'Hm.' Moller came to a halt on the pavement. 'Motive?' Harry probed Moller's face.
'My experience is that even confused people usually have a motive in their madness. And I can't see Juul's.'
'Not Juul's, boss,' Harry said. 'Daniel Gudeson's. Signe Juul's sort of going over to the enemy might have given Gudeson the motive for revenge. What he wrote on the mirror-God is my judge-may suggest that he views the murders as a one-man crusade, that his is a just cause, despite the condemnation of others.'
'What about the other murders? Bernt Brandhaug and-if you're right that it is the same murderer-Hallgrim Dale?'
'I have no idea what the motives are, but we know that Brandhaug was shot with the Marklin rifle and Dale knew Daniel Gudeson. And according to the autopsy report Dale was cut up as if a surgeon had done the job. OK, Juul was beginning to study medicine and dreamed of becoming a surgeon. Perhaps Dale had to die because he had discovered that Juul was acting like Daniel Gudeson.'
Halvorsen cleared his throat.
'What?' Harry asked sourly. He had known Halvorsen long enough to anticipate that an objection was on its way. And very probably a well-founded one.
'From what you've told us about MPDs, it must have been Even Juul who killed Hallgrim Dale. Daniel Gudeson wasn't a surgeon.'
Harry swallowed the last bite of kebab, wiped his face with the serviette and looked around for a litter bin.
'OK,' he said. 'I could have said that we should wait until we have the answers to all our questions before we do anything. And I am aware that the Public Prosecutor will consider the evidence pretty thin. But none of us can ignore the fact that we have a suspect who might kill again. You're frightened of the media circus, boss, if we charge Even Juul, but imagine the row that would break out if he committed any more murders. And then it came out that we had suspected him all along without doing anything to stop him..!
'Yes, yes, yes, I know all that,' Moller said. 'So you think he'll kill again?'
'There are a lot of things in this case I'm unsure about,' Harry said. 'But if there's one thing I'm absolutely certain of it's that he hasn't completed his project yet.'
'And what makes you so sure about that?'
Harry tapped his stomach and pulled a sardonic grin.
'There's someone in here, morsing it up to me, boss. There's a reason why he bought the most expensive and best assassination rifle in the world. One of the reasons Daniel Gudeson became a legend was that he was a fantastic marksman. And something down here is telling me that he's decided to take this crusade to its logical conclusion. It's going to be the crowning glory, something to immortalise the legend of Daniel Gudeson.'
The summer heat vanished for a second as a last wintry gust swept up Moztfeldtsgate, swirling the dust and the litter. Moller closed his eyes, pulled his coat tighter around himself and shuddered. Bergen, he thought. Bergen.
'I'll see what I can manage,' he said. 'Make sure you're ready.'
90
Police HQ. 16 May 2000.
Harry and Halvorsen were ready. So ready that when Hole's telephone rang, they both jumped up. Harry seized the receiver: 'Hole speaking!'
'You don't need to shout,' Rakel said. 'That's why the phone was invented. What was it you said about the seventeenth the other day?'
'What?' It took Harry a few seconds to connect. 'That I'm on duty?'
'The other thing,' Rakel said. 'That you would move heaven and earth…'
'Do you mean that?' Harry felt a strange, warm feeling in his stomach. 'You would like to be with me if I get someone to do my shift?' Rakel laughed.
'Now you sound nice. I should point out that you weren't my first choice, but since father has decided that he wants to be on his own this year, the answer is yes, we would like to be with you.'
'What does Oleg say to that?'
'It was his suggestion.'
'Yes? He's a clever lad, that Oleg.'
Harry was happy. So happy that it was difficult to speak with his normal voice. And he didn't give a damn that Halvorsen was sitting across the desk from him with a grin spread from ear to ear.
'Have we got a deal?' Rakel's voice tickled his ear. 'If I can make it, yes. I'll ring you later.'
'OK, or you could come over for something to eat this evening. If you had the time, that is. Or the inclination.'
The words came across as so exaggeratedly offhand that Harry knew she had been practising them before she rang. His laughter was bubbling inside him, his head as light as if he had taken a narcotic substance, and he was about to say yes when he remembered something she had said in the restaurant: I know it won't stop with the one time. It wasn't something to eat she was offering him.
If you had the time, that is. Or the inclination.
If he was going to panic, now was the time.
His thoughts were interrupted by the telephone flashing.
'I've got a call on the other line which I have to take. Rakel, can you hang on for a second.'
'Of course.'
Harry pressed the square key. It was Moller.
'The arrest warrant is ready. The search warrant's on its way. Tom Waaler is all set with two cars and four armed men. I hope to Christ that the morse-code guy in your guts has a steady hand, Harry.'
'He fucks up the odd letter, but never a whole message,' Harry said, signalling to Halvorsen that he should put on his jacket. 'See you.' Harry slammed down the phone.
They were standing in the lift on their way down when it occurred to Harry that Rakel was still on the other line, waiting for an answer. He didn't have the mental energy to work out what that meant.
91
Irisveien, Oslo. 16 May 2000.
The first summer's day of the year had begun to cool as the police car rolled into the quiet residential area of detached houses. Harry was ill at ease. Not only because he was sweating under the bulletproof vest, but because it was too quiet. He stared at the curtains behind the meticulously trimmed hedges, but nothing stirred. It felt like a Western and he was riding into an ambush.
At first, Harry had refused to put on a bulletproof vest, but Tom Waaler, who was in charge of the operation, had given him a simple ultimatum: either put on the vest or stay at home. The argument that a bullet from a Marklin rifle would cut through the vest like the proverbial knife through butter had occasioned only a bored shrug with Waaler.
They went in two police cars. The second, in which Waaler sat, had gone up Sognsveien, into Ulleval Hageby, to enter Irisveien from the opposite direction, from the west. He could hear Waaler's voice crackle over the walkie- talkie. Calm and confident. Asked for position, went through the procedure again and the emergency procedure, asked every single officer to repeat their assignment.
'If he's a pro, he might have connected an alarm to the gate, so we'll go over not through!
He was efficient, even Harry had to concede that, and it was clear that the others in the car respected Waaler. Harry pointed to the red timber house. 'There it is.'
'Alpha,' the policewoman in the front seat said into the walkie-talkie. 'We can't see you.'
