Kaja bent her head and flicked her cigarette. Took a tremulous breath.
‘I can only remember fragments of the rest. They gave me medicine, to calm me down. When I recovered, three days later, they had already buried him. They said it was just as well I wasn’t there, that the strain might have been too great. I fell ill straight afterwards and was in bed with a fever for long periods over the summer. I’ve always thought it was a bit too hurried, the funeral, as if there were something shameful about the way he had died, don’t you think?’
‘Mm. You said he had written a note?’
Kaja gazed across the fjord. ‘It was on my bedside table. He wrote that he had fallen in love with a girl he could never have, he didn’t want to live any more and asked for forgiveness for all the pain he was inflicting on us, and that he knew we loved him.’
‘Mm.’
‘That came as quite a surprise. Even had never told me there was a girl, and he used to tell me most things. Had it not been for Roar—’
‘Roar?’
‘Yes. I had my first boyfriend that summer. He was so nice and patient, visited me almost every day when I was ill and listened to me talking about Even.’
‘About what an immeasurably wonderful person he had been.’
‘You’ve got it.’
Harry shrugged. ‘I did the same when my mother died. Øystein wasn’t as patient as Roar. He asked me straight out if I was founding a new religion.’
Kaja giggled and sucked on her cigarette. ‘I think Roar eventually felt that the memory of Even was smothering all life as he knew it, including himself. It was a brief relationship.’
‘Mm. But Even was still there.’
She nodded. ‘Behind every single door I opened.’
‘That’s why, isn’t it?’
She nodded again. ‘When I came home from the hospital that summer and had to go to my bedroom, I couldn’t open the door. I simply couldn’t. Because I knew that if I did, he would be hanging there again. And it would be my fault.’
‘It’s always our fault, isn’t it?’
‘Always.’
‘And no one can persuade us that it isn’t – not even we can do that.’ Harry stubbed out his cigarette in the dark. Lit another.
The cruise ship beneath them had slid into the quay.
A gust of wind whistled through the gun slits, making a hollow, gloomy sound.
‘Why are you crying?’ he asked softly.
‘Because it is my fault,’ she whispered with tears rolling down her cheeks. ‘Everything is my fault. You’ve known all along, haven’t you?’
Harry inhaled. Took out the cigarette and blew on the glow. ‘Not all along.’
‘Since when?’
‘Since I saw Bjørn Holm’s face in the doorway in Holmenveien. Bjørn Holm is a good forensics officer, but no De Niro. And he was genuinely surprised.’
‘Was that all?’
‘It was enough. I knew from his expression that he had no idea I was on to Leike. Therefore he had not seen anything on my computer, and he had not passed it on to Bellman. And if Holm wasn’t the mole, there was only one other person it could have been.’
She nodded and dried her tears. ‘Why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you do anything? Why didn’t you behead me?’
‘What would have been the point? I assumed you had a good reason.’
She shook her head and let the tears flow.
‘I don’t know what he promised you,’ Harry said. ‘I would guess a leading position in the new, all-powerful Kripos. And I was right when I said that the guy you were hung up on was married and told you he would leave his wife and kids for your sake, but he never would.’
She sobbed quietly, her neck bent as though it had become too heavy. Like a rain-burdened flower, Harry thought.
‘What I don’t understand is why you wanted to meet me this evening,’ he said, giving his cigarette a disapproving look. Perhaps he should change brand. ‘I thought at first it was because you wanted to tell me you were the mole, but I soon realised it wasn’t. Are we waiting for someone? Is something going to happen? I mean, I’ve been sidelined, what harm can I do to them now?’
She looked at her watch. Sniffled. ‘Can we go back to yours, Harry?’
‘Why? Is someone waiting for us there?’
She nodded.
Harry drained his hip flask.
The door had been broken down. The splinters of wood on the floor suggested it had been levered open with a crowbar. Nothing refined, no attempt to be discreet. Police break-in.
Harry turned on the steps and looked at Kaja who had got out of the car and stood with crossed arms. Then he went inside.