“So I checked with the company that supplies electricity to Rakel Fauke’s home. It turns out that consumption went up by seventy kilowatts between 20:00 and 24:00. All that electricity suggests an increase in temperature, and if that happened in the living room, it would mean a rise in temperature of five degrees. My medical officer says that if that was the case, she would have given the time of death as between 18:00 and 22:00.”
Sung-min blinked. He had read somewhere that the human brain can only process sixty kilobits per second. And that that makes the brain a very weak computer. But the fact that it can work as fast as that depends on how data already stored there is organised. That most of our conclusions rely on recalling memories and patterns and using them rather than thinking new thoughts. Perhaps that was why it was taking him so long. He was having to think new thoughts. Completely new. He heard Alexandra’s voice as if it were coming from far away:
“From what Ole Winter has said in the papers, Harry Hole was in a bar with witnesses until 22:30. Is that correct?”
Sung-min stared down at his crayfish. It stared back disinterestedly.
“So the question now has to be whether you have ever had anyone else in your sights? Someone you might have ignored because they had an alibi for the time it was assumed Rakel was murdered. But who may not have had an alibi between 18:00 and 22:00.”
“You’ll have to excuse me, Alexandra.” Sung-min stood up, then realised he’d forgotten his napkin, which fell to the floor. “Please, finish your lunch. I need…I’ve got some things I need to get on with. Another day we can…you and I can…”
He saw from her smile that they could.
He walked away, gave the maître d’ his card and asked him to send him the bill, then hurried out into the street. The busker was playing a song Sung-min had heard, something about a car crash, an ambulance and Riverside, but he wasn’t interested in music. Songs, lyrics, names, for some reason none of them stuck. But he remembered every word, every moment of the transcription of the interview with Svein Finne. He had arrived at the maternity ward at 21:30. In other words, Svein Finne had had three and a half hours in which to murder Rakel Fauke. The problem was that no one knew where Finne was.
So why was Sung-min running?
He was running because it was quicker.
What difference did it make if he was quicker, if everyone was already trying to find Svein Finne?
Sung-min wanted to try harder. And he was better. And extremely motivated.
Ole Winter, the useless scavenger, would soon be choking on his big fat team victory.
—
Dagny Jensen got off the metro at Borgen. She stood there for a moment, looking out across Western Cemetery. But that wasn’t where she was going; she didn’t know if she would ever go into a cemetery again. Instead she walked down Skøyenveien to Monolitveien, where she turned right. She walked past the white wooden houses behind picket fences. They looked so empty. Afternoon, a weekday. People were are work, at school, doing things, being active. She was static. On sick leave. Dagny hadn’t asked for it, but her psychologist and the head teacher had told her to take a few days off to compose herself, and see how shereallyfelt after the attack in the women’s toilet. As ifanyonewanted to think about how they really felt!
Well, at least now she knew how bloody awful she felt.
She heard her phone buzz in her bag. She took it out and saw that it was Kari Beal, her bodyguard, again. They would be looking for her now. She pressed Reject and tapped out a message:Sorry. No danger. Just need some time alone. Will be in touch when I’m done.
Twenty minutes earlier Dagny and Kari Beal had been in the city centre when Dagny said she wanted to buy some tulips. She had insisted that the police officer wait outside while she went into the florist’s, which she knew had another door in the next street. From there, Dagny had made her way to the metro station behind Stortinget and took the first train heading west.
She looked at the time. He had told her to be there by two o’clock. Which bench she should sit on. That she should wear something different from what she usually wore, to make her harder to recognise. What direction she should be looking in.
It was madness.
It was what it was. He had called her from an unknown number. She had answered and not been able to hang up. And now, as if she had been hypnotised and had no will of her own, she was doing as he had instructed, the man who had used and deceived her. How was that possible? She had no answer to that. Just that she must have had something in her that she didn’t know was there. A cruel, animalistic urge. Well, it was what it was. She was a bad person, as bad as him, and now she was letting him drag her down with him. She felt her heart beat faster. Oh, she was already longing to be down there, where she would be cleansed by fire. But would he come? Hehadto come! Dagny heard her own shoes hitting the pavement, harder and harder.
Six minutes later she was in position, on the bench she had been told about.
It was five minutes to two. She had a view of Smestaddammen. A white swan was gliding over the water. Its head and neck formed a question mark. Why was she having to do this?
—
Svein Finne was walking. Long, calm, terrain-conquering strides. Walking like that, in the same direction, for hour after hour, was what he had missed most during his years in prison. Oh well. Spilled milk.
It took him just under two hours to walk from the cabin he had found in Sørkedalen into the centre of Oslo, but he guessed it would have taken most people three.
The cabin lay at the top of a vertical rock face. Because there were bolts drilled into the cliff and he had found rope and carabiners in the cabin, he guessed it had been used by climbers. But there was still snow on the ground, and meltwater was trickling down the red and grey-black granite when the sun was shining, and he hadn’t seen any climbers.
But he had seen evidence of the bear. So close to the cabin that he had bought what he needed and set a trap with a tripwire and some explosives. When the last of the snow melted and the climbers began to appear, he would find himself a place deeper in the forest, build himself a teepee. Hunt. Go fishing in the lakes. Only as much as he needed. Killing anything you weren’t going to eat was murder, and he wasn’t a murderer. He was already looking forward to it.
He walked through the grey, urine-stinking pedestrian tunnel beneath the Smestad junction, emerged into the daylight and carried on towards the lake.
He saw her as soon as he entered the park. Not that he—even with his sharp eyesight—could recognise her from this distance, but he could tell by her posture. The way she was sitting. Waiting. A little scared, probably, but mostly excited.
