The strip of sunlight from the window was making the white papers on Katrine Bratt’s desk glow.
“Dagny Jensen says in her statement that you persuaded her to lure Svein Finne into a trap,” she said.
She looked up from the document, found the long legs that began in front of her desk and led to the man who was half lying in the chair before her. His bright blue eyes were shaded by a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses with black gaffer tape on one arm. He had been drinking. Because it wasn’t just the acrid smell of stale alcohol coming from his clothes and body, reminding her of an amalgam, old people’s homes and rotten blackberries. It was the smell of fresh alcohol on his breath, refreshing, cleansing. In short, the man sitting in front of her was an alcoholic who was partly recovering, and partly on his way towards renewed drunkenness.
“Is that right, Harry?”
“Yes,” the man said, and coughed without covering his mouth. She saw a fleck of saliva glint in the sunlight on the arm of his chair. “Have you found who sent the video?”
“Yes,” Katrine said. “A burner phone. Which is now dead and impossible to trace.”
“Svein Finne. He sent it. He’s the one filming, and it’s him sticking his hand inside her stomach.”
“Shame he didn’t use the hand with the hole in. Then we’d have definite identification.”
“Itishim. You saw the time and date on the watch?”
“Yes. And obviously it’s suspicious that the date is the same as the night of the murder. But the time is an hour later than the interval in which Forensics think Rakel died.”
“The keyword there is ‘think,’ ” Harry said. “You know as well as I do that they can’t get it spot-on.”
“Can you identify the stomach as Rakel’s?”
“Come on, it’s a grainy image taken with a moving camera.”
“So it could be anyone. For all we know, it could be something Finne found online and sent to scare Dagny Jensen.”
“Let’s say that, then,” Harry said, putting his hands on the armrests and starting to get up.
“Sit down!” Katrine barked.
Harry sank back into the chair.
She sighed deeply. “Dagny has police protection.”
“Round the clock?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Anything else?”
“Yes. I’ve just been informed by the Forensic Medical Institute that Valentin Gjertsen was Svein Finne’s biological son. And that you’ve known about that for a while.”
Katrine looked for some sort of reaction, but saw nothing except her own reflection in those blue mirrored sunglasses.
“So,” she said. “You’ve decided that Svein Finne killed Rakel to avenge himself on you. You’ve ignored all protocols for police work and put another person, a rape victim, in danger in order to achieve something you’re after personally. That isn’t just gross misconduct in service, Harry, that’s a criminal offence.”
Katrine stopped. What was he looking at behind those damn sunglasses? Her? The picture hanging on the wall behind her? His own boots?
“You’re already suspended, Harry. I haven’t got many other sanctions available apart from dismissing you altogether. Or reporting you. Which would also lead to dismissal if you were found guilty. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Yes?”
“Yes, it isn’t exactly complicated. Can I go now?”
“No! Do you know what I said to Dagny Jensen when she asked for police protection? I told her she’d get it, but that the police officers who are going to protect her are only human, and they quickly lose their enthusiasm if they know that the person they’re protecting has filed a complaint against a police colleague for being overzealous. I put pressure on her, Harry, an innocent victim. For your sake! What have you got to say about that?”
