the way she was and she must have inherited it from her father and hadn’t she seen him mounting Lisbeth like a sow in the sty, or didn’t Mother know about that? Toya had watched her mother’s face change, not because her mother didn’t know that it was lies, but because she knew now that Toya would not shy away from using any weapon at her disposal to harm them. Then Toya had screamed as loudly as she could that she hated them all and her father had come in from the sitting room with the newspaper in his hand and she could see on their faces that they knew that she was not lying now. Did she still hate them now that they had gone? She didn’t know. No. Nowadays she didn’t hate anyone. That wasn’t why she was doing what she was doing. She was doing it for the fun of it. For indecency and yes. And because it was so irresistibly forbidden.
She gave the driver 200 kroner and a smile and told him to keep the change, despite the smell in the car. It was only when the taxi had driven away that she realised why the driver had been staring in his mirror. The smell had not come from him, but from her.
‘Bloody hell!’
She scraped the leather sole of her high-heeled cowboy boot against the pavement, making brown stripes. She searched around for a puddle, but there had not been one in Oslo for close to five weeks. She gave up and went to the door and rang the bell.
‘Yes?’
‘This is Venus,’ she cooed.
She smiled to herself.
‘And this is Pygmalion,’ the voice said.
That was the one!
There was a buzz in the door lock. She hesitated for a second. Last chance to retreat. She flicked back her hair and pulled open the door.
He was standing in the doorway with a drink in one hand waiting for her.
‘Did you do as I said?’ he asked. ‘You didn’t tell anyone where you were going?’
‘No, are you crazy?’
She rolled her eyes.
‘Maybe,’ he said opening the door wide. ‘Come in and say hello to Galatea.’
She laughed even though she hadn’t a clue what he was talking about. She laughed even though she knew something awful was about to happen.
Harry found a place to park some way down Markveien, switched off the engine and got out of the car. He lit up and had a quick recce. The streets were deserted. It seemed as if people had retired indoors. The innocent white clouds from the afternoon had spread out to form a blue-grey wall-to-wall carpet in the sky.
He followed the graffiti-covered house fronts until he stood outside the door. Just the filter remained on his cigarette and he threw it away. He rang and waited. It was so muggy that the palms of his hands were sweating. Or was it terror? He looked at his watch and took note of the time.
‘Yes?’ The voice sounded irritated.
‘Good evening. It’s Harry Hole.’
No answer.
‘From the police,’ he added.
‘Of course. Sorry, my mind was on something else. Come in.’
The door buzzed.
Harry took the steps slowly.
They stood waiting in the door for him, both of them.
‘Oh no,’ Ruth said. ‘All hell’s about to break loose.’
Harry stood on the landing in front of them.
‘The rain,’ the Trondheim Eagle added by way of explanation.
‘Oh, I see.’ Harry dried his palms on his trousers.
‘How can we help you, Inspector?’
‘You can help me to catch the Courier Killer,’ Harry said.
Toya lay in a foetal position in the middle of the bed staring at herself in the mirror on the wardrobe door, which hung open against the wall. She listened to the shower from the lower floor. He was washing the smell of her off him. She rolled over. The waterbed gently moulded itself to her body. She looked at the photo. They were smiling at the camera. They were on holiday. In France maybe. She ran her fingers over the cool duvet cover. His body had also been cold. Cold and hard and muscular for someone so old. Particularly his backside and thighs. It was because he had been a dancer, he said. He had trained his muscles every day for 15 years. They would never disappear.
Toya’s attention was caught by the black belt in his trousers lying on the floor.
Fifteen years. They would never disappear.
She rolled over onto her back, pushed herself up higher in the bed and heard the water gurgle on the inside of the rubber mattress. But now everything would be different. Toya was clever now. A good girl. Just the way Daddy and Mummy wanted. She was Lisbeth now.
Toya rested her head against the wall and sank deeper. Something was tickling her between the shoulder blades. It was like lying in a boat on the river. She lay there thinking.
Wilhelm had asked her if she would use a dildo while he watched. She had gone along with it. Good girl. He opened his toolbox. She closed her eyes, but still she had seen the stripes of light – the light through the cracks between the slats in the barn – on the inside of her eyelids. Then when he came in her mouth, it tasted of silo, but she didn’t say anything. Clever girl.
Clever is how she was when Wilhelm was training her to speak and sing like her sister. Try to smile like her. Wilhelm had given make-up a photograph of Lisbeth and told them that that was how Toya was to look. The only thing she had not been able to do was laugh like Lisbeth, so Wilhelm had asked her not to try. Now and then she had been unsure how much was about playing Eliza Doolittle and how much was about Wilhelm’s desperate yearning for Lisbeth. And now she was here in his bed. And perhaps this, too, was about Lisbeth, both for him and for her. What was it that Wilhelm had said? Lust found the lowest level?
Something was sticking into her back again and she twitched angrily.
For herself, Toya had not particularly missed Lisbeth much, if she were to be absolutely honest. Not that she wasn’t shocked like everyone else when she had heard the news about her disappearance. But it had opened quite a lot of new doors. Toya was interviewed and Spinnin’ Wheel had just received an offer for a series of well-paid concerts in memory of Lisbeth. And now the main role in My Fair Lady. Which on top of all this was well on the way to becoming a hit. Wilhelm had told her at the opening-night party that she would have to prepare herself for becoming a celebrity. A star. A diva. She put her hand under her back. What was digging into her? A lump. Under the sheet. It disappeared when she pressed it down. There it was again. She would have to find out.
‘Wilhelm?’
She was going to shout louder to drown out the noise of the shower below, but remembered that Wilhelm had given strict instructions that she was to rest her voice. After a day off today they would have to perform every night until the end of the week. When she arrived he had asked her not to speak at all, not under any circumstances. Even though he had told her before that he wanted to rehearse a few snatches of dialogue with her that were not quite right, and he had asked her to make herself up as Eliza, for the sake of realism.
Toya undid the stretch undersheet from one side of the water bed and pulled it to the side. There was no other bedding, just the blue translucent rubber mattress. But what was sticking out over there? She laid her hand against the mattress. It was there, under the rubber. There was nothing to see. She stretched over to the side, switched on the bedside table lamp and twisted it over so that it pointed to the right spot. The bulge had gone again. She placed her hand over the rubber and waited. It came back, slowly, and she realised that whatever it was sank when she poked it and then came up again. She moved her hand.
At first she saw the contours outlined against the rubber. Like a profile. No, it wasn’t like a profile. It was a profile. Toya lay down flat. She had stopped breathing. She could feel it now. Down from her stomach to her toes. There was a complete body on the inside. A body that was forced up by the buoyancy of the water and forced down by the weight of Toya as if two people were trying to be one. And perhaps they were. Because it was like looking in a mirror.
She wanted to scream now. Wanted to ruin her voice. Didn’t want to be a good girl. Or clever. She wanted to
