Read Fear Not for Free Online Page B

goosebumps. Eva Karin Lysgaard. The well-known, gentle bishop of Bjørgvin. Murdered. On Christmas Eve. She tried to follow a train of thought through to the end, but her brain just wasn’t working properly.
    Only the previous Saturday – the day of that wretched wedding – there had been a profile of Bishop Lysgaard covering four pages of the
Dagbladet
supplement. Johanne hadn’t had time to read a newspaper that day, but she bought it so that she could save the article for later. She still hadn’t got round to reading it.
    Suddenly she reached over the arm of the sofa and rummaged around in the magazine rack.
    ‘Here,’ she said, placing the newspaper on her knee. ‘ A BISHOP WITHOUT A WHIP .’
    Adam put his arm around her and they both leaned over the article. The cover photo was a close-up of a woman growing old. Her eyes were almond-shaped, but sloped down slightly. This made her look sorrowful, even when she was smiling. The irises were dark brown, almost black, with strong, dark eyebrows and lashes that looked unusually long, in spite of the wrinkles surrounding her eyes.
    ‘Quite good-looking,’ Adam mumbled, wanting to turn the page.
    ‘Not good-looking exactly. Special. Different. She looks just as nice as she seemed to be when … when she was alive.’
    Johanne stared and stared. Adam gave an enormous yawn.
    ‘Sorry,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘But I think I’d better try and get some sleep. We really ought to tidy up before we go to bed, because otherwise you’ll have to do it all tomorrow, and that might—’
    ‘Outdoors,’ said Johanne. ‘Did you say she was killed outdoors? On Christmas Eve?’
    ‘Yes. Miraculously it was a police patrol that found her. One of the few that were out tonight. She was lying on the street. From that point of view we have a major advantage. For once it seems as if the press haven’t got wind of a murder within two minutes. And there won’t be any papers tomorrow.’
    ‘The Internet press is just as bad,’ Johanne muttered, still gazing at the photo of the bishop of Bjørgvin. ‘Worse, actually. And then there’s the radio and the TV. With a case like this it doesn’t make any difference if everybody’s on holiday. Anyway, why are you involved? Surely the Bergen police are perfectly capable of handling something like this?’
    Adam smiled.
    NCIS certainly wasn’t what it had been. From being a kind of elite group of investigators known as the Murder Squad almost fifty years ago, the National Criminal Investigation Service had gradually developed into a much larger organization with the highest level of competence in tactical and particularly technical investigation. Gradually, the organization was allocated more and more tasks of a significantly greater import, both nationally and internationally. To the public, they were mainly visible as a support network for the police service in major cases, particularly murders, right up to the turn of the millennium. But as times changed, so too did criminal activity.In 2005 NCIS had effectively been scrapped in order to rise again as an organization called The National Unit for the Prevention of Organized and Other Serious Crime. The objections to the new name were vociferous. The acronym would have been TNUFPOOAOSC, which a number of people pointed out sounded like an onomatopoeic expression for vomiting. The members of the team won in the end, and NCIS was able to look forward to its golden jubilee in February 2009 under its old familiar name.
    But the work they did had changed, and it remained that way in accordance with the name that had been rejected.
    The police forces around the country had become bigger, stronger and much more competent. The great paradox when it came to combating crime was that an increase in the amount and professionalism of criminality led to a larger and more skilled police force. As more murder cases occurred in even the smaller police districts, the officers involved became more