“It was David,” the man said, in a thin, faltering junkie voice. “He hit Birger in the head with an iron bar.”
“Because Birger has stolen his heroin,” Sung-min said, and tried to stifle a yawn. “And the reason your fingerprints are on the bar is because you took it off Birger, but by then it was already too late.”
“Exactly,” the man said, looking at Sung-min as if he’d just solved a third-grade maths problem. “Can I go now?”
“You can go whenever you like, Kasko.” Sung-min gestured with one hand.
The man, who was known as Kasko because he had once sold car insurance, stood up, his legs swaying as if the floor of the Stargate bar was the lurching deck of a ship, and maneuvered towards the door where there was a newspaper cutting announcing where the cheapest beer in Oslo could be found.
“What are you doing?” Marcussen, another Kripos detective, hissed in alarm. “We could have got the whole story, all the details! We had him, damn it! Next time he might change his story. They do that, these smackheads.”
“All the more reason to let him go now,” Sung-min said, switching off the tape recorder. “Right now we’ve got a simple explanation. If we get more details, he’ll either have forgotten them, or changed them by the time he gets to the witness stand. And that’s exactly what a defense lawyer needs to sow doubt on the rest of the explanation. Shall we go?”
“No reason to hang around here,” Marcussen said, getting to his feet. Sung-min nodded and let his gaze roam over the clientele of drinkers who had been queuing up outside when he and Marcussen arrived at the bar with the earliest opening time in Oslo, seven o’clock.
“Actually, I think I’ll stay,” Sung-min said. “I haven’t had breakfast yet.”
“Youwant to eathere?”
Sung-min knew what his colleague meant. He and Stargate didn’t really go together. They hadn’t done, anyway. But who knew, maybe he’d have to lower his standards? Downgrade his expectations. This was as good a place to start as any.
Once Marcussen had gone, Sung-min picked up the newspaper that was lying on the next table.
Nothing on the front page about the Rakel Fauke case.
And nothing about the accident on Highway 287.
Which must mean that neither Ole Winter nor Katrine Bratt had gone public with the news that Harry Hole was involved.
In Ole Winter’s case, that was presumably because he wanted time to add a sheen of teamwork to what had been Sung-min’s deductions. Trivial double-checking that would only confirm what Sung-min had already ascertained, but that Winter could later claim was a team victory under his wise leadership.
Sung-min had read Machiavelli’sThe Princewhen he realised he didn’t understand political game-playing and power strategies. One of Machiavelli’s pieces of advice to a ruler who wanted to stay in power was to ally himself to and give support to weaker players in the country, those who weren’t in a position to threaten him and who would therefore be happy with the status quo. But any stronger potential opponents had to be weakened by all means available. What applied in Italian city states in the 1500s evidently also applied within Kripos.
When it came to Katrine Bratt’s motive for wanting to delay the announcement, Sung-min was in more doubt. She’d had twenty-four hours, Hole’s family must have been informed by now, and she’d had time to prepare the news that one of their own colleagues was suspected of murder. The fact that she may have personal feelings for Hole didn’t explain the fact that she was prepared to expose herself and the Crime Squad Unit to criticism and accusations of special treatment for police officers by protecting him from publicity in this way. It was as if there had to be something else, some consideration that ran deeper than that of a lover. But what could that be?
Sung-min brushed it aside. Perhaps it was something else. A desperate hope for a miracle. That Harry Hole was still alive. Sung-min took a sip of his coffee and looked out at the Akerselva, where the morning sun was starting to shine on the tops of the grey buildings on the other side. If Harry Hole was sharing any of this, it was because he was sitting on a cloud with a halo round his head, listening to the angels singing and watching it all from above.
—
He looked down at the cloud below him.
Held up the fragment of mirror and looked at his face. He had a white band round his head. He could hear singing.
He looked down at the cloud again.
Ever since it had got light, that little clump of cloud had been lying down in the valley, obscuring the view of the frozen river, colouring the forest grey. But as the sun rose higher it started to burn off the cloud, improving the visibility. And hopefully the intense birdsong around him would calm down a bit.
He was freezing. That was OK. It made it easier to see.
He looked in the piece of mirror again.
The halo or bandage he had found in one of the drawers in the cabin had a red stain where the blood had seeped through. He was probably going to end up with another scar, in addition to the one running from the corner of his mouth to his ear.
He stood up from the chair that was leaning against the wall of the cabin and went inside.
Past the newspaper cuttings on the wall, one of them bearing the same face he had just seen in the mirror.
He went into the bedroom where he had spent the night. Pulled off the bloody sheets and duvet cover, just as he had pulled off the bloody duvet cover two weeks ago in his own flat. But this time it was his blood, and his alone.
