Bjørnstad granted his request with gracious benevolence.
‘He found what he was looking for,’ Kari observed when they stood in front of the bed on the thick wall-to-wall carpet in the master bedroom. On the bedspread lay a handbag, an open, emptied purse and a jewellery box lined with red velvet, also empty.
‘Perhaps,’ Simon said, ignoring the flag and squatting down beside the bed.
‘He would have been standing roughly here when he tipped out the handbag and the jewellery box, don’t you agree?’
‘Yes, as everything is lying on the bed.’
Simon studied the carpet. He was about to get up again when he stopped mid-motion and bent down.
‘What is it?’
‘Blood,’ Simon said.
‘He bled on the carpet?’
‘Unlikely. It’s a rectangular mark so it’s probably a shoeprint. Imagine you’re burgling a house in a wealthy area like this: where do you think the safe is?’
Kari pointed to the wardrobe.
‘Exactly,’ Simon said, got up and opened the wardrobe door.
The safe was located in the middle of the wall and was the size of a microwave oven. Simon pressed the handle down. Locked.
‘Unless the burglar took the time to lock the safe afterwards – something which would seem odd given that he discarded the jewellery box and the purse – he didn’t touch it,’ Simon said. ‘Let’s see if they’ve finished with the body.’
On the way back to the kitchen, Simon went into the bathroom. He reappeared, frowning.
‘What is it?’ Kari asked.
‘Did you know that in France they have one toothbrush per forty inhabitants?’
‘That’s a myth and those statistics are old,’ she said.
‘But then I’m an old man,’ Simon said. ‘Either way, the Iversen family doesn’t have a single toothbrush between them.’
They returned to the kitchen where the body of Agnete Iversen had been temporarily abandoned and Simon could examine her unhindered. He looked at her hands, studying closely the angle of the entry and exit wounds. He got up and asked Kari to stand right in front of the victim’s feet with her back to the worktop.
‘I apologise in advance,’ he said, walked up beside her, pressed one finger between her small breasts in the same spot as the bullet had entered Agnete Iversen and another in between her shoulder blades in a place which corresponded to the victim’s exit wound. He studied the angle between the two points before he let his gaze travel up to the bullet hole on the wall. Then he bent down and picked up one of the ox-eye daisies, rested one knee on the worktop, stretched up and popped the flower into the bullet hole.
‘Come on,’ he said, sliding off the worktop and walking down the hallway towards the front door. He stopped at a picture which was hanging crooked, leaned closer and pointed at something red on the edge of the picture frame.
‘Blood?’ Kari asked.
‘Nail polish,’ Simon said and placed the back of his left hand against the picture and looked over his shoulder at the body. Then he continued towards the door. Stopped and squatted down by the threshold. Crouched over a lump of soil which had been marked with a flag.
‘Don’t you dare touch that!’ said a voice behind them.
They looked up.
‘Oh, it’s you, Simon,’ said the man in white and ran a finger over his wet lips in the depths of his ginger beard.
‘Hi, Nils. Long time no see. Are they treating you properly in Kripos?’
The man shrugged. ‘Oh, they are. But that’s probably because I’m so old and over the hill that they feel sorry for me.’
‘And are you?’
‘Oh yes,’ the crime scene technician sighed. ‘It’s all about DNA these days, Simon. DNA and computer models people like us don’t understand. It’s not like back in our day.’
‘I don’t think we’re quite over the hill yet,’ Simon said, studying the catch lock in the front door. ‘Give my best to your wife, Nils.’
The bearded man remained standing. ‘I still don’t have a—’
‘To your dog, then.’
‘My dog’s dead, Simon.’
‘Then we’ll have to skip the pleasantries, Nils,’ Simon said and went outside. ‘Kari, count to three and then scream as loud as you can. Afterwards come outside on the steps and stay there. OK?’
She nodded and he closed the door.
Kari looked at Nils, who shook his head before he walked away. Then she screamed at the top of her lungs. She yelled the word ‘fore!’ which was what she had been taught to shout to warn anyone on the rare occasions she hooked or sliced a golf stroke.
Then she opened the door.
Simon was aiming his index finger at her from the foot of the steps.
‘Now move,’ he said.
She did as she was told and saw him shift slightly to the left and narrow one eye.
‘He must have been standing here,’ Simon said, still aiming his index finger at her. She turned and saw the white ox-eye daisy on the kitchen wall.
Simon looked to the right. Went over to the maples. Spread them. Kari realised what he was looking for. The shell.
‘Aha,’ he muttered to himself, took out his mobile, held it up to his eye and she heard the digitally simulated sound of a camera shutter. He pinched some soil from the ground between his thumb and forefinger and scattered it. Then he returned to the steps to show her the picture he had taken.
‘A shoeprint,’ she said.
‘The killer’s,’ he said.
‘Oh?’
‘Right, I think school’s out, Kefas.’
They turned round. It was Bjørnstad. He looked angry. Three CSOs were standing alongside him, including Nils with the ginger beard.
‘Almost done,’ Simon said and tried to get back inside. ‘I thought we would just—’
‘I think we’re done,’ Bjørnstad said, legs akimbo and blocking the path as he folded his arms across his chest. ‘I’ve found a flower in my bullet hole, and that’s a step too far. That’ll be all for today.’
Simon shrugged. ‘Fine, we’ve seen enough anyway to draw our own conclusions. Good luck finding your assassin, folks.’
Bjørnstad scoffed. ‘So you’re trying to impress your young student here by calling it an assassination?’ He turned to Kari. ‘I’m sorry that real life isn’t quite as exciting as the old boy here would like it to be. It’s just a bog-standard murder.’
‘You’re wrong,’ Simon said.
Bjørnstad rested his hand on his hip. ‘My parents taught me to respect my elders. I’m giving you ten seconds of respect, and then I want you gone.’ One of the CSOs tittered.
‘What nice parents,’ Simon said.
‘Nine seconds.’
‘The neighbour said she heard a shot.’
‘What about it?’
‘The properties here are large and there’s plenty of room between them. And the houses are well insulated. The neighbour wouldn’t have been able to hear something she could identify as a bang coming from inside the house. Outside, however . . .’
Bjørnstad leaned his head back as if to study Simon from another angle. ‘What’s your point?’
‘Mrs Iversen was about as tall as Kari here. And the only angle that fits with her standing up when she was shot and her entry wound being here –’ he pointed to Kari’s chest – ‘and her exit wound being on her back here, while the bullet ends up in the wall where I put the ox-eye daisy, is that the shooter was on a lower level than her, but that they both stood quite a long way from the kitchen wall. In other words, the victim was standing where we’re standing now, while the shooter was standing at the bottom of the steps, on the flagstones. That was how the neighbour heard the shot. However, the neighbour didn’t hear any screaming or noises preceding the shot, nothing to indicate commotion or resistance, so my guess is it happened quickly.’
Bjørnstad couldn’t help glancing back at his colleagues. He shifted his weight. ‘And then he dragged her inside, is that what you’re saying?’
Simon shook his head. ‘No, I think she stumbled backwards.’
‘And what makes you think that?’
‘You’re right that Mrs Iversen was house-proud. The only thing in this house hanging crooked is that picture there.’ The others turned to look where Simon was pointing. ‘Besides, there’s nail polish on the side of the picture frame closest to the door. It means she struck it as she staggered back inside; it fits with the chipped nail polish on her left middle finger.’
Bjørnstad shook his head. ‘If she was shot in the doorway and walked backwards, there would have been bloodstains from the exit wound along the hallway.’
‘And there were,’ Simon said, ‘but the killer cleaned them up. Like you said yourself, there were no fingerprints on the door handle. Not even the family’s. Not because Agnete Iversen started spring-cleaning seconds after her husband and son had touched the handle on their way out, but because the killer didn’t want to leave us any evidence. And I’m quite sure that the reason he mopped up the blood on the floor was that he had stepped in it and didn’t want to leave shoeprints. So he also wiped down the soles of his shoes.’
‘Is that right?’ Bjørnstad said, still leaning his head backwards, but no longer grinning quite so broadly. ‘And you surmise all this out of thin air?’
‘When you dry the soles of your shoes, you don’t remove the blood in between the ridges in the pattern of the sole,’ Simon said, looking at his watch. ‘But that blood will come out if, for example, you stand on a thick rug whose fibres get into the sole pattern and soak up the blood. In the bedroom you’ll find a rectangular bloodstain in the carpet. I think your blood technician will agree with me, Bjørnstad.’
In the silence that followed, Kari heard the sound of a car being stopped by police officers further up the road. There were agitated voices, one of them belonging to a young man. The victim’s husband and son.
‘Whatever,’ Bjørnstad said with forced indifference. ‘Ultimately, it doesn’t matter where the victim was shot, this is a burglary gone wrong, not an assassination. And it sounds as if someone will be here shortly who can confirm that jewellery is missing from the jewellery box.’
‘Jewellery is all well and good,’ Simon said, ‘but if I’d been the burglar, I would have taken Agnete Iversen inside and forced her to show me where the real valuables are kept. Made her give me the combination to the safe which every idiot burglar knows a house like this will have. But instead he shoots her right here where the neighbours can hear. Not because he panics – the way he removed evidence shows how callous he is. No, he does it because he knows he won’t be spending very long in the house, that he’ll be long gone by the time the police arrive. Because he’s not there to steal very much, is he? Just enough so that an inexperienced investigator with nice parents will swiftly conclude that it’s a burglary gone wrong and not look too closely for the real motive.’
Simon had to admit that he enjoyed the silence and the sudden colour in Bjørnstad’s face. Deep down Simon Kefas was a simple soul, but he wasn’t vindictive. Though he was sorely tempted, he spared his young colleague his parting shot:
school’s out, Bjørnstad
.
Given time and experience it was always possible that Åsmund Bjørnstad might one day make a good investigator. Humility was also something good investigators had to learn.
‘Very enjoyable theory, Kefas,’ Bjørnstad said. ‘I’ll keep it in mind. But time is passing and . . .’ Short smile. ‘. . . perhaps you should be on your way?’
‘Why didn’t you tell him everything?’ Kari asked while Simon carefully manoeuvred the car around the sharp bends coming down from Holmenkollåsen.
‘Everything?’ Simon said, feigning innocence. Kari had to laugh. Simon was doing his eccentric old-man act.
‘You knew that the shell had landed somewhere in that flower bed. You didn’t find a shell, but you did find a shoeprint. Which you photographed. And the soil there matched the soil in the hallway?’
‘Yes.’
‘So why not give him that information?’
‘Because he’s an ambitious investigator whose ego is bigger than his team spirit, so it’s better if he discovers it himself. He’ll be more motivated if he feels that it’s his evidence and not mine they’re following up when they start looking for a man who takes size 8½ shoes and who picked up an empty shell in that rose bed.’
They stopped for a red light at Stasjonsveien. Kari strangled a yawn. ‘And how did you gain such insight into how an investigator like Bjørnstad thinks?’
Simon laughed. ‘Easy. I was young and ambitious once.’
‘But ambition fades in time?’
‘Some of it does, yes.’ Simon smiled. A wistful smile, Kari thought.
‘Is that why you stopped working for the Serious Fraud Office?’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘You were management. Chief Inspector in charge of a large team. They’ve let you keep your title in Homicide, but the only person you’re in charge of is me.’
‘Yep,’ Simon said, crossing the junction and continuing towards Smestad. ‘Overpaid, overqualified, left over. Or just over.’
‘So what happened?’
‘You don’t want to—’
‘Yes, I do.’
They drove on in a silence which Kari deemed to be to her advantage so she kept her mouth shut. Even so, they had almost reached Majorstua before Simon began.
‘I had uncovered a money laundering operation. We’re talking serious money. People in high places. My fellow senior officers thought that my investigation and I represented a big risk. That I didn’t have enough evidence, that we would be hung out to dry if we pursued the inquiry but failed to secure a conviction. We’re not talking your usual common criminal, the suspects were powerful people, people who’ll fight back using the very same system the police use. My colleagues were afraid that, even if we won, we would pay for it later, there would be a backlash.’
Another silence. Which lasted till they reached Frogner Park where Kari finally lost patience.
‘So they kicked you out just because you’d launched a controversial inquiry?’
Simon shook his head. ‘I had a problem. Gambling. Or, to use the technical expression, ludomania. I bought and sold shares. Not many. But when you work for the Serious Fraud Office . . .’
‘. . . then you have access to inside information.’
‘I never traded in shares I had information about, but I still broke the rules. And they worked that for all it was worth.’