Harry Hole Oslo Sequence 10 - Police

that?’
    ‘I have a thing about noting dates of rapes. If you don’t find the lucky man at once I know that sooner or later you’ll come asking me where I was.’
    ‘I see. And now for the sixty-four thousand dollar question. Who did it?’
    The answer was articulated slowly and with overly precise diction. ‘Ju-das Jo-hansen. An old acquaintance of the police, as they say.’
    ‘Judas Johansen?’
    ‘You work in Vice and you don’t recognise the name of a notorious rapist, Zachrisson?’
    The sound of shuffling feet. ‘What makes you think I don’t recognise the name?’
    ‘Your expression is as blank as outer space, Zachrisson. Johansen is the greatest rapist talent since . . . well, since me. And there’s a murderer inside him. He doesn’t know that yet himself, but it’s just a question of time before the murderer wakes up, believe me.’
    Katrine imagined she heard the clunk of the salivating policeman’s jaw as it fell. She listened to the crackling silence. She thought she could hear the officer’s pulse racing, the sweat springing from his brow as he tried to rein in the excitement and the nerves now that he knew he was close to the moment, the great breakthrough, the feather in the detective’s cap.
    ‘How, how—’ Zachrisson stammered, but was interrupted by a howl which was distorted in the speakers and which Katrine eventually realised was laughter. Valentin’s laughter. The shrill howls mutated gradually into long, gasping sobs.
    ‘I’m pulling your leg, Zachrisson. Judas Johansen is a homo. He’s in the cell next to me.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Do you want to hear a story that’s much more interesting than the one you came up with? Judas fucked a young lad and they were caught red-handed, so to speak, by the mother. Unfortunately for Judas the boy was still in the closet and the family was of the rich, conservative variety. So they reported Judas for rape. Judas! Who’d never hurt a fly. Or is it a flea? Fly, flea. Fly. Flea. Anyway, what do you think about taking up that case if you get a tip-off? I can tell you a thing or two about what the lad’s been up to since then. I take it the offer of time off is still on the table?’
    Chair legs scraped on the floor. The bang of a chair falling backwards. A click and silence. The tape recorder had been switched off.
    Katrine sat staring at the computer screen. Noticed that darkness had fallen outside. The cod heads had gone cold.
    ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ Anton Mittet said. ‘He spoke !’
    Anton Mittet was standing in the corridor with the phone to his ear while checking the ID cards of two doctors who had arrived. Their faces showed a mixture of surprise and annoyance. Surely he could remember them?
    Anton waved them through and they hurried in to the patient.
    ‘But what did he say?’ Gunnar Hagen asked on the phone.
    ‘She only heard him mumble something, not what he said.’
    ‘Is he awake now?’
    ‘No, there was just some mumbling and then he was gone again. But the doctors say he could wake up at any moment.’
    ‘I see,’ Hagen said. ‘Keep me posted, OK? Ring any time. Whenever.’
    ‘OK.’
    ‘Good. Good. The hospital has standing orders to contact me as well, as far as that goes, but . . . yes, well, they have their own things to think about.’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘Yes, they do, don’t they?’
    ‘Yes, they do.’
    ‘Yes.’
    Anton listened to the silence. Was there something Gunnar Hagen wanted to say?
    The head of Crime Squad rang off.

9
    KATRINE LANDED AT gardermoen at half past nine, got on the airport express, let it take her right through Oslo. Or, to be precise, beneath Oslo. She had lived here, but the few glimpses she caught of the town didn’t evoke any sentimentality. A half-hearted skyline. Low, good-natured, soft, snowy ridges, tamed countryside. Inside the train, closed, expressionless faces, none of the spontaneous, casual communication between strangers she was used to in Bergen. Then there was a signal failure on one of the world’s most expensive lines and the train came to a standstill in the pitch-black tunnel.
    She had justified her application for a trip to Oslo with the fact that there were three unsolved rape cases in their own police district – Hordaland – which bore some resemblance to the cases that Valentin could conceivably have been behind. She had argued that if they could nab Valentin for these cases that might indirectly help Kripos and Oslo Police District with the