5
“We know you’ve answered these questions before, Sara,” Harry said, looking at the nineteen-year-old girl sitting opposite him in the cramped interview room that felt a bit like a doll’s house. Truls Berntsen was sitting in the control room with his arms folded, yawning. It was ten o’clock, they had been going for an hour and Sara was showing signs of impatience as they went through the sequence of events, but no emotion beyond that. Not even when Harry read out loud from the report about the injuries her mother had suffered from the thirteen knife wounds. “But, as I said, Officer Berntsen and I have taken over the investigation, and we’d like to understand everything as clearly as possible. So—did your father usually help with the cooking? I’m asking because he must have been very quick to find the sharpest kitchen knife, and must have known exactly which drawer it was in, and where.”
“No, he didn’thelp,” Sara said, her displeasure even more apparent now. “Hedidthe cooking. And the only person who helped was me. Mum was always out.”
“Out?”
“Meeting friends. At the gym. So she said.”
“I’ve seen pictures of her, it looks like she kept herself in shape. Kept herself young.”
“Whatever. She died young.”
Harry waited. Let the answer hang in the air. Then Sara pulled a face. Harry had seen it in other cases, the way that someone left behind struggled with grief as if it were an enemy, an irritating nuisance that needed to be cajoled and tricked. And one way of doing that was to downplay the loss, to discredit the dead. But he suspected that wasn’t actually the case this time. When Harry had suggested Sara might like to bring a lawyer she had dismissed the offer. She just wanted to get it over with, she said, she had other plans. Understandable enough, she was nineteen, alone, but she was adaptable, and life went on. And the case had been solved, which was presumably why she had relaxed. And was showing her true feelings. Or rather her lack of feelings.
“You don’t get as much exercise as your mother,” Harry said. “Not running, anyway.”
“Don’t I?” she replied with a half-smile and looked up at Harry. It was the self-assured smile of a young person from a generation in which you were one of the thin ones if you had a body Harry’s generation would have thought of as average.
“I’ve seen your running shoes,” Harry said. “They’ve barely been used. And that isn’t because they’re new, because they stopped making that sort two years ago. I’ve got the same ones.”
Sara shrugged. “I’ve got more time to go running now.”
“Yes, your father’s going to be in prison for twelve years, so you won’t have to help him with the cooking for a while.”
Harry looked at her and saw that he had hit home. Her mouth was hanging open and her black-painted eyelashes were fluttering up and down as she blinked hard.
“Why are you lying?” Harry asked.
“Wh…What?”
“You said you ran from home to the top of the sculpture park, down to the Ekeberg Restaurant, then back home again in thirty minutes. I ran the same distance last night. It took me almost forty-five minutes, and I’m a pretty good runner. I’ve also spoken to the police officer who stopped you when you got back. He said you weren’t sweating or particularly out of breath.”
Sara was sitting up straight now on the other side of the little doll’s-house table, staring unconsciously at the red light on the microphones that indicated they were recording, when she replied.
“OK, I didn’t run all the way to the top.”
“How far?”
“To the Marilyn Monroe statue.”
“So you must have run along those gritted paths, like me. When I got home I had to pick small stones out of the soles of my shoes, Sara. Eight in total. But the soles of your shoes were completely clean.”
Harry had no idea if there had been eight stones or only three. But the more precise he was, the more incontestable his reasoning would seem. And he could see from Sara’s face that it was working.
“You didn’t go running at all, Sara. You left the flat at the time you told the police, at 20:15, while your father called the police claiming that he’d murdered your mother. Maybe you ran around the block, just long enough for the police to arrive, then you jogged back. Like your father told you to. Isn’t that right?”
Sara didn’t answer, just went on blinking. Harry noted that her pupils had expanded.
“I’ve spoken to your mother’s lover. Andreas. Professional name Bom-Bom. He may not sing quite as well as he plays his twelve-string guitar.”
“Andreas sings…” The anger in her eyes faded and she stopped herself.
“He admitted that you and he had met a few times, and said that was how he met your mother.” Harry looked down at his notepad. Not because he couldn’t remember what was written in it—nothing—but to lower the intensity, to give her a bit of breathing room.
“Andreas and I were in love.” There was a faint tremor in Sara’s voice.
“Not according to him. He said you’d had a couple of…”—Harry pulled his head back slightly to read what wasn’t written in his notebook—“ ‘groupie fucks.’ ”
