two-hundred-kroner note, as well as something else. A key. Not his, but to the scene of the domestic murder. On Borggata in Tøyen. He didn’t really know why he’d asked for the key seeing as the case was as good as concluded. But at least he had the scene to himself. Entirely to himself, seeing as the other so-called detective on the case, Truls Berntsen, wasn’t going to lift a finger. Truls Berntsen’s admittance to Crime Squad owed very little to merit, and a damn sight more to his childhood friendship with Mikael Bellman, one-time Chief of Police and current Minister of Justice. Truls Berntsen was utterly useless, and there was a tacit agreement between Katrine and Truls that he would steer clear of detective work and concentrate on making coffee and other basic office jobs. Which, when it came down to it, meant playing patience and Tetris. The coffee tasted no better than before, but Truls sometimes beat Harry at Tetris now. They made a pretty wretched couple, marooned at the far end of the open-plan office with a one-and-a-half-metre-tall moveable screen separating them.

Harry took another look. There was a free booth next to the families seated just inside the window. The little boy at the table suddenly noticed him, and laughed and pointed. The father, who had his back to Harry, turned round and Harry instinctively took a step back, out into the darkness. And from there he saw his own pale, lined face mirrored in the glass, while at the same time it merged with that of the boy inside. A memory floated up. His grandfather, and him as a boy. The long summer holiday, a family meal in Romsdalen. Him laughing at his grandfather. The worried look on his parents’ faces. His grandfather, drunk.

Harry felt the keys again. Borggata. A five- or six-minute walk away.

He got his phone out. Looked at the log. Made a call. Stared at the knuckles of his right hand as he waited. The pain was already fading, so he couldn’t have punched very hard. But obviously the virginal nose of a David Gray fan couldn’t cope with much before it started to squirt blood.

“Yes, Harry?”

“ Yes, Harry? ”

“I’m in the middle of dinner.”

“OK, I’ll be quick. Can you come and meet me after dinner?”

“No.”

“Wrong answer, try again.”

“ Yes? ”

“That’s more like it. Borggata 5. Call me when you get there and I’ll come down and let you in.”

Harry heard a deep sigh from Ståle Aune, his friend of many years’ standing and Crime Squad’s go-to psychological expert on murder cases. “Does that mean this isn’t an invitation to go to a bar where I’ll have to pay, and that you’re actually sober?”

“Have I ever let you pay?” Harry pulled out a packet of Camels.

“You used to pick up the tab, and remember what you’d done. But alcohol is well on its way to eating up your finances as well as your memory. You do know that, don’t you?”

“Yes. This is about that domestic murder. With the knife and—”

“Yes, yes, I read about it.”

Harry put a cigarette between his lips. “Are you coming?”

He heard another deep sigh. “If it’ll keep you away from the bottle for a few hours.”

“Great,” Harry said, then ended the call and slipped his phone into his jacket pocket. He lit the cigarette. Inhaled deeply. He stood with his back to the restaurant’s closed door. He had time to have one beer in there and still be in Borggata in time to meet Aune. The music filtered out. An autotuned declaration of undying love. He held one hand up apologetically towards a car as he lurched out into the road.

The old, working-class facades of Borggata hid newly built flats with bright living rooms, open-plan kitchens, modern bathrooms, and balconies overlooking the inner courtyards. Harry took that as a sign that Tøyen was going to be tarted up as well: rents would go up, the residents moved out, the social status of that part of town adjusted upwards. The immigrants’ grocery stores and little cafés would give way to gyms and hipster restaurants.

The psychologist looked uncomfortable as he sat on one of the two flimsy rib-backed chairs Harry had placed in the middle of the pale parquet floor. Harry assumed that was because of the disparity between the chair and Ståle Aune’s overweight frame, as well as the fact that his small round glasses were still steamed up after he had reluctantly foregone the lift and walked up the stairs to the third floor with Harry. Or possibly the pool of blood that lay like a congealed, black wax seal between them. One summer holiday when Harry was young, his grandfather had told him that you couldn’t eat money. When Harry got to his room he took out the five-kroner coin his grandfather had given him and tried. He remembered the way it had jarred his teeth, the metallic smell and sweet taste. Just like when he licked the blood after cutting himself. Or the smell of crime scenes he would later attend, even if the blood wasn’t fresh. The smell of the room they were sitting in now. Money. Blood money.