Harry breathed in deep, three times, before shouting again.

‘It’s getting dark, the wind’s picking up and I’m freezing my balls off, Bellman. Time to find shelter.’

Still no answer. Harry closed his eyes. Was he frightened? Frightened that an apparently rational colleague would kill him on a whim because circumstances happened to be propitious? Course he was bloody frightened. For this was no whim. It wasn’t chance that he stayed behind to go into the frozen wastes with Harry. Or was it? He took a deep breath. Bellman could easily arrange for this to look like an accident. Climb down afterwards and remove the harness and rope, say that Harry had missed his footing in the snow. His throat had gone dry. This was not happening. He hadn’t dug his way out of a sodding avalanche just to be dropped down a ravine twelve hours later. By a policeman. This didn’t bloody happen, this…

The pressure from the harness was gone. He was falling. Free fall. Fast.

‘The rumour is that Bellman is supposed to have manhandled a colleague,’ Gjendem said. ‘Just because the guy had danced a couple of times too many with her at the police Christmas party. The guy wanted to report a broken jaw and a cracked skull, but had no evidence – the attacker had been wearing a balaclava. But everyone knew it was Bellman. Trouble was brewing so he applied for a move to Europol to get away.’

‘Do you believe there is anything to these rumours, Gjendem?’

Roger shrugged. ‘It certainly looks as if Bellman has a certain… um, predilection for that kind of transgression. We’ve looked into Jussi Kolkka’s background following the avalanche at Havass. He beat up a rapist under interrogation. And Truls Berntsen, Bellman’s sidekick, is not exactly a mummy’s boy, either.’

‘Good. I want you to cover this duel between Kripos and Crime Squad. I want you to let off a few bombshells. Preferably about a psychopathic management style. That’s all. Then let’s see how the Minister of Justice reacts.’

Without any gestures, or parting salutations, Bent Nordbo put on his newly polished spectacles, unfolded the newspaper and started to read.

Harry didn’t have time to think. Not one thought. Nor did he see his life passing before him, faces of people he should have said he loved, or feel impelled to walk towards any light. Possibly because you don’t get that far when you fall five metres. The harness tightened against his groin and back, but the elasticity in the rope allowed him a gentle slackening of speed.

Then he felt himself being hoisted up again. The wind was blowing snow in his face.

‘What the fuck happened?’ Harry asked when, fifteen minutes later, he was standing on the edge of the ravine swaying in the wind as he untied the rope from the harness.

‘Scared then, were you?’ Bellman smiled.

Instead of putting the rope down, Harry wound it round his right hand. Checked that he had enough slack in the rope to have a swing. A short uppercut to the chin. The rope meant he would be able to use his hand again tomorrow, not like when he hit Bjorn Holm and suffered two days of painful knuckles.

He took a step towards Bellman. Saw the POB’s surprised expression when he noticed the rope around Harry’s fist, saw him retreat, stagger and fall backwards in the snow.

‘Don’t! I… I just had to tie a knot at the end of the rope so that it wouldn’t slide through the brake…’

Harry continued towards him, and Bellman – who was cowering in the snow – automatically raised his arm in front of his face.

‘Harry! There… there was a gust of wind and I slipped…’

Harry stopped, eyed Bellman in surprise. Then he continued past the trembling POB and lumbered through the snow.

***

The icy wind blew through outer clothing, underclothes, skin, flesh, muscles and into the bones. Harry grabbed a ski pole strapped to the snowmobile, cast around for some other material he could tie to the top, but found nothing, and sacrificing anything he was wearing was out of the question. Then he speared the pole into the snow to mark the site. God knows how long it would take them to find it again. He pressed the button on the electric starter. Found the lights, turned them on. And Harry knew at once. Saw it in the snow blowing horizontally into the cones of light and forming an impenetrable white wall: they would never get out of this labyrinth and back to Ustaoset.

62

Transit

Kim Erik Lokker was the youngest forensics officer at Krimteknisk. Accordingly, he was often given jobs of a less forensic nature. Such as driving to Drammen. Bjorn Holm had mentioned that Bruun was a homosexual of the flirtier kind, but that Kim Erik only had to hand over the clothes and then leave.

When the satnav woman in the car declared ‘You have arrived at your destination’, he found himself outside an old block of flats. He parked and wandered through open doors up to the second floor, to the door marked with the names GEIR BRUUN/ADELE VETLESEN on a sheet of paper stuck down with two bits of tape.

Kim Erik pressed the doorbell once, twice, and at last heard the sounds of someone stomping through the hall.

The door swung open. The man was wearing no more than a towel around his waist. He was unusually pale, and his smooth crown was wet and shiny with sweat.

‘Geir Bruun? H-hope I’m not interrupting,’ said Kim Erik Lokker, holding the plastic bag with outstretched arm.

‘Not at all, I’m only screwing,’ he said in the affected voice Bjorn Holm had imitated. ‘What is this?’

‘The clothes we borrowed. We’ve had to keep the ski pants until further notice, I’m afraid.’

‘Really?’

Kim Erik heard the door behind Geir Bruun open. And an extremely feminine voice chirp: ‘What is it, darling?’

‘Just someone delivering something.’

A figure nestled up behind Geir Bruun. She hadn’t even bothered with a towel, and Kim Erik was able to establish that the tiny creature was one hundred per cent woman.

‘Hello there,’ she twittered over Geir Bruun’s shoulder. ‘If there’s nothing else, I’d like him back.’ She raised a small, graceful foot and kicked. The glass in the door was shaking and rattling long after the door had slammed shut.

Harry had stopped the snowmobile and was staring into the drifting snow.

Something had been there.

Bellman had put his arms around Harry’s waist and his head behind his back to shelter from the wind.

Harry waited. Stared.

There it was again.

A cabin. Notched logs. And a storehouse.

Then it was gone again, erased by the snow, as though it had never existed. But Harry had the direction.

So why didn’t he just accelerate and head towards it, save their skins, why did he hesitate? He didn’t know. But there was something about the cabin, something he had sensed in the few seconds it became visible. Something about the black windows, the feeling that he was looking at a building that was infinitely abandoned and yet inhabited. Something that was not right. And which made him press the accelerator gently so as not to be heard above the wind.

63

The Storehouse

Harry put a log in the wood burner.

Bellman sat by the table, his teeth chattering. The white stains had taken on a bluish sheen. They had hammered on the door and shouted in the howling wind for a while before smashing a window to an empty bedroom. A bedroom with an unmade bed and a smell that caused Harry to wonder whether someone had slept there very recently. He almost placed a hand on the bed to see if it was still warm. And even though the sitting room would have felt warm anyway – they were so cold – Harry put a hand inside the wood burner to feel if there might be any warm embers under the black ash. But there were not.