Mikael Bellman paused. ‘Tell me, am I boring you?’
‘No.’
‘You look so bored.’
‘I… I have a lot to think about.’
‘When did you start smoking? So, I have a plan for how to find the eighth guest.’
Kaja stared at him.
Bellman sighed. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me how, darling?’
‘How?’
‘By using the same strategy as he does.’
‘Which is?’
‘Focusing on an innocent person.’
‘Isn’t that the strategy you always use?’
Mikael Bellman looked up sharply. Something was beginning to dawn on him. Something about being an alpha male.
He explained the plan to her. Told her how he would entice the man out.
Afterwards, he was shaking from cold and anger. He didn’t know what made him angrier. The fact that she didn’t respond with either a negative or a positive comment. Or that she sat there smoking, to all outward signs completely untouched by the case. Didn’t she understand that his career, his moves, in these very critical days would be decisive for her future as well? If she couldn’t count on being the next fru Bellman, she could at least rise through the ranks under his auspices, provided that she was loyal and continued to deliver. Or perhaps his anger was a result of the question she had asked. It had been about him. The other one. The old, doddery alpha male.
She had asked about opium. Asked if he really would have used it, if Hole had not ceded to his demand that he should accept the responsibility for Leike’s arrest.
‘Of course,’ Bellman said, trying to see her face, but it was too dark. ‘Why shouldn’t I have? He had smuggled drugs.’
‘I’m not thinking of him. I’m thinking of whether you would have brought discredit on the police force.’
He shook his head. ‘We can’t let ourselves be corrupted by that sort of consideration.’
Her laughter sounded dry as it met the dense night cold. ‘You indisputably corrupted him.’
‘He’s corruptible,’ Bellman said, draining the bottle in one swig. ‘That’s the difference between him and me. Now, Kaja, are you trying to tell me something?’
She opened her mouth. Wanted to say it. Should have said it. But at that moment his mobile rang. She saw him clutch his pocket as he did what he usually did, formed his lips into a pout. Which did not signify a kiss, but that she should shut up. In case it was his wife, his boss or anyone else he didn’t want to know that he came here to fuck a Crime Squad officer who gave him all the information he needed to outmanoeuvre the unit competing for murder investigations. To hell with Mikael Bellman. To hell with Kaja Solness. And above all to hell with…
‘He’s gone,’ Mikael Bellman said, putting the phone back in his pocket.
‘Who?’
‘Tony Leike.’
51
Letter
Hi Tony,
You’ve been wondering who I could be for a long time now. So long that I think it may be time I revealed my hand. I was at the cabin in Havass that night, but you didn’t see me. No one saw me, I was as invisible as a ghost. But you know me. Know me all too well. And now I’m coming to get you. The only person who can stop me now is you. Everyone else is dead. There’s just you and me left, Tony. Is your heart beating a bit faster now? Does your hand grope for a knife? Do you slash blindly through the dark, dizzy with terror that your life will be taken from you?
52
Visit
Something had woken him. a sound. there were hardly any sounds out here, none he didn’t know anyway, and those didn’t wake him. He got up, placed the soles of his feet on the cold floor and peered through the window. His terrain. Some called it a deserted wasteland, whatever that meant. Because it was never deserted here, there was always something. Like now. An animal? Or could it be him? The ghost? There was something outside, that was for certain. He looked at the door. It was locked and bolted on the inside. The rifle was in the storehouse. He shivered in the thick, red flannel shirt he wore both day and night up here. The sitting room was so empty. It was so empty out there. So empty in the world. But it wasn’t deserted. There were the two of them, the two of them who were left.
Harry was dreaming. About a lift with teeth, about a woman with a cocktail stick between cochineal-red lips, a clown with his smiling head under his arm, a bride dressed in white at the altar with a snowman, a star drawn in the dust of a TV screen, a one-armed girl on a diving board in Bangkok, the sweet smell of urinal blocks, the outline of a human body on the inside of a blue plastic waterbed, a compressor drill and blood spurting into his face, hot and death-bringing. Alcohol had acted as a cross, garlic and holy water against ghosts, but tonight there had been a full moon and a virgin’s blood, and now they came swarming from the darkest corners and deepest graves and tossed him between them in their dance, fiercer and wilder than ever, to the cardiac rhythms of mortal fear and the incessant shrill fire alarm here in hell. Then there was sudden silence. Complete silence. It was here again. It filled his mouth. He couldn’t breathe. It was cold and pitch black and he was unable to move, he.. .
Harry twitched and blinked in the darkness, dazed. An echo reverberated between the walls. An echo of what? He grabbed his revolver from the bedside table, placed the soles of his feet on the cold floor and went downstairs, into the living room. Empty. The empty drinks cabinet was still lit. There had been a solitary bottle of Martell cognac. His dad had always been careful with alcohol – he knew what genes he was carrying – and the cognac was to offer guests. There had not been many guests. The dusty, half-full bottle had disappeared in the tidal wave with Captain Jim Beam and Able Seaman Harry Hole. Harry sat down in the armchair, stuck his finger through the tear on the armrest. He closed his eyes and visualised himself filling a glass half full. The deep gurgles from the bottle, the sparkling golden-brown liquid. The smell, the quiver as he put the glass to his mouth and he felt his body fighting it, panicstricken. Then he emptied the contents down his throat.
It was like a blow to the temple.
Harry opened his eyes wide. It had gone all quiet again.
And just as suddenly it was there again.
It bored its way along his auditory canals. The fire alarm in hell. The same one that had woken him. The doorbell. Harry looked at his watch. Half past twelve.
He went into the hall, switched on the outside light, saw an outline through the wavy glass, held the revolver in his right hand while grabbing the lock with his left thumb and forefinger and tore the door wide open.
In the moonlight he could see ski tracks crossing the drive. They were not his. And ghosts didn’t leave trails, did they?
They went round the house, to the back.
At that moment it struck him that the bedroom window was open, he should have… He held his breath. Someone seemed to be breathing with him. Not someone, something. An animal.
He turned. Opened his mouth. His heart had stopped beating. How could it have moved so quickly, without
