“Does this mean you’re not on your way here?” she interrupted.
“What?”
“You’re five minutes away from me and you say ‘one more thing’ like we’re not going to be seeing each other soon.”
“I need to think,” Harry said. “And I think best on my own.”
“Of course. I didn’t mean to nag.”
“You’re not nagging.”
“No, I…” She sighed. “What’s the last thing?”
“Ringdal has a photograph of the shattered body of a woman on the wall above his computer. You know, so he can see her the whole time. Like a certificate or something.”
“Bloody hell. What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. But do you think you could find a photograph of his ex-wife, the Russian one who disappeared?”
“Shouldn’t be too hard. If there’s nothing on Google, I’ll call her friend again. I’ll text it to you.”
“Thanks.” Harry drove slowly down Sognsveien, between the brick houses in the quiet, English-style garden district. He saw a pair of headlights coming towards him. “Kaja?”
“Yes?”
It was a bus. Pale, ghostly faces looked out at him from inside the illuminated vehicle as it passed. And among them Rakel’s face. They were coming more frequently now, the flashes of memory, like loose stones before a landslide.
“Nothing,” Harry said. “Goodnight.”
—
Harry was sitting on the sofa listening to the Ramones.
Not because the Ramones meant anything special to him, but because the album had been sitting on the record player ever since Bjørn had given it to him. And he realised he’d been steering clear of music since the funeral, that he hadn’t turned the radio on once, not here at home or in the Escort, and seemed to have preferred silence. Silence to think. Silence while he tried to hear what it was saying, the voice out there, on the other side of the darkness, behind a half-moon-shaped window, behind the windows of the ghostly bus, saying something he could almost hear. Almost. But now it needed to be drowned out instead. Because now it was talking too loudly, and he couldn’t bear to hear it.
He turned the volume up, closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the shelves of records behind the sofa. The Ramones.Road to Ruin. Joey’s punchy lyrics. Even so, it still sounded more pop than punk. That was what tended to happen. Success, the good life, age, they all made even the angriest of people more conciliatory. The way they had with Harry, making him milder, kinder. Almost sociable. Happily tamed by a woman he loved in a marriage that worked. Not perfect. Well, fuck it, as perfect as anyone could bear. Until one day, like a bolt from the blue, she picked at a sore point. Confronted him with her suspicions. And he had confessed. No, not confessed. He always told Rakel what she wanted to know, it was just up to her to ask. And she had always known better than to ask about more than she needed to know. So she must have thought she needed to know. One night with Katrine. Katrine had taken care of him on a night when he was so drunk that he couldn’t look after himself. Had they had sex? Harry didn’t remember, he had been rat-arsed, probably so drunk that even if he had tried he wouldn’t have managed it. But he told Rakel the truth, that it couldn’t be ruled out entirely. And then she had said that it didn’t make any difference, that he had betrayed her anyway, that she didn’t want to see him again, and told Harry to pack his things.
Just the thought of it now hurt so much that it left Harry gasping for breath.
He had taken a bag of clothes, his bathroom stuff and his records, leaving the CDs behind. Harry hadn’t drunk a drop of alcohol since the night Katrine picked him up, but the day Rakel threw him out he went straight to the liquor store. And was stopped by one of the staff when he started to unscrew one of the bottles before he was out of the shop.
Alexandra would be working on the sweater by now.
Harry put the pieces together in his head.
If it was Rakel’s blood, then the case was sorted. On the night of the murder, Peter Ringdal left the Jealousy Bar around 22:30 and paid Rakel an unannounced visit, possibly under the pretext of trying to persuade her to remain as chairperson. She let him in, gave him a glass of water. She turned down his offer. Unless perhaps she said yes. Perhaps that was why he stayed longer, because they had things to discuss. And perhaps the conversation had slipped on to more personal subjects. Ringdal probably told Rakel about Harry’s outrageous behaviour in the bar earlier, and Rakel would have told him about Harry’s problems and—this was the first time Harry had considered this—that Harry had set up a wildlife camera that he didn’t think Rakel knew anything about. Rakel might even have told Ringdal where the camera was mounted. They had shared their troubles, and possibly their joys, and at some point Ringdal evidently thought the time was right to make a more physical move. But this time he was definitely rejected. And in the rage that followed this humiliation, Ringdal grabbed the knife from the block on the kitchen counter and stabbed her. Stabbed her several times, either in ongoing rage or because he realised it was too late, the damage was done, and he had to finish the job, kill her and get rid of the evidence. He managed to keep a clear head. Do what had to be done. And when he left the scene, he took a trophy with him, a certificate, like when he took a photograph of the other woman he had killed. The red scarf that was hanging next to Rakel’s coat under the hat rack. Then, when he was sitting in his car, he remembered just in time about the camera Rakel had mentioned, got out and removed it. He got rid of the memory card at the petrol station. Tossed the sweater with Rakel’s blood on it on the floor with his dirty washing. Maybe he hadn’t even seen the blood, because presumably then he would have washed it at once.Thatwas what had happened.
Maybe. Maybe not.
Twenty-five years’ experience as a murder detective had taught Harry that the chain of events was almost always more complicated and incomprehensible than it seemed at first.
But that the motive was almost always as simple and obvious as it seemed at first glance.
Peter Ringdal had been in love with Rakel. Hadn’t Harry seen the desire in his eyes the first time he came to view the Jealousy? Maybe he had been viewing Rakel as well. Love and murder. The classic combination. When Rakel rejected Ringdal in her home, maybe she told him she was going to take Harry back. And we’re all stuck in our ways. Bed-hoppers, thieves, drunks, murderers. We repeat our sins and hope for forgiveness, from God, other people, ourselves. So Peter Ringdal had killed Rakel Fauke the way he killed his ex-wife, Andrea Klitchkova.
Harry had originally been thinking along different lines. That it was the same person who had been there earlier that evening, that the murder had happened then, and then the perpetrator—who knew Rakel would be alone—had come back later to clean up. From the images on the wildlife camera they had seen Rakel in the doorway when she opened the door, but not the second time. Could that be because she was already dead. Maybe the murderer had taken her keys, let himself in, cleaned up and then left the keys behind when he left the house? Or had the murderer sent someone else to clean up after him? Harry had a vague notion that the silhouettes of the two visitors couldn’t belong to the same person. Either way, Harry had rejected that theory because the Forensic Medical Institute’s written report had been so certain about the time of the murder, that because of the temperature of the body and the room, the murder must have taken placeafterthe first visit. In other words, while the second visitor was there.
Harry heard the needle of the record player bump gently against the label, as if to point out discreetly that the record needed to be turned over. His brain was suggesting more loud, numbing hard rock, but he resisted, the way he routinely resisted the same bastard brain’s suggestion to have a drink, just a sip, a few drops. Time to go to bed. And if he managed to get some sleep, that would be a bonus. He lifted the record from the deck without touching the grooves, without leaving any fingerprints. Ringdal had forgotten to clean the glass in the dishwasher. Odd, really. Harry slid the album into the inner sleeve, then the cover. He ran his finger over the spines of his records. Alphabetical by artist’s name, then chronologically by date of acquisition. He inserted his hand between the eponymous albumsThe RainmakersandRamonesto make space for the new acquisition. He caught sight of something tucked between the albums. He pushed them aside a bit harder to see better. Shut his eyes. His heart began to beat faster, as if it had understood something his brain hadn’t yet taken in.
