Tear gas and signs of one helluva lot of shooting. Automatic weapon, no question about that. One man shot dead. We went down to the cellar, but it’s full of water. Think we’d better call Delta to check the first floor.’
‘Can you clarify whether there is still anyone alive?’
‘Come and clarify it yourself! Didn’t you hear what I said? Gas and an automatic weapon!’
‘OK, OK. What do you want?’
‘Four patrol cars to secure the area. Delta, SOC group and… a plumber perhaps.’
Truls Berntsen turned down the volume. Heard a car screech to a halt, saw a tall man cross the street in front of the car. The driver, furious, sounded his horn, but the man didn’t notice, just strode in the direction of Hotel Leon.
Truls Berntsen squinted.
Could that really be him? Harry Hole?
The man had his head hunched down between the shoulders of a shabby coat. It was only when he twisted his head and the face was illuminated by the street lamp that Truls saw he had been wrong. There was something familiar about him, but it wasn’t Hole.
Truls leaned back in the seat. He knew now. Who had won. He looked out over his town. For this was his now. The rain mumbled on the car roof that Harry Hole was dead, and cried in torrents down the windscreen.
Most people had generally shagged themselves out by two and gone home, and afterwards Hotel Leon was quieter. The boy in reception barely lifted his head as the pastor came in. The rain ran off his coat and hair. He used to ask Cato what he had been doing to arrive in such a state, in the middle of the night, after an absence of several days. But the answers he received were always so exhaustingly long, intense and detailed about the misery of others that he had stopped. But tonight Cato seemed more tired than normal.
‘Hard night?’ he asked, hoping for a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’.
‘Oh, you know,’ the old man said with a pale smile. ‘Humanity. Humanity. I was almost killed just now.’
‘Oh?’ said the boy and regretted asking. A long explanation was sure to be on its way.
‘A car almost ran me over,’ Cato said, continuing up the stairs.
The boy breathed out with relief and concentrated on The Phantom again.
The old man put the key in his door and turned. But to his surprise discovered it was already open.
He went in. Switched on the light, but the ceiling lamp didn’t come on. Saw the bedside lamp was lit. The man sitting on the bed was tall, stooped and wearing a long coat, like himself. Water dripped from the coat-tails onto the floor. They were so different, yet it struck the old man now for the first time: it was like staring at your reflection.
‘What are you doing?’ he whispered.
‘I broke in of course,’ the other man said. ‘To see if you had anything of value.’
‘Did you find anything?’
‘Of value? No. But I found this.’
The old man caught what was thrown over. Held it between his fingers. Nodded slowly. It was made of stiffened cotton, formed into a U-shape. Not as white as it should be.
‘So you found this in my room?’ the old man asked.
‘Yes, in your bedroom. In the wardrobe. Put it on.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I want to confess my sins. And because you look naked without it.’
Cato looked at the man sitting on the bed, hunched over. Water was running from his hair, down the scar on his jaw to his chin. From there it dripped onto the floor. He had placed the sole chair in the middle of the room. The confessional chair. On the table lay an unopened pack of Camel and beside it a lighter and a sodden broken cigarette.
‘As you like, Harry.’
He sat unbuttoning his coat and pushed the U-shaped priest’s collar into the slits in the priest’s shirt. The other man flinched when he put his hand in his jacket pocket.
‘Cigarettes,’ the old man said. ‘For us. Yours look like they’ve drowned.’
The policeman nodded and the old man took out his hand and held up an opened pack.
‘You speak good Norwegian.’
‘Tiny bit better than I speak Swedish. But as a Norwegian you can’t hear the accent when I speak Swedish.’
Harry took one of the black cigarettes. Studied it.
‘The Russian accent, you mean?’
‘Sobranie Black Russian,’ the old man said. ‘The only decent cigarettes to be found in Russia. Produced in Ukraine now. I usually steal them from Andrey. Speaking of Andrey, how is he?’
‘Bad,’ the policeman said, allowing the old man to light his cigarette for him.
‘I’m sorry to hear that. Speaking of bad, you should be dead, Harry. I know you were in the tunnel when I opened the sluices.’
‘I was.’
‘The sluices opened at the same time and the water towers were full. You should have been washed into the middle.’
‘I was.’
‘Then I don’t understand. Most suffer from shock and drown in the middle.’
The policeman exhaled the smoke from a corner of his mouth. ‘Like the Resistance fighters who went after the Gestapo boss?’
‘I don’t know if they ever tested his trap in a real retreat.’
‘But you did. With the undercover officer.’
‘He was just like you, Harry. Men who think they have a calling are dangerous. Both to themselves and their environment. You should have drowned like him.’
‘But as you see, I’m still here.’
‘I still don’t understand how that’s possible. Are you claiming that having been battered by the water you still had enough air in your lungs to swim eighty metres in ice-cold water through a narrow tunnel, fully clothed?’
‘No.’
‘No?’ The old man smiled. He seemed genuinely curious.
‘No, I had too little air in my lungs. But I had enough for forty metres.’
‘And then?’
‘Then I was saved.’
‘Saved? By whom?’
‘By the man you said was good, deep down.’ Harry held up the empty whiskey bottle. ‘Jim Beam.’
‘You were saved by whiskey?’
‘A bottle of whiskey.’
‘An empty bottle of whiskey?’
‘On the contrary, a full bottle.’
Harry put the cigarette in the corner of his mouth, unscrewed the cap, held the bottle over his head.
‘Full of air.’
The old man gave a look of disbelief. ‘You…?’
‘The biggest problem after emptying my lungs of air in the water was to put my mouth to the bottle, tilt it so the neck was pointing upwards, and I could inhale. It’s like diving for the first time. Your body protests. Because your body has a limited knowledge of physics and thinks it will suck in water and drown. Did you know that the lungs can take four litres of air? Well, a whole bottle of air and a bit of determination were enough to swim another forty metres.’ The policeman put down the bottle, removed his cigarette and looked at it sceptically. ‘The Germans should have made a slightly longer tunnel.’
Harry watched the old man. Saw the furrowed old face split. Heard him laugh. It sounded like the chug-chug of a boat.
‘I knew you were different, Harry. They told me you would come back to Oslo when you heard about Oleg. So I made enquiries. And I know now the rumours did not exaggerate.’
‘Well,’ Harry said, keeping an eye on the priest’s folded hands. Sat on the edge of the bed with both feet on
