Harry Hole Oslo Sequence 10 - Police

because he made such a blunder,’ said Beate, obviously having noticed Katrine shaking her head. ‘He kept quiet about a baton he found because he was frightened it could implicate the police. Did they say anything about the probable cause of death?’
    ‘No,’ Holm said. ‘It’s pretty clear he would have been killed by the fall. The handbrake went through his mouth and out the back of his head. But he must have been beaten while he was alive because his face was bruised.’
    ‘Could he have driven off the cliff himself?’ Katrine asked.
    ‘Maybe. But his hands were attached to the wheel with cable ties. There were no brake marks, and the car hit the rocks close to the cliff, so it can’t have been going very fast. Must have just rolled over.’
    ‘Handbrake in his mouth?’ Beate said with a frown. ‘How did that happen?’
    ‘His hands were tied and the car was rolling towards the edge,’ Katrine said. ‘He must have been trying to pull it with his mouth.’
    ‘Perhaps. Anyway, this is a policeman. He was killed at an old crime scene.’
    ‘On a murder that was never cleared up,’ Bjørn Holm added.
    ‘Yes, but there are some important differences between that murder and the murders of the girls in Maridalen and Tryvann,’ Beate said, waving the report they had printed at breakneck speed before leaving the basement office. ‘René Kalsnes was a man and there were no signs of sexual abuse.’
    ‘There’s an even more important difference,’ Katrine said.
    ‘Oh?’
    She patted the iPad under her arm. ‘I was just checking criminal records and the lists of prisoners as we were coming here. Valentin Gjertsen was serving a short sentence in Ila when René Kalsnes was killed.’
    ‘Shit!’ That was Holm.
    ‘Now now,’ Beate said. ‘That doesn’t rule out Valentin killing Anton Mittet. He might have broken the pattern here, but it’s still the same madman behind it. Isn’t it, Ståle?’
    The three of them turned to Ståle Aune, who had been unusually quiet. Katrine noticed that the plump man was also unusually pale. He was leaning on the door of the Amazon, and his chest was rising and falling.
    ‘Ståle?’ Beate repeated.
    ‘Sorry,’ he said, making an unsuccessful attempt to smile. ‘The handbrake . . .’
    ‘You’ll get used to it,’ Beate said with an equally unsuccessful attempt to hide her impatience. ‘Is this our cop killer or not?’
    Ståle Aune straightened up. ‘Serial killers can break the pattern, if that’s what you’re asking me. But I don’t think this is a copycat continuing where the first . . . er, cop killer left off. As Harry was wont to say, a serial killer is a white whale. So, a serial killer of police officers is a white whale with pink dots. There aren’t two of them.’
    ‘So we agree this is the same murderer,’ Beate stated. ‘But the prison sentence pulls the carpet from under the theory that Valentin is visiting his old haunts and repeating the murders.’
    ‘Nevertheless,’ Bjørn said, ‘this is the only murder where the murder itself is also a copy. The blows to the face, the car in the river. That may have some significance.’
    ‘Ståle?’
    ‘It might mean that he feels he’s becoming more skilled, that he’s perfecting the murders by making them polished replicas.’
    ‘Come on,’ Katrine bridled. ‘You’re making him sound like an artist.’
    ‘Really?’ Ståle said, sending her a quizzical look.
    ‘Lønn!’
    They turned. From the top of the hill came a man with a flapping Hawaiian shirt, quivering belly and dancing curls. The relatively high speed appeared to be more a consequence of the steep gradient of the hill than any enthusiasm on the body’s part.
    ‘Let’s get going,’ Beate said.
    They had piled into the Amazon, and Bjørn was making a third stab at starting the car when a bony index finger tapped on the window at the front where Beate was sitting.
    She gave a low groan and wound down the window.
    ‘Roger Gjendem,’ she said. ‘Does Aftenposten have any questions I can answer with “no comment”?’
    ‘This is the third policeman to be murdered,’ the man in the Hawaiian shirt gasped, and Katrine was able to confirm that, fitness-wise, Bjørn Holm had met his inferior. ‘Have you got any leads?’
    Beate Lønn smiled.
    ‘N-O C-O-M . . .’ Roger Gjendem spelt out, while pretending to write in his notebook. ‘We’ve been keeping an ear open. Picking up little things. A garage owner says