Harry Hole Oslo Sequence 10 - Police

hate crime. Why do people hate?’
    ‘Now you’re back to motive, Harry,’ Bjørn protested.
    ‘Quickly, why?’
    ‘Jealousy,’ Katrine said. ‘Revenge for being humiliated, rejected, jilted, ridiculed, having your wife, child, brother, sister, future prospects, pride taken from you—’
    ‘Stop right there,’ Harry said. ‘Our hypothesis is that the murderer has some connection with the police. And with that as the basis we have to dig up the Kalsnes case again and find out who killed him.’
    ‘Fine,’ Katrine said. ‘But even if there are a couple of clues in it, it’s still unclear to me why it’s suddenly so obvious we’re looking for a policeman.’
    ‘If no one can give me a better hypothesis, five, four . . .’ Harry sent both of them a questioning stare.
    Bjørn groaned. ‘Let’s not go there, Harry.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘If the rest of the force hears we’re conducting an investigation into our own—’
    ‘We’ll have to put up with it,’ Harry said. ‘Right now we’re at rock bottom and we have to start somewhere. At worst we solve a cold case. At best we find—’
    Katrine finished the sentence for him: ‘—the person who killed Beate.’
    Bjørn chewed his lower lip. Then he shrugged and nodded to say he was in.
    ‘Good,’ Harry said. ‘Katrine, you check the registers of guns that have been reported missing or stolen and check if René had contact with anyone in the police. Bjørn, you go through the forensic evidence in the light of our hypothesis, see if it turns up anything new.’
    Bjørn and Katrine got to their feet.
    Harry watched them walk through the canteen to the door, saw a table of officers working for the larger investigative unit and the looks they exchanged. Someone said something and they burst out laughing.
    Harry closed his eyes and listened to his senses. Searching. What could it be, what was it that had happened? He asked himself the same question Katrine had asked: why was it so obvious that it was a policeman they were after? Because there was something. He concentrated, blocked everything out, knowing it was like a dream, he had to hurry before it went. Slowly he sank inside himself, sank like a deep-sea diver without a torch, groping in the darkness of his subconscious. Caught something, could feel it. Something to do with Katrine’s meta-joke. Meta. Commenting on itself. Proving a point. Was the murderer proving a point? It slipped through his fingers, and at that moment he was lifted up by his own buoyancy, back to the light. He opened his eyes and sound returned. The clatter of plates, chatting, laughing. Shit, shit, shit. He had almost had it, but now it was too late. He only knew the joke was telling him something, had a catalytic effect on something deep inside him. Which he wasn’t able to grasp now, but which he just hoped would float to the surface of its own accord. Nevertheless, the reaction had given them something, a direction, a starting point. A testable hypothesis. Harry took a deep swig of coffee, got up and walked towards the terrace to have a cigarette.
    Bjørn Holm was handed two plastic boxes across the Evidence Room counter and signed the enclosed inventory.
    He took the boxes with him to Krimteknisk in Bryn, and started on the box from the original murder.
    The first thing that made him wonder was the bullet found in René’s head. It was fairly misshapen after passing through flesh, cartilage and bone, which after all are fairly soft materials. The second was that the bullet hadn’t gone green after years in this box. Age didn’t leave particularly noticeable marks on lead, but he thought this bullet looked conspicuously new.
    He flicked through the crime-scene photos of the dead man. Stopped at a close-up showing the side of his face with the entry wound, where a broken cheekbone protruded. There was a black stain on the shiny white bone. He took out his magnifying glass. It looked like a cavity, like you get in a tooth, but you don’t get black holes in cheekbones. An oil stain from the smashed car? A bit of rotten leaf or caked mud from the river? He took out the autopsy report.
    Searched until he found it.
    A small amount of black paint stuck to the maxillaris. Origin unknown.
    Paint on the cheek. Pathologists usually wrote no more than they could account for, preferably a little less.
    Bjørn flicked through the photos until he found the car. Red. So not car varnish.
    Bjørn shouted from where he was sitting.