the coat. Time had begun to breathe now, it shrank and expanded in one movement. Harry felt his hand close around the butt of his gun, knowing there was an eternity between this second and getting the weapon out, loading, releasing the safety catch and aiming. Beneath Beate's raised arm he caught a flash of reflected sunlight.
'Me, too,' Trond said, lifting the steel-grey and olive-green AG3 to his shoulder. She took a step back.
'My dear,' Trond said softly. 'Stand quite, quite still if you want to stay alive for a few more seconds.'
'We've made a mistake,' Harry said, turning away from the window and addressing the assembled detectives. 'Stine Grette was not killed by Lev but by her own husband, Trond Grette.'
The conversation between the Chief Superintendent and Ivarsson stopped, Mшller sat up in his chair, Halvorsen forgot to take notes and even Weber's face lost its lethargic expression.
Mшller, it was, who finally broke the silence. 'The accountant guy?'
Harry nodded to the disbelieving faces.
'It's not possible,' Weber said. 'We have the video from the 7-Eleven, and we have the fingerprint on the Coke bottle. There is no doubt that Lev Grette was the killer.'
'We have the handwriting on the suicide letter,' Ivarsson said.
'And unless I'm much mistaken, the robber was identified as Lev Grette by Raskol himself,' the Chief Superintendent said.
'The case looks pretty cut and dried,' Mшller said.
'Let me explain,' Harry said.
'Yes, would you be so kind?' said the Chief Superintendent.
The clouds had gathered pace now and sailed in over Aker hospital like a black armada.
'Don't do anything stupid, Harry,' Trond said. The muzzle of the gun was pressed against Beate's forehead. 'Drop the gun I know you're holding.'
'Or what?' Harry asked, pulling out his gun.
Trond gave a low chuckle. 'Elementary. I'll shoot your colleague.'
'Like you shot your wife?'
'She deserved it.'
'Oh? Because she liked Lev more than you?'
'Because she was my wife!'
Harry breathed in. Beate stood between Trond and him, but with her back to Harry so he was unable to read any of her facial expressions. There were several possible routes to take. Option number 1 was to tell Trond he was being stupid and hasty, and hope he would see that. Against that: a man who took a loaded AG3 with him onto the tennis court had already worked out what he was going to use it for. Option number 2 was to do what Trond said, put down his gun and wait to be slaughtered. Option number 3 was to put pressure on Trond, make something happen, something which would make him change his plans. Or explode and pull the trigger. The first option was hopeless, the second the worst possible outcome and the third, well, if the same happened to Beate as happened to Ellen, Harry knew he would never be able to live with himself-if he survived.
'Perhaps she didn't want to be your wife any longer,' Harry said. 'Was that what happened?'
Trond's finger tightened round the trigger and his eyes met Harry's above Beate's shoulder. Inside, Harry instinctively began to count. 'One-thousand-and-one, one-thousand-and-two…'
'She thought she could just leave me,' Trond said in a low voice. 'Me-who had given her everything.' He laughed. 'For a guy who had never done anything for anyone, who thought life was a birthday party and all the presents were for him. Lev didn't steal. He was just confused by the prepositions from and to.' Trond's laughter was carried away on the wind like the crumbs of alphabet biscuits.
'Like from Stine to Trond,' Harry said.
Trond blinked hard with both eyes. 'She said she loved him. Loved. She didn't even use those words on the day we married. Fond of, she said. She was fond of me. Because I was so good to her. But she loved the boy who dangled his legs from a roof and waited for applause. That was what it was about for him. Applause.'
There were fewer than six metres between them and Harry could see the knuckles on Trond's left hand whiten as he held the gun barrel.
'But not for you, Trond. You didn't need any applause, did you. You enjoyed your triumphs in silence. Alone. Like that time by the bridge.'
Trond pushed out his lower lip. 'Own up, you believed me, didn't you.'
'Yes, we believed you, Trond. We believed every word you said.'
'So where did I slip up?'
'Beate has checked Trond and Stine Grette's bank accounts for the last two quarters,' Harry said.
Beate held up a pile of papers for the others in the room. 'They've both transferred money to Brastour, the travel agency,' she said. 'The agency has confirmed that in March of this year Stine Grette booked a trip to Sгo Paulo for June, and Trond Grette followed a week later.'
'So far, that tallies with what Trond Grette told us,' Harry said. 'The strange thing is that Stine told Klementsen, the branch manager, she was going on holiday to Greece. Also that Trond Grette booked and bought his ticket the same day he left. Pretty bad planning if you're going on holiday together to celebrate ten years of marriage, isn't it?'
The room was so quiet they could hear the refrigerator motor on the other side of the corridor switch itself on.
'Suspiciously reminiscent of a wife who has lied to everyone about where she's going, and an already sceptical husband who has checked her bank statement and been unable to make Brastour square with a trip to Greece. Who then rang Brastour, found the name of the hotel where his wife was staying and followed her to bring her back.'
'And so?' Ivarsson said. 'Did he find her with a darkie?'
Harry shook his head. 'I don't think he found her at all.'
'We've checked and she didn't stay at the hotel she booked,' Beate said. 'Trond returned on an earlier flight.'
'Furthermore, Trond took out thirty thousand kroner on his bank card in Sгo Paulo. At first, he said he'd bought a diamond ring, then that he'd met Lev and given him the money because he was broke. I'm fairly sure, though, that neither is true. I believe the money was for a service for which Sгo Paulo is even more famous than jewellery.'
'And that is?' Ivarsson asked, clearly irritated by the silence, which had become unbearable.
'Contract murder.'
Harry had felt like dragging it out even longer, but a glance from Beate told him he was already being melodramatic. 'When Lev came back to Oslo this autumn, it was for his own money. He wasn't broke at all and had no intention of robbing any bank. He had returned to take Stine with him to Brazil.'
'Stine?' Mшller exclaimed. 'His brother's wife?'
Harry nodded. The detectives present exchanged glances.
'And Stine was supposed to move to Brazil without telling anyone?' Mшller continued. 'Not her parents, not her friends? Without even giving notice to her employers?'
'Well,' Harry said, 'when you've decided to spend your life with a bank robber wanted by both the police and your colleagues you don't announce your plans and leave a forwarding address. There was only one person she had told, and that was Trond.'
'The last person she should have told,' Beate added.
