Harry Hole Oslo Sequence 10 - Police

on the march. And perhaps that was why it felt like a bit of an anticlimax when the news came that he’d been found in the forest in Maridalen, only a few hundred metres from where Erlend Vennesla had been spotted. With a small, almost discreet, hole in his head and a gun in his hand. It was his car that had put them on the track; it had been seen in a car park close to where the trail paths started: an old Fiat that had also featured in the nationwide alert.
    Bjørn himself had led the forensics team. Arnold Folkestad had looked so innocent lying on his back in the heath, like a leprechaun with his red beard. He lay beneath a patch of open sky unprotected by the trees clumped together around him. In his pockets they had found the keys for the Fiat and the door that was blown up in Hausmanns gate 92, a standard Heckler & Koch gun as well as the one he held in his hand, together with a wallet containing a dog-eared photo of a man Bjørn immediately recognised as René Kalsnes.
    As it had rained non-stop for at least twenty-four hours and the body had been out in the open for three days there hadn’t been much evidence to examine. But it didn’t matter; they had what they needed. The skin around the entry wound in his right temple had scorch marks from the flame discharge of the weapon and the residue of burnt powder, and the ballistic results showed the bullet in his head came from the gun in his hand.
    For that reason it was not there they concentrated their efforts. The investigation began when they broke into his house, where they found most of what they needed to clear up all the police murders. Batons covered with blood and hair from the victims, a bayonet saw with Beate Lønn’s DNA on it, a spade smeared with soil and clay that matched the ground in Vestre Cemetery, plastic ties, police cordon tape of the same kind that had been found outside Drammen, boots that tallied with the footprint at Tryvann. They had everything. And afterwards, as Harry had so often said, but which only Bjørn Holm had experienced, the void.
    Because there was suddenly nothing else.
    It wasn’t like breasting a tape, drifting into a harbour or pulling into a station.
    It was more like the tarmac, the bridge, the rails had disappeared. It was the end of the road, and that was where the dive into nothingness began.
    Finished. He hated the word.
    So, almost in desperation, he had delved even deeper into the investigation of the original murders. And had found what he had been searching for, a link between the murder of the girl at Tryvann, Judas Johansen and Valentin Gjertsen. A quarter of a fingerprint didn’t give a match, but thirty per cent probability wasn’t to be sneered at. No, it wasn’t finished. It was never finished.
    ‘They’re starting now.’
    It was Katrine. Her lips were almost touching his ear. The organ notes soared, grew into music, music he knew. Bjørn swallowed hard.
    Gunnar Hagen closed his eyes for a second and listened only to the music, not wanting to think. But thoughts came. The case was over. Everything was over. They had buried what had to be buried now. Yet there was this one matter, one he could not bury, never managed to get underground. And which he still hadn’t mentioned to anyone. He hadn’t mentioned it because it could no longer be of any use. The Swedish words Asayev had whispered in his hoarse voice the seconds he had spent with him that day at the hospital. ‘What can you offer me if I agree to testify against Isabelle Skøyen?’ and ‘I don’t know who, but I know she worked with someone high up in the police force.’
    The words were dead echoes of a dead man. Unprovable claims that would be damaging rather than beneficial now that Skøyen was off the scene.
    So he had kept this to himself.
    Like Anton Mittet with the bloody baton.
    The decision had been taken, but it still kept him awake at night.
    ‘I know she worked with someone high up in the police force.’
    Gunnar Hagen opened his eyes again.
    Slowly, he ran his eyes across the assembled congregation.
    Truls Berntsen sat with the window of the Suzuki Vitara rolled down so that he could hear the organ music from the small church. The sun shone from a cloudless sky. Warm and awful. He had never liked Oppsal. Just hooligans. He had given a lot of beatings. Taken a lot of beatings. Not as bad as in Hausmanns gate of course. Luckily it had looked worse than it was. And in hospital Mikael had said it didn’t matter with