“To check how late you thought you’d be?”
“No later than necessary. I can’t just leave, though.”
“No, of course not, I get that. Who else is there?”
“Who? The team who worked on the case, of course.”
“Just them? No…outsiders?”
Katrine straightened up. Bjørn was a kind and cautious man. A man who was liked by everyone because he also had charm and a quiet, solid air of confidence. But even if it wasn’t something she and Bjørn Holm ever talked about, she was in no doubt that he asked himself at regular intervals how on earth he had ended up with a girl half the men—and a few of the women—in Crime Squad had their eye on, at least until she became their boss. One of the reasons why he had never raised the subject was probably that he knew there were few things as unsexy as an insecure and chronically jealous partner. And he had managed to hide it, even when she had dumped him eighteen months ago and they spent a short time apart before getting back together again. But it was hard to maintain the pretense in the long run, and she had begun to notice that something had changed between them over the past few months. Maybe it was because he was at home with the baby, maybe it was simply lack of sleep. Or maybe she was just a bit oversensitive after everything she’d had to deal with in the previous six months.
“Just us,” she said. “I’ll be home before ten.”
“Stay longer, I just wanted to check.”
“Before ten,” she repeated, and looked over towards the door. At the tall man who was standing among the other clientele, looking around him.
She ended the call.
He was trying to appear relaxed, but she could see the tension in his body, the hunted look in his eyes. Then he caught sight of her, and she saw the way his shoulders relaxed.
“Harry!” she said. “You came.” She gave him a hug. Used the short embrace to breathe in the smell that was simultaneously so familiar and so strange. And she was struck once again that the best thing about Harry Hole was that he smelled so good. Not good like perfume or meadows and woodland. Sometimes he smelled of stale drink, and occasionally she detected an acrid note of sweat. But taken as a whole, he smelledgood, in some indefinable way. It was the smell ofhim. Surely that wasn’t something she needed to feel guilty for thinking, was it?
Magnus Skarre came over to them, slightly glassy-eyed and with a blissful grin on his face.
“They reckon it’s my round.” He put one hand on each of their shoulders. “Beer, Harry? I heard you were the one who managed to get Finne. Yeah! Ha!”
“Just Coke,” Harry said, discreetly shrugging off Skarre’s hand.
Skarre went off to the bar.
“So you’re back on the wagon again,” Katrine said.
Harry nodded. “For a while.”
“Why do you think he confessed?”
“Finne?”
“Obviously I know it’s because he gets a reduced sentence by confessing, and he realised we had a solid case against him with that video clip he sent. And of course he avoided being charged with rape, but is thatall?”
“How do you mean?”
“Don’t you think it could also be what we all want, what we feel aneedfor—to confess our sins?”
Harry looked at her. Moistened his lips. “No,” he said.
Katrine noticed a man in a smart jacket and blue shirt leaning over their table, and someone pointed towards her and Harry. The man nodded and set off towards them.
“Journalist alert,” Katrine sighed.
“Jon Morten Melhus,” the man said. “I’ve been trying to contact you all evening, Bratt.”
Katrine looked at him more closely. Journalists weren’t usually this polite.
“In the end I got hold of someone else at Police Headquarters, explained why I was calling, and was told that I would probably find you here.”
No one at Police Headquarters would tell a random caller where she was.
