context within which these actions are performed.
Most people, for instance, are equipped with an
impulse control in the midbrain which attempts to
prevent us from killing our fellow creatures. This
is just one of the evolutionary qualities with which
we are equipped to protect our own species. But if
you train long enough to overcome these
inhibitions, the inhibition is weakened. As with
soldiers, for example. If you or I suddenly began to
kill, there is a good chance we would become sick.
But that is not necessarily the case if you are a
contract killer or a . . . policeman for that matter.’
‘So, if we’re talking about a soldier – someone
who has been fighting for either side during a war
– the threshold for killing is much lower than with
someone else, assuming both are of sound mind?’
‘Yes and no. A soldier is trained to kill in a war
situation, and in order for the inhibitions not to
kick in, he has to feel that the action of killing is
taking place in the same context.’
‘So he must feel he is still fighting a war?’
‘Put simply, yes. But supposing that is the
situation, he can continue killing without being sick
in a medical sense. No sicker than any normal
soldier, at any rate. Then it is just a matter of a
divergent sense of reality, and now we’re all
skating on thin ice.’
‘Why’s that?’ Halvorsen asked.
‘Who is to say what is true or real, moral or
immoral? Psychologists? Courts of law?
Politicians?’
‘Right,’ said Harry. ‘But there are those who do.’
‘Exactly,’ Aune said. ‘But if you feel that those
who have been invested with authority judge you
high-handedly or unjustly, in your eyes they lose
their moral authority. For instance, if anyone is
imprisoned for being a member of a wholly legal
party, you look for another judge. You appeal
against the sentence to a higher authority, so to
speak.’
‘“God is my judge”,’ Harry said.
Aune nodded. ‘What do you think that means,
Aune?’
‘It might mean that he wants to explain his
actions. Despite everything, he feels a need to be
understood. Most people do, you know.’
Harry dropped in at Schrøder’s on his way to meet
Fauke. It wasn’t a busy morning and Maja was
sitting at the table under the TV with a cigarette
and the newspaper. Harry showed her the picture
of Edvard Mosken which Halvorsen had managed
to produce in an impressively short time, probably
via the authority which had issued an international
driver’s licence to Mosken two years before.
‘I think I’ve seen that prune face before, yes,’ she
said. ‘But how can I remember where or when? He
must have been here a few times since I recognise
him. He’s not a regular though.’
‘Could anyone else have spoken to him?’
‘Now you’re asking me tricky stuff, Harry.’
‘Somebody rang from the pay phone here at 12.30
last Monday. I’m not expecting you to remember,
but could it have been this person?’
Maja shrugged.
‘Of course it could. But it could have been Father
Christmas too. You know what it’s like, Harry.’
On his way to Vibes gate Harry rang Halvorsen
and asked him to get hold of Edvard Mosken.
‘Should I arrest him?’
‘No, no. Check his alibis for the Brandhaug
murder and Signe Juul’s disappearance today.’
Sindre Fauke’s face was grey when he opened the
door to Harry.
‘A friend turned up with a bottle of whisky
yesterday,’ he explained and pulled a face. My
body can’t take that sort of thing any more. No, if
only I were sixty again . . .’
He laughed and went to take the whistling coffee
pot off the stove.
‘I read about the murder of this man from the
Foreign Office,’ he shouted from the kitchen. ‘It
said in the paper that the police are not ruling out
the possibility of a link with what he said about
Norwegians at the front. Verdens Gang reckons
neo-Nazis were behind it. Do you really believe
that?’
‘ VG might believe that. We don’t believe
anything and we don’t rule out anything either.
How’s it going with the book?’
‘It’s going a bit slowly at this minute. But if I
finish it, it will open a few people’s eyes. That’s
what I tell myself, anyway, to get myself motivated
on days like today.’
Fauke put the coffee on the table between them
and sank back into the armchair. He had tied a cold
cloth round the pot – an old trick he had learned at
the front, he explained with a knowing smile. He