Maybe it wasn’t a he; not even that much was possible to determine from the recordings.
But the first person, who had arrived on foot at eight o’clock and left again half an hour later, that had been a man, Harry was fairly certain of that. And he hadn’t been expected. She had opened the door and stood there for two or three seconds instead of letting him in at once. Perhaps he had asked if he could come in, and she had let him in without hesitation. So she had known him well. How well? So well that he had let himself out just under half an hour later. Perhaps that visit had nothing to do with the murder, but Harry couldn’t help the questions from popping up: What can a man and a woman do in just under half an hour? Why had the lights in the kitchen and living room been dimmed when he left? Bloody hell, he didn’t have time to let his thoughts wander off in that direction now. So he hurried on instead.
The car that had arrived three hours later.
It had parked right in front of the steps. Why? A shorter walk to the house, less chance of being seen. Yes, that fitted with the fact that the automatic light inside the car was switched off.
But there was slightly too much of a gap between the car arriving and the front door of the house opening.
Perhaps the driver had been looking for something inside the car.
Gloves. A cloth to wipe fingerprints off with. Perhaps he checked that the safety was on on the pistol he was going to threaten her with. Because obviously he wasn’t going to kill her with that; ballistics analysis can identify the pistol, which identifies the owner. He would use a knife he found at the scene. The perfect knife, the one the murderer already knew he would find in the knife block on the kitchen counter.
Or had he improvised in there, had the knife at the scene been a matter of chance?
The thought had struck Harry because it seemed careless to spend so long in the car in front of the steps. Rakel could have woken up and become alarmed, the neighbours could have chanced to look out of their windows. And when the man finally opened the front door and enough light filtered out for them to see the silhouette of an oddly hunched figure disappear inside, what was that? Someone who was intoxicated? That might fit with the clumsy parking, and the fact that he had taken so long getting to the door, but not the light inside the car and the clean crime scene.
A mixture of planning, intoxication and chance?
The person in question had been in there for almost three hours, from just before midnight until around half past two in the morning. Given the Forensic Department’s estimate of the time of death, he had been in there for a long time after committing the murder, and had taken plenty of time to clean up.
Could it be the same person who was there earlier that evening, and he had come back later in his car?
No.
The images had been too poor to see anything clearly, but there was something about the shape—the person who had been hunched over when he went in had looked broader. But, on the other hand, that could be thanks to a change of clothes, or even a shadow.
The person who had come out at 02:23 had stood for a couple of seconds in the doorway, and had looked as if he were swaying. Injured? Intoxicated? Momentary dizziness?
He had got in the car, the lights had come on, then gone off again. He had walked around behind the wildlife camera. End of recording.
Harry rubbed the memory card, hoping that a genie might appear.
He was thinking about this wrong. All wrong! Damn, damn.
And he needed a break. He needed a…coffee. Strong, Turkish coffee. Harry reached behind the bar for thecezve, the Turkish coffeepot Mehmet had left, and realised that Øystein had changed the music. Still hip-hop, but the jazz and intricate bassline were gone.
“What’s this, Øystein?”
“Kanye West, ‘So Appalled,’ ” Øystein called from the back room.
“And just when you almost had me. Please, turn it off.”
“This is good stuff, Harry! Give it time. We mustn’t let our ears get stale.”
“Why not? There are thousands of albums from the last millennium I haven’t heard, and that’s enough to last the rest of my life.” Harry swallowed. What a relief it was to take a break from the heavy stuff, with these feather-light, meaningless exchanges with someone you knew inside out, like table tennis with a three-gram ball.
“You need to make more of an effort.” Øystein came back into the bar with a broad, toothless grin. He had lost his last front tooth in a bar in Prague, it had just fallen out. And even if he had discovered the gap in the airport toilet, called the bar and had the brownish-yellow tooth returned to him by post, there was nothing that could be done. Not that Øystein seemed particularly bothered.
“These are the classics hip-hop fans will be listening to when they’re old, Harry. This isn’t just form, it’scontent.”
Harry held the memory card up to the light. He nodded slowly. “You’re right, Øystein.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“I’m thinking wrong because I’m focusing on form, on how the murder was carried out. I’m ignoring what I always used to go on about to my students.Why. The motive. The content.”
The door opened behind them.
