moment to wake up. Or to be precise, to be asleep. You should do something else at this time of day. Such as drink.
Harry got up onto his knees.
There was something vibrating in his trousers. That, he now realised, was what had woken him. A moth trapped and desperately flapping its wings. He shoved his hand into his pocket and pulled out his mobile phone.
Harry walked slowly towards St Hanshaugen. His headache throbbed behind his eyeballs. The address Moller had given him was within walking distance. He had splashed a little water over his face, found a drop of whisky in the cupboard under the sink and set off hoping that a walk would clear his head. Harry passed Underwater: 4 p.m. till 3 a.m., 4 p.m. till 1 a.m. on Mondays, closed Sundays. This was not one of his more frequent watering holes since his local, Schroder, was in the parallel street, but like most serious drinkers Harry always had a place in his brain where the opening hours of taprooms were stored automatically.
He smiled at his reflection in the grimy windows. Another time.
At the corner he turned right, down Ullevalsveien. Harry didn’t like walking in Ullevalsveien. It was a street for cars, not for pedestrians. The best thing he could say about Ullevalsveien was that the pavement on the right afforded some shade on days like this.
Harry stopped in front of the house bearing the number he had been given. He gave it a quick once-over.
On the ground floor was a launderette with red washing machines. The note on the window gave the opening times as 8.00 till 21.00 every day and offered a 20-minute dry for the reduced price of 30 kroner. A dark-skinned woman in a shawl sat beside a rotating drum, staring out into the air. Next to the launderette was a shop window with headstones in, and further down, a green neon sign displaying KEBAB HOUSE above a snack-bar-cum-grocer’s. Harry’s eyes wandered over the filthy house front. The paint on the old window frames had cracked, but the dormer windows on the roof suggested there were new attic conversions on top of the original four floors. A camera was placed over the newly installed intercom system by the rusty iron gate. Money from Oslo’s West End was flowing slowly but surely into the East End. He rang the top bell next to the name of Camilla Loen.
‘Yes,’ the loudspeaker replied.
Moller had warned him, but nevertheless he was taken aback when he heard Tom Waaler’s voice.
Harry tried to answer, but could not force a sound from his vocal cords. He coughed and made a fresh attempt.
‘Hole. Open up.’
There was a buzzing sound and he grasped the cold, rough door handle of black iron.
‘Hi.’
Harry turned round.
‘Hi, Beate.’
Beate Lonn was just under average height, with dark blonde hair and blue eyes, neither good-looking nor unattractive. In short, there was nothing particularly striking about Beate Lonn, apart from her clothes. She was wearing a white boiler suit that looked a bit like an astronaut’s outfit.
Harry held open the gate while she carried in two large metal containers.
‘Have you just arrived?’
He tried not to breathe on her as she passed.
‘No. I had to come back down to the car for the rest of my stuff. We’ve been here for half an hour. Hit yourself?’
Harry ran a finger over the scab on his nose.
‘Apparently.’
He followed her through the next door leading into the stairwell.
‘What’s it like up there?’
Beate put the boxes in front of a green lift door, still looking up at him.
‘I thought it was one of your principles to look first and ask questions later,’ she said, pressing the lift button.
Harry nodded. Beate Lonn belonged to that section of the human race who remembered everything. She could recite details from criminal cases he had long forgotten and from before she began Police College. In addition, she had an unusually well-developed fusiform gyrus – the part of the brain that remembers faces. She had had it tested and the psychologists were amazed. Just his luck that she remembered the little he had managed to teach her when they worked together on the spate of bank robberies that swept Oslo the previous year.
‘I like to be as open as possible to my impressions the first time I am at the scene of a crime, yes,’ Harry said and gave a start when the lift sprang into action. He began to go through his pockets looking for cigarettes. ‘But I doubt that I’m going to be working on this particular case.’
‘Why not?’
Harry didn’t answer. He pulled out a crumpled pack of Camels from his left-hand trouser pocket and extracted a crushed cigarette.
‘Oh yes, now I remember,’ Beate smiled. ‘You said this spring that you were going to go on holiday. To Normandy, wasn’t it? You lucky thing…’
Harry put the cigarette between his lips. It tasted dreadful. And it would hardly do anything for his headache, either. There was only one thing that helped. He took a look at his watch. Mondays, 4 p.m. to 1 a.m.
‘There won’t be any Normandy,’ he said.
‘Oh?’
‘No, so that’s not the reason. It’s because he’s running this case.’
Harry took a long drag on his cigarette and nodded upwards.
She gave him a long, hard look. ‘Watch out that he doesn’t become an obsession. Move on.’
‘Move on?’ Harry blew out smoke. ‘He hurts people, Beate. You should know that.’
She blushed. ‘Tom and I had a brief fling, that’s all, Harry.’
‘Wasn’t that the time you were going round with a bruised neck?’
‘Harry! Tom never…’
Beate stopped when she realised that she was raising her voice. The echo resounded upwards in the stairwell, but was drowned out by the lift coming to a halt in front of them with a brief dull thud.
‘You don’t like him,’ she said. ‘So you imagine things. In fact, Tom has a number of good sides you know nothing about.’
‘Mm.’
Harry stubbed his cigarette out on the wall while Beate pulled open the door to the lift and went in.
‘Aren’t you coming up?’ she asked, looking at Harry who was still outside intently staring at something. The lift. There was a sliding gate inside the door, a simple iron grille that you push open and close behind you so that the lift can operate. There was the scream again. The soundless scream. He could feel sweat breaking out all over his body. The nip of whisky had not been enough. Nowhere near enough.
‘Something the matter?’ Beate asked.
‘Not at all,’ Harry answered in a thick voice. ‘I just don’t like these old-fashioned lifts. I’ll take the stairs.’
4
Friday. Statistics
The house did have attic flats, two of them. The door to one stood open, but some orange police tape placed it off-limits. Harry stooped to get his full height of 192 centimetres under the tape and quickly took another step to steady his balance when he emerged on the other side. He was standing in the middle of a room with an oak parquet floor, a slanting ceiling and dormer windows. It was warm, much like a bathroom. The flat was small and furnished in a minimalist style, as his own was, but that was where the similarity ended. This flat had the latest sofa from Hilmers Hus, a coffee table from r.o.o.m. and a small 15-inch Philips TV in ice-blue translucent plastic to match the stereo system. Harry looked through doorways to a kitchen and a bedroom. That was all there was. And it was strangely still. A policeman in uniform with his arms folded was standing by the kitchen door rocking on his
