Kristian didn’t say another word.

The man opened his mouth and began to howl. The sound was as chilling as a steel blade. He began to attack the door again with a fury that Marit had never witnessed before, beating the solid, white door with clenched fists. Howling like a wolf, he struck again and again, flesh against wood. It sounded like axe-blows in the stillness of the morning forest. Then he began to beat the wrought-iron Star of Bethlehem in the circular window. She thought she heard the sound of ripping skin as the splatter of blood began to discolour the white door.

‘Someone do something,’ a voice screamed. She saw Kristian take out his mobile phone.

The iron star was loose. All of a sudden the man sank to his knees.

Marit went closer. The others had moved back, but she had to go nearer. Her heart was thumping in her chest. In front of the steps she felt Kristian’s hand on her shoulder and she stopped. She could hear the man gasping for breath on the steps, like a fish drowning on dry land. It sounded as if he was weeping.

When the police car came to collect him a quarter of an hour later, he was lying in a heap on the steps. They got him to his feet, and he allowed himself to be led to the car without putting up any resistance. One of the policewomen asked if anyone had any damage to report. They just shook their heads, too shocked to give the smashed window another thought.

Then the car was gone and all that was left was the warm summer night. It went through Marit’s mind that it was as if nothing had happened. She hardly noticed Roy emerge, pale and worn, and then disappear, or Kristian put his arm around her. She stared at the damaged star in the window. It was bent over and twisted; two of the five points of the star pointed upwards and one down. Despite the heat of the night, she pulled her jacket tighter round her shoulders.

It was well past midnight, and the moon was reflected in the windows of Police HQ. Bjarne Moller walked across the empty car park and into the custody block. As he entered, he took a quick look around. The three reception desks were unmanned; two officers were staring at the TV in the guard room. As an old Charles Bronson fan, Moller recognised the film. Death Wish. And he recognised the older of the two officers. It was Groth, also known as the ‘Griever’ on account of the liver-coloured scar that ran down from his left eye to the top of his cheek. Groth had worked in the custody block for as long as Moller could remember and everyone knew that to all intents and purposes he ran the place.

‘Hello?’ Moller shouted.

Without taking his eyes off the television screen, Groth raised a finger and pointed to the younger officer who reluctantly twisted in his chair to face him.

Moller flashed his ID card, but apparently that was superfluous. They knew him.

‘Where’s Hole?’ he shouted.

‘The idiot?’ Groth snorted as Charles Bronson raised his gun to exact revenge.

‘Cell five, I think,’ the younger officer said. ‘Check with one of the warders in there, if you can find one.’

‘Thank you,’ Moller said, and went through the door leading to the cells.

There were approximately a hundred detention cells and the number of inmates varied according to the season. Now it was definitely low season. Moller didn’t bother going to the warders’ guard room and began to walk down the corridors between the metal cubicles. His footsteps reverberated. He had always loathed the custody block. Firstly, it was absurd that living people should be incarcerated here. Secondly, there was the atmosphere of the gutter and ruined lives. Thirdly, he knew the kind of thing that went on here. Such as the time a prisoner had reported Groth for using a fire hose on him. SEFO rejected the claim when they took out the fire hose and discovered that it only reached halfway to the cell where the hosing down was alleged to have taken place. It seemed that SEFO were the only people at Police HQ who didn’t know that when Groth knew there would be a spot of bother, he would just cut a chunk off the fire hose.

Like all the other cells, number five had no lock and key, just a basic device for opening the door from the outside.

Harry was sitting on the floor with his head in his hands. The first thing that Moller noticed was that the bandage on Harry’s right hand was soaked in blood. Harry raised his head slowly and looked at him. He had a plaster on his forehead and his eyes were swollen as if he had been crying. There was the smell of vomit.

‘Why don’t you lie on the bunk?’ Moller asked.

‘Don’t want to sleep,’ Harry whispered in an unrecognisable voice. ‘Don’t want to dream.’

Moller pulled a face to hide the fact that he was shaken. He had seen Harry down before, but not like this, not so low. Never crushed.

He cleared his throat.

‘Let’s go.’

‘Griever’ Groth and the young officer did not even cast a glance their way as they passed the guard room, but Moller caught Groth’s telling shake of the head.

Harry threw up in the car park. He stood bent over, spitting and cursing as Moller lit a cigarette and passed it over to him.

‘This is out of hours,’ Moller said. ‘It’s staying unofficial.’

Harry choked on his laughter. ‘Thanks, boss. It’s good to know I’ll get the boot with a slightly better record than it might have been.’

‘That’s not why I said that. It’s because otherwise I would have had to suspend you with immediate effect.’

‘And so?’

‘I need a detective like you for the next few days. That is, the detective you are when you’re sober. So the question is whether you can stay sober.’

Harry straightened up and exhaled the cigarette smoke.

‘You know I can, boss. But do I want to?’

‘I don’t know. Do you want to, Harry?’

‘You have to have a reason, boss.’

‘Yes. I suppose you do.’

Moller surveyed his inspector thoughtfully. He considered the situation. Here they were, standing in the middle of a deserted car park one summer’s night in Oslo, under the light of the moon and a lamp full of dead insects. He thought of all the things they had been through together, all the things they had achieved and hadn’t achieved. In spite of everything, after all these years, was it going to be here, like this, as banal as it sounded, that they would finally go their separate ways?

‘For as long as I’ve known you, there’s only been one thing that’s kept you going,’ Moller said, ‘and that’s work.’

Harry didn’t answer.

‘I’ve got a job for you. If you want it.’

‘And that would be…?’

‘I received this in a brown padded envelope today. I’ve been trying to get hold of you ever since.’

Moller opened his hand and studied Harry’s reaction. The moon and the lamp shone on the palm of Moller’s hand and one of the Forensics department’s plastic bags.

‘Mm,’ Harry said. ‘And the rest of her body?’

In the plastic bag was a long, slim finger with a red-lacquered nail. The finger was wearing a ring. The jewel set in the ring was in the shape of a star with five points.

‘That’s all we’ve got,’ Moller said. ‘The middle finger of the left hand.’

‘Did forensics manage to identify the finger?’

Bjarne Moller nodded.

‘So quickly?’

Moller pressed his hand against his stomach and nodded again.

‘Right,’ Harry said. ‘So it is Lisbeth Barli then.’

Part Three

13

Monday. Touch.

You are on television, darling. There is a whole wall of you. There are twelve clones of you, all moving in step, copies in almost imperceptible variations of colour and shade. You are walking down a catwalk in Paris. You stop, raise a hip and look down at me with that cold, hate-filled look that you learned, and turn your back on me. It works. Rejection works every time, you know that, darling, don’t you.