Police: A Harry Hole thriller (Oslo Sequence 8) (61 page)

51

KATRINE SHIVERED AND
snuggled up under Bjørn’s arm. It was cold in the large church. Cold inside, cold outside, and she should have put on more clothes.

They were waiting. Everyone in Oppsal Church was waiting. Coughing. Why was it that people started coughing as soon as they entered a church? Was it the room itself that provoked tight throats and pharynxes? Even in a modern church made of glass and concrete like this? Was it their anxiety not to make a sound which they knew would be amplified by the acoustics that created this compulsive action? Or was it just a human way of releasing pent-up emotion, coughing it out instead of bursting into tears or laughter?

Katrine craned her head. There was a small turnout, only those closest. Few enough people to have only an initial in Harry’s contacts list. She saw Ståle Aune. Wearing a tie for once. His wife. Gunnar Hagen, also with wife.

She sighed. She should have worn more. Even if Bjørn didn’t seem to be cold. Dark suit. She hadn’t known he would look so good in a dark suit. She brushed his lapel. Not that there was anything on it, it was just what you did. An intimate act of love. Monkeys picking lice from the coat of another monkey.

The case was solved.

For a while they had been afraid they’d lost him, that Arnold Folkestad – now also known as the Cop Killer – had managed to escape abroad or find a hidey-hole in Norway. It would have had to be a deep, dark hole, for during the twenty-four hours after the initial alert, his description and personal information had been broadcast on every media outlet in such detail that every person of sound mind in the country had grasped who Arnold Folkestad was and what he looked like. And Katrine had at that point come to her own conclusions about how close they had been earlier in the case when Harry had asked her to check the connections between René Kalsnes and other police officers. If she had only widened her search to include
former
officers they would have found Arnold Folkestad’s ties to the young man.

She stopped brushing Bjørn’s lapel and he flashed her a smile of gratitude. A quick, forced smile. A little tremble around the chin. He was going to cry. She saw it now, for the first time she was going to see Bjørn Holm cry today. She coughed.

Mikael Bellman slipped into the end of the row. Glanced at his watch.

He had another interview in three-quarters of an hour.
Stern
. A million readers. Another foreign journalist wanting the story of how the young Chief of Police had worked indefatigably week after week, month after month, to catch this murderer, and how in the end he had himself almost become the Cop Killer’s victim. And Mikael would once again pause briefly before saying that the eye he had sacrificed was a cheap price for what he had achieved: preventing an insane murderer from taking even more of his officers’ lives.

Mikael Bellman pulled the sleeve over his watch. They should have started by now. What were they waiting for? He had given some thought to his choice of dress today. Black, to match the moment and the eyepatch? The patch was a real hit; it told his story in such a dramatic and effective way that according to
Aftenposten
he was the most photographed Norwegian in the international press this year. Or should he choose something dark but more neutral, which would be acceptable and not so conspicuous for the interview afterwards? He would have to go straight from the interview to a meeting with the City Council chairman, so Ulla had opted for dark, neutral colours.

If they didn’t start soon he would be late.

He mused. Did he feel anything? No. What should he feel? After all, it was only Harry Hole, not exactly a close friend, nor one of his officers in Oslo Police District. But there was a certain possibility that the press were waiting outside, and of course it was good PR to show your face in church. It was indeed impossible to get around the fact that Harry Hole had been the first to point the finger of guilt at Arnold Folkestad, and with the dimensions this case had taken on that linked Mikael and Harry. And PR was going to be even more important than ever. He already knew what the meeting with the City Council chairman was going to be about. The party had lost a strong personality with Isabelle Skøyen and was on the lookout for someone new. A popular, respected person they would like to have on the team, to lead Oslo forward. When the chairman had rung he had opened by singing the praises of the warm, contemplative impression Bellman had made in the
Magasinet
interview. And then wondered if their party political programme chimed with Mikael Bellman’s own political standpoints.

Chimed.

Lead Oslo forward.

Mikael Bellman’s town.

So get that organ cranked up!

Bjørn Holm could feel Katrine trembling under his arm, felt the cold sweat under his suit trousers and reflected that it was going to be a long day. A long day before he and Katrine could take off their clothes and crawl into bed. Together. Let life carry on. The way life carried on for those of them who were left, whether they wanted it to or not. And as his gaze swept across the rows of pews he thought of all those who were
not
here. Of Beate Lønn. Of Erlend Vennesla. Anton Mittet. Roar Midtstuen’s daughter, Fia. And of Rakel Fauke and Oleg Fauke, who weren’t here either. Who had paid the price for attaching themselves to the man who was being positioned in front of them by the altar. Harry Hole.

And in a strange way it was as though the man at the front was continuing to be what he had always been: a black pit sucking in everything that was good around him, consuming all the love he was offered and also the love he wasn’t.

Katrine had said yesterday after they had gone to bed that she had also been in love with Harry Hole. Not because he deserved it, but because he had been impossible not to love. As impossible as he was to catch, keep or live with. Yes, of course she had loved him. But it had passed, the desire had cooled, or at least she had tried to cool it. But the delicate little scar after the short heartbreak she shared with several women would always be there. He had been someone they’d had on loan for a while. And now it was over. Bjørn had asked her to drop the subject there.

The organ piped up. Bjørn had always had a weakness for organs. His mother’s organ in the sitting room in Skreia, Gregg Allman’s B3 organ, creaking pump organs squeezing out an old hymn, to Bjørn it was all the same, like sitting in a bathtub of warm notes and hoping the tears didn’t get you.

They had never caught Arnold Folkestad; he had caught himself.

Folkestad had probably come to the conclusion that his mission had ended. And with it, his life. So he had done the only logical thing. It took them three days to find him. Three days of desperate searching. BjØrn had had the feeling the whole country had been on the march. And perhaps that was why it felt like a bit of an anticlimax when the news came that he’d been found in the forest in Maridalen, only a few hundred metres from where Erlend Vennesla had been spotted. With a small, almost discreet, hole in his head and a gun in his hand. It was his car that had put them on the track; it had been seen in a car park close to where the trail paths started: an old Fiat that had also featured in the nationwide alert.

Bjørn himself had led the forensics team. Arnold Folkestad had looked so innocent lying on his back in the heath, like a leprechaun with his red beard. He lay beneath a patch of open sky unprotected by the trees clumped together around him. In his pockets they had found the keys for the Fiat and the door that was blown up in Hausmanns gate 92, a standard Heckler & Koch gun as well as the one he held in his hand, together with a wallet containing a dog-eared photo of a man Bjørn immediately recognised as René Kalsnes.

As it had rained non-stop for at least twenty-four hours and the body had been out in the open for three days there hadn’t been much evidence to examine. But it didn’t matter; they had what they needed. The skin around the entry wound in his right temple had scorch marks from the flame discharge of the weapon and the residue of burnt powder, and the ballistic results showed the bullet in his head came from the gun in his hand.

For that reason it was not there they concentrated their efforts. The investigation began when they broke into his house, where they found most of what they needed to clear up all the police murders. Batons covered with blood and hair from the victims, a bayonet saw with Beate Lønn’s DNA on it, a spade smeared with soil and clay that matched the ground in Vestre Cemetery, plastic ties, police cordon tape of the same kind that had been found outside Drammen, boots that tallied with the footprint at Tryvann. They had everything. And afterwards, as Harry had so often said, but which only Bjørn Holm had experienced, the void.

Because there was suddenly nothing else.

It wasn’t like breasting a tape, drifting into a harbour or pulling into a station.

It was more like the tarmac, the bridge, the rails had disappeared. It was the end of the road, and that was where the dive into nothingness began.

Finished. He hated the word.

So, almost in desperation, he had delved even deeper into the investigation of the original murders. And had found what he had been searching for, a link between the murder of the girl at Tryvann, Judas Johansen and Valentin Gjertsen. A quarter of a fingerprint didn’t give a match, but thirty per cent probability wasn’t to be sneered at. No, it wasn’t finished. It was never finished.

‘They’re starting now.’

It was Katrine. Her lips were almost touching his ear. The organ notes soared, grew into music, music he knew. Bjørn swallowed hard.

Gunnar Hagen closed his eyes for a second and listened only to the music, not wanting to think. But thoughts came. The case was over. Everything was over. They had buried what had to be buried now. Yet there was this one matter, one he could not bury, never managed to get underground. And which he still hadn’t mentioned to anyone. He hadn’t mentioned it because it could no longer be of any use. The Swedish words Asayev had whispered in his hoarse voice the seconds he had spent with him that day at the hospital. ‘What can you offer me if I agree to testify against Isabelle Skøyen?’ and ‘I don’t know who, but I know she worked with someone high up in the police force.’

The words were dead echoes of a dead man. Unprovable claims that would be damaging rather than beneficial now that Skøyen was off the scene.

So he had kept this to himself.

Like Anton Mittet with the bloody baton.

The decision had been taken, but it still kept him awake at night.

‘I know she worked with someone high up in the police force.’

Gunnar Hagen opened his eyes again.

Slowly, he ran his eyes across the assembled congregation.

Truls Berntsen sat with the window of the Suzuki Vitara rolled down so that he could hear the organ music from the small church. The sun shone from a cloudless sky. Warm and awful. He had never liked Oppsal. Just hooligans. He had given a lot of beatings. Taken a lot of beatings. Not as bad as in Hausmanns gate of course. Luckily it had looked worse than it was. And in hospital Mikael had said it didn’t matter with people as ugly as he was and how serious could concussion be for someone who didn’t have a brain?

It was meant to be a joke, and Truls had tried with his grunted laughter to show he appreciated it, but the broken jawbone and the smashed nose had hurt too much.

He was still taking strong painkillers, he still wore big bandages around his head, and of course he was not allowed to drive, but what could he do? He couldn’t sit at home waiting for the dizziness to go and the wounds to heal. Even Megan Fox had begun to bore him and he didn’t actually have the doctor’s permission to watch TV either. So he might just as well sit here. In a car outside a church to . . . well, to do what? To show his respect for a man he had never had any respect for? An empty gesture for a sodding idiot who didn’t know what was good for him, who saved the life of the one man whose death he had everything to gain by? Truls Berntsen couldn’t bloody fathom it. He only knew he wanted to be back working as soon as he was well enough. And the town to be his again.

Rakel breathed in and out. Her fingers round the bouquet felt clammy. Stared at the door. Thought about the people sitting inside. Friends, family, acquaintances. The priest. Not that there were so many, but they were waiting. Couldn’t start without her.

‘You promise you won’t cry?’ Oleg said.

‘No,’ she said, smiled fleetingly and stroked his cheek. He had grown so tall. He was so good-looking. Towered above her. She’d had to buy a dark suit for him, and it was only when they were standing in the shop and measuring up that she realised her son was close to Harry’s one metre ninety-two. She sighed.

‘We’d better go in,’ she said, threading her arm through his.

Oleg opened the door, was given a nod by the verger inside and they began to walk up the aisle. And when Rakel saw all the faces turned to her, she felt her nervousness vanish. This had not been her idea, she had been against it, but in the end Oleg had persuaded her. He thought it was only right that it should all finish like this. That was precisely the word he had used: finish. But wasn’t it above all else a beginning? The start of a new chapter in their lives? At least that was how it felt. And suddenly this did feel right. Being here, now.

And a smile spread across her face. She smiled at all the other smiling faces. For a moment she thought that if their smiles or her own got any broader there could be a serious accident. And the notion of this, the sound of tearing faces, which ought to have made her shudder, caused bubbles of laughter in her stomach. Don’t laugh, she told herself. Not now. She noticed that Oleg, who so far had been concentrating on walking in time with the organ, sensed her mood, and she glanced at him. Met his surprised, admonitory expression. But then he had to look away; he had seen. That his mother was having a fit of the giggles. Here, now. And he found that so inappropriate that he started laughing as well.

To focus her mind on something else, on what was about to happen, on the solemnity, she fixed her gaze on the man who was waiting by the altar. Harry. In black.