‘Oh, I forgot to say. You remember the snaps I showed you earlier today? The ones I asked you to flick through and you said were sticky?’

‘What about them?’

‘You get great fingerprints from them. Yours matched the ones we found on the desk at Leike’s place.’

Sigurd Altman’s expression changed slowly as the realisation sank in. ‘You only showed them to me… so that I would hold them?’ Altman stared at Harry for a few seconds, as if turned to stone. Then he put his face in his hands. And a sound emerged from behind his fingers. Laughter.

‘You considered almost every angle,’ Harry said. ‘Why didn’t you think it prudent to find yourself a respectable alibi?’

‘It didn’t occur to me that I needed one.’ Altman took his hand away. ‘You would have seen through everything anyway, Harry, wouldn’t you.’

The eyes behind the glasses were moist, but not devastated. Resigned. Harry had experienced this before. The relief at being caught. Being able to unburden yourself at last.

‘Probably,’ Harry said. ‘I mean, officially, I didn’t see through any of this. The man sitting in the vehicle over there did. He’s the one who will arrest you.’

Sigurd removed his glasses and dried his tears of laughter. ‘So you were lying when you said you needed me to tell you about ketanome?’

‘Yes, but I wasn’t lying when I said your name would go down in Norwegian crime history.’

Harry nodded to Bjorn, who flashed his lights.

A man jumped out of the Cherokee in front of them.

‘An old acquaintance of yours,’ Harry said. ‘At least his daughter was.’

The man ambled over, slightly bow-legged, hitched up his trousers by the belt. Like an old policeman.

‘One last thing I was wondering,’ Harry said. ‘The Snowman said you would steal up on me, unnoticed, while I was vulnerable maybe. How did that come about?’

Sigurd put his glasses back on. ‘All patients admitted have to give the name of their next of kin. Your father must have given your name because in the canteen one of the nurses mentioned that the father of the man who had caught the Snowman, Harry Hole himself, was on her ward. I took it for granted that someone with your reputation would be given the case. At that time I was actually working on other wards, but I asked the ward manager if I could use your father in an anaesthesia paper I was writing, said he fitted my test group exactly. I thought that if I could get to know you via your father then I would find out of how the case was going.’

‘You could be close, you mean. Feel the pulse of the case and have your superiority confirmed.’

‘When you finally made an appearance, I had to take care not to ask you direct questions about the investigation.’ Sigurd Altman took a deep breath. ‘I didn’t want to arouse suspicion. I had to be patient, wait until I had built up trust.’

‘And you succeeded.’

Sigurd nodded slowly. ‘Thank you, I like to believe I inspire trust. By the way, I called my office at the Kadok factory the cutting room. When you broke in I lost my mind. It was my home. I was so furious I was on the point of disconnecting your father from the respirator, Harry. But I didn’t. I would like you to know that.’

Harry didn’t respond.

‘One more thing.’ Sigurd said. ‘How did you find out about the locked Tourist Association cabin?’

Harry shrugged. ‘By chance. A colleague and I had to stay the night. It seemed as if someone had just been there. And something was stuck to the wood burner. Bits of flesh, I guessed. It was a while before I connected it with the arm sticking out from under the snowmobile. It looked like an overdone sausage. The County Officer went to the cabin, poked at the flesh and sent the bits for DNA testing. We’ll have the results in a few days. Tony kept personal possessions there. I found a family photo in a drawer, for instance. Tony as a lad. You didn’t clear up after yourself properly, Sigurd.’

The policeman had stopped by the driver’s window, and Bjorn rolled it down. He stooped, looked past Bjorn and at Sigurd Altman.

‘Hi, Ole,’ Skai said. ‘I am hereby arresting you for the murder of a whole load of people whose names I should have swotted up on, but we’ll take things one step at a time. Before I come round and open the door, I would like you to place both hands on the dashboard so that I can see them. I’m going to handcuff you, and you will have to accompany me to a nice, freshly spruced-up cell. The wife has made meatballs with mashed swede. Seem to remember you like that. That sound alright, Ole?’

PART EIGHT

75

Perspiration

‘What the fuck’s this supposed to mean?’

It was seven o’clock, the Kripos building was stirring into life and in the doorway to Harry’s office stood a fuming Mikael Bellman with a briefcase in one hand and a copy of Aftenposten in the other.

‘If you’re thinking about Aftenposten-’

‘I’m thinking about this, yes!’ Bellman smacked the newspaper down on the desk in front of him.

The headlines covered half the front page. PRINCE CHARMING ARRESTED LAST NIGHT. The press had got hold of the sobriquet Prince Charming the same day they had christened him in the Odin conference room. ARRESTED LAST NIGHT was not quite accurate, of course, it was more early evening, but Skai had not had time to send out the press report until midnight, after the TV stations’ last news programmes and before the newspapers’ deadlines. It had been brief and did not specify the time or circumstances, only that Prince Charming, after intense investigation by local police, had been arrested outside the old dance hall in Ytre Enebakk.

‘What’s this supposed to mean?’ Bellman repeated.

‘I presume it means the police have one of Norway’s most notorious killers under lock and key,’ Harry said, trying to release the high-backed chair.

‘The police?’ hissed Bellman. ‘The local police in -’ he had to consult the newspaper – ‘Ytre Enebakk?’

‘I don’t suppose it matters who clears up the case so long as it’s cleared up, does it?’ said Harry, groping for the lever beside the seat. ‘How do these things work?’

Bellman shut the door. ‘Listen here, Hole.’

‘No Harry any more?’

‘Shut your mouth and listen carefully. I know what’s gone on here. You’ve been talking to Hagen and were told you couldn’t hand over the arrest to him and Crime Squad, it was too risky. So, as you couldn’t go for a home win, you went for a draw. You bequeathed the honour and the points to a police bumpkin who couldn’t tell you one end of a murder investigation from the other.’

‘Me, boss?’ Harry said, giving him a blue-eyed, aggrieved look. ‘One of the bodies was found in his district, so it’s natural enough that he followed up on a local level. Then he picked up on this background story about Tony Leike. Cracking police work, if you ask me.’

The white patches on Bellman’s forehead seemed to be turning all the colours of the rainbow.

‘Do you know how this will be construed by the Ministry of Justice? They have put the investigation in my hands, I keep at it week after week, no result. Then along comes this bloody inbred and after a couple of days cuts us up on the inside lane.’

‘Mm.’ Harry yanked at the lever and the seat tipped back violently. ‘Doesn’t sound too good when you put it like that, boss.’

Bellman placed his palms on the desk, leaned forward and snarled, sending small, white spit balls in Harry’s direction. ‘I hope it doesn’t sound too good, Hole. This afternoon a lump of opium found in your house is going to the lab to be identified. Your goose is cooked, Hole!’

‘And afterwards, boss?’ Harry bobbed up and down as he wrestled with the lever.

Bellman frowned. ‘What the hell do you mean?’

‘What are you going to say to the press and the Ministry of Justice? When they see the date of the search warrant you used, issued in your name? And ask how it can be that the day after you find opium at a policeman’s house, you give the selfsame officer a prominent position in your own investigative unit? Some might claim that if Kripos is governed like that, it’s no wonder a country copper with one cell and a wife who cooks is better at finding killers.’