Jo Nesbo - Nemesis

'There's enough room in the house,' Harry said. 'Say hi to Karoline and quote Ola Bauer.'

' "I moved to Carefree Street"?'

' "But that didn't help much, either." '

They both laughed.

'Anyway, my mind is pretty much on the case at the moment,' Harry said.

'The case, yes,' Aune said. 'I've read all the reports, as you asked. Bizarre. Truly bizarre. You wake up in your flat, can't remember a thing and bang, you're caught up in this game of Alf Gunnerud's. Naturally, it is a bit tricky to establish a psychological diagnosis post-mortem, but he is truly an interesting case. Doubtless a very intelligent, creative soul. Almost artistic, even. It's a masterly plan he hatched. There are a couple of things I wondered about. I read the copies of the e-mails he sent you. He referred to the fact that you had had a blackout. That must mean he saw you leave the flat in an inebriated state and speculated that you wouldn't remember anything the following day?'

'That's how it is when a man has to be helped into a taxi. I would guess he was standing in the street outside, spying on me, just as he wrote in his e-mail Arne Albu was doing. Presumably he had been in touch with Anna and knew I would be coming that evening. My leaving the house so drunk must have been an unexpected bonus.'

'So then he unlocked the flat with a key he got from the manufacturer via Lеsesmeden AS. And shot her. Using his own gun?'

'Probably. The serial number had been filed off. As was the number on the gun we found in Gunnerud's hand in the container terminal. Weber says the filing patterns suggest they come from the same supplier. Looks like someone is running an illegal arms-import business on a grand scale. The Glock we found at Sverre Olsen's-Ellen's killer-had exactly the same file marks.'

'So he puts the gun in her right hand. Even though she was left-handed.'

'Bait,' Harry said. 'Naturally enough, he knew I would get involved in the case at some point, if for no other reason than to make sure my position wouldn't be compromised. And he knew that, unlike the other officers, I would realise it was the wrong hand.'

'And then there was the photograph of fru Albu and the children.'

'To lead me to Arne Albu, her last lover.'

'And before he leaves, he takes Anna's laptop and the mobile telephone you dropped in the flat during the evening.'

'Another unexpected bonus.'

'So this brain concocted an intricate, watertight plan for how he was going to punish his faithless lover, the man with whom she deceived him while he was in prison and her resurrected mission, the blond-haired policeman. In addition, he begins to improvise. Once again he uses his job at Lеsesmeden AS to gain access to your flat and cellar. He plants Anna's laptop there, connected to your mobile phone, and sets up an e-mail account via an untraceable server.'

'Almost untraceable.'

'Ah, yes, this anonymous computer nerd of yours found that out. But what he didn't find out was that the e-mails you received had been written in advance and were sent on pre-determined dates from the computer in your storeroom. In other words, the sender had set everything up well before the laptop was put in position. Correct?'

'Mm. Did you read the e-mails?'

'Indeed.' Aune nodded. 'In retrospect, you can see that while they factored in a certain unfolding of events, they were also vague. But it wouldn't seem like that to the person caught up in events; the sender would appear permanently well-informed and online. But he could do that because in many ways he was running the whole show.'

'Well, we don't know yet if it was Gunnerud who orchestrated the murder of Arne Albu. A colleague at the locksmith's says he and Gunnerud were at Gamle Major drinking beer at the time of the murder.'

Aune rubbed his hands. Harry wasn't sure if it was because of the cold wind or because he was enjoying the thought of so many logically possible or impossible outcomes. 'Let's assume Gunnerud didn't kill Albu,' the psychologist said. 'What fate had he planned for him by pointing you in his direction? That Albu would be convicted? But then you would go free. And vice versa. Two men can't be convicted of the same murder.'

'Right,' Harry said. 'You have to ask yourself what the most important thing in Albu's life was?'

'Excellent,' Aune said. 'A father of three who voluntarily, or not, scales down his professional ambitions. The family, I assume.'

'And what had Gunnerud achieved by revealing, or rather allowing me to find out, that Arne Albu was continuing to meet Anna?'

'His wife took the children and left him.'

' "Losing your life is not the worst thing that can happen. The worst thing is to lose your reason for living." '

'Good quote.' Aune gave him a nod of acknowledgement. 'Who said that?'

'Forgotten,' Harry said.

'But the next question you have to ask is what he wanted to take from you, Harry? What makes your life worth living?'

They had arrived at the house where Anna had lived. Harry fidgeted with the keys for a long time.

'Well?' Aune said.

'All Gunnerud probably knew about me was what Anna had told him. And she knew me from the time when I didn't have…much more than the job.'

'The job?'

'He wanted me behind bars. But, primarily, kicked out of the force.'

They talked as they went up the stairs.

Inside the flat Weber and his boys had finished the forensic examination. Weber was happy and said they had found Gunnerud's prints in several places, including the bedhead.

'He wasn't exactly careful,' Weber said.

'He was here so many times you would have found prints even if he had been,' Harry said. 'Besides, he was convinced he would never come under suspicion.'

'Incidentally, the way Albu was killed was interesting,' Aune said as Harry opened the sliding door to the room with the portraits and the Grimmer lamp. 'Buried upside down. On a beach. It looked like a rite, as if the murderer was trying to tell us something about himself. Have you given it any thought?'

'Not my case.'

'That wasn't what I asked.'

'OK. Maybe the murderer wanted to say something about the victim.'

'What do you mean?'

Harry switched on the Grimmer lamp and light fell on the three pictures. 'It reminds me of something in my law studies, the Gulathing Law of 1100. It states that everyone who dies should be buried in holy ground except for men of dishonour, traitors and murderers. They should be buried where the sea meets land. The place where Albu was buried doesn't suggest a jealousy killing, as it would have been if Gunnerud had killed him. Someone wanted to show that Albu was a criminal.'

'Interesting,' said Aune. 'Why should we look at these pictures again? They're terrible.'

'You're really sure you can't see anything in them?'

'I certainly can. I can see a pretentious young artist with an exaggerated sense of drama and no sense of art.'

'I have a colleague called Beate Lшnn. She couldn't be here today because she's giving a talk at a police conference in Germany, about how it is possible to recognise masked criminals with the help of computer manipulation of images and the fusiform gyrus. She has a special innate talent: she can recognise all the faces she has seen in the whole of her life.'

Aune nodded. 'I am aware of this phenomenon.'

'When I showed her these pictures she recognised the people.'

'Oh?' Aune raised an eyebrow. 'Tell me more.'

Harry pointed. 'The one on the left is Arne Albu, the one in the middle is me and the last is Alf Gunnerud.'

Aune squinted, straightened his glasses and tried looking at the pictures from a variety of distances. 'Interesting,' he mumbled. 'Extremely interesting. I can only see the shapes of heads.'

'I only wanted to know if you, as an expert witness, can vouchsafe that this kind of recognition is possible. It would help us to make further links between Gunnerud and Anna.'