by Jo Nesbo
Harry lay on his back watching cigarette smoke slowly curling up to the bedroom ceiling. It formed figures and faces. He knew whose. He could mention them by name, one by one. The Dead Policemen’s Society. He blew on them and they disappeared. He had made a decision. He didn’t know exactly when he’d decided, he only knew it was going to change everything.
For a while he had tried to convince himself that it didn’t have to be such a risk, that he was exaggerating, but he had been an alcoholic for too many years not to recognise the fool’s ill-judged disdain of the cost. After he’d said what he was going to say now, it would change everything in his relationship with the woman he was lying next to. He was dreading it. Rolled some of the phrases around in his mouth. It was now or never.
He took a deep breath, but she intervened.
‘Can I have a drag?’ Rakel murmured, snuggling closer to him. Her naked skin had that tiled-stove glow he could begin to long for at the most astonishing times. It was warm underneath the duvet, cold on top. White bedlinen, always white bedlinen, nothing else got cold in the same, authentic way.
He passed her the Camel. Watched her hold it in that clumsy manner of hers, her cheeks hollowing as she squinted at the cigarette, as though it was safest to keep an eye on it. He reflected on all he had.
All he had to lose.
‘Shall I run you to the airport tomorrow?’ he asked.
‘You don’t need to.’
‘I know. But my first lecture isn’t until late.’
‘Drive me then.’ She kissed him on the cheek.
‘On two conditions.’
Rakel rolled over onto her side and eyed him with a quizzical look.
‘The first is you never stop smoking like a teenager at a party.’
She sniggered quietly. ‘I’ll try. And the second?’
Harry swallowed. Knowing he could come to regard this as the last happy moment of his life.
‘I expect. .’
Oh, shit.
‘I’m considering breaking a promise,’ he said. ‘A promise I’d made primarily to myself, but I’m afraid it affects you as well.’
He sensed rather than heard her breathing change in the darkness. Shorten, quicken. Fear.
Katrine yawned. Looked at her watch. At the luminous second hand counting down the time. None of the detectives on the original case had reported receiving a call.
She should have felt the tension mounting as the deadline approached, but instead it was the opposite, she had already started to work on her disappointment by forcing herself to think positively. Of the hot bath she would have when she got back to her flat. Of the bed. Of the coffee early tomorrow. Another day with new possibilities. There was always something new, there had to be.
She could see the car headlights on Ring 3: life in Oslo incomprehensibly following its inexorable course. The darkness deepening after the clouds had drawn a curtain in front of the moon. She was about to turn when she froze. A noise. A crack. A twig. Here.
She held her breath and listened. The position she had been allocated was surrounded by dense bushes and trees, well hidden from any of the paths he might choose. But there hadn’t been any twigs on the paths.
Another crack. Closer this time. Katrine instinctively opened her mouth, as though the blood, which was pounding through her veins, needed more oxygen.
Katrine reached for the walkie-talkie. But never got that far.
He must have moved like greased lightning, yet the breath she felt on her neck was quite calm and the whispering voice by her ear unruffled, cheerful almost.
‘What’s happening?’
Katrine turned to him and released her breath in a long hiss. ‘Nothing.’
Mikael Bellman took her binoculars and studied the house below. ‘Delta has two positions inside the railway line there, don’t they?’
‘Yes. How-?’
‘I was given a copy of the ops map,’ Bellman said. ‘That’s how I found this observation post. Well hidden, I must say.’ He smacked himself on the forehead. ‘Well I never. Mosquitoes in March.’
‘Midges,’ Katrine said.
‘Wrong,’ said Mikael Bellman, who was still holding the binoculars to his eyes.
‘Well, we’re both right. Midges are similar to mosquitoes, just much smaller.’
‘You’re wrong about-’
‘Some of them are so small that they don’t suck the blood of humans but other insects. Or their bodily fluids.’ Katrine knew she was babbling out of nervousness, without really knowing why she was nervous. Perhaps because he was the Chief of Police. ‘Of course, insects don’t have-’
‘-nothing happening. A car has stopped outside the house. Someone’s getting out and approaching the house.’
‘And if a midge. . What did you say?’
She took the binoculars from him. Chief of Police or not, this was her post. And he was right. In the light from the street lamps she saw someone who had already walked through the gate and was heading for the front door. He was dressed in red and carrying something she couldn’t identify. Katrine felt her mouth going dry. It was him. It was happening. It was happening now. She grabbed her mobile phone.
‘And I don’t break promises lightly,’ Harry said. Staring at the cigarette she had passed back to him. Hoping there was enough for at least one big drag. He was going to need it.
‘And which promise is that?’ Rakel’s voice sounded small, helpless. Alone.
‘It’s a promise I made to myself. .’ Harry said, pressing his lips round the filter. Inhaled. Tasted the smoke, the end of the cigarette which for some strange reason has a completely different flavour from the beginning. ‘. . about never asking you to marry me.’
In the silence that followed he could hear a gust of wind rustling through the deciduous trees, like an excited, shocked, whispering audience.
Then came her answer. Like a short walkie-talkie message.
‘Repeat.’
Harry cleared his throat. ‘Rakel, will you marry me?’
The wind had moved on. And all that remained was silence, calm. Night. In the midst of it, Harry and Rakel.
‘Are you pulling my leg?’ She had moved away from him.
Harry closed his eyes. He was in free fall. ‘I’m not joking.’
‘Quite sure?’
‘Why would I joke? Do you want this to be a joke?’
‘First off, Harry, you have a very bad sense of humour.’
‘Agreed.’
‘Second, I have Oleg to consider. And you do, too.’
‘When I think about us getting married, Oleg is a big plus.’
‘Third, even if I had wanted to, getting married has a number of legal implications. My house-’
‘I had been thinking of separate estates. I’m damned if I’m going to hand over my fortune to you on a silver platter. I can’t promise much, but I can promise the world’s most pain-free divorce.’
She chuckled. ‘But we’re getting on well as we are, aren’t we, Harry?’
‘Yes, we’ve got everything to lose. And fourth?’
‘Fourth, that’s not how you propose, Harry. In bed, over a cigarette.’
‘Well, if you want me on my knees, I’ll have to put my trousers on first.’
‘Yes.’
‘Yes, I should put my trousers on? Or yes, I-?’
‘Yes, you idiot! Yes! I want to marry you.’
Harry’s reaction was automatic, rehearsed over a long life as a policeman. He turned to the side and checked his watch. Noted the time. 23.11. The nitty-gritty for when he had to write the report. When they arrived at the crime scene, when the arrest was made, when the shot was fired.
‘Oh good lord,’ he heard Rakel mumble. ‘What am I saying?’
‘Cooling-off period expires in five seconds,’ Harry said, turning back to her.
Her face was so close to his that all he saw was a hazy sparkle in her wide eyes.
‘Time’s up,’ he said. ‘And what kind of a grin is tha
t supposed to be?’
And now Harry could feel it himself, the smile that just kept spreading across his face like a freshly cracked egg in the pan.
Beate was lying with her legs on the arm of the sofa watching Gabriel Byrne wriggle uncomfortably in the chair. She had worked out it had to be the eyelashes and the Irish accent. The eyelashes of a Mikael Bellman, the lilt of a poet. The man she was seeing had none of these things, but that wasn’t the problem. There was something odd about him. For starters, there was the intensity; he hadn’t understood why he couldn’t visit her if she was by herself this evening. And then there was his background. He had told her things she had gradually discovered didn’t tally.
Perhaps that wasn’t so unusual: you want to make a good impression and so you lay it on a bit thick.
On the other hand, perhaps there was something wrong with her. After all, she had tried to google him. Without finding anything. So she had googled Gabriel Byrne instead. Reading with interest that he’d worked as a teddy bear eye-installer before she found what she was really looking for. Spouse: Ellen Barkin (1988–1999). For a moment she’d thought Gabriel was widowed, left behind, like her, until she realised it was probably the marriage that was deceased. And if so Gabriel must have been single for longer than her. Or maybe Wikipedia wasn’t up to date?
On the screen the female patient flirted at will. But Gabriel wasn’t fooled. He sent her a brief, troubled smile, fixed his gentle eyes on her and said something trivial, which he made sound like a Yeats poem.
A light flashed on the table and her heart stopped.
Her mobile. It was ringing. It could be him. Valentin.
She lifted the phone, looked at the caller. Sighed.
‘Yes, Katrine?’
‘He’s here.’
Beate could hear from her colleague’s excitement that it was true, they had a bite.
‘Tell. .’
‘He’s standing on the doorstep.’
Doorstep! That was more than a bite. That was fish for supper. Christ, they had the whole house surrounded.
‘He’s just standing there, hesitating.’
She heard the activity on the walkie-talkie in the background. Get him now, get him now. Katrine answered her prayers. ‘The orders have been given to move in.’
Beate heard another voice in the background say something. It was familiar, but she couldn’t place it.
‘They’re storming the house now,’ Katrine said.
‘Details, please.’
‘Delta. All wearing black. Automatics. God, the way they’re running. .’
‘Less colour, more content.’
‘Four men running up the path. Blinding him with light. The others are hidden, waiting to see if he has any backup. He’s dropped what he’s holding. .’
‘Has he got a weap-?’
A shrill, high-pitched ring. Beate groaned. Doorbell.
‘He hasn’t got time. They’re on him already. They’ve wrestled him to the ground.’
Yes!
‘Searching him, so it seems. They’re holding something up.’
‘Weapon?’
The doorbell again. Hard, insistent.
‘Looks like a remote control.’
‘Ooh! A bomb?’
‘Don’t know. But they’ve got him now anyway. They’re signalling the situation is under control. Wait. .’
‘I’ve got to open the door. I’ll ring you back.’
Beate jumped up off the sofa. Jogged to the door. Wondering how to explain to him that this wasn’t acceptable, that if she said she wanted to be alone she meant it.
And as she opened the door she thought about how far she had come. From the quiet, shy, self-sacrificing girl, who had graduated from the same police college her father had attended, to the woman who not only knew what she wanted but did what she had to do to achieve it. It had been a long and at times hard road, but the reward was worth every single step.
She looked at the man opposite her. The reflected light from his face hit her retina, was converted into visual signals and fed her fusiform gyrus with the data.
Behind her she heard Gabriel Byrne’s reassuring voice; she thought it said: ‘Don’t panic now.’
By which time her brain had recognised the face before her.
Harry could feel the orgasm coming. His own. The sweet, sweet pain, the muscles in his back and abdomen tensing. He closed the door on what he could see and opened his eyes. Looked down at Rakel, who was staring up at him with glassy eyes. The blood vessel on her forehead bulged. A jerk went through her body and face every time he thrust. She seemed to be trying to say something. And he became aware that this was not the suffering, offended look she generally wore before she came, this was something else, a terror in her eyes he could only once remember having seen before, also here in this room. He became aware she had both hands around his wrist, trying to drag his hand off her neck.
He waited. Not knowing why, but he wouldn’t slacken his grip. Felt the resistance in her body, saw her eyes bulge. Then he let go.
Heard the hiss as she inhaled air.
‘Harry. .’ Her voice was hoarse, unrecognisable. ‘What were you doing?’
He looked down at her. He had no answer.
‘You. .’ She coughed. ‘You mustn’t hold on so long!’
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I got a bit carried away.’
Then he felt it come. Not the orgasm, but something similar. A pain in his chest that rose into his throat and spread to behind his eyes.
He slumped down beside her. Buried his face in the pillow. Felt the tears come. Rolled to the side, away from her, took deep breaths, fought them. What the hell was going on with him?
‘Harry?’
He didn’t answer. Couldn’t.
‘Is something wrong, Harry?’
He shook his head. ‘Just tired,’ he said into the pillow.
He felt her hand on his neck, caressing him gently, then it lay over his chest and she snuggled up to his back.
And he thought what he had always known at some point he was going to think: how could he ask someone he loved so much to share her life with someone like him?
Katrine lay with her mouth open, listening to the furious communication on the walkie-talkie. Behind her Mikael Bellman was cursing. It wasn’t a remote control the man on the step had in his hand.
‘It’s a payment terminal,’ a breathless voice rasped.
‘And what’s in his bag?’
‘Pizza.’
‘Repeat?’
‘Looks like the guy’s a bloody delivery boy. Says he works for Pizzaexpressen. Got an order for this address three-quarters of an hour ago.’
‘OK, we’ll check that out.’
Mikael Bellman leaned forward and took the walkie-talkie.
‘Bellman here. He’s sent this guy out to clear the mines. Which means he’s in the area and can see what’s happening. Have we got any dogs?’
Pause. Crackling noise.
‘U05 here. No dogs. We can have them here in fifteen.’
Bellman cursed again under his breath, then pressed the talk button. ‘Get them here. And the helicopter with floodlights and thermal imaging. Confirm.’
‘Received. Request helicopter. But I don’t think it has thermal imaging.’
Bellman closed his eyes and whispered ‘idiot’ before answering: ‘It does, it’s fitted, so if he’s in the forest we’ll find him. Use the whole team to spread a net north and west of the forest. If he makes a run for it, it’ll be that way. What’s your mobile number, U05?’
Bellman let go of the talk button and signalled to Katrine, who was holding the phone ready. Keyed in the numbers as U05 said them. Passed the phone to Bellman.
‘U05? Falkeid? Listen, we’re losing this one, and we haven’t got enough officers to do an effective search of the forest, so let’s try a long shot. As he clearly suspected we were here, he may also have access to our frequencies. It’s true we don’t have thermal imaging, but if
he now believes we do and we’re spreading a net to the north and west, then. .’ Bellman listened. ‘Exactly. Position your men on the east side. But keep a couple back in case he still comes to the house to check it out.’
Bellman broke the connection and handed the phone over.
‘What do you think?’ Katrine asked. The screen went off and it was as though the light from the white, pigmentless stripes on his face was pulsating in the darkness.
‘I think,’ Bellman said, ‘we’ve been outmanoeuvred.’
26
They left Oslo at seven o’clock.
The incoming rush-hour traffic was at a standstill, and mute. As it was in their car, where both were adhering to the long-established pact of no unnecessary talking before nine.
On the way through the tollbooths a light drizzle fell, which the windscreen wipers seemed to absorb rather than remove.
Harry switched on the radio, listened to yet another news broadcast, but it wasn’t there, either. The item that should have been on every website and station this morning. The arrest in Berg, the news that a suspect had been detained in connection with the police murders. After the sport, which was about Norway’s match against Albania, Pavarotti and some pop star sang a duet and Harry hurriedly switched off the radio.
Through the hills up to Karihaugen, Rakel rested her hand on Harry’s, which was on the gearstick, as usual. Harry waited for her to say something.
Soon they would be apart for a whole working week, and Rakel still hadn’t said a word about his proposal of the night before. Was she having doubts? She didn’t usually say things she didn’t mean. At the turn-off to Lørenskog it struck him that perhaps she was thinking he had doubts. That if they acted as if it hadn’t happened, burying it in an ocean of silence, then it hadn’t happened. At worst it would be remembered as an absurd dream. Shit, perhaps he had dreamt it. In his opium-smoking days he would speak to people about things he was convinced had happened and would receive quizzical looks in return.
At the turn-off to Lillestrøm he broke the pact. ‘What about June? The twenty-first is a Saturday.’
He glanced at her, but she was looking at the rolling landscape of fields. Silence. Oh shit, she was having regrets. She-