Harry Hole Oslo Sequence 10 - Police

demanding him to sacrifice his family life and sleep to catch one of society’s poor wretches. But there was no longer an inspector at Crime Squad by the name of Harry Hole, and no one else had rung him either. His eye ran over the pages of the newspaper again. There had been a press conference. It was almost three months since the murder of the police officer in Maridalen, and the police still didn’t have a lead or any suspects. This was the kind of problem they would have rung him about in times gone by. The murder had occurred at the same scene and on the same date as an old, unsolved investigation. The victim was a policeman who had worked on the original case.
    But that was then. Now the problem was the sleeplessness of an overworked businessman he didn’t like. Soon Aune would begin to ask questions that would presumably eliminate post-traumatic stress disorders. The man in front of him wasn’t incapacitated by his nightmares; he was only concerned about getting his productivity back to its previous heights. Aune would then give him a copy of the article ‘Imagery Rehearsal Therapy’ by Krakow and . . . he couldn’t remember the other names. Ask him to write down his nightmares and bring it along for next time. Then, together, they would create an alternative, a happy ending to the nightmare, which they would rehearse mentally so that the dream either became easier to cope with or just disappeared.
    Aune heard the regular, soporific drone of the patient’s voice and reflected that the Maridalen murder had been in a rut from day one. Even when the striking similarities with the Sandra Tveten case – the date, the place – and the connection between the victims had come out, neither Kripos nor Crime Squad had managed to make any headway. And now they were urging people to rack their brains and come forward, however seemingly irrelevant their information might be. That was what the previous day’s press conference had been about. Aune suspected it was the police playing to the gallery, showing they were doing something, that they weren’t paralysed. Even though that was exactly what they were: helpless senior management under attack, desperately turning to the public and asking ‘let’s see if you can do any better’.
    He looked at the picture of the press conference. He recognised Beate Lønn. Gunnar Hagen, head of Crime Squad, resembling a monk more and more with the rich abundance of hair like a laurel wreath around his blank, shiny pate. Even Mikael Bellman, the new Chief of Police, had been there; after all, it had been the murder of one of their own. Taut-faced. Thinner than Aune remembered him. The media-friendly curls that had been on the verge of being too long had obviously been shed somewhere along the line between being the head of Kripos and Orgkrim and the sheriff’s office. Aune thought about Bellman’s almost girlish good looks, emphasised by the long eyelashes and the tanned skin with its characteristic, white patches. None of which were visible in the photo. The unsolved murder of an officer was of course the worst possible start for a Chief of Police who had based his meteoric rise on success. He had cleared up the drug wars in Oslo, but that would be forgotten quickly. It was true the retired Erlend Vennesla hadn’t been killed on active service in a formal sense, but most people knew that in some way or other it was tied up with the Sandra Tveten case. So Bellman had mobilised every available officer and all the external manpower there was. Except him, Ståle Aune. He had been crossed off their lists. Naturally enough – he himself had asked them to.
    And now winter had arrived early and with it a sense that snow was settling on the tracks. Cold tracks. No tracks. That was what Beate Lønn had said at the conference, an almost conspicuous lack of forensic evidence. It went without saying that they had checked the evidence in the Sandra Tveten investigation. Suspects, relatives, friends, even colleagues of Vennesla who had worked on the case. All without success.
    The room had gone quiet, and Ståle Aune saw from the patient’s expression that he had just asked a question and was waiting for the psychologist’s answer.
    ‘Hm,’ Aune said, resting his chin on his clenched fist and meeting the other man’s gaze. ‘What do you think about it?’
    There was bewilderment in the man’s eyes and for a moment Aune feared he had asked for a glass of water or something like