'You won't find any e-mail address,' Albu said. 'Sorry, old chap. We can continue this game, but you can't win.'

Harry struck out. The sound of knuckles on flesh was dull and brief. Albu staggered back a pace, holding his brow.

Harry could see his own grey breath in the darkness of the night. 'You'll have to get that sewn up,' he said.

Albu looked at his blood-stained hand and guffawed. 'My God, Harry, what a terrible loser you are. Is it OK if we use first names? I think this has brought us closer together, don't you?'

Harry didn't answer, and Albu laughed louder.

'What did she see in you, Harry? Anna didn't like losers. At least she wouldn't let them fuck her.'

The laughter rose higher and higher as Harry walked back to the taxi, and the jagged edges of the car keys cut into his skin as his hand closed tighter and tighter around them.

23

Horsehead Nebula

Harry woke up to the telephone ringing and squinted at the clock. 7.30. It was Шystein. He had left Harry's flat only three hours ago. Then he had located the server in Egypt and now he had made further progress.

'I've e-mailed an old friend. He lives in Malaysia and does a bit of small-time hacking. The ISP is in El Tor, on the Sinai peninsula. They have quite a few ISPs there, it's a sort of centre. Were you asleep?'

'Kind of. How will you find our client?'

'There's only one way, I'm afraid. Go there with a thick wad of American greenbacks.'

'How much?'

'Enough to make someone tell you who to talk to. And to make the person you talk to tell you who you really have to talk to. And to make the person you really-'

'I've got you. How much?'

'A grand should make some headway.'

'Do you think so?'

'Off the top of my head. What the fuck do I know?'

'OK. Will you take the job?'

'Course.'

'I pay shit. You travel on the cheapest plane and stay in a crap hotel.'

'Deal.'

***

It was twelve o'clock and the Police HQ canteen was packed. Harry clenched his teeth and went in. He didn't dislike his colleagues on principle; he disliked them by instinct. And, as the years went by, it was getting worse.

'Completely normal paranoia,' Aune had called it. 'I feel the same myself. I think all psychologists are after me, whereas in reality it is probably no more than half of them.'

Harry scanned the room and spotted Beate with her packed lunch and the back of someone keeping her company. Harry tried not to notice the looks he received from the tables he passed. Someone mumbled a 'Hi', but Harry assumed it was meant ironically and didn't answer.

'Am I disturbing?'

Beate looked up at Harry as if he had caught her in the act.

'Not at all,' said a familiar voice, getting up. 'I was about to go anyway.'

The hairs on Harry's neck rose-not on principle, but by instinct.

'See you this evening then.' Tom Waaler smiled, a white flash to Beate's beetroot face. He took his tray, nodded to Harry and left. Beate stared down into her goat's cheese as she tried her best to assume a sensible expression while Harry took a seat.

'Well?'

'Well what?' she chirped, overdoing the failure to understand.

'You said on my answerphone you had something new,' Harry said. 'I gathered it was urgent.'

'I've worked it out.' Beate drank from the glass of milk. 'The drawings the program made of the Expeditor's face. I've been racking my brains who they reminded me of.'

'Do you mean the printouts you showed me? There's nothing even remotely like a face, it's just random lines on paper.'

'Nevertheless.'

Harry shrugged. 'You're the one with the fusiform gyrus. Out with it.'

'Last night it came to me who it was.' She took another mouthful of milk and wiped her milky smile on the serviette.

'Well?'

'Trond Grette.'

Harry stared at her. 'You're kidding, aren't you?'

'No,' she said. 'I just said there was a certain likeness. After all, Grette was not far from Bogstadveien at the time of the murder. But, as I said, I've worked it out.'

'And how…?'

'I checked with Gaustad hospital. If it's the same person who held up the DnB branch in Kirkeveien, it can't be Grette. At that time he was sitting in the TV room with at least three carers. And I sent off a couple of boys from Krimteknisk to Grette's place to get a fingerprint. Weber has just compared it with the print on the Coca-Cola bottle. It is definitely not his print.'

'So you were wrong for once?'

Beate shook her head. 'We're looking for a person who has a number of identical external characteristics to Grette.'

'Sorry to have to say this, Beate, but Grette has no external or any other kind of characteristics. He's an accountant who looks like an accountant. I've already forgotten what he looks like.'

'Right,' she said, taking the greaseproof paper off her next sandwich. 'But I haven't. That's the crunch.'

'Mm. I may have some good news.'

'Oh, yes?'

'I'm on my way to Botsen. Raskol wanted to talk to me.'

'Wow. Good luck.'

'Thank you.' Harry stood up. Hesitated. Took a deep breath. 'I know I'm not your father, but may I be allowed to say one thing?'

'Be my guest.'

He peered round to make sure no one could hear them. 'I'd watch it with Waaler, if I were you.'

'Thank you.' Beate took a large bite of her sandwich. 'And the bit about yourself and my father is correct.'

***

'I've lived in Norway all my life,' Harry said. 'Grew up in Oppsal. My parents were teachers. My father's retired and, since Mum died, he's lived like a sleepwalker, only occasionally visiting the land of the living. My little sister misses him. I do too, I suppose. I miss them both. They thought I would be a teacher. I did, too. But it was Police College instead. And a bit of law. Were you to ask me why I became a policeman, I would be able to give you ten sensible answers, but not one I believed myself. I don't think about it any longer. It's a job, they pay me, and now and then I think I do something good-you can live off that for a long time. I was an alcoholic before I was thirty. Perhaps before I was twenty, it depends on how you look at things. They say it's in your genes. Possibly. When I grew up I found out my grandfather in Еndalsnes had been drunk every day for fifty years. We went there every summer until I was fifteen and never noticed a thing. Unfortunately I haven't inherited that talent. I've done things which have not exactly gone unnoticed. In a nutshell, it's a miracle I've still got a job in the police force.'

Harry looked up at the NO SMOKING sign and lit up.

'Anna and I were lovers for six weeks. She didn't love me. I didn't love her. When I stopped, I did her a greater favour than I did myself. She didn't see it like that.'

The other man in the room nodded.

'I've loved three women in my life,' Harry continued. 'The first was a childhood sweetheart I was going to marry until everything went pear-shaped for us both. She took her life a long time after I'd stopped seeing her, and that had nothing to do with me. The second was murdered by a man I was chasing on the other side of the globe. The same happened to a female colleague of mine, Ellen. I don't know why but women around me die. Perhaps it's the genes.'

'What about the third woman?'

The third woman. The third key. Harry stroked the initials AA and the edges of the key Raskol had passed him over the table when he was let in. Harry had asked if it was identical to the one he had received and Raskol had nodded.