but the Crime Squad head was still not completely at ease with the various vegetables which were flown daily from Bangkok to the Pakistani grocer's store in Grшnlandsleiret.
'That's green chilli, boss,' a voice by his ear said and Bjarne Mшller spun round and looked into Harry's flushed, sweat-stained face. 'Couple of those and a few slices of ginger and you can make tom yam soup. There'll be steam coming out of your ears, but you'll have sweated out a fair bit of crap.'
'Looks like you've had a foretaste, Harry.'
'Just a little cycle race with Halvorsen.'
'Oh yes? And what's that in your hand?'
'Japone pepper. A small red chilli.'
'Didn't know you cooked.'
Harry gazed with wonderment at the bag containing the chilli, as if it was new to him, too. 'By the way, lucky I met you, boss. We have a problem.'
Mшller could feel his scalp chafing.
'I don't know who decided Ivarsson should lead the investigation into the killing in Bogstadveien, but it's not working.'
Mшller put the list in the shopping basket. 'How long have you worked together now? Two whole days?'
'That's not the point, boss.'
'Can't you just do your job for once in your life, Harry? And let others decide how it's organised? Having a go at not being against everyone won't inflict permanent damage, you know.'
'I just want the case to be solved as quickly as possible, boss, so that I can get on with the other one, you know.'
'Yes, I know, but you've been working on that case for a good deal longer than the two months I promised you, and I cannot defend the commitment of time and resources with personal considerations and emotions, Harry.'
'She was a colleague, boss.'
'I know!' Mшller barked. He paused, looked around, then continued in more muted tones: 'What's your problem, Harry?'
'They're used to working on robberies, and Ivarsson is not in the slightest bit interested in constructive input.'
Bjarne Mшller was unable to suppress a grin at the thought of Harry's 'constructive input'.
Harry leaned forward. He spoke quickly and intensely: 'What's the first thing we ask ourselves when a murder has been committed, boss? Why? What's the motive? That's what we ask. In the Robberies Unit they automatically take it for granted money is the motive and don't ask the question.'
'So what do you think the motive is?'
'I don't think anything. The point is that they use completely the wrong methodology.'
'A different methodology, Harry, different. I have to get these vegetable things bought and go home, so tell me what it is you want.'
'I want you to talk to the people you have to talk to so that I can have one person to work solo with.'
'Step down from the investigation team?'
'Parallel investigation.'
'Harry-'
'That was how we caught the Redbreast, do you remember?'
'Harry, I can't interfere-'
'I want to work with Beate Lшnn, so that she and I can start afresh. Ivarsson is already getting bogged down-'
'Harry!'
'Yes?'
'What's the real reason?'
Harry shifted weight. 'I can't work with the smiling croc.'
'Ivarsson?'
'I'll go and do something extremely stupid.'
Bjarne Mшller's eyebrows met across the bridge of his nose in a black V: 'Is that supposed to be a threat?'
Harry placed a hand on Mшller's shoulder. 'Just this one favour, boss. I'll never ask for anything else again. Ever.'
Mшller growled. Over the years, how many times had he put his head on the block for Harry, instead of heeding the well-meant career advice from older colleagues? Keep him at arm's length, they said. A loose cannon, he is. The only thing that was certain about Harry Hole was that one day something was going to go disastrously wrong. However, because, in some mysterious way, he and Harry had so far always landed on their feet, no one had been able to implement any drastic measures. So far. The most interesting question of all, though, was: Why did he put up with it? He looked across at Harry. The alcoholic. The troublemaker. The ever-unbearable, arrogant bullhead. And the best investigator he had, apart from Waaler.
'You keep your nose clean, Harry. Otherwise I'll shove you behind a desk and lock the door. Have you got that?'
'Received loud and clear, boss.'
Mшller sighed. 'I have a meeting with the Chief Superintendent and Ivarsson tomorrow. We'll have to wait and see. I'm not promising anything, do you hear?'
'Aye, aye, boss. Regards to your wife.' Harry craned his head round on the way out. 'Coriander's on the far left, bottom shelf.'
Bjarne Mшller stood staring into his shopping basket. He remembered the reason now. He liked the alcoholic, obstreperous, stubborn bastard.
7
White King
Harry nodded to one of the regulars and sat down at a table under the narrow, wavy window panes looking out onto Waldemar Thranes gate. On the wall behind him hung a large painting of a sunny day in Youngstorget with women holding parasols and being cheerily greeted by men promenading in top hats. The contrast with the forever autumnally gloomy light and the almost devout afternoon quiet in Restaurant Schrшder could not have been greater.
'Nice that you could come,' Harry said to the corpulent man already sitting at the table. It was easy to see he was not one of the regulars. Not by the elegant tweed jacket, nor by the bow tie with red dots, but because he was stirring a white mug of tea on a cloth smelling of beer and perforated with blackened cigarette burns. The unlikely customer was Stеle Aune, a psychologist, one of the country's finest in his field and an expert to whom the police had had frequent recourse. Sometimes with pleasure and sometimes regret, as Aune was a thoroughly upright man who preserved his integrity and in a court of law never pronounced on matters which he could not support to the hilt with scientific evidence. However, since there is little evidence for anything in psychology, it often happened that the prosecution witness became the defence's best friend, the doubts he sowed generally working in favour of the accused. Harry, in his capacity as a police officer, had used Aune's expertise in murder cases for so long that he regarded him as a colleague. In his capacity as an alcoholic, Harry had put himself so totally in the hands of this warm-hearted, clever and becomingly arrogant man that-if cornered-he would have called him a friend.
'So this is your refuge?' Aune said.
'Yes,' Harry said, raising an eyebrow to Maja at the counter, who responded at once by scuttling through the swing doors into the kitchen.
'And what have you got there?'
'Japone. Chilli.'
A bead of sweat rolled down Harry's nose, clung for a second to the tip, then fell onto the tablecloth. Aune
