Harry put the cigarette back between his lips and looked up. Let his eyes slide across the timber building. The crime scene. The morning sun was glinting off the windows. Nothing about the house looked different, just the degree of abandonment. It had been the same inside. A sort of paleness, as if the stillness had sucked the colour from the walls and curtains, the faces out of the photographs, the memories out of the books. He hadn’t seen anything he hadn’t seen last time, hadn’t thought anything he hadn’t thought then, they were back where they had ended up last night: back at the start, with the smoking ruins of buildings and hotels behind them.
“And the eighth category?” Kaja asked, wrapping her coat more tightly around her and stamping on the gravel.
“Professor Mattiuzzi calls them the ‘just plain bad and angry.’ Which is a combination of the seven others.”
“And you think the killer you’re looking for is in one of eight categories invented by some American psychologist?”
“Mm.”
“And that Svein Finne is innocent?”
“No. But of Rakel’s murder, yes.”
Harry took a deep drag on his Camel. So deep that he felt the heat of the smoke in his throat. Oddly, it hadn’t come as a shock that Finne’s confession was fake. He had had a feeling that something wasn’t right, ever since they were sitting in the bunker. That Finne had been a bit too happy with the situation. He had deliberately provoked physical violence so that, regardless of what he confessed about the murder or rapes, it could never be used in court. Had he known all along that Rakel’s murder had taken place the same night he was in the maternity unit? Had he been aware that the video clip could be misinterpreted? Or was it only later, before his interview in Police Headquarters, that he realised this irony of fate, that the circumstances were set for a tragicomedy? Harry looked over towards the kitchen window, where in April last year he and Rakel had gathered leaves and branches when they were clearing the garden. That was just after Finne had been released from prison, with a half-spoken threat to pay Harry’s family a visit. If Finne had stood on that trailer one night, he could have seen right in between the bars over the kitchen window, where he would have seen the breadboard on the wall, and could have read the writing on it if his eyesight was good enough. Finne had found out that the house was a fortress. And had hatched his plan.
Harry doubted Krohn was behind the decision to use the false confession to get rid of the rape charges. Krohn was more aware than anyone that anything he won in the short term by a maneuver of that sort was small change in comparison to the damage to the credibility that—even for a defense lawyer with a license to be manipulative—was his real stock-in-trade.
“You’re aware that those categories of yours don’t exactly narrow it down much?” Kaja said. She had turned and was looking down at the city. “At some point in our lives we all fit into one or other of those descriptions.”
“Mm. But actually going through with a premeditated, cold-blooded murder?”
“Why are you asking, if you already know the answer?”
“Maybe I just want to hear someone else say it.”
Kaja shrugged. “Killing is just a question of context. There’s no problem taking a life if you see yourself as the city’s respected butcher, the fatherland’s heroic soldier or the long arm of the law. Or, potentially, the righteous avenger of justice.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it, that came from your own lecture at Police College. So who killed Rakel? Someone with personality traits from one of those categories killing without any context, or a normal person killing for a reason they’ve come up with themselves?”
“Well, I think that even a crazy person needs some sort of context. Even in outbursts of rage there’s a moment when we manage to convince ourselves that we’re acting in a justifiable way. Madness is a lonely dialogue where we give ourselves the answers we want. And we’ve all had that conversation.”
“Have we?”
“I know I have,” Harry said, looking down the drive where the dark, heavy fir trees stood on watch on either side. “But to answer your question: I think the process of narrowing down potential suspects starts here. That’s why I wanted you to see the scene. It’s been cleaned up. But murder is messy, emotional. It’s as if we’re facing a murderer who is both trained and untrained at the same time. Or perhaps trained, but emotionally unbalanced, typical for a murder motivated by sexual frustration or personal hatred.”
“And because there are no signs of sexual assault, you’ve concluded that we’re dealing with hatred?”
“Yes. That’s why Svein Finne looked like the perfect suspect. A man accustomed to using violence who wants to avenge the death of his son.”
“In which case surely he should have killedyou?”
“I reasoned that Svein Finne knows that living after losing the person you love is worse than dying. But it looks like I was wrong.”
“The fact that you got the wrong person doesn’t necessarily mean that you got the wrong motive.”
“Mm. You mean it’s hard to find anyone who hated Rakel, but easy to find people who hate me?”
“Just a thought,” Kaja said.
“Good. That could be a starting point.”
“Perhaps the investigative team have got something that we don’t know about.”
Harry shook his head. “I went through their files last night, and all they’ve got are separate details. No definite line of inquiry or actual evidence.”
“I didn’t think you had access to the investigation?”
