Larsen heard a branch snap behind them and turned round to see the head of the Crime Squad Unit, Katrine Bratt, making her way down the slope in stages, bracing herself against the trees. When she reached them she wiped her hands on her black jeans. Sung-min studied her face as she held her freshly dried hand out to the local police officer and introduced herself.
Pale. Newly applied make-up. Did that mean she’d been crying on the way from Oslo and had put more on before she got out of the car? Obviously, she knew Harry Hole well.
“Have you found the body?” she asked, and nodded when Jan from Sigdal shook his head. Sung-min guessed her next question would be if there was any chance Hole might be alive.
“So we don’t actuallyknowthat he’s dead?”
Jan let out a deep sigh and adopted his tragic expression again. “When a car falls twenty metres, it reaches a speed of seventy kilometres an—”
“They’re sure he’s dead,” Sung-min said.
“And presumably you’re here because you think there’s a connection to the murder of Rakel Fauke,” Bratt said without looking at Sung-min, focusing instead on the grotesque sculpture of the wrecked car.
Aren’t you?Sung-min was about to ask, but realised that it probably wasn’t that strange for a head of department to visit the location where one of her colleagues had died. Maybe. Almost two hours’ driving, fresh make-up. Maybe it was more than just a professional relationship?
“Shall we go back up to my car?” he asked. “I’ve got some coffee.”
Katrine nodded, and Sung-min cast a quick glance at Jan as if to let him know that no, he wasn’t invited as well.
Sung-min and Katrine got in the front seats of his BMW Gran Coupé. Even if he got a decent petrol allowance, he was still taking a loss by driving his own car instead of one of Kripos’s, but as his father used to say: life’s too short not to drive a good car.
“Hello,” Bratt said, reaching her hand back between the seats to pat the dog lying on the back seat with its head on its front paws, looking up at them sadly.
“Kasparov’s a retired police dog,” Sung-min said as he poured coffee from a flask into two paper cups. “But he outlived his owner so I’ve taken him in.”
“You like dogs?”
“Not especially, but he didn’t have anyone else.” Sung-min handed her one of the cups. “To get to the point. I was at the point of arresting Harry Hole.”
Katrine Bratt spilled some of the coffee as she was about to take her first sip. And Sung-min knew it wasn’t because the coffee was too hot.
“Arrest him?” she said, accepting the handkerchief he offered her. “Based on what?”
“We got a phone call. From a guy called Freund. Sigurd Freund, in fact. A specialist in 3-D analysis of film and photographs. We’ve used him before, as have you. He wanted to check the formalities regarding a job he’d done for Detective Inspector Harry Hole.”
“Why did he call you? Hole works for us.”
“Maybe that’s why. Freund said Hole had asked him to send the invoice to his private address, which is obviously highly irregular. Freund just wanted to make sure it was all above board. He had also found out rather late that Harry Hole is between one metre ninety and one ninety-five tall, the same as the man in the footage in question. Then Freund checked with Police Headquarters to see if Hole drives a Ford Escort, the same as in the recording. He sent us the files. They were taken using a so-called wildlife camera outside Rakel Fauke’s house. The time matches the presumed time of the murder. The camera has been removed, presumably by the only person who knew it was there.”
“The only person?”
“When people install cameras like that in built-up areas, they’re usually used to spy on people. Their partner, for instance. So we sent Hole’s photograph to the people who sell wildlife cameras in Oslo, and Harry Hole was recognised by an elderly man who used to own Simensen Hunting and Fishing.”
“Why would Har…Hole request analysis of the footage if he knew it would incriminate himself?”
“Why would he request analysis without anyone in the police knowing about it?”
“Hole is suspended. If he was going to investigate the murder of his wife, it would have to be in secret.”
“In which case the brilliant Harry Hole has just achieved his greatest triumph by uncovering the brilliant Harry Hole.”
Katrine Bratt didn’t answer. She hid her mouth behind the paper cup, turning it in her hand as she stared out through the windshield at the dwindling daylight.
“I actually think it was the other way around,” Sung-min said. “He wanted to check with an expert if it was technically possible to see that it was him being filmed on his way in and out of Rakel Fauke’s home right in the middle of the presumed time of the murder. If Sigurd Freund hadn’t been able to tell that it was Hole, Hole could have safely handed the footage over to us, because it proves that someone was in Rakel Fauke’s house at the time when Hole apparently had an alibi. His alibi would have been strengthened because the images confirm the medical officer’s conclusion that Rakel Fauke was murdered sometime between ten o’clock and two o’clock, more precisely after 23:21, which is when the person caught on film arrives.”
“But he does have an alibi!”
Sung-min was about to state the obvious, that the alibi was reliant on a single witness, and that experience shows that witness statements couldn’t always be relied upon. Not because witnesses are unreliable by nature, but because our memories play tricks and our senses are less reliable than we think. But he had heard the despair in her voice, seen the naked pain in her eyes.
