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Nemesis(141)

By:Jo Nesbo






Beate's eyebrows formed two quotation marks. 'Do you mean to say it wasn't Alf Gunnerud who killed Anna Bethsen?'





'You know what an anagram is, don't you,' Harry said.





'A letter game…'





'Anna's murderer left a patrin for me. A sign. I saw it in the mirror. The e-mail was signed with a woman's name. Back to front. So I sent the e-mail to Aune, who contacted a specialist in cognitive psychology and language. From a single sentence in an anonymous threatening letter he had been able to determine gender, age and origins of the person. In this case, he was able to say the e-mails were written by a person of either gender, between twenty and seventy and potentially from anywhere in the country. Not much help, in other words. Except that he thought it may have been a woman. Because of one single word. It says "you policemen" and not "you police" or some non-specific collective term. He says the sender may have chosen that word unconsciously because it makes a distinction between the gender of the receiver and the sender.'





Harry leaned back in the chair.





Beate put down her cup. 'I can't exactly say I'm convinced, Harry. An unidentified woman in the stairwell, a code which is a woman's name backwards and a psychologist who thinks Alf Gunnerud chose a female way of expressing himself.'





'Mm,' Harry nodded. 'Agreed. First of all, I want to tell you what put me onto this trail. But before I tell you who killed Anna, I would like to ask you if you can help me find a missing person.'





'Of course. But why ask me? Missing persons are not—'





'Yes, they are.' Harry smiled sadly. 'Missing persons are your field.'





43

Ramona





HARRY FOUND VIGDIS ALBU DOWN BY THE BEACH. SHE WAS sitting on the same smooth rock where he had fallen asleep with his hands around his knees staring into the fjord. In the morning mist the sun resembled a pale imprint of itself. Gregor ran up to Harry wagging his tail. It was low tide and the sea smelt of seaweed and oil. Harry sat down on a small rock behind her and flipped out a cigarette.





'Did you find him?' she asked, without turning. Harry wondered how long she had been waiting for him.





'Many people found Arne Albu,' he answered. 'I was one of them.'





She stroked away a wisp of hair dancing in front of her face in the wind. 'Me, too. But that was a long, long time ago. You may not believe me, but I loved him once.'





Harry clicked the lighter. 'Why shouldn't I believe you?'





'You can believe what you like. Not everyone can love. We–and they–may believe that, but it is so. They learn the movements, the lines and the steps, that's all. Some of them are so good they can fool us for quite a while. What surprises me is not that they succeed, but that they can be bothered. Why go to all the effort to have a feeling reciprocated which you don't understand? Do you understand, Constable?'





Harry didn't answer.





'Perhaps they're just frightened,' she said, turning to him. 'To see themselves in the mirror and discover they're cripples.'





'Who are you talking about, fru Albu?'





She turned back to the water. 'Who knows? Anna Bethsen? Arne? Me? The me I became?'





Gregor licked Harry's hand.





'I know how Anna Bethsen was killed,' Harry said. He studied her back, but no reaction was discernible. The cigarette caught light at the second attempt. 'Yesterday afternoon I got the results of an analysis Krimteknisk were doing on four glasses which had been in the sink at Anna Bethsen's flat. They were my fingerprints. I had apparently been drinking Coke. I would never have dreamed of drinking it with wine. One wineglass had not been used. The interesting part, however, is that traces of morphine hydrochloride were found in the dregs of the Coke. In other words, morphine. You know the effect of large doses, don't you, fru Albu?'





She scoured his face. Shook her head slowly.





'No?' Harry said. 'Collapse and amnesia from the moment you ingest the drug followed by severe nausea and a headache when you come to. Easily confused with the effects of going on the bottle. It's a good date-rape drug, much like Rohypnol. And we have been raped. All of us. Haven't we, fru Albu?'





A seagull screamed with laughter above them.





* * *





'You again,' Astrid Monsen said with a brief, nervous laugh and let him in. They sat in the kitchen. She scuttled about, made some tea, put out a cake she had bought at Hansen's bakery 'in case anyone dropped by'. Harry mumbled trivialities about yesterday's snow and how the world they all thought would cave in, along with the twin towers on TV, hadn't changed much by and large. It was only when she had poured out the tea and sat down, that he asked her what she had thought of Anna.