'Is it really as reliable as they say?'

'The sound of our vocal cords is like a fingerprint. If we can give our voice analyst, at the university in Trondheim, ten words on tape, he can match two voices with ninety-five per cent reliability.'

'Mm. But not with the sound quality we had before the alarm went, I take it?'

'It's less reliable.'

'So that's why he shouts in English first, and then when he reckons the alarm has been activated, he uses Stine Grette as his mouthpiece.'

'Exactly.'

In silence they observed the black-clad man manoeuvring himself over the counter, putting the gun barrel to Stine Grette's neck and whispering into her ear.

'What do you think about her reaction?' Harry asked.

'What do you mean?'

'Her facial expression. She seems relatively calm, don't you think?'

'I don't think anything. Generally, you can't get much information from a facial expression. I would think her pulse is close on 180.'

They watched Helge Klementsen floundering on the floor in front of the cash dispenser.

'Hope he gets proper post-trauma treatment,' Beate said sotto voce and shook her head. 'I've seen people become psychological wrecks after being exposed to robberies like this one.'

Harry said nothing, but thought that statement had to be something she had picked up from older colleagues.

The robber turned and displayed six fingers.

'Interesting,' Beate mumbled and, without looking down, made a note on the pad in front of her. Harry followed the young policewoman out of the corner of his eye and watched her jump when the shot was fired. While the robber on the screen swept up the holdall, sprang over the counter, and ran out of the door, Beate's little chin rose and her pen fell out of her hand.

'We haven't put the last part on the Net, or passed it on to any of the TV stations,' Harry said. 'Look, now he's on the camera outside the bank.'

They watched the robber walk across the pedestrian crossing-on green-in Bogstadveien before making his way up Industrigata. Then he was outside the frame.

'And the police?' Beate asked.

'The closest police station is in Sшrkedalsveien just after the toll station, only eight hundred metres from the bank. Nevertheless, it took just over three minutes from the time the alarm went off until they arrived. So the robber had less than two minutes to make his escape.'

Beate looked at the screen thoughtfully, at the people and cars passing by as though nothing had happened.

'The escape was as meticulously planned as the hold-up. The getaway car was probably parked around the corner so that it wouldn't be caught by the cameras outside the bank. He's been lucky.'

'Perhaps,' Harry said. 'On the other hand, he doesn't strike you as someone who relies on good fortune, does he?'

Beate shrugged. 'Most bank robberies seem well planned if they're successful.'

'OK, but here it was odds on that the police would be delayed. On Friday at this time all the patrol cars in the area were busy somewhere else, at-'

'-the American ambassador's residence!' Beate exclaimed, slapping her forehead. 'The anonymous phone call about the car bomb. I had Friday off, but I saw it on the TV news. And if you think how hysterical people are nowadays, it's obvious everyone there would have been.'

'There was no bomb.'

'Of course not. It's the classic ruse to keep the police busy somewhere else before a hold-up.'

They sat watching the last part of the recording in thoughtful silence. August Schulz standing waiting at the pedestrian crossing. Green changes to red and back again without him moving. What's he waiting for? Harry wondered. An irregularity? An extra-long sequence on green? A kind of hundred-year green wave? Alright. Should come soon. In the distance he heard the police sirens.

'There's something not quite right.'

Beate Lшnn answered with the weary sigh of an old man: 'There's always something not quite right.'

Then the film was over and the snowstorm swept across the screen.

4

The Echo

'SNOW?'

Harry shouted into his mobile phone as he hurried along the pavement.

'Yes, really,' Rakel said over a bad line from Moscow. This was followed by a hissy echo: '…eally.'

'Hello?'

'It's freezing here…ere. Inside and outside…ide.'

'And in the court?'

'Well below freezing there, too. When we lived here, his mother even said I should take Oleg away. Now she's sitting with the others and sending me such hateful scowls…owls.'

'How's the case going?'

'How should I know?'

'Well. First of all, you studied law. Secondly, you speak Russian.'

'Harry. In common with 150 million Russians I don't understand a thing about the legal system here, OK?…kay?'

'OK. How's Oleg taking it?'

Harry repeated his question without getting an answer and held up the display to see if he had lost the connection, but the seconds on the conversation timer were ticking away. He put the phone to his ear again.

'Hello?'

'Hello, Harry, I can hear you…oooh. I miss you so…ohh. What's with the ha ha?…aah.'

'There's an echo on the line. Lots of oohs, ohs and aahs.'

Harry had reached the main door, pulled out a key and unlocked the hall entrance.

'Do you think I'm too pushy, Harry?'

'Of course not.'

Harry nodded to Ali, who was trying to manoeuvre a kicksled through the cellar door. 'I love you. Are you there? I love you! Hello?'

Harry looked up from the dead phone in bewilderment and noticed his Pakistani neighbour's beaming smile.

'Yes, yes, you, too, Ali,' he mumbled as he laboriously tapped in Rakel's number again.

'Call register,' Ali said.

'Hey?'

'Nothing. Tell me if you want to let your cellar room. You don't use it much, do you?'

'Have I got a storeroom in the cellar?'

Ali rolled his eyes. 'How long have you lived here, Harry?'

'I said…I love you.'

Ali gave Harry a searching look. Harry waved goodbye to Ali and gestured that he had got through. He jogged upstairs with the key in front of him like a divining rod.

***

'That's it, we can talk now,' Harry said as he went through the doorway into his sparsely furnished yet tidy two-room flat, bought for a song some time in the nineties when the housing market was rock bottom. Every so often he thought the flat had used up his share of luck for the rest of his life.

'I wish you were here with us, Harry. Oleg misses you, too.'

'Did he say that?'

'He doesn't need to say it. In that respect, you're very similar.'

'You, I've just told you I love you. Three times. With the neighbour listening. Do you know what that sort of thing does to a man?'

Rakel laughed. Harry loved her laugh, had done so from the very first moment he heard it. Instinctively, he knew he would do anything to hear it more often. Every day for preference.

He kicked off his shoes and smiled when he saw the answerphone in the corridor blinking to tell him there was a message. He didn't need to be psychic to know it was from Rakel earlier in the day. No one else phoned Harry Hole at home.

'How do you know you love me then?' Rakel cooed. The echo was gone.

'I can feel myself getting hot in the…what's it called?'

'Heart?'

'No, it's back a bit and under the heart. Kidneys? Liver? Spleen? Yes, that's the one. I can feel my spleen heating up.'

Harry wasn't sure if it was sobbing or laughing he could hear at the other end. He pressed PLAY on the answerphone.

'I hope to be home in two weeks,' Rakel said on the mobile before being drowned out by the answerphone: