‘Whoops.’ Holm smiled, revealing both top and bottom sets of teeth.

‘I assume Hagen wanted to use you in Operation Persuasion since he knows you are one of the few people Harry likes working with.’

‘We never got that far, and Harry turned down the job.’

‘But now it seems he has changed his mind.’

‘Uh-huh? What made him do that?’

‘He didn’t say. He just said he thought it was right to go through me.’

‘Sure. You’re the boss here.’

‘You can take nothing for granted where Harry is concerned. I know him pretty well, as you’re aware.’

Holm nodded. He was aware. Knew Jack Halvorsen, Beate’s partner and soon-to-be father of their child, had been killed while working for Harry. One freezing cold winter’s day, in broad daylight, in Grunerlokka, stabbed in the chest. Holm had arrived straight afterwards. Hot blood soaking down into the blue ice. A policeman’s death. No one had blamed Harry. Apart from Harry, that is.

He scratched his sideburns. ‘So what did you say?’

Beate took a deep breath and watched the journalists and photo graphers hurrying out of the Kripos building. ‘The same as I’m going to tell you now. The Ministry of Justice has let it be known that Kripos has priority, and accordingly there is no chance that I can pass on forensics officers to anyone other than Bellman for this case.’

‘But?’

Beate Lonn drummed a Bic pen on the table, hard. ‘But there are other cases besides this double murder.’

‘Triple murder,’ Holm said, and after a sharp look from Beate, he added, ‘Believe me.’

‘I don’t know exactly what Inspector Hole is investigating, but it is definitely not any of these murder cases. He and I are totally agreed on that,’ Beate said. ‘And you are thereby transferred to that case or those cases – of which I know nothing. For two weeks. Copy of first report on whatever you do to be on my desk five working days from now. Understood?’

Inwardly, Kaja Solness was beaming like a sun and felt an almost irresistible desire to do a couple of spins in her swivel chair.

‘If Hagen says OK, of course I’ll join you,’ she said, trying to contain herself, but she could hear the exultation in her voice.

‘Hagen says OK,’ said the man leaning against the door frame with his arm over his head, forming a diagonal in her doorway. ‘So it’s just Holm, you and me. And the case we’re working on is confidential. We start tomorrow. Meet at seven in my office.’

‘Er… seven?’

‘Sieben. Seven. O seven hundred hours.’

‘I see. Which office?’

The man grinned and explained.

She looked at him in disbelief. ‘We’ve got an office in the prison?’

The diagonal in the doorway relaxed. ‘Meet up, all systems go. Questions?’

Kaja had several, but Harry had already left.

The dream has begun to appear in the daytime, too, now. A long way off I can still hear the band playing ‘Love Hurts’. I notice a few boys standing around us, but they don’t move in. Good. As for me, I’m looking at her. See what you’ve done, I try to say. Look at him now. Do you still want him? My God, how I hate her, how I want to tear the knife out of my mouth and stick it in her, stab holes in her, see it gush out: blood, guts, the lie, the stupidity, her idiotic self-righteousness. Someone should show her how ugly she is on the inside.

I saw the press conference on TV. Incompetent oafs! No clues. No suspects! The golden first forty-eight hours, the sands are running out, hurry, hurry. What do you want me to do? Write it on the wall in blood?

It’s you who are allowing this killing to go on.

The letter is finished.

Hurry.

15

Strobe Lights

Stineeyed the boy who had just spoken to her. He had a beard, blond hair and a woollen hat. Indoors. And this was no indoor hat, but a thick hat to keep your ears warm. A snowboarder? Anyway, when she took a closer look, this was no boy, but a man. Over thirty. At any rate, there were white wrinkles in the brown skin.

‘So?’ she shouted over the music booming out through the stereo system at Krabbe. The recently opened restaurant had proclaimed it was the new hangout for Stavanger’s young avant-garde musicians, filmmakers and writers, of whom there were quite a few in this otherwise business-orientated, dollar-counting oil town. It would turn out that the in-crowd had not yet decided whether Krabbe deserved their favour or not. As indeed Stine had not yet decided whether this boy – man – deserved hers.

‘It’s just I think you should let me tell you about it,’ he said with a confident smile and looked at her with a pair of eyes that seemed much too pale blue to her. But perhaps that was the lighting in here? Strobe lights? Was that cool? Time would tell. He turned the beer glass in his hand and leaned back against the bar so that she had to lean forward if she wanted to hear what he was saying, but she didn’t fall for that one. He was wearing a thick puffa jacket, yet there was not a drop of sweat to be seen on his face under that ridiculous hat. Or was that cool?

‘There are very few people who’ve biked through the delta district of Burma and returned sufficiently alive to tell the tale,’ he said.

Sufficiently alive. A talker, then. She liked that up to a point. He looked like someone. Some American action hero from an old film or a TV show from the eighties.

‘I promised myself that if I got back to Stavanger I would go out, buy myself a beer and accost the most attractive girl I could see and say what I am saying now.’ He thrust out his arms and wore a big white smile. ‘I think you’re the girl by the blue pagoda.’

‘What?’

‘Rudyard Kipling, missie. You’re the girl waiting for the English soldier by the old blue Moulmein pagoda. So what do you say? Will you join me and walk barefoot on the marble in Shwedagon? Eat cobra meat in Bago? Sleep till the Muslims’ call to prayers in Rangoon and wake to the Buddhists in Mandalay?’

He breathed in. She bent forward. ‘So I’m the most attractive girl in here, am I?’

He looked around. ‘No, but you’ve got the biggest boobs. You’re good-looking, but the competition is too fierce for you to be the best-looking of the lot. Shall we be off?’

She laughed and shook her head. Didn’t know whether he was fun or just mad.

‘I’m with some girls. You can try that trick on someone else.’

‘Elias.’

‘What?’

‘You were wondering what my name was. In case we meet again. And my name’s Elias. Skog. You’ll forget that, but you’ll remember Elias. And we’ll meet again. Before you imagine, actually.’

She slanted her head. ‘Oh yes?’

Then he drained his glass, put it on the bar, smiled at her and left.

‘Who was he?’

It was Mathilde.

‘Don’t know,’ Stine said. ‘He was quite nice. But weird. Talked like he came from eastern Norway.’

‘Weird?’

‘There was something odd about his eyes. And teeth. Are there strobe lights in here?’

‘Strobe lights?’

Stine laughed. ‘No, it’s that toothpaste-coloured solarium light. Makes your face look like a zombie’s.’

Mathilde shook her head. ‘You need a drink. Come on.’

Stine turned towards the exit as she followed. She thought she had seen a face against a pane, but no one was there.

16

Speed King

It was nine o’clock at night, and Harry was walking through Oslo city centre. He had spent the morning humping chairs and tables into the new office. In the afternoon he had gone up to Rikshospital, but his father was undergoing some tests. So he had doubled back, copied reports, made a few calls, booked a ticket to Bergen, nipped down to the shops and bought a SIM card the size of a cigarette end.

Harry strode out. He had always enjoyed moving from east to west in this compact town, seeing the gradual but obvious changes in people, fashion, ethnicity, architecture, shops, cafes and bars. He popped into a McDonald’s, had a hamburger, stuffed three straws in his coat pocket and continued his journey.