He didn’t walk directly towards the bench, but took a detour to check that there were no police around. That was what he did when he visited Valentin’s grave. He quickly concluded that he was alone on this side of the lake. There was someone sitting on a bench on the other side, but they were too far away to see or hear much of what was about to happen, and they wouldn’t have time to intervene. Because this was going to happen quickly. Everything was ready, the scene was set and he was ready to burst.
“Hello,” he said as he approached the bench.
“Hello,” she said, and smiled. She seemed less frightened than he had expected. But of course she didn’t know what was about to happen. He glanced around once more to make sure they were alone.
“He’s running a bit late,” Alise said. “That sometimes happens. You know, being a successful lawyer.”
Svein Finne smiled. The girl was relaxed because she thought Johan Krohn was going to be joining them. That must be the explanation Krohn had given her for why she should be sitting on a bench beside Smestaddammen at two o’clock. That she and Krohn were going to be meeting Svein Finne, but because their client was currently being sought by the police, the meeting couldn’t take place in the office. All of this had been in the note Finne had found pinned to the ground with a knife in front of Valentin’s grave, signed by Johan Krohn. Krohn had also used a splendid knife, and Finne had put it in his pocket to add to his collection. It would come in useful in the cabin. Then he had opened the letter. It looked like Krohn had thought of pretty much everything to let both Finne and Krohn himself walk free afterwards. Apart from the consequences of having given his mistress to Finne, of course. Krohn didn’t know it yet, but he would never again be able to love Alise the way he had before. And he would never be free. Krohn had, after all, entered into a pact with the devil, and, as everyone knows, the devil is in the detail. Finne was never going to have to worry about getting hold of anything he needed again, whether it be money or pleasure.
—
Johan Krohn was still sitting in his car in the visitors’ car park at Hegnar Media. He had arrived early, he mustn’t be at the lake in the park on the other side of the road before five past two. He took out the new packet of Marlboro, got out of the car—because Frida didn’t like the smell of smoke in the car—and tried to light a cigarette. But his hands were shaking too much and he gave up. Just as well, he’d decided to stop anyway. He looked at his watch again. The plan was for him to get two minutes. They hadn’t been in direct contact, it was safest that way, but his message had said that two minutes were all he needed.
He followed the second hand with his eyes. There. Two o’clock.
Johan Krohn closed his eyes. Naturally it was terrible, something he would have to live with for the rest of his life, but when it came down to it, it was the only solution.
He thought about Alise. What she was having to go through right now. She would survive, but the nightmares would obviously haunt her. All because of the decision he had taken, without saying a word to her. He had deceived her. It was him, not Finne, who had done this to Alise.
He looked at his watch again. In one and a half minutes he would walk into the park, making out that he was just a bit late, comfort her as well as he could, call the police, act appalled. Correction: he would hardly have to act. He would give the police an explanation that was 90 percent true. And Alise an explanation that was 100 percent lie.
Johan Krohn caught sight of his own reflection in the car window.
He hated what he saw. The only thing he hated more was Svein Finne.
—
Alise looked at Svein Finne, who had sat down on the bench beside her.
“Do you know why we’re here, Alise?” he asked.
He had a red bandana tied around his black hair, with just a few strands of grey.
“Only in general terms,” she said. All Johan had told her was that it was to do with the Rakel Fauke case. Her first thought had been that they were going to press charges against the police for the physical injuries inflicted on their client by Harry Hole in the bunker in Nordstrand. But when she asked, Johan had simply replied curtly that it was to do with a confession, and that he didn’t have time to explain. He had been like that for the past few days. Cold. Dismissive. If she didn’t know better, she would have thought he was starting to lose interest. But she did know better. She had seen him like this before, during the brief periods when his conscience was getting at him and he suggested taking a break, saying he needed to focus on his family, the firm. Yes, he had tried. And she had stopped him. Dear Lord, it didn’t take much. Men. Or, to be more accurate: boys. Because every so often she got the feeling that she was the older of the pair of them, that he was just an overgrown Boy Scout equipped with a razor-sharp legal brain but not much else. Even if Johan liked to play the role of master to her slave, they both knew it was the other way around. But she let him play that role, the way a mother plays a frightened princess when her child wants to pretend to be a troll.
Not that Johan didn’t have his good qualities. He did. He was kind. Considerate. Loyal. Hewas. Alise had known men who had far fewer scruples about deceiving their wives than Johan Krohn. The question thathadbegun to worry Alise, though, wasn’t Johan’s loyalty to his family, but what she herself was getting out of it. No, she hadn’t had a carefully thought-out plan when she embarked upon the affair with Johan, it wasn’t that calculated. As a newly qualified lawyer she had obviously been star-struck by the hotshot lawyer who had been permitted to practise in the Supreme Court when he had barely started shaving, and was a partner in one of the best law firms in the city. But Alise was also fully aware of what she, with her average grades, had to offer a law firm, and what with her youth and appearance she had to offer a man. At the end of the day (Johan had stopped correcting her Anglicisms and had instead started to copy them), the reasons why you choose to have an affair with someone were a combination of rational and apparently irrational factors. (Johan would have pointed out that factors lead to aproduct, not acombination.) It was hard to know what was what, and perhaps it wasn’t that useful to know anyway. What was more important was that she was no longer sure if the combination was positive. She may have got a slightly larger office than the others on the same level as her, and perhapsslightlymore interesting cases as a result of working for Johan. But her annual bonus was the same, symbolic amount that the other non-partners got. And there hadn’t been any indication that she could expect anything more. And even if Alise knew how much married men’s promises to leave their wives and families were worth, Johan hadn’t even bothered to make any of those.
“In general terms,” Svein Finne said, and smiled.
Brown teeth, she noted. But also that he didn’t smoke, seeing as he was sitting so close to her that she could feel his breath on her face.
“Twenty-five,” he said. “You kn-know you’re heading past the most fruitful time for having children?”
Alise stared at Finne. How did he know how old she was?
“The best age is your late t-teens, up to twenty-four,” Finne said, as his eyes slid over her. Yes, slid, Alise thought. Like a physical thing, like a snail leaving a trail of slime behind it.
“From then on, the health risks increase, and also the chances of spontaneous miscarriage,” he said, tugging up one cuff of his flannel shirt. He pressed a button on the side of his digital watch. “While the quality of men’s semen remains the same throughout their lives.”
That isn’t true, she thought. She had read that compared to a man her age, the risk of a man over the age of forty-one getting you pregnant was five times lower. And he was five times as likely to give you a child suffering from some sort of autism. She’d googled it. She had been invited by Frank to join him and a couple of fellow students on a trip to the mountains. When she and Frank were together he had been rather too fond of partying, without any clear goal or good grades, and she had written him off as a daddy’s boy with no motivation of his own. That turned out to be wrong, Frank had done surprisingly well in his father’s law firm. But she still hadn’t replied to the invitation.
“So look upon this as my and Johan Krohn’s gift to you,” Finne said, undoing his jacket.
Alise looked at him intently. A thought flew through her head, that he was going to attack her, but she dismissed it. Johan would be here any minute, and they were in a very public place. OK, there was nobody in their immediate vicinity, but she could see someone on the other side of the lake, maybe two hundred metres away, sitting on another bench.
“What…” Alise began, but got no further. Svein Finne’s left hand had locked around her throat, and his right hand was shoving his jacket aside. She tried to breathe but couldn’t. His erect penis had a curve, like a swan’s neck.
“Don’t be scared, I’m not like the others,” Finne said. “I don’t kill.”
