MONDAY, MAY 10
What on earth were you working on over the weekend? Don’t you think we have enough of a slog every day of the week?”
Police Attorney Håkon Sand was standing in the doorway. His jeans were new, and for once he was wearing a jacket and tie. His jacket was slightly too large and his tie was a touch too broad, but nevertheless he looked reasonably put together. Apart from the hemline on his jeans. Hanne Wilhelmsen couldn’t resist leaning in front of him, speedily tucking the superfluous centimeters inside so they couldn’t be seen.
“You shouldn’t walk about with the turn-up on the outside.” She gave a friendly smile and stood up. She smoothed her hand down his arm with a light, almost tender, movement.
“There. Now you’re fantastic. Are you going to court?”
“No,” replied the prosecution attorney, who, despite the well-meaning gesture, felt embarrassed. Why did the detective inspector have to draw attention to his lack of fashion sense? She could have saved herself the trouble of doing that, he thought, though he said something different.
“I’ve a dinner date right after work. But what about you, why were you here?”
A pale green folder hung poised in the air before landing precisely on Hanne Wilhelmsen’s blotter.
“I just received this,” he went on. “Strange case. There have been no reports of either dismembered people or animals in our area.”
“I did an extra shift in the crime section,” she explained, leaving the folder untouched. “They’re struggling with illness down there right now.”
The police prosecution attorney, a dark-haired and reasonably good-looking man whose temples were grayer than his thirty-five years would suggest, flopped onto the visitor’s chair. He removed his glasses and sat polishing them with the end of his tie. The spectacles did not become particularly clean, but the tie became decidedly more crumpled.
“The case has been assigned to the two of us. If there is a case, that is. There’s no victim, no one has heard anything, no one has seen anything. Odd. There are some pictures in there.”
He pointed toward the folder.
“I don’t need those, thanks.” She waved dismissively. “I was there. It really didn’t look very pretty.
“But you know,” she continued, leaning toward him, “if all of that turns out to be human blood, then there must have been two or three people killed in there. I’m inclined to think there are some young hooligans having some fun with us.”
The theory didn’t seem improbable. The Oslo police were in the middle of their worst spring ever. In the course of six weeks, three murders had been visited upon the city, and at least one of these seemed unsolvable. There had been no fewer than sixteen cases of ra