‘And that will be perceived as...?’ She looked at him, uncertain.

‘Do you know why prime ministers send telegrams of congratulation when someone wins a gold medal at the Winter Olympics? Because those telegrams end up in the newspapers so that the Prime Minister can bask a little in the reflected glory and remind the people who created the conditions to facilitate such a small country being able to take so many gold medals. Our press release will be correct, but also show that I’m on the same wavelength as the people. We’ve put a drug-pushing serial killer behind bars, and that’s even better than a rich guy. We won the gold medal. You understand?’

She nodded. ‘I think so.’

40

Thursday

Absence of fear

Terry Våge lifted the chair — just to hip height, he couldn’t raise it higher — and flung it at the wall.

‘Fuck, fuck, fuck!’

Locating the owners of the vehicles that had passed Kolsås Shopping Centre had been easy. All you had to do was go into REGNR online and type in the licence plate, then — for a certain fee — you were given a name and address. It had cost him over two thousand kroner and taken a couple of hours, but finally he had a complete list with fifty-two names and addresses and was about to start calling them. But now on VG’s website he had just read the guy had been caught, arrested at Jernbanetorget!

The chair didn’t even tip over, just came rolling back towards him on the sloping floor, as though bidding him to sit down and calmly evaluate things.

He put his head in his hands and tried to do as the chair suggested.

The plan had been to land the scoop of all time, one that would even top the photographs he had taken of the heads in Kolsås. He was going to find the killer on his own and — here was the genius of it — demand an exclusive, in-depth interview about the murders and the man behind them in exchange for complete source protection. Våge would explain that source confidentiality would be cemented by going public, safeguarding them both against prosecution by the police or other authorities. He would, however, fail to mention that this protection of sources — just like the privileged information and duties of confidentiality of certain professions — only stretched so far, and certainly not past the point where life was in danger. Våge would, therefore — as soon as the interview was published — tell the police where they could find the murderer. He was a journalist, and nobody could hold the fact he was doing his job against him, especially when it was he, Terry Våge, who had found the killer!

But now someone had beaten him to it.

Fuck!

He scrolled through the other newspapers’ sites. No pictures of the guy, and no name. Common practice when the person concerned wasn’t a high-profile figure, like Markus Røed, for example. It was just typical bloody Scandinavian mollycoddling, protecting the bastards, it made you want to emigrate to the USA and other places where journalism got a bit of elbow room. Oh well. Anyway, so what if he did find the name? All he could do was berate himself for not having found it sooner and ringing the guy.

Våge sighed heavily. He was going to be in a bad mood the rest of the weekend. And that would impact Dagnija. But she would just have to put up with it, he had paid half the cost of her tickets, after all.

At six o’clock, everyone in the Aune group was in room 618.

Øystein had brought a bottle of champagne and plastic cups.

‘I got it at Police HQ,’ he said. ‘As a thank-you, like. Think they must’ve had a few bottles themselves. Never seen so many jolly cops.’

Øystein popped the cork and poured into the cups, which Truls distributed to everyone, a smiling Jibran Sethi included. They toasted.

‘Can’t we just continue having these meetings?’ Øystein said. ‘We don’t need to be solving cases either. We can argue about... who the most underrated drummer in the world is, for instance. The correct answer is Ringo Starr, by the way. The most overrated is Keith Moon from the Who, and the best is of course John Bonham from Led Zeppelin.’

‘Would make for pretty short meetings by the sound of it,’ Truls said, and everyone laughed, not least Truls himself upon realising he had actually been funny.

‘Well, well,’ Aune said from the bed when the laughter had subsided. ‘I guess it’s time for a summary.’

‘Yep,’ Øystein said, tilting back on his chair.

Truls merely nodded.

All three looked at Harry expectantly.

‘Mm,’ he said, fidgeting with the plastic cup, which he had yet to drink from. ‘We don’t have all the details yet, and some questions remain. But let’s draw some lines between the dots we have and see if we get a clear picture. OK?’

‘Hear, hear,’ Øystein said, and stamped approvingly on the floor.