Dead Joker E-Book

Anne Holt

• Herausgeber: Corvus
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: Hanne Wilhelmsen Series
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 602

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

THE FIFTH INSTALMENT IN THE HANNE WILHELMSEN SERIES. The edgy detective investigates a brutal series of murders while dealing with tragedy closer to home. Chief Prosecutor Sigurd Halvorsrud's wife is found dead in front of the fireplace in the family living room. The cause of death is instantly apparent - she has been brutally decapitated. Halvorsrud immediately falls under suspicion. Then a journalist at one of Oslo's largest newspapers is found beheaded. What links these two horrifically violent crimes? Detective Inspector Hanne Wilhelmsen is called in to lead the investigation with her old colleague Billy T. But the most demanding task that Hanne Wilhelmsen has ever faced in her career clashes with the worst crisis in her personal life. Cecilie, the woman she lived with for almost twenty years, is seriously ill. Wilhelmsen must ask herself: is the truth worth chasing at all costs?

Leseprobe

PRAISE FOR

‘Step aside, Stieg Larsson, Holt is the queen of Scandinavian crime thrillers’ Red

‘Holt writes with the command we have come to expect from the top Scandinavian writers’ The Times

‘If you haven’t heard of Anne Holt, you soon will’ Daily Mail

‘It’s easy to see why Anne Holt, the former Minister of Justice in Norway and currently its bestselling female crime writer, is rapturously received in the rest of Europe’ Guardian

‘Holt deftly marshals her perplexing narrative … clichés are resolutely seen off by the sheer energy and vitality of her writing’ Independent

‘Her peculiar blend of off-beat police procedural and social commentary makes her stories particularly Norwegian, yet also entertaining and enlightening … reads a bit like a mash-up of Stieg Larsson, Jeffery Deaver and Agatha Christie’ Daily Mirror

ANNE HOLT is Norway’s bestselling female crime writer. She spent two years working for the Oslo Police Department before founding her own law firm and serving as Norway’s Minister for Justice between 1996 and 1997. She is published in 30 languages with over 6 million copies of her books sold.

Also by Anne Holt

THE HANNE WILHELMSEN SERIES:

Blind GoddessBlessed Are Those Who ThirstDeath of the DemonThe Lion’s MouthDead JokerNo EchoBeyond the Truth1222

THE JOHANNE VIK SERIES:

PunishmentThe Final MurderDeath in OsloFear NotWhat Dark Clouds Hide

First published in trade paperback in Great Britain in 2015 by Corvus, animprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright © Anne Holt, 1999

English translation copyright © Anne Bruce, 2015

Originally published in Norwegian as Død Joker. Published by agreementwith the Salomonsson Agency.

The moral right of Anne Holt to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

The moral right of Anne Bruce to be identified as the translator of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

This translation has been published with the financial support of NORLA.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978 0 85789 814 2Paperback ISBN: 978 0 85789 229 4E-book ISBN: 978 0 85789 236 2

Printed in Great Britain.

CorvusAn imprint of Atlantic Books LtdOrmond House26–27 Boswell StreetLondonWC1N 3JZ

www.corvus-books.co.uk

To Tine

Contents

Praise for Anne Holt

Also by Anne Holt

Part 1

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Part 2

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Chapter 78

Chapter 79

Chapter 80

Chapter 81

Chapter 82

Chapter 83

Chapter 84

Chapter 85

Chapter 86

Chapter 87

Chapter 88

Chapter 89

Chapter 90

Chapter 91

Chapter 92

Chapter 93

Chapter 94

Epilogue

Part 1

1

The knowledge that he had only seconds to live made him finally close his eyes against the salt water. Admittedly, he had felt a touch of fear as he’d thrown himself off the soaring span of the bridge and leapt into the air, but when he hit the fjord, the impact had not caused him any pain. He had probably broken both arms. His hands, glistening gray-white, were at a peculiar angle. He had attempted to swim a few involuntary strokes, but it had been useless, his arms ineffectual against the powerful current. All the same, he felt no pain. Quite the opposite, in fact. The water enveloped him with surprising warmth. He felt himself being dragged down into the depths, becoming drowsy.

The man’s anorak swayed around his body, a dark, limp balloon on an even darker sea. His head bobbed like an abandoned buoy, and he finally stopped treading water.

The last thing the man noticed was that it was possible to breathe underwater. The sensation was not even unpleasant.

2

A short time earlier, the woman on the floor had been ash blond. You couldn’t tell that now. Her head had been separated from her body, and her mid-length hair had become entangled in the fibers of her severed neck. Also, the back of her head had been smashed. Her dead, wide-open eyes seemed to stare in astonishment at Hanne Wilhelmsen, as if the Chief Inspector were a most unexpected guest.

A fire was still burning in the hearth. Low flames licked the sooty black rear wall, but the glow they cast was faint and had a limited range. Since the power was cut and the dark night pressed against the windows like an inquisitive spectator, Hanne Wilhelmsen felt the urge to pile on some more logs. Instead, she switched on a Maglite. The beam swept over the corpse. The woman’s head and body were clearly parted, but the short distance between them indicated that the decapitation must have occurred while the woman was lying on the floor.

“Pity about that polar-bear skin,” Police Sergeant Erik Henriksen mumbled.

Hanne Wilhelmsen let the shaft of light dance around the room. The living room was spacious, almost square, and cluttered with furniture. The Chief Public Prosecutor and his wife obviously had a fondness for antiques, though their fondness for moderation was less well developed. In the semi-darkness, Hanne Wilhelmsen could see wooden rosemaling bowls from Telemark, painted with flower motifs in traditional folk style, side by side with Chinese porcelain in white and pale blue. A musket was hanging above the fireplace. Sixteenth century, the Chief Inspector assumed, and had to stop herself from touching the exquisite weapon.

Two painstakingly crafted wrought-iron hooks yawned above the musket. The samurai sword must have hung there. Now it was lying on the floor beside mother-of-three Doris Flo Halvorsrud, a woman who would not celebrate her forty-fifth birthday, an occasion barely three months ahead. Hanne continued to search through the wallet she had removed from the handbag in the hallway. The eyes that had once gazed into a camera lens for the Driving License Agency had the same startled look as the lifeless head beside the hearth.

The children were in a plastic pocket.

Hanne shuddered at the sight of the three teenagers laughing at the photographer from a rowing boat, all clad in life jackets and the elder boy brandishing a half bottle of lager. The youngsters looked alike, and all resembled their mother. The beer drinker and his sister, the eldest, had the same blond hair as Doris Flo Halvorsrud. The youngest had been on the receiving end of a drastic haircut: a skinhead with acne and braces, making a V-sign with skinny boyish fingers above his sister’s head.

The picture was vibrant with strong summer colors. Orange life jackets nonchalantly slung over bronzed shoulders, red-and-blue swimming costumes dripping onto the green benches of the boat. This was a photograph telling a story about siblings as they rarely appear. About life as it almost never happens.

As Hanne Wilhelmsen put the photo back, it occurred to her that they had seen no sign of anyone else apart from Halvorsrud since they’d got there. Running her finger absent-mindedly over an old scar on her eyebrow, she closed the wallet and scanned the room again.

A half-open door revealed a cherry-wood fitted kitchen occupying what had to be the rear of the house. The picture windows faced southwest and in the light from the city below the heights of Ekebergåsen, Hanne Wilhelmsen could make out a good-sized terrace. Beyond that stretched the Oslo Fjord, mirroring the full moon as it swept across the slopes above Bærum.

Chief Public Prosecutor Sigurd Halvorsrud sat sobbing in a barrel chair, his head in his hands. Hanne could see the reflection of the log fire in the embedded wedding ring on his right hand. Halvorsrud’s pale-blue casual shirt was spattered with blood. His sparse hair was saturated with blood. His gray flannel trousers, with their sharp creases and waist pleats, were covered in dark stains. Blood. Blood everywhere.

“I’ll never understand how four liters of blood can spread so much,” Hanne muttered as she turned to face Erik.

Her red-haired colleague did not answer. He was swallowing repeatedly.

“Raspberry candies,” Hanne reminded him. “Think about something tart. Lemon. Redcurrants.”

“I didn’t do anything!” Halvorsrud was convulsed with sobs now. He let go of his face and flung his head back. Gasping for breath, the well-built man succumbed to a violent coughing fit.

Beside him stood a trainee policewoman wearing a coverall. Uncertain of how to behave at a murder scene, she was standing to attention in an almost military pose. Hesitantly, she gave the public prosecutor a hearty slap on the back, to no noticeable effect.

“The worst thing is that I couldn’t do anything,” he wheezed as he finally succeeded in regaining his breath.

“He’s damn well done enough,” Erik Henriksen said softly, spitting out some flakes of tobacco as he fiddled with an unlit cigarette.

The Police Sergeant had turned away from the decapitated woman. Now he stood beside the picture windows with his hand on his spine, swaying slightly. Hanne Wilhelmsen placed her hand between his shoulder blades. Her colleague was trembling. It could not possibly be from the cold. Although the power had gone off, it had to be twenty-plus degrees Celsius in the room. The smell of blood and urine hung in the air, pungent and acrid. Had it not been for the technicians – who had arrived at last, after an intolerable delay – Hanne would have insisted on ventilating the room.

“Not so fast, Henriksen,” she said instead. “It’s a mistake to draw conclusions when you know nothing, so to speak.”

“Know?” Erik spluttered, sending her a sideways glance. “Look at her, for God’s sake!”

Hanne Wilhelmsen turned her face to the room again. She placed her arm on Erik’s shoulder and leaned her chin on her hand, a gesture that was both affectionate and patronizing. It really was unbearably hot in there. The room was more brightly lit now that the crime-scene examiners had begun fine-combing the vast space, centimeter by centimeter. They had barely reached the dead body yet.

“Anyone who is not meant to be here must leave,” thundered the most senior of the technicians, sweeping the flashlight beam across the floor toward the hallway with repetitive, commanding movements. “Wilhelmsen! Take everyone out with you. Now.”

She had no objections. She had seen more than enough. She had allowed Chief Public Prosecutor Halvorsrud to remain seated where they’d found him, in a carved barrel chair far too small for his bulky frame, because she’d had no choice. It had been impossible to converse with him. And there was a chance he might behave unpredictably. Hanne did not recognize the young trainee on duty. She did not know whether the girl was capable of dealing with a public prosecutor who was in shock and who might have just decapitated his wife. As for herself, Hanne Wilhelmsen could not leave the corpse until the crime-scene examiners arrived. And Erik Henriksen had refused to be left alone with Doris Flo Halvorsrud’s grotesque remains.

“Come on,” she said to the Public Prosecutor, holding out her hand. “Come on, and we’ll go somewhere else. The bedroom, maybe.”

The Public Prosecutor did not react. His eyes were vacant. His mouth was half open and its corners wet, as if he were about to vomit.

“Wilhelmsen,” he suddenly rasped. “Hanne Wilhelmsen.”

“That’s right,” Hanne said with a smile. “Come on. Let’s go, shall we?”

“Hanne,” Halvorsrud repeated pointlessly, without standing up.

“Come on now.”

“I did nothing. Nothing. Can you understand that?”

Hanne Wilhelmsen did not answer. Instead, she smiled again, and took the hand he would not give her voluntarily. Only now did she discover that his hands were also covered in dried blood. In the dim light, she had taken the traces they had noticed on his face for shadows or stubble. She let go automatically.

“Halvorsrud,” she said loudly, sharper this time. “Come on now. At once.”

The raised voice helped. Halvorsrud gave himself a shake and lifted his gaze, as if he had suddenly returned to a reality about which he understood nothing. Stiffly, he rose from the barrel chair.

“Take the photographer with you.”

The trainee flinched when Hanne Wilhelmsen addressed her directly for the first time. “The photographer,” the girl in overalls repeated with little comprehension.

“Yes. The photographer. The guy with the camera, you know. The guy snapping pictures over there.”

The trainee looked down shyly. “Yep. Of course. The photographer. Okay.”

It was a relief to close the door on the headless corpse. The hallway was pitch-dark and chilly. Hanne took a deep breath as she fumbled for the switch on her flashlight.

“The family room,” Halvorsrud mumbled. “We can go in there.”

He pointed at a door just to the left of the front door. When the light from Hanne’s torch illuminated his hands, he stiffened.

“I did nothing. That I could … I didn’t lift a finger.”

Hanne Wilhelmsen placed her hand on the small of his back. He obeyed the slight prod and led the two police officers down the narrow corridor to the family room. He was about to touch the door handle, but Erik Henriksen beat him to it.

“I’ll do that,” Henriksen said quickly, squeezing past Halvorsrud. “There we go. You stay there.”

The photographer appeared in the doorway, though no one had heard him coming. He glanced wordlessly at Hanne Wilhelmsen through thick glasses.

“Do you have any objection to us taking a few photos of you?” Hanne asked, looking at the Public Prosecutor. “As you know all too well, there are lots of routine procedures in cases like this. It would be great if we could get some of them out of the way here, before we go to the station.”

“To the station,” repeated Halvorsrud, like an echo. “Pictures. Why is that?”

Hanne ran her fingers through her hair and caught herself experiencing an impatience neither she nor the case merited.

“You’re splattered with blood. We’ll take your clothes for examination, of course, but it would be helpful to have some photos of you wearing them. To be on the safe side, I mean. Then you can get washed and changed. That’ll be better, don’t you think?”

The only response Hanne received was an indistinct hawking. She chose to interpret that as agreement, and nodded at the photographer. The Public Prosecutor was momentarily bathed in the blue-white glare of a flashbulb. The photographer issued a series of brisk orders about how the Public Prosecutor should pose. Halvorsrud looked resigned. He held out his hands. He turned around. He stood sideways against the wall. He would probably have stood on his head if someone had asked him to.

“That’s it,” the photographer said three or four minutes later. “Thanks.” He disappeared just as silently as he had arrived. Only the buzzing noise of film being rewound in the camera housing told them he was returning to the living room and the repulsive subject he would be working on for the next hour or so.

“Then we can go,” Hanne Wilhelmsen said. “First of all, we’ll find you some clothes, so that you can get changed once we get to the station. I can come with you to the bedroom. Where are your children, by the way?”

“But, Chief Inspector …” Sigurd Halvorsrud protested, and Hanne could see for the first time something resembling alertness glittering in his eyes. “I was there when my wife was murdered! Don’t you understand? I did nothing—”

He plumped down into a chair. Either he had forgotten the blood on his hands or else he couldn’t care less. Regardless, he rubbed the bridge of his nose vigorously, before running his hand several times over his head, as if making a futile attempt to bring himself some comfort.

“You were there,” Hanne Wilhelmsen said slowly, without daring to look at Erik Henriksen. “For the record, I have to let you know that you don’t need to make a statement without—”

Hanne Wilhelmsen was interrupted by an entirely different man from the sobbing, brand-new widower who, until a few minutes earlier, had been sitting like an overgrown schoolboy in a barrel chair beside his wife’s beheaded remains. This was the Chief Public Prosecutor Sigurd Halvorsrud she had known previously. The sight made her shut her mouth.

His eyes were steel gray. His mouth was no longer a shapeless hole in his face. His lips stretched across unusually even teeth. The wings of his nose quivered slightly, as if he had caught the scent of a truth he suddenly found too good to share with others. Even the arrogant little toss of his head, crass and abrupt, with his neck jutting forward, happened so quickly that Hanne Wilhelmsen fleetingly thought she must be mistaken.

“I wasn’t just there,” Halvorsrud said lamely, in a low voice into empty space, as if on second thoughts he had decided to wait until a more appropriate juncture to return to his former self, “I can give you the name of the killer. And his address, for that matter.”

The window was open a crack, even though it was only March and it looked as if spring had been seriously delayed. An ammonia smell wafted into the room and a cat wailed so suddenly that everyone jumped. In the glow from a garden light beside the gate, Hanne could see that it had started to snow, in soft, sparse flakes. The trainee wrinkled her nose and moved to close the window.

“So you know the … Was it a man?”

The Chief Public Prosecutor ought not to say anything. Hanne should not listen to him. Hanne Wilhelmsen was obliged to convey Sigurd Halvorsrud to police headquarters at Grønlandsleiret 44 as speedily as possible. The man required a lawyer. He had to have a shower and clean clothes. He needed to get away from this house where his wife lay dead and mutilated on the living room floor.

Hanne ought to keep her mouth shut.

Halvorsrud did not look at her.

“A man,” he said with a nod.

“Someone you know?”

“No.”

The Chief Public Prosecutor finally looked up again. He caught Hanne’s eye, and what followed was a silent contest that Hanne could not interpret. She could not figure out the expression in his eyes. She was perplexed by the conspicuous shifts in the Public Prosecutor’s behavior. One minute he was totally absent, and the next his usual arrogant self.

“I don’t know him at all,” Sigurd Halvorsrud said in a remarkably steady voice. Then he got to his feet and let Hanne follow him up to the first floor to pack an overnight bag.

The bedroom was spacious, with double doors opening on to a small balcony. Hanne’s hand automatically slid over the light switch by the door. Amazingly, the six downlighters in the ceiling came on. Sigurd Halvorsrud did not react in surprise at the upstairs lights actually working. He had pulled out two drawers in a tall green chest. Now he hunched over them, apparently rummaging aimlessly among underpants and shirts.

A gigantic four-poster bed dominated the room. The footboard was intricately carved, and the carpenter had made generous use of gold leaf. A virtual sea of cushions and quilts lent the room a fairytale character, an impression intensified by three oil paintings on the wall depicting scenes from Asbjørnsen and Moe’s famous nineteenth-century Norwegian folk tales.

“Can I help?” Hanne Wilhelmsen asked.

The Public Prosecutor was no longer grubbing around for something he could not find. His hand was clutching a silver-framed photograph displayed alongside five or six other family portraits on the green-lacquered chest of drawers. Hanne Wilhelmsen wasn’t even sure if the man was still breathing.

She crossed the room and stopped two paces from Halvorsrud. As she’d anticipated, the picture was of his wife. She was on horseback, with a young child straddled between her and the pommel. The child looked nervous and was clinging to his mother’s arm, which was angled protectively across the youngster’s shoulder and stomach, like a seatbelt. The woman was smiling. In contrast to the face that had stared expressionlessly at Hanne Wilhelmsen from the pale-pink driving license, this photograph revealed that Doris Flo Halvorsrud had been an attractive woman. Her face was cheerful and guileless, and her strong nose and wide chin suggested an appealing tenacity rather than a lack of femininity.

Sigurd Halvorsrud held the picture in his right hand, his thumb pressed against the glass inside the embossed frame. His finger went white. Suddenly the glass cracked with a faint snap. Halvorsrud did not react, not even when blood began to pour from a deep cut on his hand.

“I don’t know the man who killed my wife,” he said. “But I know who he is. You can have his name.”

The woman and child in the photograph had almost disappeared, lost beneath the splintered glass and dark blood. Hanne Wilhelmsen took hold of the picture and coaxed it out of the man’s grasp. She replaced it gently on top of the chest of drawers, beside a silver hairbrush.

“Let’s go, Halvorsrud.”

The Chief Public Prosecutor shrugged and went with her. Drops of red were dripping from his injured thumb.

3

Journalist Evald Bromo had always enjoyed working at Aftenposten. It was an excellent newspaper. At least to work for. You avoided most of the adultery stories in the tabloids, and the pay was good. Now and then he even got the chance to immerse himself in a topic and study it in depth. Evald Bromo had worked on the financial pages for eleven years and usually looked forward to going to work.

But not today.

Evald Bromo’s wife put a plate with two pancakes on the table in front of him, sandwiched with butter and smothered in Canadian maple syrup, just the way she knew he liked them. Instead of launching himself greedily at his breakfast, he took a tight grip of his knife and fork, absent-mindedly tapping them tunelessly on the tabletop.

“Don’t you think?”

He flinched and dropped his fork on the floor.

Evald Bromo’s wife was called Margaret Kleiven. She was skinny, as if the childlessness she had never come to terms with had eaten her up from the inside. Her skin seemed too large for her slight body, making her appear ten years older than her husband, even though they were the same age. They had never discussed adoption, so Margaret Kleiven had dedicated her life to discharging her duties as a high-school teacher to the best of her ability and to treating her husband as a substitute for the child she had never had. She leaned over him and tucked his napkin more neatly into his shirt collar before retrieving his fork.

“Spring’s obviously late this year,” she repeated, mildly irritated, as she pointed insistently at the pancakes. “Eat up now. You’re behind time.”

Evald Bromo stared at his plate. The syrup had run down the sides and the butter had melted, and now everything was mixed together in a greasy mess around the edges of the pancakes, making him feel nauseous.

“I’m not very hungry today,” he mumbled, pushing the food away.

“Aren’t you feeling well?” she asked anxiously. “Are you coming down with something? There’s such a lot going around just now. Maybe you should stay at home.”

“Not at all. It’s just that I didn’t sleep too well. I can get something to eat at work. If I’m hungry, I mean.”

He forced a faint smile. Sweat was pouring from his armpits, even though he had taken a shower that morning.

He stood up abruptly.

“But, darling, you must have something to eat,” she said firmly, placing her hand on his shoulder to make him sit down again.

“I’m going,” Evald Bromo snarled, pulling away from her unwelcome touch.

Margaret Kleiven’s narrow face became all eyes; her mouth and nose disappeared, creating an overpowering sense of gigantic gray-blue irises.

“Relax,” he said, attempting a smile. “I may have to nip into a meeting at … a meeting. Not sure, you see. I’ll phone, okay?”

Margaret Kleiven did not reply. When Evald Bromo leaned across to give her a routine goodbye kiss, she drew back. He shrugged, muttering something she could not catch.

“Hope you feel better soon,” she said in an injured tone as she turned her back on him.

Once he had left, she nevertheless stood staring at him until his back vanished behind their neighbor’s overgrown hedge. She rubbed the curtains with her fingers and it occurred to her in her distraction that they needed a spring clean. It also struck her that her husband’s back had become thinner over the years.

When Evald Bromo knew his wife could no longer see him, he halted. The chill spring air jarred on a decayed molar as he opened his mouth and took a deep breath.

Evald Bromo’s world was about to be shattered. It was all going to happen on the first of September. He would have the spring and the summer, but then right at the beginning of autumn, everything would be over. For Evald Bromo the coming six months would be blighted by pain, shame and fear at the thought of what lay ahead.

His bus arrived and he grabbed the one vacant seat before an old lady could reach it. He never usually did that kind of thing.

4

Evald Bromo was not at work. Out of habit, he had got off the bus on Akersgata at his usual stop, between the government tower block and the Ministry of Culture. He didn’t even shoot a glance in the direction of Aftenposten, situated fifty meters down the street; instead, his feet had almost automatically taken him up to Vår Frelsers graveyard.

The graveyard was silent. The occasional high-school pupil hurried along the network of paths to make it in time for the first class of the day at the nearby Cathedral School. Despite the signs bearing stern reminders about using a leash, a stray dog was sniffing amongst the graves. The mongrel, black and burly, was wagging its tail madly at everything it found. The owner had to be the equally burly man in an equally black coat who was leaning on a lamp post reading a newspaper.

Evald Bromo was freezing.

He opened the zipper of his leather jacket and loosened the scarf around his neck. Suddenly he felt ravenous. He was thirsty too, come to think of it. He sat down on a grimy bench beside a gravestone whose inscription was no longer legible and removed his gloves, placing them neatly by his side. He was plagued by thoughts about how cold he felt and how tormented with hunger and thirst he was. He conjured up images of food and recalled the sensation of ice-cold water filling his mouth after a long run; he felt the liquid progress from his palate down his throat. He decided to take off his jacket all the same.

Now his teeth were chattering.

He had received two emails. One anonymous, and with a meaningless address: [email protected]. The other signed “Someone who never forgets”. Forgets what?

Perhaps it was possible to trace a Hotmail address. Perhaps there were records of that kind of thing. Evald Bromo knew very well that the police sometimes had problems obtaining permission from internet service providers to check where an email might have originated. It must be even worse for an ordinary citizen. He had decided to enlist the help of a colleague who knew considerably more than he did about electronic communications, but when it came to it, he could not bring himself to ask. When he’d felt the color rise in his cheeks, he had instead asked about searching an archive he had not been able to access.

Worst of all, however, was the thought that these emails were stored somewhere in Aftenposten’s colossal IT system. When they’d pinged onto his screen, he had opened them and read them twice before deleting them. He’d wanted to escape them, to get rid of them. Only after he had deleted the second one, the one that had arrived yesterday morning and had put him into a state of total panic, had it dawned on him that both emails were retrievable. Evald Bromo vaguely remembered receiving a circular a few months earlier. Since he hadn’t really understood what it was about, he had only skimmed it. But he had noted its warning that IT staff might, for technical reasons, occasionally need to access employees’ private mail. And that deleted documents could remain in the system for some considerable time.

Evald Bromo was a good journalist. At the age of forty-six, he had still not tired of it. He lived quietly, with a limited social circle and an apparent concern for his elderly mother that was touching. Over the years he had obtained a rudimentary education in economics, taking the odd accountancy qualification and distance-learning course. Enough to satisfy pertinent questions. More than sufficient to find weaknesses wherever they might lie, as a good business journalist should. Evald Bromo’s approach was as thorough in his work as it was in his hobby of building model boats, something that had developed into a time-consuming obsession.

Building boats and writing were about the same thing.

Attention to detail. Fastidiousness. Just as every tiny detail had to be exactly right on a ship, from the cannon balls to the stitches on the sail and the drapery on the figurehead, so the stories he covered also needed to be correct. They might be critical, or presented from a particular point of view, but they were always meticulous. Everything in order. Everyone having a say.

Evald Bromo had only one real weakness.

Certainly there were sad aspects to his life. His father, who had died in a drinking binge when Evald was only six, had haunted his dreams ever since. However, his mother had done what she could for the boy. These days she lay in her decrepit shell of a body with a brain that had short-circuited long ago, but Evald Bromo derived a quiet pleasure from his almost daily visits to her nursing home. His marriage to Margaret Kleiven had never been a bed of roses, but at least it offered comfort. For the past fourteen years he had been looked after and given food, and peace and quiet.

Evald Bromo’s weakness was little girls.

He could not remember when it had started. It had probably always been like that. In a sense, he had never grown out of them. Giggling, gum-chewing girls with pigtails and long stockings under short skirts had swarmed around him that spring when he was twelve years old and had been given five hundred kroner by an aunt. Eventually the girls grew bigger, but Evald Bromo did not keep up with them. He could never forget what one of them had given him in return for fifty shiny coins, behind the gymnasium and sworn to secrecy.

As a youth, he had buried his urges in work and exercise. He ran like a hare; for an hour before anyone else had risen, and usually for two hours in the early evening. The legal training he embarked on fell through after one and a half semesters. The hours he spent in the reading room, head bowed over books that did not interest him in the slightest, became unbearable. They provided too much room for thoughts he was reluctant to acknowledge. Evald Bromo ran: he ran like a madman, away from university and away from himself. At twenty-two years of age, in 1974, he arrived at a temporary post with Dagbladet newspaper. And the running he was so fond of became fashionable.

On his twenty-fifth birthday, Evald Bromo became a criminal.

He had never had a girlfriend. His only sexual experience with another person was the one he had bought for fifty kroner coins threaded on a string when he was twelve and a half years old.

When he was double that age, he was aware of the difference between right and wrong. The young girl who had run away from home could not have been older than thirteen. She was begging for money when he staggered home after attending a celebration in town with a group of people who might be called friends. The girl received three hundred kroner and a pack of cigarettes. In return, Evald Bromo got five minutes of intense pleasure and endless nights of regret and remorse.

But he had made a start.

He always paid. He was really generous, and never used force. Sometimes it amazed him how easy it was to find these youngsters. They were lost, superfluous in a city that closed its eyes to them as long as they did not hang around in gangs. And they didn’t. Not these ones. They were alone, and even though they used make-up to look older, Evald Bromo possessed an expert eye when it came to what was hidden underneath those skintight blouses and bras stuffed with cotton wool. He could determine a girl’s age almost to the exact month she was born. He shopped for illegal sex for a period of six years. Then he met Margaret Kleiven.

Margaret Kleiven was quiet, thin and small. She was friendly. She was the first grown woman to show more than a sisterly interest in him. Sexually, she demanded very little. They married after three months’ acquaintance, and when Evald Bromo slipped the ring on her finger, the emotions he felt were hope and relief. Now someone would keep him under control. Everything would be much more difficult, and finally simple again.

He had never been unfaithful. He did not regard it as such. When by chance he came across an address in a porn magazine he found lying around at work, the temptation was too great. It seemed safe. The arrangement cost far more than picking up strays in the street, but on the other hand he could keep the home he shared with Margaret clean. Over the years, there had been new addresses in other shady magazines and also from time to time even younger girls, but he had always kept himself to a boundary of ten years old. That’s where he said stop. What he was doing was wrong, terribly wrong, but it became worse the younger the girls were.

He was never unfaithful.

He bought sex once a month.

First and foremost, he was a journalist, and he built model boats.

Evald Bromo was forty-six years old and skipped work for the first time in his life. The morning rush hour in Ullevålsveien had subsided, and one or two little birds seemed to believe that spring had already arrived. There was a smell of wet earth and an indefinable scent of the city, and he was chilled to the bone.

On the first day of September, Aftenposten’s Chief Editor would receive an envelope in the post. It would contain a video recording and five photographs of Evald Bromo and a twelve-year-old girl, still three years shy of her confirmation. The email had not included any demands. No threats. No exit routes of the type, “If you don’t give me this, then …” Just a plain statement of fact. Short and sweet. This will happen. September the first.

Evald Bromo got to his feet, stiff with cold. He put on his jacket again and tied his scarf.

There was nothing he could do.

He could only wait. He had six months left.

5

Oslo Police Station had changed its name. At one stage during an endless series of reorganizations, the massive, sprawling gray building at Grønlandsleiret 44 had been renamed Oslo Police District Headquarters. No one really understood why. District police forces were merged with urban police forces and all the good-natured rural officers were made accountable to police chiefs with law degrees and gold braiding on their shoulders. After the merger, police stations were no longer to be found in Norway. Instead there were district headquarters.

The change of name had not had any visible effect. Oslo Police District HQ seemed just as uncomfortable with its surroundings as Oslo Police Station had always been. On its eastern side stood the old Oslo Prison, formerly a national institution for long-term prisoners and now downgraded to a mere county jail, on account of changing circumstances and a lack of financial resources. Grønland Church loomed on its western flank, defiantly and patiently awaiting visitors in an area of the city where half the residents were Muslim and the other half had barely seen the inside of a house of prayer since they were christened. The optimism that had infused the rest of Old Oslo and seen house prices double in the space of a year had never reached the hill on which the Police District HQ was located, with Åkebergveien tucked in behind it.

“A station is and will always be a station,” Hanne Wilhelmsen said emphatically, slinging a case folder into a corner. “Since I began in the police force, this place has been reorganized a zillion times. Don’t touch those!”

She made a lunge for the man who, having leaned over her, had already nabbed four chocolate bananas from a blue enamel bowl on the desk.

The man helped himself to three more.

“Billy T.!” Hanne said furiously, slapping him so hard on the backside of his tight jeans that it sounded like an explosion. “Leave them alone, I said! Anyway, you’re starting to get really fat! Gross!”

“Comfort padding.” Billy T. grinned, giving himself a smack on the belly before sitting down in the visitor’s chair. “I’m getting so much good food these days.”

“Which quite simply means you’re getting real food,” Hanne said tartly. “Instead of all the junk you’ve lived on for as long as I’ve known you. I’ve loads to do, as a matter of fact.”

She cast an encouraging glance in the direction of the door he had just slammed behind him.

“Fine.” Billy T. beamed, picking up the Dagbladet newspaper that lay on a shelf under an overflowing ashtray. “I’ll wait. Bloody hell, you’ve started to smoke again!”

“Not at all,” Hanne said. “Having a cigarette now and again certainly doesn’t mean that I smoke.”

“Now and again,” Billy T. mumbled, already immersing himself in an article about new motorbikes coming out that spring. “That means once in a while. Are those butts there a whole year’s worth, eh?”

Hanne Wilhelmsen did not answer.

The man who sat reading a newspaper while discreetly picking his nose on the opposite side of her desk looked larger than ever. Billy T. had measured six foot seven in his stocking feet since he was eighteen. He had never been slim. He would soon turn forty and in the past six months must have put on twenty kilos. It looked as though the extra weight had also done something to his height. Even when seated, it was as if his shape had no actual beginning or end. He filled the room with something Hanne could not quite figure out.

Hanne leafed through a well-thumbed textbook on criminal law, pretending to read while she stole secret glances at Billy T. through her fringe. She ought to get a haircut. He ought to go on a diet.

Hanne Wilhelmsen had long ago given up trying to work out her relationship with Billy T. He was definitely her best pal. Over the years, they had fallen into a modus vivendi like that of a symbiotic old married couple, using a bickering, sarcastic tone that vanished in an instant if one realized the other was being serious. Hanne caught herself wondering how close they really were. In recent months she had started to question whether she was capable of being close to anyone. Apart from for brief, transitory moments.

Something had happened between Hanne and Billy T. late one Thursday evening five months earlier. When she closed her eyes, she saw him lurching into her apartment, drunk as a sailor. The entire block must have heard him when he roared in delight that he was going to marry the mother of his soon-to-be fifth son. As he had never lived with any of the mothers of his first four boys, this called for a celebration. Cecilie, Hanne’s live-in partner of almost twenty years, had welcomed Billy T. with coffee strong as dynamite, gentle admonitions and heartfelt congratulations. Hanne, on the other hand, had fallen silent, feeling both wounded and aggrieved; emotions that had still not quite dissipated. The realization of what was really bothering her hurt far more than the actual prospect of losing someone she thought she would have to herself for the rest of her life.

“Have you thought about your speech?” Billy T. asked suddenly.

“Speech?”

“The wedding. The speech. Have you thought about it?”

There were still almost three months to go. Hanne Wilhelmsen was to be best woman but did not even know if she could face going.

“Look at this,” she said instead, throwing a folder containing Polaroid pictures across the desk. “Warning: graphic violence.”

Billy T. threw the newspaper on the floor and opened the file. He pulled a grimace Hanne could not recall seeing before. Billy T. had grown older. His eyes were more deep-set than ever, and the laughter lines below them could be maliciously likened to dark bags. His shaved head was no longer a statement; he could just as easily have lost his hair. Even his teeth, visible when his lips contracted in disgust at the photos, bore signs that Billy T. would turn forty that summer. Hanne let her eyes slide from his face down to her own hands. The winter-dry skin was not improved by the hand cream she plastered on three times a day. Fine lines on the back of her hand reminded her she was only eighteen months younger than Billy T.

“Fucking hell,” Billy T. said, banging the folder shut. “I heard about the case at the morning meeting, but that there …”

“Nasty,” Hanne sighed. “He may have done it himself.”

“Hardly,” Billy T. said, kneading his face. “No one’s going to get me to believe that Chief Public Prosecutor Halvorsrud has gone berserk with a samurai sword and attacked his own wife. No fucking way.”

“Hasty conclusion, if I may say so.”

Hanne Wilhelmsen scratched her neck irritably. Billy T. was the eighth police officer in the past few hours who, without a scrap of prior knowledge, had nonetheless come to a definite conclusion about the case.

“Obviously he could have done it,” she said flatly. “Equally, he may well be telling the truth when he says he was threatened with a gun and therefore sat completely paralyzed while his wife was massacred by a madman. Who knows?”

She wanted to add: and who cares? Another sign that she was ready to move on. The worst thing was that she had no idea where to. Or why everything, in some vague, undefined way, was in flux. Something had entered her life that meant she could no longer muster the required energy. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that she could not be bothered. She had become quieter than before. Grumpier, without really wanting to be. Cecilie had begun to scrutinize her when she thought she would not notice. Hanne could not even take the trouble to ask what she was staring at.

There were four brisk knocks at the door.

“Come in!” Billy T. thundered, breaking into a broad smile when a policewoman with a huge stomach waddled into the cramped office. “My wife-to-be and my new son!”

He pulled his colleague onto his knee.

“Have you ever seen a more beautiful sight, Hanne?”

Without waiting for a reply, he rubbed his face against the policewoman’s bump and embarked on an incomprehensible mumbled dialogue with the child inside.

“It’s a GIRL,” the heavily pregnant woman mouthed to Hanne without making a sound. “A GIRL!”

Hanne Wilhelmsen began to laugh involuntarily.

“A girl, Billy T.! Are you going to be daddy to a girl at last? Poor, unfortunate baby girl!”

“This guy only makes boys,” Billy T. said, tapping her smock with his finger. “And this, my friends, this here is my son. The fifth in a row. Sure as shooting.”

“What can I do for you?”

Hanne Wilhelmsen made an effort to disregard Billy T.. Police Sergeant Tone-Marit Steen made a wholehearted attempt to tear herself away. Neither of them succeeded.

“Billy T.!”

He pulled a face and scowled at Hanne. “Bloody hell, you’re so bad-tempered these days! Do you have PMS morning, noon and night, or what? Get a grip of yourself, woman!”

His grimace transformed into a smile directed at Tone-Marit as he wriggled out of the chair and made himself scarce.

“What was it he was actually after?” Hanne asked, spreading her hands demonstratively.

“Haven’t a clue,” Tone-Marit said, sitting down with a groan she tried to conceal. “But I’ve got something for you. That guy who was supposed to have beheaded Halvorsrud’s wife—”

“Ståle Salvesen,” Hanne said briskly. “What about him?”

“Well, the man the Public Prosecutor insists—”

“I know who you’re referring to.” Hanne interrupted her in an irate voice. “What have you found out?”

“Dead.”

“Dead?”

Hanne Wilhelmsen was aware that no one had caught Ståle Salvesen since she had initiated a search for him the night before. He was on a piece of paper in front of her.

Age: 52 years. Marital status: Separated. Employment: In receipt of disability benefit. One grown-up son. Address: Vogts gate 14. Income: 32,000 kroner in 1997. No capital. No other relative apart from his son, living in the USA.

Two patrols had been to Torshov to look for Ståle Salvesen at three o’clock in the morning. As he was not at home and his apartment was in fact unlocked, they had paid an unofficial visit inside. Cheerless place, but tidy. Bed made. No Salvesen. Out-of-date milk in the fridge. The compressed information had materialized in a special report attached to the printout from the data register.

“What do you mean by ‘dead’?” Hanne said, her tone needlessly sharp; the previous night’s information that Salvesen could not be found had given her a secret hope that Sigurd Halvorsrud had actually told the truth.

“Suicide. He jumped into the sea last Monday.”

“Jumped into the sea?” Hanne Wilhelmsen felt an urge to laugh. She had no idea why.

“It was a … Oops!” Tone-Marit touched her stomach and held her breath.

“Just practice contractions,” she gasped after a while. “A hiker saw a man throw himself off Staure Bridge just before eleven o’clock on Monday night. The police found Salvesen’s old Honda nearby. Unlocked, with the key in the ignition. There was a suicide note on the dashboard. Straightforward stuff, four lines saying that he couldn’t stand it any more, etcetera, etcetera.”

“And the body?”

“Not found yet. The currents are unpredictable in that spot, so it could take some time. Salvesen may well have died in the fall. The drop would have been over twenty meters.”

A fire alarm wailed.

“Nooo!” Hanne Wilhelmsen screamed. “I’m bloody fed up with these false alarms! Bloody fed up!”

“You’re fed up most of the time,” Tone-Marit said calmly, getting to her feet. “Anyway, there might well be a fire.”

In the doorway, she turned to gaze at her superior officer. For a second it looked as though she was about to say something more. Then she shook her head almost imperceptibly, and walked off.

6

“This doesn’t look too good,” Hanne Wilhelmsen said in an undertone, pouring more coffee into the handleless mug in front of Chief Public Prosecutor Sigurd Halvorsrud. “You can see that, can’t you?”

Halvorsrud had spruced himself up considerably. He was freshly showered and smooth-shaven, and he was even wearing a tie, despite his temporary domicile being an uncomfortable remand cell. He nodded wordlessly.

“My client agrees to being held on remand for one week. By which time this misunderstanding should have been cleared up.”

Hanne Wilhelmsen raised her eyebrows. “Honestly, Karen—”

An indistinct expression in Karen Borg’s eyes made Hanne shift in her chair. “Miss Borg,” she corrected herself. “Take a close look at this.”

Hanne placed a sheet of paper with a handwritten list of bullet points in front of Halvorsrud’s lawyer. She tapped her forefinger against each point in turn, itemizing the reasons the police had for remanding Halvorsrud in custody for significantly longer than a week.

“He was present at the crime scene when—”

“He was the one who called the police.”

“Could I be allowed to continue without interruption?”

“Sorry. Go ahead.”

Hanne Wilhelmsen took out a cigarette. Halvorsrud had driven her to go through three cigarettes during the formalities so far, and at that particular moment Hanne could not care less that Karen had developed a talent for sanctimoniousness since becoming the mother of two children.

“Halvorsrud was in fact on the spot when the murder was committed. His fingerprints are all over the place. On the sword, beside the body … Everywhere.”

“But he lives—”

“Miss Borg,” Hanne said, clearly and emphatically, as she got to her feet.

She stood by the window of the office she had recently been assigned. The room did not feel like her own. She did not belong there. It contained hardly a single personal item. The view was not the one she was used to. The trees lining the avenue leading out from the old main entrance of the prison were still bare. A football rolled slowly along the gravel path, though there was not a child in sight.

“I suggest,” Hanne Wilhelmsen began afresh, out of habit sending a smoke ring up to the ceiling, “that I be allowed to complete my exposition. Then you can have your say. Without interruptions.”

She wheeled around to face the other two. “Okay?”

“Okay,” Karen Borg said, flashing a smile as she touched her client’s arm. “Of course.”

“In addition to what I’ve just mentioned, there’s the fact that Halvorsrud invokes a … an invalid alibi, so to speak. He claims that it was a certain Ståle Salvesen who abused and murdered his wife. Ståle Salvesen, however, died on Monday.”

“What?” The Public Prosecutor launched himself forward, banging his elbows on the surface of the desk.

“Ståle Salvesen’s not dead! Definitely not! He was at my house … He killed my wife last night! I saw it with my own eyes. I can—”

He rubbed his tender arm and looked at Karen Borg as if expecting his lawyer to vouch for his story. Help was not forthcoming. Karen Borg twiddled an unostentatious diamond ring and cocked her head as if she had misheard what Hanne had said.

“Ståle Salvesen took his own life on Monday night. At least everything indicates that. Eye witnesses, his car parked just beside the bridge he jumped from, a suicide note.”

“But no body,” Karen Borg said slowly.

Hanne looked up. “No. Not yet. It will turn up. Sooner or later.”

“Perhaps he’s not dead,” Karen Borg said.

“You’re quite right, of course,” Hanne said calmly. “But in the meantime there’s not a solitary speck of evidence that your client is telling the truth. In other words …” She stubbed out her cigarette with a pang of conscience. It was her sixth that day. She should not have started again. Definitely not. “… one week is not enough time. But if you’ll accept two, I’ll work my butt off in the next fortnight.”

“Fine,” Halvorsrud said firmly, without reference to his attorney. “I relinquish my right to appear at a preliminary hearing. Two weeks. Okay.”

“With a ban on letters and visits,” Hanne Wilhelmsen added quickly.

Karen Borg nodded. “And with the minimum possible press coverage,” she said. “I notice the newspapers haven’t picked up the story as yet.”

“Dream on,” Hanne muttered, before continuing. “I’ll try to find a mattress for you, Halvorsrud. We’ll have another, far more comprehensive interview tomorrow, if that’s acceptable …”

Karen Borg tucked her hair behind her ear in a compliant gesture. An officer was summoned over the intercom and when he had closed the door behind himself and Halvorsrud, Karen Borg remained where she was.

“I haven’t seen you for ages,” she said.

Hanne smiled briefly and began to save some non-existent item on her computer. “Too much to do. Both Cecilie and me. And what about you? How are the children doing?”

“Fine. And you?”

“Okay.”

“Håkon says something’s bothering you.”

“Håkon says a lot of strange things.”

“And a lot of sensible things too. He notices things. You and I both know that.”

Six months earlier, Håkon had finally become a public prosecutor. The nomination had come late, later than for most police lawyers, who were promoted as a matter of routine. Sooner or later. It was just a question of being patient. Year after year. Case after case. The vast majority found themselves better paid and less onerous jobs in the space of two or three years. Håkon Sand had held out, eventually earning a kind of respect, if not exactly admiration, from those in the higher echelons of the prosecution service. Not least for his work with Hanne Wilhelmsen and Billy T., who had both protested vehemently at losing their most police-friendly lawyer. However, Håkon Sand could not endure any more. He had shuffled green folders and walked the linoleum corridors of Grønlandsleiret 44 for nine years before finally being able to stow his family photographs and a beautiful bronze statuette of the Goddess of Justice into a cardboard box and move to C. J. Hambros plass 2B. As the crow flies, it was barely one and a half kilometers away, but he had disappeared without trace. Now and again, he phoned for a chat, most recently only a couple of days earlier. He had suggested lunch. Hanne had not had time. She never had time.

“I thought you’d become the champion of the disadvantaged and everyone’s friend,” Hanne said sharply. “What’s made you take on the case of his scornful highness Halvorsrud?”

“Friend of the family. Of my brother, to be more specific. Besides, you said it yourself: Halvorsrud’s in quite a weak position. What’s really wrong with you, Hanne?”

“Nothing.”

Hanne made a genuine effort to smile. She drew up the corners of her mouth, and tried to drag her eyes along with them. They filled up. She looked from side to side with her eyes wide open, aware her smile was about to morph into a grimace that would reveal something of what she would not speak about. Of what she could not speak about.

Karen Borg leaned across the desk, very carefully placing her hand on Hanne’s. Hanne pulled hers away, more as a reflex action than deliberate rejection.

“It’s nothing, really.” She tried to brush it aside as the tears began to roll.

Karen Borg had known Hanne Wilhelmsen since 1992. The early days of their friendship had been pretty dramatic: together they had been sent whirling into a murder case that had later turned into a political scandal of rare proportions. It had almost cost Karen Borg her life. Håkon Sand had rescued her from a burning cottage at the very last moment. When they had subsequently moved in together and had children, Hanne and Cecilie had become close friends of them both. Seven years had elapsed since.

“I’ve never seen you cry, Hanne.”

“I’m not actually crying,” Hanne Wilhelmsen corrected her as she wiped away her tears. “I’m just so worn out. Tired, somehow. All the time.”

Snow began to fall again. The enormous, frisky flakes melted as soon as they touched the windowpane, and Hanne was not sure whether it was because of them or her tears that the shapes in the park outside were merging into an indistinct image in shades of gray.

“I wish it was summer soon,” she whispered. “And warm. If only the weather was warmer, then everything would improve.”

Karen Borg did not reply. It occurred to her that even the most intense heatwave ever would not help Hanne Wilhelmsen. Nevertheless, she could not restrain herself from checking the time. The nursery would close in fifteen minutes. Hanne still didn’t say anything, and instead simply rocked to and fro in her chair, snapping her fingers. The feigned smile was still fixed like a mask on the lower part of her face, and tears were still running down her cheeks.

“We’ll talk again, then,” Karen Borg said, rising from her seat. “Tomorrow, ten o’clock.”

She felt uneasy as she hurried along the third-floor gallery, yellow zone. And she had no idea what she was going to cook for dinner.

7

The current had carried Ståle Salvesen’s mortal remains to the mouth of the fjord. Where the fjord met the sea, eddies had developed that toyed with the corpse for as long as they could summon the energy. When they’d grown tired of this, they’d forced it down to the seabed.

An old fishing boat, about fifteen meters long, lay at a depth of thirty-two meters. It had lain there since one rough winter’s night in 1952 and had long been a favorite haunt of amateur divers. The binnacle was gone. The solid oak wheel had been removed in the sixties by a young lad. There were no pots and pans left. All that remained was the shell of a boat with no glass in the windows of its pilot house.

Ståle Salvesen was no longer wearing his anorak. The water had wrenched it off him, and it now lethargically washed over the pebbles on the shore two kilometers farther north. However, he still had his boots on. They were firmly attached, as if by vacuum suction. When Ståle Salvesen’s right leg was dragged by the current through the pilot house, the leg of the boot got caught on a hook no one had taken the trouble to remove.

He resembled a four-armed starfish as he swayed in the cold March brine.

8

S