Harry Hole Oslo Sequence 10 - Police

body of Rudolf Asayev and do a second post-mortem. I used your FBI stats on dead witnesses.’
    ‘Glad I could be of use. By the way, you have another visitor.’
    ‘Not . . .’
    ‘No, neither frøken Gravseng nor any of your ex-colleagues. I said he could wait in your office.’
    ‘Who . . .?’
    ‘Someone you know, I believe. I gave him some coffee.’
    Harry met Arnold’s gaze. Nodded quickly and left.
    The man in the chair in Harry’s office hadn’t changed much. Bit more meat on the bones, a touch of grey around the temples. But he still had the boyish fringe befitting the suffix ‘junior’, a suit that looked borrowed and the sharp-eyed, quick-witted gaze that could read a document page in four seconds flat and quote every word, if necessary, in a court of law. Johan Krohn was, in brief, the law’s answer to Beate Lønn, the lawyer who won even when Norwegian law was his opponent.
    ‘Harry Hole,’ he said in his youthful voice, got up and proffered his hand. ‘Been a long time,’ he said in English.
    ‘Not long enough,’ Harry said, shaking his hand. Squeezing his titanium finger against Krohn’s palm. ‘You’ve always been bad news, Krohn. Coffee all right?’
    Krohn squeezed back. Hard. The additional kilos must be muscle.
    ‘Your coffee’s good,’ he smiled knowingly. ‘My news as usual is bad.’
    ‘Oh?’
    ‘I’m not in the habit of showing up in person, but I wanted to have a tête-à-tête before putting anything into writing. This is about Silje Gravseng, who is your student.’
    ‘My student,’ Harry repeated.
    ‘Is that not the case?’
    ‘In a sense. You made it sound as if she were personally mine.’
    ‘I’ll do my best to be as precise as possible,’ Krohn said, puckering his lips into a smile. ‘She came straight to me instead of going to the police. Out of fear you would back one another up.’
    ‘You?’
    ‘The police.’
    ‘I’m not—’
    ‘You were employed by the police for years and, as a PHS employee, you’re part of the system. The point is she’s frightened the police would try to dissuade her from reporting this sexual assault. And that in the long term it would damage her career if she set herself against them.’
    ‘What are you talking about, Krohn?’
    ‘Am I still not making myself clear? You raped Silje Gravseng here in this office last night, just before midnight.’
    Krohn observed Harry during the ensuing silence.
    ‘Not that I can use this against you, Hole, but your absence of visible surprise is eloquent and reinforces my client’s credibility.’
    ‘Does it need reinforcing?’
    Krohn placed the tips of his fingers together. ‘I hope you’re aware of the seriousness of this matter, Hole. The very fact that this rape has been reported and made public will turn your life upside down.’
    Harry tried to imagine him in his lawyer’s gown. The trial. The accusatory finger pointing at Harry in the dock. Silje bravely drying a tear. The lay judges’ open-mouthed expressions of indignation. The cold front from the public gallery. The ceaseless scratching of the court sketcher’s lead pencil on his pad.
    ‘The only reason I’m sitting here, instead of two policemen with handcuffs ready to usher you out through the corridors, past your colleagues and your students, is that this approach would have a cost for my client as well.’
    ‘Which is?’
    ‘I’m sure you know. She would always be the woman who sent a colleague to prison. Grassed up, it would be said. I understand this is frowned upon in police circles.’
    ‘You’ve seen too many films, Krohn. The police like to see rape cases cleared up, whoever the suspect is.’
    ‘And the trial would be a strain for a young girl, of course. Especially with important exams looming. As she didn’t dare to go to the police, and had to think hard before she came to me, much of the forensic and biological evidence will already be lost. And that means the trial might drag on for longer than it would otherwise.’
    ‘And what evidence have you got?’
    ‘Bruising. Scratch marks. A torn dress. And if I have to ask for this office to be gone through with a fine-tooth comb, I’m sure we’ll find bits of the same dress.’
    ‘If?’
    ‘Yes. I’m not just bad news, Harry.’
    ‘Oh?’
    ‘I have an alternative to offer you.’
    ‘The devil’s, I assume.’
    ‘You’re an intelligent man, Hole. You know we don’t have damning evidence. This is a typical rape case, isn’t it?