Harry Hole Oslo Sequence 10 - Police

Rødbekk. The screen lit up. She put the cursor on Finder and typed in Mittet. No hits. She tried a couple of other names from the investigation, crime scenes and ‘police murders’, but no hits.
    So Silje Gravseng hadn’t used the computer. Smart girl.
    Katrine pulled at the desk drawers. Locked. Strange. What girl of twenty-something would lock the drawers in her own room?
    She got up, went over to the curtain and drew it aside.
    It was as she remembered, an alcove.
    With two large photographs on the wall above the narrow bed.
    She had seen Silje Gravseng only twice, the first time at PHS when Katrine had visited Harry. But the family likeness between the blonde Silje and the person in the photo was so striking she was sure.
    There was no doubt about the man in the other photo.
    Silje must have found a high-res photo online and enlarged it. Every scar, every line, every pore in the skin of the ravaged face stood out. But it was as though they were invisible, as though they faded in the gleam of the blue eyes and the furious expression as he spotted the photographer and told him there would be no cameras on his crime scene. Harry Hole. This was the photo the girls in the row in front of her in the auditorium had been talking about.
    Katrine divided the room into squares and started with the top left, then scanned the floor, looked up again to start the next row, the way she had been taught by Harry. And recalled his thesis: ‘Don’t search for something , just search. If you search for something the other things won’t speak to you. Make sure everything speaks to you.’
    After going through the room, she sat down at the iMac again, his voice still buzzing in her head: ‘And when you’ve finished and think you haven’t found anything, think inversely, a mirror image, and let the other things speak to you. The things that weren’t there, but should have been. The bread knife. The car keys. The jacket from a suit.’
    It was the last item that had helped her to conclude what Silje Gravseng was doing now. She had flicked through all the clothes in the wardrobe, in the linen basket in the little bathroom and on the hooks beside the door, but she hadn’t found the tracksuit Silje had been wearing the last time Katrine had seen her, with Harry in the basement flat where Valentin had lived. Dressed in black from top to toe. Katrine remembered she had reminded her of a marine on night manoeuvres.
    Silje was out running. Training. As she had done to pass the entry requirements for PHS. To get in and do whatever she could do. Harry had said the motive for the murders was love, not hatred. Love for a brother, for instance.
    It was the name that had brought a reaction. Runar Gravseng. And after further investigation a lot had come to light. Among other things, the names of Bellman and Berntsen. Runar Gravseng had in conversation with the head of the detox clinic claimed that he had been beaten up by a masked man while working at Stovner Police Station. That had been the reason for the doctor’s certificate, his resignation and his increased drug consumption. Gravseng maintained the perp was one Truls Berntsen and the motive for the violence was a slightly too cosy dance with Mikael Bellman’s wife at the police station’s Christmas dinner. The Chief of Police had refused to take the wild accusations of an out-and-out drug addict any further, and the head of the detox clinic had supported this. He had only wanted to pass on information, he’d said.
    Katrine heard the lift go in the corridor as her gaze fell on something protruding from under the desk, which she’d missed. She bent down. A black baton.
    The door opened.
    ‘Electricians doing their job?’
    ‘Yes,’ said Leif Rødbekk. ‘You look as if you intend to use that.’
    Katrine smacked the baton against her palm. ‘Interesting object to have lying around in your room, don’t you think?’
    ‘Yes. I said the same when I was changing the washer on the bathroom tap last week. She said it was for training, for an exam. And in case the cop killer turned up.’ Leif Rødbekk closed the door behind him. ‘Find anything?’
    ‘This. Ever seen her take it out?’
    ‘A couple of times, yes.’
    ‘Really?’ Katrine pushed herself backwards on the chair. ‘What time of day?’
    ‘At night of course. Dolled up, high heels, blow-dried hair and the baton.’ He chuckled.
    ‘Why on—?’
    ‘She said it was protection against rapists.’
    ‘She’d lug a