His phone rang.
Harry answered.
“It’s Alexandra. I’ve done a first sweep and I can already see differences in the DNA profiles that mean the blood on this Ringdal guy’s sweater can’t possibly be Rakel’s.”
“Mm.”
“And it doesn’t match yours either. And the blood on your jeans isn’t yours either.”
Silence.
“Harry?”
“Yes.”
“Is something wrong?”
“I don’t know. I suppose it must be blood from his nose on his sweater and my jeans, then. We’ve still got fingerprints tying him to the scene. And Rakel’s scarf in the drawer in his home, it smells of her, it’s bound to have her DNA on it. Hair, sweat, skin.”
“OK. But there’s a difference between the DNA profiles of the blood on the sweater and on your trousers as well.”
“Are you saying that the blood on the sweaterdoesn’tbelong to Rakel, me or Ringdal?”
“It’s a possibility.”
Harry realised she was giving him time to figure out the other possibilities for himself.Theother possibility. It was a matter of logic.
“The blood on my trousers isn’t Ringdal’s. And you began by saying it wasn’t mine. So whose is it, then?”
“I don’t know,” Alexandra said. “But…”
“But?” Harry stared in between the records. He knew what she was going to say. There were no longer any loose stones warning of a landslide. That had already happened. The whole mountainside had given way.
“So far, the blood on your trousers doesn’t show any deviation from Rakel’s DNA,” Alexandra said. “Obviously there’s a lot of work left before we get to the 99.999 percent probability that we count as a complete match, but we’re already up to 82 percent.”
Eighty percent. Four out of five.
“Of course,” Harry said. “I was wearing the trousers when I was at the scene after Rakel was found. I knelt down beside her body. There was a pool of blood there.”
“That explains that, if it reallyisRakel’s blood on your trousers. Do you want me to carry on with the analysis that could rule out the possibility that the blood on the sweater is Rakel’s?”
“No, there’s no need,” Harry said. “Thanks, Alexandra. I owe you one.”
“OK. You’re sure everything’s OK? You sound so—”
“Yes,” Harry interrupted. “Thanks, and goodnight.” He ended the call.
Therehadbeen a pool of blood. Hehadknelt down. But that wasn’t what had triggered the scream inside Harry’s head, the landslide that was already starting to bury him. Because he hadn’t been wearing those trousers when he was in Rakel’s house with the crime-scene investigators, he had left them in the laundry basket the morning after the night she was murdered. That much hedidremember. Until now, his memory had been as blank as a crystal ball when it came to that night, from the time he walked into the Jealousy Bar at seven in the evening until the time the woman collecting for charity rang on the door and woke him the next day. But images were starting to appear, connect, become a sequence. A film with him in the lead role. And what was screaming inside his head, in a trembling, broken voice, was his own voice, the soundtrack from Rakel’s living room. He had been there on the night of the murder.
And squeezed between The Rainmakers and the Ramones lay the knife Rakel had loved. A Tojiro knife with an oak handle and a white guard of water-buffalo horn. The blade was smeared with something that could only be blood.
35
Ståle Aune was dreaming. At least, he assumed it was a dream. The siren that had been cutting through the air had stopped abruptly, and now he could hear the distant rumble of bombers as he ran through the empty street to the air-raid shelter. He was late, everyone else had got inside long before, and now he could see that a man in uniform was closing the metal door at the end of the street. He could hear himself panting for breath, he should have tried to lose some weight. But on the other hand, it was only a dream, everyone knew Norway wasn’t at war. But perhaps we’ve been attacked suddenly? Ståle reached the door and discovered that the opening was much smaller than he had thought. “Come on!” the man in uniform yelled. Ståle tried to get in, but it was impossible, all he could do was get his shoulder and one foot inside. “Get in or get lost, I have to close the door!” Ståle kept pushing. And now he was stuck, he couldn’t get in or out. The air-raid siren started to blare again. Damn. But he could comfort himself with the fact that all the evidence suggested that this was a dream, nothing more.
“Ståle…”
He opened his eyes and felt his wife Ingrid’s hand shaking his shoulder. There you go, the professor was right again.
