“A prison. Bars over the windows. You’d almost think they were frightened of something.” Finne laughed. “Shall we call it a day, Katrine?”
“What?”
“I’ve got th-things to do.”
Katrine felt a slight sense of panic. “But we’ve only just begun.”
“Headache. It’s tough, going through such traumatic things as this, I’m sure you can understand that.”
“Just tell me—”
“That wasn’t actually a question, my dear. I’m done here. If you want more, you’ll have to come down to my cell and visit me this evening. I’m fr-free then.”
“The video recording that Dagny Jensen received. Did you send it, and is it of the victim?”
“Yes.” Finne stood up.
From the corner of her eye Katrine saw that Skarre was already on his way. She held one hand up towards the window. She looked down at her folder of questions. Tried to think. She could press on. And risk the possibility that Krohn could invalidate the confession by citing unnecessarily harsh interview methods as the reason. Or she could make do with what she’d got, which was more than enough to get the prosecutor to press charges. They could get the details later, before the trial. She looked at the watch Bjørn had given her on their first anniversary.
“Interview concluded at 17:31,” she said.
When she looked up she discovered that a red-faced Gunnar Hagen had walked into the control room and was talking to Johan Krohn. Skarre came into the interview room and put cuffs on Finne to lead him back to the detention cells in the custody unit. Katrine saw Krohn shrug his shoulders as he said something, and Hagen turned even redder.
“See you, Mrs. Bratt.”
The words were spoken so close to her ear that she could feel the thin spray of saliva that accompanied them. Then Finne and Skarre were gone. She saw Krohn set off after them.
Katrine wiped her face with a tissue before going in to Hagen.
“Krohn has toldVGabout our horse-trading. It’s already up on their website.”
“And what did he have to say in his defense?”
“That neither party had given any sort of promise to keep it secret. Then he asked if I thought we’d entered into an agreement that didn’t hold up in daylight. Because he prefers to avoid that sort of agreement, apparently.”
“Hypocritical bastard. He just wants to show what he can do.”
“Let’s hope so.”
“What do you mean?”
“Krohn is a smart, devious defense lawyer. But there’s someone even more devious than him.”
Katrine looked at Hagen. Bit her bottom lip. “His client, you mean?”
Hagen nodded, and they both turned and looked through the open door into the corridor. They saw Finne, Skarre and Krohn waiting for the lift.
—
“Younevercall at a bad time, Krohn,” Mona Daa said, adjusting her earphone as she studied herself in the mirrored wall of the gym. “You’ll have seen that I’ve been trying to get hold of you too. Along with every other journalist in Norway, I daresay.”
“It’s a bit like that, yes. I’ll get straight to the point. We’re about to issue a press statement about the confession in which we’re considering attaching a picture of Finne that was taken just a couple of weeks ago.”
“Good, the pictures we’ve got of him must be ten years old.”
“Twenty, in fact. Finne’s condition for sending this private picture is that you make it your lead story.”
“Sorry?”
