“The only detail I have for you is that I didn’t do it.”
Harry clenched his fist around the handle of the knife and punched. He felt the cartilage in the other man’s nose break, felt the blow in his own knuckles and the warm blood on the back of his hand. Finne’s eyes filled with tears of pain and his lips parted. Revealed his big, yellow teeth in a broad grin. “Everybody kills, Hole.” His priest’s voice had a different, more nasal tone now. “You, your colleagues, your neighbour. Just not me. I create new life, I repair what you destroy. I populate the world with myself, with people who want good.” He tilted his head. “I don’t understand why people make the effort to raise something that isn’t theirs. Like you and your bastard son. Oleg, that’s his name, isn’t it? Is that because your sperm’s too weak, Hole? Or didn’t you fuck Rakel well enough for her to want to give birth to your children?”
Harry punched again. Hit the same place. He wondered if the crisp crunching sound came from Finne’s nose or was just in his own head. Finne leaned his head back and grinned up at the roof. “More!”
—
Harry was sitting on the floor with his back against the concrete wall, listening to the sound of his own deep breathing and the wheezing sound from the bench. He had wound Finne’s shirt around his hand, but the pain told him that the skin on at least one of his knuckles was broken. How long had they been at it? How long was it going to take? On the website about torture it had said that no one, absolutely no one, could hold out against torture in the long run, that they would tell you what you want, or possibly what theythinkyou want. Svein Finne had merely repeated the same word:more. And had got what he asked for.
“Knives.” The voice was no longer recognisable as Finne’s. And when Harry looked up, he didn’t recognise the man either. The swelling on his face had made his eyes close, and the blood was hanging off him like a dripping red beard. “People use knives.”
“Knives?” Harry repeated in a whisper.
“People have been sticking knives in each other since the Stone Age, Hole. Fear of them is embedded in our genes. The thought that something can penetrate your skin, get inside, destroy what’s inside you, that whichisyou. Show them a knife and they’ll do whatever you want.”
“Who does what you want?”
Finne cleared his throat and spat red saliva on the floor between them. “Everyone. Women, men. You. Me. In Rwanda, the Tutsis were offered the chance to buy bullets so they could be shot rather than hacked to death with machetes. And you know what? They paid up.”
“OK, I’ve got a knife,” Harry said, nodding towards the knife on the floor between them.
“And where are you going to stick it?”
“I was thinking the same place you stabbed my wife. In the stomach.”
“A bad bluff, Hole. If you stab me in the stomach I won’t be able to talk, and I’d bleed to death before you got your confession.”
Harry didn’t answer.
“Actually, hang on,” Finne said, straightening his bloody head. “Could it be that you, who have done your research into torture, are conducting this ineffective boxing match because deep down you don’t really want a confession?” He sniffed the air. “Yes, that’s it. You don’t want me to confess, so you have an excuse to kill me. In fact, you’dhaveto kill me in order to get justice. You just needed a precursor to the killing. So you can tell yourself you tried, that this wasn’t what you wanted. That you’re not like the murderers who do it just because they like it.” Finne’s laughter turned into a gurgling cough. “Yes, I lied. I am a murderer, me too. Because killing someoneisfantastic, isn’t it, Hole? Seeing a child come into the world, knowing that it’s your own creation, can only be outshone by one thing: removing someone from the world. Terminating a life, assuming the role of fate, being someone’s dice. Then you’re God, Hole, and you can deny it as much as you like, but that’s precisely the feeling you’ve got right now. It’s good, isn’t it?”
Harry stood up.
“So I’m sorry to have to spoil this execution, Hole, but I hereby declare:mea culpa, Hole. I murdered your wife, Rakel Fauke.”
Harry froze. Finne looked up at the roof.
“With a knife,” he whispered. “But not the one you’re holding in your hand. She was screaming when she died. She was screaming your name. Haarr-y. Haarr-yy…”
Harry felt a different type of rage hit him. The cold sort, the sort that made him calm. And crazy. Which he had feared might come, and whichmustn’tbe allowed to take over.
“Why?” Harry asked. His voice was suddenly relaxed. His breathing normal.
“Why?”
“The motive?”
“That’s obvious, surely? The same as yours now, Hole. Revenge. We’re engaged in a classic blood feud. You killed my son, I kill your wife. That’s what we do, that’s what separates us from the animals: we takerevenge. It’s rational, but we don’t even have to think about whether it makes sense, we just know that it feels good. Isn’t that what it feels like for you right now, Hole? You’re making your own pain into someone else’s. Someone you can convince yourself is responsible for the fact that you’re in pain.”
“Prove it.”
“Prove what?”
“That you killed her. Tell me something you couldn’t have known about the murder or crime scene.”
“To Harri. With an ‘i.’ ”
Harry blinked.
