They got their coats and sat down on the large, covered terrace that looked out onto a garden full of bare apple trees. Harry glanced up at the windows of the first floor in the neighbouring house on Lyder Sagens gate. There were no lights on in any of them.
“Your neighbour,” Harry said as he took out his cigarette packet. “Has he stopped watching over you?”
“Greger turned ninety a couple of years ago. He died last year,” Kaja sighed.
“So now you have to take care of yourself?”
She shrugged. There was a rhythm in the movement, like a dance. “I have a feeling someone’s always watching over me.”
“Have you got religious?”
“No. Can I have a cigarette?”
Harry looked at her. She was sitting on her hands. The way he remembered her doing because she got cold so quickly.
“You know we sat right here doing this years ago? Seven years? Eight?”
“Yes,” she said. “I remember.” She pulled one hand out from beneath her. Held the cigarette between her index and middle fingers as she let Harry light it. She inhaled and breathed out grey smoke. She handled the cigarette just as clumsily as she had last time.
Harry felt the sweet aftertaste of the memories. They had talked about all the smoking in the filmNow, Voyager, about material monism, free will, John Fante and the pleasures of stealing little things. Then, as punishment for those pain-free moments, he started at the sound of her name and the knife was twisted again.
“You sound so certain when you say that Rakel had no enemies apart from this Finne guy, Harry. But what makes you think you know all the details of her life? People can live together, share a bed, share everything, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they share each other’s secrets.”
Harry cleared his throat. “I knew her, Kaja. She knew me. We knew each other. We didn’t have any sec—” He heard the tremble in his own voice and broke off.
“That’s great, Harry, but I don’t know what you want me to be here. Comforter or professional?”
“Professional.”
“OK.” Kaja put her cigarette down on the edge of the wooden table. “Then I’ll give you another possibility, just as an example. Rakel had embarked on a relationship with another man. It might be impossible for you to imagine that she would have gone behind your back, but believe me, women are better at hiding things like that than men, especially if they think there’s good reason to. Or, to be more accurate: men are worse at uncovering infidelity than women.”
Harry closed his eyes. “That sounds like a big—”
“Generalisation. Of course it is. Here’s another one. Women are unfaithful for different reasons than men. Maybe Rakel knew she needed to get away from you, but needed a catalyst, something to give her a push. Like a short-term fling. Then, once the fling had served its purpose and she was free from you, she finished with the other man as well. And bingo, you’ve got an infatuated, humiliated man with a motive for murder.”
“OK,” Harry said. “But do you believe that yourself?”
“No, but it just shows that therecouldbe other possibilities. I certainly don’t believe the motive you’re trying to ascribe to Finne.”
“No?”
“The idea that he killed Rakel just because you were doing your job as a police officer? That he hates you, had made threats against you, fine. But men like Finne are driven by sexual lust, not revenge. No more than other criminals, anyway. And I’ve never felt threatened by anyone I sent to jail, no matter how loud-mouthed they were. There’s a long way between firing off a cheap threat and taking the risk of actually committing murder. I think Finne would have needed a far stronger motive to risk twelve years, possibly the rest of his life, in prison.”
Harry sucked hard, angrily, on his cigarette. Angrily because he could feel every fibre of his being fighting against what she had said. Angrily because he knew she was right. “So what sort of revenge motive would you consider strong enough?”
Once again, the dancing, almost childish shrug of the shoulders. “I don’t know. Something personal. Something that fits with what he’s done to you.”
“But that’s what I’ve done. I took his freedom from him, the life he loved. So he’s taken what I loved most away from me.”
“Rakel.” Kaja pushed her bottom lip out and nodded. “To make you live with the pain.”
“Exactly.” Harry noticed that he had smoked the cigarette down to the filter. “You see things, Kaja. That’s really why I came.”
“What do you mean?”
“You can tell I’m not really functioning.” Harry tried to smile. “I’ve become my own worst example of an emotion-led detective who starts with a conclusion and then looks for questions whose answers he hopes will confirm it. And that’s why I need you, Kaja.”
“I don’t follow.”
