Harry Hole Oslo Sequence 10 - Police

than his. There’s a red Golf in the car park. We’re checking now to find the owner.’
    ‘No signs of the perpetrator?’
    ‘What do you reckon, Bjørn?’ Beate asked, turning to Holm, who at that moment was walking towards them with a roll of police tape in his hand.
    ‘Not so far,’ he panted. ‘No other footprints. But loads of ski tracks, of course. No visible fingerprints, hair or fabric so far. Perhaps we’ll find some on the toothpick.’ Bjørn Holm nodded towards the pole sticking out of the dead man’s mouth. ‘Otherwise all we can do is hope Pathology might find something.’
    Gunnar Hagen shivered in his coat. ‘You make it sound as if you already know you won’t find much.’
    ‘Well,’ Beate Lønn said, a ‘well’ Hagen recognised; it was the word Harry Hole used to introduce bad news. ‘There was no DNA. There weren’t any fingerprints to be found at the other crime scene either.’
    Hagen wondered whether it was the temperature, the fact that he had come straight from his bed or what his Krimteknisk leader had said that made him shiver.
    ‘What do you mean?’ he asked, steeling himself.
    ‘I mean I know who it is,’ Beate said.
    ‘I thought you said you didn’t find any ID on him.’
    ‘That’s correct. And it took me a while to recognise him.’
    ‘You? I thought you never forgot a face?’
    ‘The fusiform gyrus gets confused when both cheeks have been smashed in. But that’s Bertil Nilsen.’
    ‘Who’s that?’
    ‘That’s why I rang you. He’s . . .’ Beate Lønn took a deep breath. Don’t say it, Hagen thought.
    ‘A policeman,’ Bjørn Holm said.
    ‘Worked at the police station in Nedre Eiker,’ Beate said. ‘We had a murder just before you came to Crime Squad. Nilsen contacted Kripos thinking the case bore similarities to a rape case he’d worked on in Krokstadelva, and offered to come to Oslo to give a hand.’
    ‘And?’
    ‘Dead duck. He came, but basically just delayed the proceedings. The man or men were never caught.’
    Hagen nodded. ‘Where . . .?’
    ‘Here,’ Beate said. ‘Raped in the ski-lift hut and carved up. Part of the body was found in the lake here, another a kilometre south and a third seven kilometres in the opposite direction, by Lake Aurtjern. That was the reason it was thought there was more than one person involved.’
    ‘And the date . . .?’
    ‘. . . is the same, to the day.’
    ‘How long . . .?’
    ‘Nine years ago.’
    A walkie-talkie crackled. Hagen watched Bjørn Holm lift it to his ear and speak softly. Put it back down. ‘The Golf in the car park is registered in the name of a Mira Nilsen. Same address as Bertil Nilsen. Must be his wife.’
    Hagen released his breath with a groan, and it hung out of his mouth like a white flag. ‘I’ll have to report this to the Chief,’ he said. ‘Don’t mention the murdered girl for now.’
    ‘The press’ll find out.’
    ‘I know. But I’m going to advise the Chief to let the press speculate for the time being.’
    ‘Wise move,’ Beate said.
    Hagen sent her a quick smile, as thanks for very much needed encouragement. Glanced up the mountainside to the car park and the march ahead of him. Looked up at the body. Shivered again. ‘Do you know who I think of when I see a tall, thin man like that?’
    ‘Yes,’ Beate Lønn said.
    ‘I wish he was here now.’
    ‘He wasn’t tall and thin,’ said Bjørn Holm.
    The two others turned to him. ‘Harry wasn’t . . .?’
    ‘I mean this guy,’ Holm said, nodding towards the body on the wire. ‘Nilsen. He got tall overnight. If you feel his body it’s like jelly. I’ve seen the same happen to people who’ve fallen a long way and crushed all the bones in their body. With the skeleton broken the body hasn’t got a frame, and the flesh says follow gravity until rigor mortis sets in. Funny, isn’t it?’
    They regarded the body in silence. Until Hagen turned on his heel and left.
    ‘Too much information?’ Bjørn Holm asked.
    ‘A trifle superfluous perhaps,’ Beate said. ‘And I also wish he was here.’
    ‘Do you think he’ll ever come back?’ Bjørn Holm asked.
    Beate shook her head. Bjørn Holm didn’t know if it was in response to his question or the whole situation. He turned and his eye caught a spruce branch swaying on the edge of the forest. A chilling bird cry filled the silence.



6
    THE BELL OVER the door rang furiously as Truls Berntsen stepped in from the freezing cold street and into the damp