“Well?” Gunnar Hagen said when the door had closed behind the visitors.
“Why are defense lawyers always presented as the lone defenders of justice?”
Hagen murmured, “They’re the necessary counterweight to the police, Katrine, and objectivity has never been your strong suit. Or self-control.”
“Self-control?”
“Cheer him up?”
Katrine shrugged. “What do you think about his proposal?”
Hagen rubbed his chin. “It’s problematic. But of course the pressure in the Rakel Fauke case is growing by the day, and if we failed to get Finne convicted it would be the defeat of the decade. But on the other hand, there’s all the reports of rapists going free over the past few years, and we’d be dropping three cases…What do you think, Katrine?”
“I hate the guy, but his proposal makes sense. I think we should be pragmatic and look at the bigger picture. Let me talk to the women who have reported him.”
“OK.” Hagen cleared his throat tentatively. “Talking about objectivity…”
“Yes?”
“Your attitude isn’t in any way affected by the fact that it would mean Harry going free as well?”
“What?”
“You’ve worked closely together, and…”
“And?”
“And I’m not blind, Katrine.”
Katrine walked over to the window and looked down at the path that led away from Police Headquarters, through Botsparken, where the snow was finally in full retreat, and down towards the sluggish traffic at Grønlandsleiret.
“Have you ever done anything you regretted, Gunnar? I mean,reallyregretted?”
“Hm. Are we still talking professionally?”
“Not necessarily.”
“Is there something you want to tell me?”
Katrine thought about how liberating it would be to tell someone. Thatsomeoneknew. She had thought that the burden, the secret, would become easier to bear with time, but it was the other way around, it felt heavier with each passing day.
“I understand him,” she said quietly.
“Krohn?”
“No, Svein Finne. I understand that he wants to confess.”
22
Dagny Jensen put her palms down on the cold desk and looked at the dark-haired police officer sitting at the school desk in front of her. It was break time, and in the playground outside the windows she could hear the pupils shouting and laughing. “I appreciate that this isn’t an easy decision,” the woman said. She had introduced herself as Katrine Bratt, head of the Crime Squad Unit of the Oslo Police District.
“It sounds like the decision has already been made for me,” Dagny said.
“Naturally we can’t force you to retract an accusation,” Bratt said.
“But that’s exactly what you’re doing in practice,” Dagny said. “You’re handing the responsibility for him being convicted of murder over to me.”
The police officer looked down at the desk.
