Røed entered the room and removed the coat, face mask and scrub cap. ‘When can we move her to a funeral home?’ he asked, addressing Krohn, and taking no notice of Harry. ‘I hate seeing her this way.’ His voice was hoarse, and his eyes moist and red. ‘And the head. We need to make a head for her. We’ve tons of pictures. A sculptor. The best, Johan. It has to be the best.’ He began to cry again. Harry had withdrawn to a corner of the room where he observed Røed closely.
Observed the puzzled shock as the door opened, three policemen and one policewoman entered, two of them seizing Røed by each arm, the third placing handcuffs on him and the fourth explaining why he was under arrest.
On his way out the door, Røed turned his head as though to get one last glimpse of the body of the woman lying through the window behind him, but only managed to turn it enough to notice Harry.
The look he gave him reminded Harry of the summer he had worked at a foundry, when the molten metal was poured into a mould and turned in seconds from hot, red and runny to cold, grey and hard.
Then they were gone.
The post-mortem technician entered and removed his face mask. ‘Hi, Harry.’
‘Hi, Helge. Let me ask you something.’
‘Yeah?’ He hung up his scrubs.
‘Have you seen someone who was guilty cry like that?’
Helge puffed out his cheeks pensively and slowly let the air out. ‘The problem with empiricism is that we don’t always get the answer about who is guilty and who isn’t, do we?’
‘Mm. Good point. May I...?’ He nodded in the direction of the autopsy room.
He saw Helge hesitate.
‘Thirty seconds,’ Harry said. ‘And I won’t tell a soul. At least, not anyone who can get you into trouble.’
Helge smiled. ‘All right. Hurry up then, before anyone comes. And don’t touch anything.’
Harry went in. Looked down at what was left of the vivacious person he had spoken to only two days ago. He had liked her. And she had liked him, he wasn’t wrong on the few occasions he noticed that sort of thing. In another life he might have asked her out for a coffee. He studied the wounds and the cut where decapitation had occurred. He breathed in a faint, barely discernible odour that reminded him of something. Since his parosmia rendered him unable to perceive the smell of a corpse, it wasn’t that. Of course — it was the smell of musk, and it reminded him of Los Angeles. Harry straightened up. Time — for him and Helene Røed — was up.
Harry and Helge walked out together and just caught sight of the police cruiser driving away. Alexandra was leaning against the front of the building smoking a cigarette. ‘That’s what I call two cute boys,’ she said.
‘Thanks,’ Harry said.
‘Not you two, those two.’ She nodded in the direction of the car park where there was an old Mercedes with a taxi sign and a Keith Richards clone standing in front of it with a three-year-old on his shoulders. The clone was holding up an arm as an extension of his nose while he made what Harry assumed were supposed to be elephant noises and staggered in a way Harry hoped was intentional.
‘Yeah,’ he said, while trying to sort through the chaos of his thoughts, suspicions and impressions. ‘Cute.’
‘Øystein asked if I was going to join him and you at the Jealousy Bar tomorrow to celebrate solving the case,’ she said, handing the cigarette to Harry. ‘Will I?’
Harry took a long drag. ‘Will you?’
‘Yes, I will,’ she said, snatching the cigarette back again.
Orangotango
The press conference began at four o’clock.
Katrine looked out over the Parole Hall. It was packed and the atmosphere was electric. The names of the victim and the man in custody had obviously begun to circulate. She stifled a yawn as Kedzierski outlined to those present how the case had developed. It was already a long Sunday, and it was far from over. She had sent a text to Harry to ask how it was going and he had replied:
‘NRK, please,’ the head of Information said, in an attempt to maintain order.
‘How can you have DNA evidence against Markus Røed when we know he has refused to submit to a DNA test?’
‘Because the police haven’t taken a DNA test,’ Katrine said. ‘The DNA material was obtained by an individual outside the police who also had it analysed and thus confirmed a match to the DNA at the crime scene.’
‘Who was this individual?’ a voice asked, cutting through the buzz of the others in the hall.
‘A private investigator,’ Katrine said.
