‘Oh yes?’
‘Yes. I think there’s something in that.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m not quite sure, but did you know that in the past they used to place a coin on the eyes of a corpse before it was buried?’
‘No.’
‘It was payment for the ferryman to deliver the soul into the kingdom of the dead. If the soul wasn’t delivered, it would never find peace. Think about it.’
‘Thank you for the wisdom, but I don’t believe in ghosts, Harry.’
Harry didn’t answer.
‘Anything else?’
‘Just one small question. Do you know if the Chief Super starts his holidays this week?’
‘Yes, he does.’
‘You wouldn’t by any chance happen to know… when he comes back?’
‘Three weeks’ time. What about you?’
‘What about me?’
Beate heard the click of a lighter. She sighed: ‘When are you coming back?’
She heard Harry inhale, hold his breath and slowly let it out again before he answered:
‘I thought you said you didn’t believe in ghosts.’
As Beate was putting down the phone, Bjarne Moller woke up with abdominal pains. He lay in bed twisting and turning until 6.00 when he gave up and got out of bed. He had a long breakfast without any coffee and immediately felt better. When he arrived at Police HQ just after eight, to his surprise, the pains had completely gone. He took the lift up to his office and celebrated by swinging his feet onto the desk, taking his first mouthful of coffee and grappling with the day’s newspapers.
Dagbladet ran a picture of a smiling Camilla Loen on the front page under the headline ‘Secret Lover?’. Verdens Gang ran the same picture but with a different headline: ‘Clairvoyant Sees Jealousy’. Only the article in Aftenposten seemed to be interested in reality.
Moller shook his head, cast a glance at his watch and dialled Tom Waaler’s number. Timed to perfection. He would just have finished his morning meeting with the detectives on the case.
‘No breakthrough yet,’ Waaler said. ‘We’ve been conducting door-to-door inquiries with all the neighbours and we’ve talked to all the shops nearby. Checked the taxis who were in the area at the relevant time, had a chat with informers and gone through the alibis of old friends with tarnished records. No-one stands out as a suspect, let’s put it that way. And, to be frank, in this case I don’t think the man is someone we know. No evidence of a sexual assault. No money or valuables touched. No familiar features here and no bells ringing. This finger and the diamond for example…’
Moller could feel his guts grumbling. He hoped it was hunger.
‘So no good news for me then.’
‘Majorstua police station has sent us three men, so now we have ten men working on the strategic side of the investigation. And the technicians at Kripos are giving Beate a hand to go through what they found in the flat. We’re pretty well staffed, considering it’s the holiday period. Does that sound good?’
‘Thanks, Waaler, let’s hope it stays that way. As regards the staffing, I mean.’
Moller put the phone down and turned his head to look out of the window before going back to the papers. However, he remained in this position, with his head twisted round very uncomfortably and his eyes rooted to the lawn outside Police HQ. He had caught sight of a figure wandering up Gronlandsleiret. The person in question was not walking quickly, but he appeared at any rate to be walking in a moderately straight line and there was no doubt where he was headed: he was coming towards the police station.
Moller got up, went out into the corridor and called for Jenny to come in right away with more coffee and an extra cup. Then he went back, sat down and hastily pulled out some old documents from one of his drawers.
Three minutes later there was a knock at the door.
‘Come in!’ Moller shouted without looking up from his papers, a twelve-page letter of complaint written by a dog owner accusing the dog clinic in Skippergata of administering the wrong medicine and thus killing his two chow chows. The door opened and Moller casually waved him in as he perused a page about the dogs’ breeding, their awards from dog shows and the remarkable intelligence with which both dogs had been blessed.
‘My God,’ Moller said when he finally looked up. ‘I thought we’d given you the boot.’
‘Well. Since my dismissal papers are still lying unsigned on the Chief Superintendent’s desk, and will be doing so for at least the next three weeks, I thought I might as well turn up for work in the meantime. Eh, boss?’
Harry poured himself a cup of coffee from Jenny’s coffee pot and carried the cup with him round Moller’s desk and over to the window.
‘But that doesn’t mean I’ll work on the Camilla Loen case.’
Bjarne Moller turned round and contemplated Harry. He had seen it all several times before, how Harry could have a near-death experience one day and the very next be strolling around like some red-eyed Lazarus. For all that, it was still a surprise every time.
‘If you think your dismissal is a bluff, Harry, you’re wrong. This is not a shot across the bows this time. It’s definitive. All the times you’ve disobeyed instructions it was me who ensured that you were dealt with leniently. For that reason I can’t run away from my responsibilities now, either.’
Bjarne Moller searched for hints of an appeal in Harry’s eyes. He found none. Fortunately.
‘That’s how it is, Harry. It’s over.’
Harry didn’t answer.
‘And while I remember, your gun licence is withdrawn with immediate effect. Standard procedure. You’ll have to nip down to the armoury and return whatever hardware you have on you today.’
Harry nodded. The department head scrutinised him. Did he detect a faint touch of the bewildered schoolboy who had received an unexpected box around the ears? Moller placed his hand against the lowest buttonhole on his shirt. It wasn’t easy to work Harry out.
‘If you think you can make yourself useful in your last weeks, and you feel like turning up for work, that’s absolutely fine by me. You are not suspended and we have to pay your salary to the end of the month anyway. And we know what your alternative is to sitting here, don’t we.’
‘Fine,’ Harry grunted and stood up. ‘I’ll just go and see if my office still exists. You’ll have to tell me if there’s anything you need any help with, boss.’
Bjarne Moller flashed an indulgent smile.
‘Yes, I’ll take you up on that, Harry.’
‘On the chow chow case, for example,’ Harry said, closing the door quietly behind him.
Harry stood in the doorway contemplating his shared office. Halvorsen’s desk, cleared for his holiday and empty, was set against his. On the wall over the filing cabinet hung a picture of Officer Ellen Gjelten, taken at the time when she used to sit in Halvorsen’s seat. The other wall was almost completely covered with a street map of Oslo. The map was decorated with pins, lines and times indicating where Ellen, Sverre Olsen and Roy Kvinsvik were at the time of the murder. Harry went over to the wall and stood in front of the map. Then, in one swift movement, he tore it down and stuffed it into one of the drawers of the filing cabinet. He took a silver hip flask out of his jacket pocket, took a quick swig and rested his forehead against the metal cabinet’s cooling surface.
He had worked for more than ten years in this office. Room 605. The smallest office in the red zone on the sixth floor. Even when they hit on the weird idea of promoting him to detective inspector he had insisted on remaining here. Room 605 didn’t have any windows, but he observed the world from here. In these ten square metres he had learned his trade, celebrated his victories and suffered his defeats and acquired the little insight he had into the human mind. He tried to remember what else he had done over those ten years. There must have been something. You only work eight to ten hours every day. Not more than twelve, anyway. Plus the weekends.
Harry slumped down into his battered office chair, and the damaged springs screamed joyously. He could happily sit here for another two weeks.
At 5.25 p.m. Bjarne Moller would normally have been at home with his wife and child. However, since they were visiting Grandma he decided to use these days of holiday tranquillity to catch up on neglected paperwork. The shooting in Ullevalsveien had to some extent spoiled these plans, but he determined to make up for lost time.
