fillets.
Harry pulled down his T-shirt and closed the glass door. He didn’t want any milk. Nor did he want any meat or cod. Basically, he wanted as little as possible, just something he could eat, not because he was hungry, but for his stomach’s sake. His stomach had started to give him some trouble the night before. And he knew from experience that if he didn’t get some solid food down him now, he would not be able to keep down a drop of alcohol. In his trolley there was a loaf of wholemeal bread and a brown paper bag containing a bottle from the Vinmonopol over the road. He added half a chicken, a six-pack of Hansa and fidgeted around at the fruit counter before joining the checkout queue right behind Vibeke Knutsen. It wasn’t intentional, but then again perhaps it wasn’t quite by chance either.
She half turned without seeing him and wrinkled her nose as if there was a potent smell coming from somewhere, which was a possibility that Harry could not completely exclude. She asked the checkout girl for a pack of 20 Prince Mild cigarettes.
‘Thought you were trying to give them up.’
Vibeke turned round in surprise, scrutinised him and gave him three different smiles. The first one, fleeting, automatic. Then one of recognition. Then, after she had paid, one of curiosity.
‘And you’re going to have a party, I see.’
She put her purchases into a plastic bag.
‘Something like that,’ Harry mumbled, reciprocating her smile.
She tilted her head to the side. The zebra stripes moved.
‘Many guests?’
‘A few. All uninvited.’
The checkout girl handed him his change, but he nodded towards the collection box for the Salvation Army.
‘You could show them the door, couldn’t you?’ Her smile had reached her eyes now.
‘Course. But these particular guests are not so easy to get rid of.’
The bottle of Jim Beam clinked joyfully against the six-pack as he lifted his bags.
‘Oh? Old drinking pals?’
Harry threw a lingering look in her direction. She seemed to know what she was talking about. This struck him as even stranger because she was living with the type of person who gave the impression of being fairly austere. Or to be more precise: it was strange that such an austere person would be living with her.
‘I haven’t got any pals,’ he said.
‘Must be the ladies then. The type that doesn’t let go easily.’
He intended to hold the door open for her, but it turned out it was automatic. He had only been shopping there a few hundred times. They stood opposite each other on the pavement outside.
Harry didn’t know what to say. Perhaps this was why he came out with:
‘Three ladies. Perhaps they’ll go away if I drink enough.’
‘Eh?’
She shaded her eyes from the sun.
‘Nothing. Sorry. I’m just thinking aloud. That is, I’m not thinking… but I’m doing it aloud anyway. Prattling away, I suppose. I…’
He couldn’t understand why she was still there.
‘They’ve been running up and down our stairs all weekend,’ she said.
‘Who?’
‘The police, I suppose.’
Harry slowly absorbed the information that a weekend had passed since he had stood in Camilla Loen’s flat. He tried to catch a glimpse of himself in the shop window. A whole weekend? What did he look like now?
‘They won’t tell us anything,’ she said. ‘And the papers only say they haven’t got any leads. Is that true?’
‘It’s not my case,’ he said.
‘Right.’ Vibeke Knutsen nodded her head. Then she began to smile. ‘And do you know what?’
‘What?’
‘Actually, it’s probably a good thing too.’
It took a couple of seconds before Harry realised what she meant. He laughed. The laugh developed into a hacking cough.
‘Funny that I’ve never seen you in this shop before,’ he said when he had regained his composure.
Vibeke shrugged her shoulders. ‘Who knows? Perhaps we’ll see each other here again soon?’
She beamed at him and began to walk away. The plastic bags and her backside swung from side to side.
Yes, you and me and a flying pig.
Harry was thinking furiously and for a moment he was afraid that he had thought out loud.
A man with his jacket slung over one shoulder and a hand pressed against his stomach was sitting on the steps outside the entrance to the apartment block in Sofies gate. His shirt had dark, sweaty patches on the front and under the armpits. On seeing Harry, he stood up.
Harry breathed in and steeled himself. It was Bjarne Moller.
‘My God, Harry.’
‘My God to you too, boss.’
‘Have you seen what you look like?’
Harry took out his keys. ‘Not quite peak of fitness?’
‘You were told to assist with the murder case at the weekend and no-one has seen hide nor hair of you. Today you didn’t even turn up for work.’
‘Overslept, boss. And that’s not as bloody far from the truth as you might think.’
‘Perhaps you overslept during those weeks when you only came in on Fridays as well?’
‘Probably. I picked up a bit after the first week. So I rang into work and was told that someone had put my name up on the staff leave list. I reckoned it was you.’
Harry trudged into the hallway with Moller hard on his heels.
‘I had absolutely no choice,’ Moller said, groaning and holding his hand against his stomach. ‘Four weeks, Harry!’
‘Well, just a nanosecond in the universe…’
‘And not one single word about where you were!’
Harry guided the key into the lock with some difficulty. ‘It’s coming now, boss.’
‘What is?’
‘A single word about where I was. Here.’
Harry shoved open the door to his flat and an acrid stench of beer, cigarette ends and stale refuse rose up to meet them.
‘Would you have felt better if you’d known?’
Harry went in, and hesitantly Moller stepped in after him.
‘You don’t need to take your shoes off, boss,’ Harry shouted from the kitchen.
Moller rolled his eyes and tried not to tread on any of the empty bottles, ashtrays full of cigarette butts and old vinyl records on his way across the sitting-room floor.
‘Have you been sitting here drinking for four weeks, Harry?’
‘With some breaks, boss. Long breaks. After all, I am on holiday, aren’t I? Last week I hardly touched a drop.’
‘I’ve got some bad news for you, Harry,’ Moller shouted, releasing the catches on the window and pushing feverishly at the glass. At the third shove the window sprang open. He groaned, loosened his belt and undid the top trouser button. As he turned round he saw Harry standing by the sitting-room door with an open bottle of whisky.
‘That bad, is it,’ Harry said, noticing the Chief Inspector’s slackened belt. ‘Am I going to be whipped or ravished?’
‘Slow digestion,’ Moller explained.
