'Where are we going?' Harry asked.

'Here,' Waaler said, swinging abruptly to the left in front of an oncoming car. The window was still open and Harry could hear the sound of wet leaves sucking at the tyres.

'Welcome back to Crime Squad,' Harry said. 'Didn't they want you in POT?'

'Restructuring,' Waaler said. 'Besides, the Chief Super and Mшller wanted me back. I achieved some pretty useful results in Crime Squad, if you remember.'

'How could I forget.'

'Well, one hears so much about the long-term effects of drinking.'

Harry had just managed to put his arm against the dashboard before the sudden braking sent him into the windscreen. The glove compartment sprang open and something heavy hit Harry on the knee on its way to the floor.

'What the fuck was that?' he groaned.

'A Jericho 941, Israeli police issue,' Waaler said, switching off the engine. 'Not loaded. Leave it where it is. We've arrived.'

'Here?' Harry asked in amazement and bent down to look up at the yellow block of flats in front of him.

'Why not?' Waaler said, already halfway out of the car.

Harry felt his heart beginning to pound. As he searched for the door handle, out of all the thoughts racing through his mind one took hold: he should have made the call to Rakel.

***

The fog was back. It seeped in through the streets, from the cracks around the closed windows behind the trees in the avenue, out of the blue door which opened after they had heard Weber's abrupt bark over the intercom, and out through the keyholes in the doors they passed on the way upstairs. It lay like a duvet of cotton wool around Harry, and as they entered the flat, Harry had the sensation of walking on clouds. Everything around him-the people, the voices, the crackle of the walkie-talkies, the light from the camera flashes-had taken on a dreamlike sheen, a coating of detachment because this was not, could not be, real. But, standing in front of the bed where the deceased lay with a pistol in her right hand and a black hole in her temple, he found himself unable to look at the blood on the pillow or meet her vacant, accusatory gaze. Instead he focused on the bedhead, on the horse with the bitten-off head, hoping the fog would soon lift and he would wake up.

10

Sorgenfrigata

Voices came and went around him.

'I'm Inspector Waaler. Can anyone give me a quick recap?'

'We got here three quarters of an hour ago. The electrician here found her.'

'When?'

'At five. He immediately rang the police. His name is…let me see…Renй Jensen. I've got his National Insurance number here and his address too.'

'Good. Ring in and check his record.'

'OK.'

'Renй Jensen?'

'That's me.'

'Can you come over here? My name's Waaler. How did you get in?'

'As I said to the other officer, with this spare key. She popped it down to my shop on Tuesday because she wasn't going to be at home when I came.'

'Because she was working?'

'No idea. Don't think she had a job. Well, not the normal kind. She said she was putting on an exhibition of some stuff.'

'She was an artist then. Anyone here heard of her?'

Silence.

'What were you doing in the bedroom, Jensen?'

'Looking for the bathroom.'

Another voice: 'The bathroom's behind that door.'

'OK. Anything suspicious strike you when you came into the flat, Jensen?'

'Er…how do you mean suspicious?'

'Was the door locked? Any windows left open? A particular smell or sound? Anything.'

'The door was locked. Didn't see windows open, but I wasn't looking. The only smell was that solvent…'

'Turpentine?'

Another voice: 'There are some painting materials in one of the bigger rooms.'

'Thanks. Anything else you noticed, Jensen?'

'What was the last one again?'

'Sound.'

'Sound, yeah! No, not a lot of sound, quiet as the grave it was. That is…ha ha…I didn't mean…'

'That's fine, Jensen. Had you met the deceased before?'

'Never seen her before she came to the shop. Seemed pretty perky then.'

'What did she want you to do?'

'Fix the thermostat for the underfloor heating in the bathroom.'

'Could you do us a favour and check if there's really a problem with the cables? See if she had any heater cables even.'

'What for? Oh, I see, she might have set the whole thing up and we were kind of supposed to find her?'

'Something like that.'

'Yeah, well, the thermostat was fried.'

'Fried?'

'Not functional.'

'How do you know?'

Pause.

'You must have been told not to touch anything, Jensen, weren't you?'

'Ye-es, but you took such a bloody long time to come, and I got a bit twitchy, so I had to find something to do.'

'So, now, the deceased has a fully functional thermostat?'

'Er…ha ha…yes.'

***

Harry tried to move off the bed, but his feet wouldn't obey. The doctor had closed Anna's eyes and now she seemed to be sleeping. Tom Waaler had sent the electrician home and told him to make himself available for the next few days. He had also dismissed the uniformed patrolmen who had responded to the call. Harry would never have believed he would feel this way, but in fact he was pleased that Waaler had been there. Without his experienced colleague's presence, not one single intelligent question would have been asked, and even fewer intelligent decisions taken.

Waaler asked the doctor if he could give them some provisional conclusions.

'The bullet has obviously passed through the skull, destroyed the brain and thus arrested all vital bodily functions. On the assumption that the room temperature has been constant, body temperature suggests that she has been dead for at least sixteen hours. No signs of violence. No injection marks or external indications of medicinal use. However…' The doctor paused for effect. 'The scars on the wrists suggest that she has tried this before. A purely speculative but educated guess is that she was manic depressive, or simply depressive, and suicidal. I wouldn't mind betting we will find a psychologist's case file on her.'

Harry tried to say something, but his tongue wouldn't obey, either.

'I'll know more when I've undertaken a closer examination.'

'Thank you, Doctor. Anything to tell us, Weber?'

'The weapon is a Beretta M92F, a highly unusual gun. We can only find one set of fingerprints on the gunstock, and they are obviously hers. The bullet was lodged in one of the bed boards and the ammo matches the weapon, so the ballistics report will show it was fired by this pistol. You'll get a full report tomorrow.'

'Good, Weber. One more thing. The door was locked when the electrician arrived. I noticed the door was fitted with a standard lock and not a latch, so no one can have been here and then left the flat, unless they took the deceased's key and locked the door after them, of course. In other words, if we find her key, we can wrap this one up.'

Weber nodded and lifted a yellow pencil, dangling from which was a ring and a key. 'It was on the chest of drawers in the hall. It's the kind of system key that opens the main door to the block and all the rooms for common use. I checked and it fits the lock on the flat door.'

'Excellent. All we're missing then is basically a signed suicide letter. Any objections to calling this one an open and shut case?'

Waaler looked at Weber, the doctor and Harry. 'OK. Family can be given the sad news and come to identify her.'

He went into the hall while Harry stood by the bed. Soon after, Waaler stuck his head in again.