'I didn't say I didn't like him.'
The blue, punctured office chair, which had long been set at the lowest notch, screamed in protest as Harry leaned back, lost in thought. He picked up a yellow Post-it with Ellen's writing on from the telephone in front of him.
'What's this?'
'You can read, can't you? Moller wants you.'
Harry trotted down the corridor, imagining as he went the pursed mouth and the two deep furrows the boss would get when he heard that Sverre Olsen had walked yet again.
By the photocopier a young, rosy-cheeked girl instantly raised her eyes and smiled as Harry passed. He didn't manage a return smile. Presumably one of the office girls. Her perfume was sweet and heavy, and simply irritated him. He looked at the second hand on his watch.
So perfume had started irritating him now. What had got into him? Ellen had said he lacked natural buoyancy, or whatever it was that meant most people could struggle to the surface again. After his return from Bangkok he had been down for so long that he had considered giving up ever returning to the surface. Everything had been cold and dark, and all his impressions were somehow dulled. As if he were deeply immersed in water. It had been so wonderfully quiet. When people talked to him the words had been like bubbles of air coming out of their mouths, hurrying upwards and away. So that was what it was like to drown, he had thought, and waited. But nothing happened. It was only a vacuum. That was fine, though. He had survived.
Thanks to Ellen.
She had stepped in for him in those first weeks after his return when he'd had to throw in the towel and go home. And she had made sure that he didn't go to bars, ordered him to breathe out when he was late for work, after which she declared him fit or unfit accordingly. Had sent him home a couple of times and then kept quiet about it. It had taken time, but Harry had nothing particular to do. And Ellen had nodded with satisfaction on the first Friday they could confirm that he had turned up sober for work on five consecutive days.
In the end he had asked her straight out. Why, with police college and a law degree behind her and her whole life in front of her, had she voluntarily put this millstone around her neck? Didn't she realise that it wouldn't do her career any good? Did she have a problem finding normal, successful friends?
She had looked at him with a serious expression and answered that she only did it to soak up his experience. He was the best detective they had in Crime Squad. Rubbish, of course, but he had nonetheless felt flattered that she would bother to say so. Besides, Ellen was such an enthusiastic, ambitious detective that it was impossible not to be infected. For the last six months Harry had even begun to do good work again. Some of it even excellent. Such as on the Sverre Olsen case.
Ahead of him was Moller's door. Harry nodded in passing to a uniformed officer who pretended not to see him.
If he had been a contestant on Swedish TV's The Robinson Expedition, Harry thought, it would have taken them no more than a day to notice his bad karma and send him home. Send him home? My God, he was beginning to think in the same terminology as the shit TV3 programmes. That's what happened when you spent five hours every night in front of the TV. The idea was that if he was locked up in front of the goggle box in Sofies gate, at least he wouldn't be sitting in Schroder's cafe.
He knocked twice immediately beneath the sign on the door: Bjarne Moller, PAS. 'Come in!'
Harry looked at his watch. Seventy-five seconds.
7
Moller's Office. 9 October 1999.
Inspector Bjarne Moller was lying rather than sitting in the chair, and a pair of long limbs stuck out between the desk legs. He had his hands folded behind his head-a beautiful specimen of what early race researchers called 'long skulls'-and a telephone gripped between ear and shoulder. His hair was cut in a kind of close crop, which Hole had recently compared with Kevin Costner's hairstyle in The Bodyguard. Moller hadn't seen The Bodyguard. He hadn't been to the cinema in fifteen years as fate had furnished him with an oversized sense of responsibility, too few hours, two children and a wife who only partly understood him.
'Let's go for that then,' Moller said, putting down the phone and looking at Harry across a desk weighed down with documents, overflowing ashtrays and paper cups. On the desktop a photograph of two boys dressed as Red Indians marked a kind of logical centre amid the chaos.
'There you are, Harry.'
'Here I am, boss.'
'I've been to a meeting at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in connection with the summit in November here in Oslo. The US President is coming… well, you read papers, don't you. Coffee, Harry?'
Moller had stood up and a couple of seven-league strides had already taken him to a filing cabinet on which, balanced atop a pile of papers, a coffee machine was coughing up a viscous substance.
'Thanks boss, but I -'
It was too late and Harry took the steaming cup.
'I'm especially looking forward to a visit from the Secret Service, with whom I'm sure we will have a cordial relationship as we get to know each other better.'
Moller had never quite learned to handle irony. That was just one of the things Harry appreciated about his boss.
Moller drew in his knees until they supported the bottom of the table. Harry leaned back to get the crumpled pack of Camels from his trouser pocket and raised an enquiring eyebrow at Moller, who quickly took the hint and pushed the brimming ashtray towards him.
'I'll be responsible for security along the roads to and from Gardemoen. As well as the President, there will be Barak -'
'Barak?'
'Ehud Barak. Prime Minister of Israel.'
'Jeez, so there's another fantastic Oslo agreement on the way, then?' Moller stared despondently at the blue column of smoke rising to the ceiling.
'Don't tell me you haven't heard about it, Harry. Or I'll be even more worried about you than I already am. It was on all the front pages last week.'
Harry shrugged.
'Unreliable paper boy. Inflicting serious gaps in my general knowledge. A grave handicap to my social life.' He took another cautious sip of coffee, but then gave up and pushed it away. 'And my love life.'
'Really?' Moller eyed Harry with an expression suggesting he didn't know whether to relish or dread what was coming next.
'Of course. Who would find a man in his mid-thirties, who knows all the details about the lives of the people on The Robinson Expedition but can hardly name any head of state, or the Israeli President, sexy?'
'Prime Minister.'
'There you are. Now you know what I mean.'
Moller stifled a laugh. He had a tendency to laugh too easily. And a soft spot for the somewhat anguished officer with big ears that stuck out from the close-cropped cranium like two colourful butterfly wings. Even though Harry had caused Moller more trouble than was good for him. As a newly promoted PAS he had learned that the first commandment for a civil servant with career plans was to guard your back. When Moller cleared his throat to put the worrying questions he had made up his mind to ask, and dreaded asking, he first of all knitted his eyebrows to show Harry that his concern was of a professional and not an amicable nature.
'I hear you're still spending your time sitting in Schroder's, Harry.'
'Less than ever, boss. There's so much good stuff on TV.'
'But you're still sitting and drinking?'
'They don't like you to stand.'
'Cut it out. Are you drinking again?'
