“I’ve been suspended and am no longer allowed to work with anyone in the department. As detectives, we all need someone to bounce ideas off. Someone to offer a bit of resistance. New ideas. You used to be a murder detective, and you haven’t got anything to fill your days.”
“No. No, Harry.”
“Hear me out, Kaja.” Harry leaned forward. “I know you don’t owe me anything, I know I walked away from you that time. The fact that my heart was broken may have been the explanation, but that was still no excuse for me to break yours. I knew what I was doing, and I’d do the same thing again. Because I had to, because I loved Rakel. I know it’s a lot to ask, but I’m asking anyway. Because I’m going mad, Kaja. I’ve got todosomething, and the only thing I can do is investigate murders. And drink. I can drink myself to death if I have to.”
Harry saw Kaja flinch again.
“I’m just saying it like it is,” he said. “You don’t have to reply now, all I’m asking is that you think about it. You’ve got my number. And now I’m going to leave you in peace.”
Harry stood up.
He pulled his boots on, walked out of the door, down to Suhms gate, down past Norabakken and Fagerborg Church, successfully passed two open pubs with their own congregations crowded around the bar, saw the entrance to Bislett Stadium, which had once had its own congregation but now seemed more like a prison, and looked up at the pointlessly clear sky above him, where he caught a glimpse of an S twinkling in the sunlight as he crossed the street. There was a shriek as a tram braked hard, echoing his own scream when he got up from the floor and one of his boots slipped on blood.
—
Truls Berntsen was sitting in front of his PC watching the third episode of the first season ofThe Shield. He had watched the whole series twice already, and had started again. Television series were like porn films: the old, classic ones were the best. Besides, TrulswasVic Mackey. OK, not entirely, but Vic was the man Truls Berntsen wouldliketo be: corrupt through and through, but with a moral code that made it all right. That was what was so cool. That you could be sobad, but only because of how you looked at it. From which angle. The Nazis and Communists had made their own war films, after all, and got people to cheer on their own bastards. Nothing was entirely true, and nothing was absolutely false. Point of view. That was everything. Point of view.
The phone rang.
That was disconcerting.
It was Hagen who had insisted that the Crime Squad Unit should be staffed at weekends too. With just the one officer, but that suited Truls fine, he was happy to take other people’s shifts too. To start with, he had nothing better to be doing, and he needed the money and time owing for his trip to Pattaya in the autumn. And there was absolutely nothing to do, seeing as the duty officer fielded all the calls. He wasn’t entirely sure that they knew there was anyone sitting in Crime Squad at the weekend, but he had no intention of telling them.
Which was why this call was disconcerting, seeing as the screen said it was the duty officer.
After five rings, Truls swore quietly, turned the volume ofThe Shielddown but left it playing, and picked up the receiver.
“Yes?” he said, managing to make that single, positive syllable sound like a rejection.
“Duty officer here. We’ve got a lady who needs assistance. She wants to see pictures of rapists, in connection with a rape.”
“That’s the Vice Squad’s job.”
“You’ve got the same pictures, and they don’t have anyone there at the weekend.”
“Better if she comes back on Monday.”
“Better if she sees the pictures while she remembers the face. Are you open at weekends or not?”
“Fine,” Truls Berntsen grunted. “Bring her up, then.”
“We’re pretty busy down here, so how about you come down and get her?”
“I’m busy too.” Truls waited, but got no response. “OK, I’ll come down,” he sighed.
“Good. And listen, it’s been a while since it was called the Vice Squad. It’s called the Sexual Offences Unit these days.”
“Fuck you too,” Truls muttered, almost too quietly to be heard, then hung up and pressed Pause, makingThe Shieldfreeze just before one of Truls Berntsen’s favourite scenes, the one where Vic liquidates his police colleague Terry with a bullet just below his left eye.
—
“So we’re not talking about a rape that you were subjected to, but one you’re saying you witnessed?” Truls Berntsen said, pulling an extra chair over to his desk. “You’re sure it was rape?”
“No,” the woman said. She had introduced herself as Dagny Jensen. “But if I recognise any of the rapists in your archive, I’d be pretty sure.”
Truls scratched his protruding Frankenstein’s-monster forehead. “So you don’t want to file a report until you’ve recognised the perpetrator?”
“That’s right.”
