made to pay. Had been destroyed, taken from him. Only the ghosts were left. All of them. And soon Rakel and Oleg would be ghosts as well.
He opened the pack and looked inside.
What was it he had imagined? That he would be allowed to escape the curse? That he would be able to flee to the other side of the globe with them and live happily ever after? He was thinking this as he checked his watch again, wondering how late he could leave and still make the flight. This was his selfish, greedy heart he was listening to.
He took out the dog-eared family photo and looked at it again. At Irene. And the brother, Stein. The one with the grey look. Harry had had two hits in his memory database when he met him. One was from this photograph. The second was the night Harry came to Oslo. He had been to Kvadraturen. The close scrutiny to which Stein had subjected him made Harry think he was a policeman at first, but he was wrong. Very wrong.
Then he heard the footsteps on the stairs.
The church bells chimed. They sounded so frail and lonely.
Truls Berntsen stopped on the top step and stared at the front door. Felt his heart beating. They were going to see each other again. He looked forward to the meeting and yet dreaded it. Inhaled.
And rang.
Straightened his tie. He did not feel comfortable in a suit. But he had known there was no way out when Mikael had told him who was coming to the housewarming party. All the top brass, from the outgoing Chief of Police and unit heads to their old Crime Squad rival, Gunnar Hagen. Politicians would be there, too. The foxy council woman whose pictures he had stared at, Isabelle Skoyen. And a couple of TV celebs. Truls had no idea how Mikael had got to know them.
The door opened.
Ulla.
‘You look nice, Truls,’ she said. Hostess smile. Glittering eyes. But he knew at once he was too early.
He just nodded, unable to say what he should have said, that she looked very attractive herself.
She gave him a quick hug, said to come in. They would be welcoming guests with glasses of champagne but she hadn’t poured them yet. She smiled, wrung her hands and cast semi-panicked glances at the staircase to the first floor. Probably hoping that Mikael would come soon and take over. But Mikael must have been changing, inspecting himself in the mirror, checking every hair was in the right place.
Ulla was speaking a bit too fast about people from their childhood in Manglerud. Did Truls know what they were doing now?
Truls didn’t.
‘Don’t have much contact with them any more,’ he answered. Even though he was fairly sure she knew he had never had any contact with them. Not one of them, not Goggen, Jimmy, Anders or Krokke. Truls had one friend: Mikael. And he too had made sure to keep Truls at arm’s length as he had risen through the ranks socially and professionally.
They had run out of things to say. She had run out. He hadn’t had anything to say from the start. A pause.
‘Women, Truls? Anything new there?’
‘Nothing new there, nope.’ He tried to say it in the same jokey tone as she had. He really could have done with the welcome drink now.
‘Is there really no one who can capture your heart?’
She had tilted her head and winked one smiling eye, but he could see she was already regretting her question. Perhaps because she could see his flushed face. Or perhaps because she knew the answer. That you, you, you, Ulla, could capture my heart. He had walked three steps behind the super-couple Mikael and Ulla in Manglerud, been ever-present, ever at their service, though this was gainsaid by the sullen, indifferent I’m-bored-but-I-have- nothing-better-on-offer look. While his heart had burned for her, while from the corner of his eye he had registered her every movement or expression. He could not have her, it was an impossibility, he knew. Yet he had yearned the way people yearn to fly.
Then at last Mikael strode down the stairs, pulling down his shirtsleeves so that the cufflinks could be seen under the dinner jacket.
‘Truls!’
It sounded like the somewhat exaggerated heartiness usually reserved for people you don’t really know. ‘Why the long face, old friend? We have a palace to celebrate!’
‘I thought it was the Chief of Police job we were celebrating,’ Truls said, looking round. ‘I saw it on the news today.’
‘A leak. It’s not been formally announced yet. But it’s your terrace we’re going to pay tribute to today, Truls, isn’t it? How’s it going with the champagne, dear?’
‘I’ll pour it now,’ Ulla said, brushing an invisible speck of dust off her husband’s shoulder and departing.
‘Do you know Isabelle Skoyen?’ Truls asked.
‘Yes,’ Mikael said, still smiling. ‘She’s coming this evening. Why?’
‘Nothing.’ Truls inhaled. It had to be now, or not at all. ‘There’s something I’ve been wondering about.’
‘Yes?’
‘A few days ago I was sent on a job to arrest a guy at Leon, the hotel, you know?’
‘I think I know it, yes.’
‘But while I was in the middle of the arrest two other policemen I don’t know turned up, and they wanted to arrest us both.’
‘Double booking?’ Mikael laughed. ‘Talk to Finn. He coordinates operational matters.’
Truls slowly shook his head. ‘I don’t think it was a double booking.’
‘No?’
‘I think someone sent me there on purpose.’
‘You mean it was a wind-up?’
‘It was a wind-up, yes,’ Truls said, searching Mikael’s eyes, but found no indication that he understood what Truls was actually talking about. Could he have been mistaken after all? Truls swallowed.
‘So I was wondering if you knew anything about it, if you might have been in on it.’
‘Me?’ Mikael leaned back and burst out laughing. And when Truls saw into his mouth he remembered how Mikael had always returned from the school dentist with zero cavities. Not even Karius and Bactus got the better of him.
‘I wish I had been! Tell me, did they lay you out on the floor and cuff you?’
Truls eyed Mikael. Saw he had been wrong. So he laughed along with him. From relief as much as at the image of himself being sat on by two other officers, and because Mikael’s infectious laughter always invited him to laugh along. No, commanded him to laugh along. But it had also enveloped him, warmed him, made him part of something, a member of something, a duo consisting of him and Mikael Bellman. Friends. He heard his own grunted laughter as Mikael’s faded.
‘Did you really think I was in on it, Truls?’ Mikael asked with a pensive expression.
Truls, smiling, looked at him. Thought about how Dubai had found his way to him, thought of the boy Truls had beaten to blindness in remand. Who could have told Dubai that? Thought of the blood the SOC group had found under Gusto’s nail in Hausmanns gate, the blood Truls had contaminated before it got as far as a DNA test. But some of which he had procured and kept. It was evidence such as this that could be valuable one rainy day. And since it had definitely begun to rain, he had driven to the Pathology Unit this morning with the blood. And been given the result before coming here this evening. The test suggested, so far, that it was the same blood and nail fragments as those received from Beate Lonn a few days ago. Didn’t they talk to each other down there? Didn’t they think they had enough to do at Forensics? Truls had apologised and rung off. And considered the answer. The blood under Gusto Hanssen’s nails came from Mikael Bellman.
Mikael and Gusto.
Mikael and Rudolf Asayev.
Truls fingered the knot of his tie. It hadn’t been his father who taught him how to do it; he couldn’t even tie his own. It had been Mikael who had taught him when they were going to the end-of-school party. He had shown Truls how to tie a simple Windsor knot, and when Truls had asked why Mikael’s knot seemed so much fatter Mikael
