worse.
'Completely normal paranoia,' Aune had called it. 'I feel the same myself. I think all psychologists are after me, whereas in reality it is probably no more than half of them.'
Harry scanned the room and spotted Beate with her packed lunch and the back of someone keeping her company. Harry tried not to notice the looks he received from the tables he passed. Someone mumbled a 'Hi', but Harry assumed it was meant ironically and didn't answer.
'Am I disturbing?'
Beate looked up at Harry as if he had caught her in the act.
'Not at all,' said a familiar voice, getting up. 'I was about to go anyway.'
The hairs on Harry's neck rose-not on principle, but by instinct.
'See you this evening then.' Tom Waaler smiled, a white flash to Beate's beetroot face. He took his tray, nodded to Harry and left. Beate stared down into her goat's cheese as she tried her best to assume a sensible expression while Harry took a seat.
'Well?'
'Well what?' she chirped, overdoing the failure to understand.
'You said on my answerphone you had something new,' Harry said. 'I gathered it was urgent.'
'I've worked it out.' Beate drank from the glass of milk. 'The drawings the program made of the Expeditor's face. I've been racking my brains who they reminded me of.'
'Do you mean the printouts you showed me? There's nothing even remotely like a face, it's just random lines on paper.'
'Nevertheless.'
Harry shrugged. 'You're the one with the fusiform gyrus. Out with it.'
'Last night it came to me who it was.' She took another mouthful of milk and wiped her milky smile on the serviette.
'Well?'
'Trond Grette.'
Harry stared at her. 'You're kidding, aren't you?'
'No,' she said. 'I just said there was a certain likeness. After all, Grette was not far from Bogstadveien at the time of the murder. But, as I said, I've worked it out.'
'And how…?'
'I checked with Gaustad hospital. If it's the same person who held up the DnB branch in Kirkeveien, it can't be Grette. At that time he was sitting in the TV room with at least three carers. And I sent off a couple of boys from Krimteknisk to Grette's place to get a fingerprint. Weber has just compared it with the print on the Coca-Cola bottle. It is definitely not his print.'
'So you were wrong for once?'
Beate shook her head. 'We're looking for a person who has a number of identical external characteristics to Grette.'
'Sorry to have to say this, Beate, but Grette has no external or any other kind of characteristics. He's an accountant who looks like an accountant. I've already forgotten what he looks like.'
'Right,' she said, taking the greaseproof paper off her next sandwich. 'But I haven't. That's the crunch.'
'Mm. I may have some good news.'
'Oh, yes?'
'I'm on my way to Botsen. Raskol wanted to talk to me.'
'Wow. Good luck.'
'Thank you.' Harry stood up. Hesitated. Took a deep breath. 'I know I'm not your father, but may I be allowed to say one thing?'
'Be my guest.'
He peered round to make sure no one could hear them. 'I'd watch it with Waaler, if I were you.'
'Thank you.' Beate took a large bite of her sandwich. 'And the bit about yourself and my father is correct.'
'I've lived in Norway all my life,' Harry said. 'Grew up in Oppsal. My parents were teachers. My father's retired and, since Mum died, he's lived like a sleepwalker, only occasionally visiting the land of the living. My little sister misses him. I do too, I suppose. I miss them both. They thought I would be a teacher. I did, too. But it was Police College instead. And a bit of law. Were you to ask me why I became a policeman, I would be able to give you ten sensible answers, but not one I believed myself. I don't think about it any longer. It's a job, they pay me, and now and then I think I do something good-you can live off that for a long time. I was an alcoholic before I was thirty. Perhaps before I was twenty, it depends on how you look at things. They say it's in your genes. Possibly. When I grew up I found out my grandfather in Еndalsnes had been drunk every day for fifty years. We went there every summer until I was fifteen and never noticed a thing. Unfortunately I haven't inherited that talent. I've done things which have not exactly gone unnoticed. In a nutshell, it's a miracle I've still got a job in the police force.'
Harry looked up at the NO SMOKING sign and lit up.
'Anna and I were lovers for six weeks. She didn't love me. I didn't love her. When I stopped, I did her a greater favour than I did myself. She didn't see it like that.'
The other man in the room nodded.
'I've loved three women in my life,' Harry continued. 'The first was a childhood sweetheart I was going to marry until everything went pear-shaped for us both. She took her life a long time after I'd stopped seeing her, and that had nothing to do with me. The second was murdered by a man I was chasing on the other side of the globe. The same happened to a female colleague of mine, Ellen. I don't know why but women around me die. Perhaps it's the genes.'
'What about the third woman?'
The third woman. The third key. Harry stroked the initials AA and the edges of the key Raskol had passed him over the table when he was let in. Harry had asked if it was identical to the one he had received and Raskol had nodded.
Then he had asked Harry to talk about himself.
Now Raskol was sitting with his elbows resting on the table and his fingers interlaced as if in prayer. The defective neon tube had been replaced and the light on his face was like bluish-white powder.
'The third woman is in Moscow,' Harry said. 'I think she's a survivor.'
'She's yours?'
'I wouldn't put it like that.'
'But you're together?'
'Yes.'
'And you're planning to spend the rest of your lives together?'
'Well. We don't plan. It's a little too early for that.'
Raskol gave him a doleful smile. 'You don't plan, you mean. But women plan. Women always plan.'
'Like you?'
Raskol shook his head. 'I only know how to plan bank robberies. All men are amateurs in the capturing of hearts. We may believe we have a conquest, like a general capturing a fortress, and then we discover too late-if at all-that we have been duped. Have you heard of Sun Tzu?'
Harry nodded. 'Chinese general and military strategist. He wrote The Art of War.'
'They maintain he wrote The Art of War. Personally, I believe it was a woman. On the surface, The Art of War is a manual about tactics on the battlefield, but at its deepest level it describes how to win conflicts. Or to be more precise, the art of getting what you want at the lowest possible price. The winner of a war is not necessarily the victor. Many have won the crown, but lost so much of their army that they can only rule on their ostensibly defeated enemies' terms. With regard to power, women don't have the vanity men have. They don't need to make power visible, they only want the power to give them the other things they want. Security. Food. Enjoyment. Revenge. Peace. They are rational, power-seeking planners, who think beyond the battle, beyond the victory
