Waaler shrugged his shoulders.
‘My father died in an accident at work. It’s strange, but when your father has gone you suddenly discover that the choices you have made were as much for him as for yourself. I was immediately aware that I had nothing in common with the other law students. I suppose I was a kind of naive idealist. I thought it was all about raising the banner for justice and driving the modern democratic state forward. However, I discovered that for most people it was about getting a title and a job and creaming enough to be able to impress the girl next door in Ullern. Well, you did law yourself…’
Harry nodded.
‘Perhaps it’s in the genes,’ Waaler said. ‘At any rate, I’ve always liked building things. Big things. Right from when I was small. I built huge palaces with Lego bricks, much bigger than the things all the other kids built. On the law course I realised I was wired differently from all these tiny-minded people with their tiny-minded thoughts. Two months after my father’s funeral I applied to go to Police College.’
‘Mm. And left as top cadet, according to the rumours.’
‘Second.’
‘And here at Police HQ you had to build your palace?’
‘I didn’t have to. There’s no had to, Harry. When I was small I took Lego bricks off the other children to make my buildings large enough. It’s a question of what you want. Do you want a small, poky house for people with small, poky lives or do you want to have opera houses and cathedrals, majestic buildings that point the way towards something greater than you yourself, something you can strive for.’
Waaler ran his hand along the steel railing.
‘Building cathedrals is a calling, Harry. In Italy they gave masons who died during the construction of a church the status of a martyr. Even though cathedral builders built for humanity there isn’t a single cathedral in human history that was not founded on human bones and human blood. My grandfather used to say that. And that’s the way it will always be. The blood of my family has been used as the mortar of many of the buildings you can see from here. I simply want more justice. For everyone. And I’ll use the building materials that are necessary.’
Harry studied the glow of his cigarette.
‘And I’m a building material?’
Waaler smiled.
‘That’s one way of putting it. But the answer is yes. If you want it. I have alternatives…’
He didn’t complete the sentence, but Harry knew how it ended: ‘… but you don’t.’
Harry took a long drag on his cigarette and asked in a low voice: ‘What if I agree to come on board?’
Waaler raised an eyebrow and fixed Harry with an intent look before answering.
‘You’ll receive your first assignment, which you will carry out on your own and without asking any questions. Everyone before you has done this. As a mark of loyalty.’
‘And it is?’
‘You’ll find that out in good time. But it means burning bridges.’
‘Does it mean breaking Norwegian law?’
‘Probably.’
‘Aha,’ Harry said. ‘So that you’ve got something on me, so that I won’t be tempted to rat on you.’
‘I would perhaps have expressed that in a different way, but you’ve got the idea.’
‘What are we talking about here? Smuggling?’
‘I can’t tell you that yet.’
‘How can you be sure that I’m not a mole from POT or SEFO?’
Waaler leaned further over the railing and pointed down.
‘Do you see her, Harry?’
Harry went to the edge and peered down at the park. People were still lying on the green grass catching the last rays of the sun.
‘Her in the yellow bikini,’ Waaler said. ‘Nice colour for a bikini, isn’t it.’
Harry’s stomach churned, and he stood up straight again.
‘We’re not stupid,’ Waaler said, without taking his eyes off the lawn. ‘We follow the ones we want to join us. She wears well. Smart and independent, from what I can see. But of course she wants what all women want in her position. A man who can provide for her. It’s pure biology. And you don’t have a lot of time. Women like her are not on their own for long.’
Harry’s cigarette fell over the edge. It left behind a stream of sparks.
‘There was a warning about forest fires for all Ostland yesterday,’ Waaler said.
Harry didn’t answer. He just shuddered when he felt Waaler’s hand on his shoulder.
‘Strictly speaking, the deadline has already passed, Harry. But to show how kind we are, I’ll give you two more days. If I don’t hear anything in that time, the offer is rescinded.’
Harry swallowed hard and tried to get out the one word, but his tongue refused to obey and his salivary glands felt like the dry river beds in Africa.
Finally, he managed it.
‘Thanks.’
Beate Lonn enjoyed her work. She like the routines, the security, the knowledge that she was competent, and she knew that the others at the Forensics Institute at Kjolberggata 21A knew that too. Since work was the only thing in her life she considered important, it was reason enough to get up in the morning. Everything else was a musical interlude. She lived in her mother’s house in Oppsal and had the whole of the top floor to herself. They got on extremely well. She had always been Daddy’s girl when he was alive; she assumed that was why she joined the police force, like him. She had no hobbies. Even though she and Halvorsen, the officer Harry shared his office with, had become a sort of couple, she was not convinced about it. She had read in a women’s magazine that this kind of doubt was natural and that you should take risks. Beate didn’t like taking risks. Or being in doubt. That was why she enjoyed her work.
As she was growing up she blushed at the thought that anyone could be thinking about her and she spent most of her time devising different ways to hide. She still blushed, but she had found good places to hide. She could sit for hours inside the worn redbrick walls of Forensics studying fingerprints, ballistics reports, video recordings, comparisons of voices, the analyses of DNA or textile fibres, footprints, blood and an endless number of technical leads which might resolve important, complicated, controversial cases in total peace and quiet. She had also discovered that working was not nearly as dangerous as it seemed. So long as she spoke loudly and clearly and managed to repress her panic about blushing, losing face, her clothes, standing there exposed and full of shame, for what reason she didn’t know. The office in Kjolberggata was her castle; the uniform and her professional duties her mental armour.
The clock showed 12.30 a.m. when the telephone on her office desk rang, interrupting her reading of the laboratory report on Lisbeth Barli’s finger. Her heart began to quicken with fear when she saw on the display that the caller was ringing from an ‘unknown number’. It could only mean that it was him.
‘Beate Lonn.’
It was him. His words came out in a flurry of blows.
‘Why didn’t you ring me about the fingerprints?’
She held her breath for a second before she replied.
‘Harry said he would pass on the message.’
‘Thank you. I received it. Next time, you ring me first. Is that understood?’
Beate gulped. She didn’t know whether out of fear or anger.
‘Fine.’
‘Anything else you told him that you didn’t tell me?’
‘No. Except that I’ve got the results from the lab on what was under the finger we were sent through the post.’
‘Lisbeth Barli’s? And it was?’
‘Excrement.’
‘What?’
‘Pooh.’
‘Thank you very much. I know what it is. Any idea where it came from?’
