‘They earn money by killing people they would like to eliminate anyway,’ he whispered. ‘I was the one who brought them here. My contact – or whoever he contacted – must have found out that the person I wanted killed was gay, and passed the job on to The 25’ers. So simple. So… clinical. I’m the one who has financed the murders of six Norwegians. I didn’t even know that Niclas Winter… my brother… was gay too. I set a monster free. I…’
He staggered backwards as the huge window exploded. A freezing cold wind rushed into the room. Shards of glass lay everywhere like fragments of ice. The dogs were howling. Rolf stood there with the heavy floor lamp in his hand, ready to strike again.
‘You killed someone for this?’ he yelled. ‘You decided to buy a murderer? For a fucking Nazi place in Holmenkollen? For expensive cars and a bloody wine cellar? You’ve turned into one of them, Marcus!
With a roar he braced himself, lifted the two-metre tall lamp with six kilos of lead in its base and smashed it into the next window with all his strength.
‘
He was on the way to the next window when the doorbell rang.
He stood there, frozen to the spot.
It rang again.
Marcus heard nothing. He had sunk down into the armchair, among pieces of glass and broken lampshade. The dogs were running around barking. One of them had a badly cut paw, leaving a trail of blood across the floor as the terrified animal disappeared into the hallway.
‘I set a monster free,’ Marcus whispered, closing his eyes.
He registered voices from the hallway, but he didn’t hear what they were saying.
‘A monster,’ he whispered again, then stood up and walked across the room.
‘It’s the police,’ Rolf sobbed from the doorway. ‘Marcus! The police are here.’
But Marcus was no longer there. He had gone into his study and sat down on his calfskin-covered desk chair behind the desk made of polished silver birch. The door was closed but not locked. When he heard Rolf call out again, he opened the top drawer, where he had placed the pistol from the gun cupboard in readiness.
He removed the safety catch and placed the barrel to his temple.
‘Tell them the whole story,’ he said, even though no one could hear him. ‘And take good care of our son.’
The last thing Marcus Koll Junior heard was Rolf’s scream and just a fraction of the short, sharp report.
A short man accompanied by a fat African-American came towards Richard Forrester as he approached passport control at John F. Kennedy International Airport. The queue looked endless, and for a brief moment it occurred to him that they were perhaps going to offer him special privileges as a first-class passenger, allowing him to go ahead of all the other travellers. He smiled encouragingly as the smaller of the two men looked at him and asked: ‘Richard Forrester?’
‘Yes?’
The man took out an ID card, which was very easy to recognize. He began to speak. Richard’s voice disappeared. There was a rushing sound in his ears, and he felt so hot. Too hot. He tugged at his tie, he couldn’t get his breath.
‘… the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in…’
Richard Forrester closed his eyes and listened to the drone of the Miranda warning that seemed to be coming from somewhere far, far away. Something had gone wrong, and for the life of him he couldn’t work out what it was. There wasn’t a trace of him anywhere. No prints. No photos. He had only been in England, on a business trip relating to his small but well-run travel company.
‘Do you understand?’
He opened his eyes. It was the fat man who had asked. His voice was rough and deep, and he glared at Richard as he repeated: ‘Do you understand?’
‘No,’ said Richard Forrester, holding out his hands as the smaller man requested. ‘I don’t understand a thing.’
‘Adam,’ Johanne said quietly, moving close to his sleeping body. ‘Wasn’t there anything we could have done to prevent that suicide?’
‘No,’ he mumbled, turning over. ‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know.’
The time was 2.35 in the morning on Sunday 18 January 2009. Adam licked his lips and half sat up to have a drink of water.
‘I can’t sleep,’ Johanne whispered.
‘I’ve noticed,’ he smiled. ‘But it has been rather an eventful day, after all.’
‘I’m so glad you caught the last flight home.’
‘Me too.’
She kissed him on the cheek and wriggled into the crook of his arm. The worn old leather-bound diary was still lying on Adam’s bedside table. He had shown it to her, but hadn’t let her read any of it. No one else knew of its existence. The highly personal contents had affected him deeply. Religious musings, philosophical observations. Accounts of everyday life. The story of how a homosexual man had created a child with a lesbian woman, about the happiness and the pain of it, the shame. All in small, ornate handwriting that seemed almost feminine. As soon as Adam had landed at Gardermoen he had decided to write a report on the key elements relating to the murder of Eva Karin Lysgaard, and to make it look as if Erik had told him everything. No one else would ever see the diary.
‘I’m sure he’s not going to convert after this,’ Adam said quietly.
As early as their second meeting, Lukas had mentioned Erik’s fascination with Catholicism. The young man had actually smiled when he talked about his parents’ trip to Boston the previous autumn. Eva Karin was a delegate attending a world ecumenical congress, and Erik had visited the city’s Catholic churches. What neither Eva Karin nor Lukas knew was that he had gone to confession. He had a theological background, and could pass for a Catholic if he so wished. His conversation with the priest in the confessional was reproduced in detail in the brown leather-bound diary. It had been Erik’s very first confidential discussion about the great lie of his life that was so difficult to bear.
‘Do you think it’s the priest? Is he something to do with The 25’ers?’
Johanne was whispering, even though she had let the children stay over with her parents. They had looked after them while she was with Silje Sorensen, and both children had flatly refused to come home when she eventually turned up to collect them, puffing and panting.
‘Who knows? The priest or someone connected with him. Catholics have a certain… tradition when it comes to taking the law into their own hands, you could say. At any rate, it’s clear Erik never spoke to anyone else about this, and I think it’s out of the question that Eva Karin would have had another confidante apart from Martine. I’ve met Martine. Eva Karin didn’t need anyone else, believe me. A really lovely woman. Very wise. Warm.’
He smiled in the darkness.
‘Anyway, the Americans will clear things up now. It turns out the FBI had quite a lot of information already. They just needed this… key. We’ve given them so much information they think they’ll probably be able to blow the entire organization apart. Back here the investigation is firing on all cylinders. We’ll be mapping the movements of all American citizens over the past few months. We can combine and compare information from all six murders now we know they’re linked. We’ll be-’
‘The picture,’ Johanne interrupted him. ‘The artist’s sketch, that was what led to the breakthrough. For the Americans and for us. Silje told me it took the FBI only nine hours to establish the identity of one of the perpetrators. The driving licence register combined with information about travel between Europe and the States over the past few months was enough to identify the man. That drawing solved the entire case.’
