30
DAY 20.
Scapegoat.
KNUT MÜLLER-NILSEN HAD APPEARED ON THE QUAY UNDER Puddefjord Bridge in person as Harry arrived in the cabin cruiser. He, two police officers and the duty psychiatrist joined him below deck where Katrine Bratt lay handcuffed to the bed. She was given a shot of an anti-psychotic tranquilliser and transported to a waiting vehicle.
Müller-Nilsen thanked Harry for agreeing to handle the matter with discretion.
‘Let’s try and keep this to ourselves,’ Harry said, looking up at the leaking heavens. ‘Oslo will want to take control if this is made public.’
‘Course,’ nodded Müller-Nilsen.
‘Kjersti Rødsmoen,’ said a voice that made them turn round. ‘The psychiatrist.’
The woman peering up at Harry was in her forties, with light, tousled hair and a big, bright red down jacket. She was holding a cigarette in her hand and didn’t appear to be bothered that the rain was drenching both her and the cigarette.
‘Was it dramatic?’ she asked.
‘No,’ Harry said, feeling Katrine’s revolver pressing against his skin under his waistband. ‘She surrendered without resistance.’
‘What did she say?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing?’
‘Not a word. What’s your diagnosis?’
‘Obviously a psychosis,’ Rødsmoen said without hesitation. ‘Which does not imply in any way that she’s mad. It’s just the mind’s way of managing the unmanageable. Much the same as the brain choosing to faint when the pain is too great. I would conjecture that she’s been under extreme stress for a lengthy period. Could that be correct?’
Harry nodded. ‘Will she be able to speak again?
‘Yes,’ Kjersti Rødsmoen said, gazing with disapproval at the wet, extinguished cigarette. ‘But I don’t know when. Right now she needs rest.’
‘Rest?’ snorted Müller-Nilsen. ‘She’s a serial killer.’
‘And I’m a psychiatrist,’ Rødsmoen said, dispensing with the cigarette and departing in the direction of a small red Honda that even in the pouring rain looked dusty.
‘What are you going to do?’ Müller-Nilsen asked.
‘Catch the last plane home,’ Harry said.
‘No shit. You look like a skeleton. The station’s got a deal with Rica Travel Hotel. We can drive you there and send on some dry clothes. They’ve got a restaurant, too.’
Once Harry had checked in and was standing in front of the bathroom mirror in the cramped single room, he thought about what Müller-Nilsen had said. About looking like a skeleton. And about how close he had been to death. Or had he? After taking a shower and eating in the empty restaurant he went back to his room and tried to sleep. He couldn’t and switched on the TV. Crap on all the channels except NRK2, which was showing Memento. He had seen the film before. The story was told from the point of view of a man with brain damage and the short-term memory of a goldfish. A woman had been killed. The protagonist had written the name of the killer on a Polaroid, as he knew he would forget. The question was whether he could trust what he had written. Harry kicked off the duvet. The minibar under the TV had a brown door and no lock.
He should have caught the plane home.
He was on his way out of bed when his mobile rang somewhere in the room. He put his hand in the pocket of the wet trousers hanging over a chair by the radiator. It was Rakel. She asked where he was. And said they had to talk. And not in his flat, but somewhere public.
Harry fell back on the bed with closed eyes.
‘To tell me we cannot keep meeting?’ he asked.
‘To tell you we cannot keep meeting,’ she said. ‘I can’t take it.’
‘It’s enough if you tell me on the phone, Rakel.’
‘No, it’s not. It won’t hurt enough.’
Harry groaned. She was right.
They agreed on eleven o’clock the next morning by the Fram Museum in Bygdøy, a tourist attraction where you could disappear in crowds of Germans and Japanese. She asked him what he was doing in Bergen. He told her and said she was to keep it to herself until she read about it in the papers after a couple of days.
They rang off, and Harry lay staring at the minibar as Memento continued its course in reverse chronological order. He had almost been killed, the love of his life didn’t want to see him any more and he had concluded the worst case in his experience. Or had he? He hadn’t answered when Müller-Nilsen asked why he had chosen to hunt for Bratt on his own, but now he knew. It was the doubt. Or the hope. This desperate hope that it would not be the way things had been shaping up after all. And which was still there. But now the hope had to be extinguished, drowned. Come on, he had three good reasons and a pack of dogs in the pit of his stomach all barking as though possessed. So why not just open the minibar anyhow?
Harry got to his feet, went to the bathroom, turned on the tap and drank, letting the jet of water gush over his face. He straightened up and looked into the mirror. Like a skeleton. Why won’t the skeleton drink? Aloud, he spat out the answer to his face: ‘Because then it won’t hurt enough.’
Gunnar Hagen was tired. Tired to his soul. He looked around. It was almost midnight and he was in a conference room at the top of one of Oslo’s central buildings. Everything here was shiny brown: the ship floor, the ceiling with the spotlights, the walls with painted portraits of former club chairmen who had owned the premises, the ten-square-metre mahogany table and the leather blotting pad in front of each of the twelve men around it. Hagen had been phoned by the Chief Superintendent an hour earlier and summoned to this address. Some of the people in the room – such as the Chief Constable – he knew, others he had seen in newspaper photographs but he had no idea who most of them were. The Chief Superintendent brought them up to date with events. The Snowman was a policewoman from Bergen who had been operating for a while from her post in Crime Squad in Grønland. She had pulled the wool over their eyes, and now that she was caught, they would soon have to go public with the scandal.
When he had finished, the silence lay as thick as the cigar smoke.
The smoke was filtering upwards from the end of the table where a white-haired man leaned back in his chair, his face hidden in shadow. For the first time, he made a sound. Just a tiny sigh. And Gunnar Hagen realised that everyone who had spoken so far had turned to this man.
‘Damned tedious, Torleif,’ said the white-haired man in a surprisingly high-pitched, effeminate voice. ‘Extremely damaging. Confidence in the system. We are at the top. And that means . . .’ the whole room seemed to be holding its breath as the man puffed on his cigar, ‘heads will have to roll. The question is whose.’
The Chief Constable cleared his throat. ‘Have you any suggestions?’
‘Not yet,’ said the white hair. ‘But I believe you and Torleif have. Fire away.’
‘In our view, specific mistakes have been made in the appointment and follow-up phases. Human blunders and not systemic flaws. Hence this is not directly a management problem. We propose therefore that we make a distinction between responsibility and guilt. Management takes the responsibility, is humble and –’
‘Skip the basics,’ said the white hair. ‘Who’s your scapegoat?’
The Chief Superintendent adjusted his collar. Gunnar Hagen could see that he was extremely ill at ease.
‘Inspector Harry Hole,’ said the Chief Superintendent.
Again there was silence as the white-haired man lit his cigar anew. The lighter clicked and clicked. Then sucking noises issued from the shadows and the smoke rose again.
‘Not a bad idea,’ said the high-pitched voice. ‘Had it been anyone other than Hole I’d have said you would have to find your scapegoat higher up in the system. An inspector is not fat enough as a sacrificial lamb. Indeed, I might have asked you to consider yourself, Torleif. But Hole is an officer with a profile; he’s been on that talk show. A popular figure with a certain reputation as a detective. Yes, that would be perceived as fair game. But would he be cooperative?’
‘Leave that to us,’ said the Chief Superintendent. ‘Eh, Gunnar?’
Gunnar Hagen gulped. His mind turned – of all things – to his wife. To the sacrifices she had made so that he could have a career. When they’d got married she had broken off her studies and moved with him to wherever the Special Forces, and later the police force, had sent him. She was a wise, intelligent woman, an equal in most areas, his superior in some. It was to her he went with both career and moral issues. And she always imparted good advice. Nevertheless, he had perhaps not succeeded in achieving the illustrious career for which they had both hoped. But now things were looking rosier. It was on the cards that his position as Crime Squad supremo would lead onwards and upwards. It was just a question of not putting a foot wrong. That needn’t be so difficult.
‘Eh, Gunnar?’ repeated the Chief Superintendent.
It was just that he was so tired. So tired to the soul. This is for you, he thought. This is what you would have done, darling.