“You know the papers aren’t saying anything explicitly, but their readers aren’t stupid. And they’re not wrong, because the probability that the husband is the killer in cases like this is around…”
“Eighty percent,” Harry said loudly and slowly.
“Sorry,” Katrine said, turning red. “We just need to stop that in its tracks as soon as possible.”
“I get it,” Harry mumbled, wondering if he ought to try calling for Nina. “I’m just a bit sensitive today.”
Katrine reached her hand across the table and put it on his. “I can’t even begin to imagine what it must be like, Harry. Losing the love of your life like that.”
Harry looked at her hand. “Nor me,” he said. “And that’s why I’m planning to be as far away as possible while it eventually sinks in. Nina!”
“They can’t interview you if you’re drunk, so you won’t be ruled out of the case until you sober up.”
“It’s only beer, I’ll be sober again in a few hours if they call. The maternal role suits you, by the way, have I told you?”
Katrine smiled briefly and stood up. “I need to get back. Kripos have asked to use our interview facilities. Look after yourself, Harry.”
“I’ll do my best. Go and get him.”
“Harry…”
“If you don’t, I will. Nina!”
—
Dagny Jensen was walking along the spring-damp path between the gravestones in the Vår Frelsers Cemetery. There was a smell of scorched metal from some roadworks on Ullevålsveien, as well as decaying flowers and wet earth. And dog shit. This was what spring was like in Oslo just after the snow melted, but she couldn’t help wondering who they were, these dog owners who made use of the usually deserted cemetery, where they could walk away from their dogs’ excrement without any witnesses. Dagny had been visiting her mother’s grave, like she did every Monday after her last class at the Cathedral School, only three or four minutes’ walk away, where Dagny worked as an English teacher. She missed her mother, missed their daily conversations about everything and nothing. Her mother had been such a real, vital part of Dagny’s life that when they called from the old people’s home to say her mother was dead, at first she hadn’t believed it. Not even when she saw the body, which looked like a wax doll, a fake. That’s to say, her brain knew, of course, but her body refused. Her body demanded to have actually witnessed her mother’s death in order to accept it. Sometimes Dagny still dreamed that someone was banging on her door up on Thorvald Meyers gate, and that her mother was standing outside, like it was the most natural thing in the world. And why not? Soon they’d be able to send people to Mars, and who could knowfor certainthat it was medically impossible to breathe life back into a dead body? During the funeral the priest, a young woman, had said that no one knew what lay on the other side of the threshold of death, that all we knew was that those who crossed it never came back. That had upset Dagny. Not that the so-called church of the people had become so feeble that it had surrendered its only real function: to give absolute and comforting answers about what happened after death. No, it was the “never” that the priest had uttered with such confidence. If people needed hope, a fixed belief that their loved ones would one day rise from the dead, why take that away from them? And if what the priest’s faith claimed was true, that it had happened before, then surely it could happen again? Dagny would be forty in two years, she had never been married or engaged, she hadn’t had any children, she hadn’t travelled to Micronesia, she hadn’t realised her dream of starting an orphanage in Eritrea or finished that poetry collection. And she hoped that she would never again hear anyone say the word “never.”
Dagny was heading up the path at the end of the cemetery closest to Ullevålsveien when she caught sight of the back view of a man. Or rather she noticed the long, thick, black plait that hung down his back, as well as the fact that he wasn’t wearing a jacket over his checked flannel shirt. He was standing in front of a headstone that Dagny had noticed before, when it had been covered by snow in winter, and she had thought it belonged to someone who had left no one behind, or at least no one who had cared for him or her.
Dagny had the type of appearance that’s easy to forget. A thin, small woman who so far had managed to creep quietly through life. It was already rush hour on Ullevålsveien—though it wasn’t even three o’clock—because the working week had shrunk so much in Norway over the past forty years, to a level that either irritated or impressed foreigners. So she was surprised when the man evidently heard her approaching. And, when he turned around, that he was an old man. His leathery face had furrows so sharp and deep that they seemed cut to the bone. His body looked slender, muscular and young beneath the flannel shirt, but his face and the yellowish whites around his pin-sized pupils and brown irises declared that he must be at least seventy. He was wearing a red bandana, like a Native American, and had a moustache around his thick lips.
“Good afternoon,” he said loudly to drown out the traffic.
“How nice to see someone at this grave,” Dagny replied with a smile. She wasn’t usually so talkative with strangers, but today she was in a good mood, almost a little excited, because she had been asked out for a drink by Gunnar, a new teacher who also taught English.
The man smiled back.
“It’s my son’s,” he said in a deep, rough voice.
“I’m sorry to hear that.” She saw that what was sticking out of the ground in front of the headstone wasn’t a flower, but a feather.
“In the Cherokee tribe they used to lay eagles’ feathers in the coffins of their dead,” the man said, as if he had read her thoughts. “This isn’t an eagle’s, but a buzzard’s.”
“Really? Where did you find it?”
“The buzzard feather? Oslo’s surrounded by wilderness on all sides, didn’t you know?” The man smiled.
“Well, it seems fairly civilised. But the feather is a nice thought, perhaps it will carry your son’s soul to heaven.”
The man shook his head. “Wilderness, no civilisation. My son was murdered by a policeman. Now, my son probably won’t get to heaven no matter how many feathers I give him, but he’s not in a hell as fiery as the one that policeman is going to.” There was no hatred in his voice, just sorrow, as if he felt for the policeman. “And who are you visiting?”
“My mother,” Dagny said, looking at the son’s gravestone. Valentin Gjertsen. There was something vaguely familiar about the name.
“Not a widow, then. Because a b-beautiful woman like you must have married young and have children?”
“Thanks, but neither of those.” She laughed, and a thought ran through her head: a child with her fair curls and Gunnar’s confident smile. That made her smile even wider. “That’s lovely,” she said, pointing at the beautiful, artistic metal object stuck in the ground in front of the headstone. “What does it symbolise?”
He pulled it up and held it out to her. It looked like a slithering snake and ended in a sharp point. “It symbolises death. Is there any m-madness in your family?”
