by Jo Nesbo
‘Yes, I just saw the missed calls. There’s not much of a signal down in our bunker. Would it be possible to do anything about that?’
‘I’ll ask Tord if we could set up a relay or something. So can I have my office back now?’
Harry and Smith were alone in the lift.
‘You’re avoiding eye contact,’ Smith said.
‘That’s the rule in lifts, isn’t it?’ Harry said.
‘I meant generally.’
‘If not making eye contact is the same as avoiding it, you’re probably right.’
‘And you don’t like lifts.’
‘Mm. Is it that obvious?’
‘Body language doesn’t lie. And you think I talk too much.’
‘This is your first day, you’re bound to be a bit nervous.’
‘No, I’m like this most of the time.’
‘OK. By the way, I haven’t thanked you for changing your mind.’
‘Don’t mention it. I should be apologising for the fact that my initial response was so selfish when people’s lives are at stake.’
‘I can understand that your doctorate means a lot to you.’
Smith smiled. ‘Yes, you understand because you’re one of us.’
‘One of who?’
‘The half-crazy elite. Maybe you’ve heard of the Goldman Dilemma from the 1980s? Elite athletes were asked if they’d be prepared to take a drug that would guarantee a gold medal, but they’d die five years later. More than half answered yes. When the rest of the population were asked the same question, only two out of 250 said yes. I know it sounds sick to most people, but not to people like you and me, Harry. Because you’d sacrifice your life to catch this murderer, wouldn’t you?’
Harry looked at the psychologist for a long while. Heard the echo of Ståle’s words. Because you understand the idea of the monkey trap: you can never give up either.
‘Anything else you’re wondering about, Smith?’
‘Yes. Has she put on weight?’
‘Who?’
‘Ståle’s daughter.’
‘Aurora?’ Harry raised an eyebrow. ‘Well, she probably used to be thinner.’
Smith nodded. ‘You’re not going to like my next question, Harry.’
‘We’ll see.’
‘Do you think Ståle Aune might have an incestuous relationship with his daughter?’
Harry stared at Smith. He had picked him because he wanted people who were prepared to think original thoughts, and as long as Smith came up with the goods Harry was prepared to tolerate almost anything. Almost anything.
‘OK,’ Harry said in a low voice. ‘You’ve got twenty seconds to explain yourself. Use them wisely.’
‘I’m just saying that—’
‘Eighteen.’
‘OK, OK. Self-harming behaviour. She was wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt that hid the scars on her lower arms which she kept scratching the whole time. Hygiene. When you stood close to her you could tell that her personal hygiene wasn’t great. Eating. Extreme eating or dieting is typical in abuse victims. Mental state. She seemed depressed generally, may be suffering from angst. I realise that the clothes and make-up can be misleading, but body language and facial expressions don’t lie. Intimacy. I could see in your body language that you were open to the idea of a hug in the boiler room. But she pretended not to notice, that was why she’d pulled her hair in front of her face before she came in – you know each other well, you’ve hugged each other before, so she predicted what would happen. Abuse victims avoid intimacy and bodily contact. Is my time up?’
The lift stopped with a jolt.
Harry took a step forward, so that he towered over Smith, and pressed the button to keep the lift doors closed. ‘Let’s assume for a moment that you’re right, Smith.’ Harry lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘What the hell has that got to do with Ståle? Apart from the fact that back in the day he got you kicked off your psychology degree in Oslo and landed you with the nickname “the Monkey”.’
Harry saw tears of pain in Smith’s eyes, as if he’d been slapped. Smith blinked and swallowed. ‘Oh. You’re probably right, Harry. I’m just seeing something I subconsciously want to see because I’m still angry. It was a hunch, and like I said, I’m not good at them.’
Harry nodded slowly. ‘And you know that, so this wasn’t your first hunch. What did you see?’
Hallstein Smith straightened up. ‘I saw a father holding his daughter’s hand when she’s what, sixteen, seventeen years old? And my first thought is that it’s sweet that they’re still doing that, that I hope my daughters and I will still be holding hands well into their teenage years.’
‘But?’
‘But you can look at it from the other side, that the father is exerting power and control by holding on to her, keeping her in her place.’
‘And what makes you think that?’
‘Because she runs off the moment she gets the chance. I’ve worked on cases where there are suspicions of incest, Harry, and running away from home is precisely one of the things we look at. The symptoms I mentioned can mean a thousand other things, but if there’s one chance in a thousand that she’s being abused at home, it would be a dereliction of my professional duty not to share my thoughts, don’t you think? I understand that you’re a friend of the family, but that’s also the reason I’m sharing these thoughts with you. You’re the only person who can talk to her.’
Harry let go of the button, the doors slid open and Hallstein Smith slipped out.
Harry waited until the doors started to close again, stuck one foot between them and was going after Smith, down the stairs towards the culvert, when his phone buzzed in his pocket.
He answered.
‘Hello, Harry.’ Isabelle Skøyen’s masculine voice, simultaneously chirping and teasing, was unmistakable. ‘You’re back in the saddle, I hear.’
‘I don’t know about that.’
‘We did ride together for a while, Harry. It was fun. Could have been more fun.’
‘I thought it was as much fun as it could have been.’
‘Well, water under the bridge, Harry. I’m calling to ask for a favour. Our communications bureau is doing some work for Mikael, and you might have seen that Dagbladet has just published an article online which is pretty hard on Mikael?’
‘No.’
‘They write, quote: “The city is now paying the price for the fact that the Oslo Police under Mikael Bellman has failed to do what we have the police for, to catch people like Valentin Gjertsen. It is a scandal, a sign of professional bankruptcy, that Gjertsen has played cat and mouse with the police for four years. And now he’s tired of being the mouse, so he’s playing at being the cat instead.” What do you think?’
‘Could have been better written.’
‘What we want is for someone to come forward and explain how unreasonable this criticism of Mikael is. Someone who can remind people of the clear-up rate for serious crime under Bellman, someone who has been personally responsible for many murder investigations, someone who is held in high esteem. And because you’re now a lecturer at Police College you can’t be accused of sycophancy either. You’re perfect, Harry. What do you say?’
‘Obviously I want to help you and Bellman.’
‘You do? That’s great!’
‘The best way I can. Which is by catching Valentin Gjertsen. Something I’m pretty busy with right now, so if you’ll excuse me, Skøyen.’
‘I know you’re all working hard, Harry, but that could take time.’
‘And why is it so urgent to polish Bellman’s reputation right now? Let me save us both some time. I will never stand in front of a microphone and say anything dictated by a PR agent. If we hang up now we can say that we had a civilised conversation which didn’t end with me being forced to tell you to go to hell.’
Isabelle Skøyen laughed loudly. ‘You haven’t changed, Harry. Still engaged to that sweet lawyer with the black hair?’
‘No.’
�
�No? Maybe we should have a drink one evening?’
‘Rakel and I are no longer engaged because we’re married.’
‘Ah. Well, I never. But is that necessarily a problem?’
‘It is for me. For you it’s probably more of a challenge.’
‘Married men are best, they never give you any trouble.’
‘Like Bellman?’
‘Mikael’s lovely, and he’s got the most kissable lips in the city Well, this conversation’s getting boring now, Harry, so I’m hanging up. You’ve got my number.’
‘No, I haven’t. Bye.’
Rakel. He’d forgotten that she’d called. He brought up her number as he checked his reaction, just for the hell of it. Had Isabelle Skøyen’s invitation had any effect on him, had it managed to turn him on at all? No. Well. A bit. Did that mean anything? No. It meant so little that he couldn’t be bothered to work out what sort of bastard he was. Not that it meant that he wasn’t a bastard, but that tiny little tingle, that involuntary, half-dreamt fragment of a scene – with her long legs and broad hips – which was there one moment, then gone, wasn’t enough for a guilty verdict. Bloody hell. He’d rejected her. Even though he knew that rejection made Isabelle Skøyen more likely to call him again.
‘Rakel Fauke’s phone, you’re talking to Dr Steffens.’
Harry felt the back of his neck begin to prickle. ‘This is Harry Hole, is Rakel there?’
‘No, Hole, she isn’t.’
Harry felt his throat tighten. Panic was creeping up on him. The ice was creaking. He concentrated on breathing. ‘Where is she?’
In the long pause that followed, which he suspected was there for a reason, Harry had time to think a lot of things. And of all the conclusions his brain automatically came to, there was one he knew he would remember. That it ended here, that he would no longer be able to have the one thing he wanted: for today and tomorrow to be a copy of the day he had yesterday.
‘She’s in a coma.’
In confusion, or in sheer, utter desperation, his brain tried to tell him that a coma was a city or a country.
‘But she tried to call me. Less than an hour ago.’
‘Yes,’ Steffens said. ‘And you didn’t answer.’
18
MONDAY AFTERNOON
SENSELESS. HARRY WAS sitting in a hard chair and trying to concentrate on what the man on the other side of the desk was saying. But the words made as much sense as the birdsong outside the open window behind the man in glasses and a white coat. As senseless as the blue sky and the fact that the sun had decided to shine brighter today than it had done for weeks. As senseless as the posters on the walls depicting people with grey organs and bright red blood vessels on show, or, beside them, a cross with a bleeding Christ on it.
Rakel.
The only thing in his life that made any sense.
Not science, not religion, not justice, not a better world, not pleasure, not intoxication, not the absence of pain, not even happiness. Only those five letters. R-a-k-e-l. It wasn’t the case that if it hadn’t been her, it would have been someone else. If it hadn’t been her, it would have been no one.
And having no one would have been better than this.
They can’t take no one away from you.
So in the end Harry cut through the torrent of words.
‘What does it mean?’
‘It means,’ Senior Consultant John D. Steffens said, ‘that we don’t know. We know that her kidneys aren’t working the way they should. And that could be caused by a number of things, but, like I said, we’ve ruled out the most obvious.’
‘So what do you think?’
‘A syndrome,’ Steffens said. ‘The problem is that there are thousands, each one rarer and more obscure than the last.’
‘Which means?’
‘That we need to keep looking. For the time being we’ve put her in a coma, because she was starting to have difficulty breathing.’
‘How long …?’
‘For the time being. We don’t just need to find out what’s wrong with your wife, we need to be able to treat it as well. Only when we’re sure she’ll be able to breathe independently will we bring her out of the coma.’
‘Could she … could she …’
‘Yes?’
‘Could she die while she’s in the coma?’
‘We don’t know.’
‘Yes, you do.’
Steffens put his fingertips together. Waited, as if to force the conversation into a lower gear.
‘She could die,’ he said eventually. ‘We could all die. The heart can stop at any moment, but obviously it’s a question of probability.’
Harry knew that the rage he felt bubbling up wasn’t really anything to do with the doctor and the platitudes he was coming out with. He had spoken to enough next of kin in murder cases to know that frustration sought a target, and the fact that it couldn’t find one only made him more furious. He took a deep breath. ‘And what sort of probability are we talking about here?’
Steffens threw his hands out. ‘Like I said, we don’t know the cause of her kidney failure.’
‘You don’t know, and that’s why it’s called probability,’ Harry said. Stopped. Swallowed. Lowered his voice. ‘So just tell me what you think the probability is, based on the little you do know.’
‘Kidney failure isn’t the fault, in and of itself, it’s a symptom. It could be a blood disease, or poisoning. It’s the season for mushroom poisoning, but your wife said you haven’t eaten any recently. And you’ve eaten the same things. Are you feeling unwell, Hole?’
‘Yes.’
‘You … Okay, I understand. What we’re left with, some sort of syndrome, is invariably a serious problem.’
‘Over or under fifty per cent, Steffens?’
‘I can’t—’
‘Steffens, I know we’re in no man’s land here, but I’m begging you. Please.’
The doctor stared at Harry for a long time before seeming to make a decision.
‘As things stand, based on her test results, I think the risk of losing her is a little over fifty per cent. Not much more than fifty, but slightly more. The reason I don’t like telling relatives these percentages is that they usually read too much into them. If a patient dies during an operation where we estimated the risk of death at twenty-five per cent, they often accuse us of having misled them.’
‘Forty-five per cent? A forty-five per cent chance of her surviving?’
‘At the moment. Her condition is deteriorating, so a bit lower if we can’t identify the cause within a day or two.’
‘Thanks.’ Harry stood up. Dizzy. And the thought came automatically: a hope that everything would go completely dark. A fast and pain-free exit, stupid and banal, yet no less senseless than everything else.
‘It would be useful to know how to get hold of you if …’
‘I’ll make sure you can reach me at any time,’ Harry said. ‘I’ll go back to her now, if there isn’t anything else I should know.’
‘Let me come with you, Harry.’
They headed back to room 301. The corridor stretched away and vanished into shimmering light. Presumably a window, with the low autumn sun shining directly through it. They passed nurses in ghostly white, and patients in dressing gowns, slowly moving towards the light with their living-dead shuffle. Yesterday he and Rakel had been embracing in the big bed with its slightly too soft mattress, and now she was here, in the land of coma, among ghosts and spirits. He needed to call Oleg. He needed to work out how to tell him. He needed a drink. Harry didn’t know where the thought came from, but there it was, as if someone had shouted it, spelling it out, straight into his ear. The thought needed to be drowned out, quickly.
‘Why were you Penelope Rasch’s doctor?’ he said in a loud voice. ‘She wasn’t a patient here.’
‘Because she needed a blood transfusion,’ Steffens said. ‘And I’m a haematologist and bank manager. But I also do shifts in A&E.’
‘Ban
k manager?’
Steffens looked at Harry. And perhaps he realised that Harry’s mind needed distracting, a brief pause from everything he found himself in the middle of.
‘The local branch of the blood bank. I should probably be called bath manager, because we took over the old rheumatic baths that used to be in the basement beneath this building. We call it the bloodbath. Don’t try to tell me that haematologists haven’t got a sense of humour.’
‘Hm. So that’s what you meant about buying and selling blood.’
‘Sorry?’
‘You said that was why you were able to use pictures from the crime scene in Penelope Rasch’s stairwell to calculate how much blood she’d lost. By eye.’
‘You’ve got a good memory.’
‘How is she doing?’
‘Oh, Penelope Rasch is recovering physically. But she’s going to need psychological help. Coming face-to-face with a vampire—’
‘Vampirist.’
‘—it’s an omen, you know.’
‘An omen?’
‘Oh yes. He was predicted and described in the Old Testament.’
‘The vampirist?’
Steffens smiled thinly. ‘Proverbs 30:14. “A sort whose teeth are swords, and whose jaws are set with knives, who devour the poor from the earth and the needy out of house and home.” Here we are.’
Steffens held the door open and Harry walked in. Into the night. On the other side of the closed curtain the sun was shining, but in here the only light was a shimmering green line jumping across a black screen, over and over again. Harry gazed down at her face. She looked so peaceful. And so far away, floating in a dark space where he couldn’t reach her. He sat down on the chair beside the bed, waited until he heard the door close behind him. Then he took hold of her hand and pressed his face to the covers.
‘No further away now, darling,’ he whispered. ‘No further.’
Truls Berntsen had moved the screens in the open-plan office so that the corner he shared with Anders Wyller was completely hidden from view. Which is why he was annoyed that the only person who could see him, Wyller, was so damn curious about everything, and especially who he was talking to on the phone. But right now the snooper was out at some tattoo and piercing parlour, because they’d had a tip-off saying they were importing vampire accessories, among them denture-like metal objects with pointed canine teeth, and Truls was planning to make the most of the break. He’d downloaded the final episode of the second season of The Shield, and had turned the volume so low that only he could hear it. For that reason he definitely wasn’t at all pleased when his phone started to flash and buzz like a vibrator on the desk in front of him as it played the start of Britney Spears’s ‘I’m Not a Girl’, which Truls, for reasons that weren’t entirely clear, was very fond of. The words, about her not being a woman yet, prompted vague thoughts of a girl who was under the age of consent, and Truls hoped that wasn’t why he had it as his ringtone. Or was it? Britney Spears in that school uniform, was it perverse to wank off to that? OK, in that case he was a perv. But what worried Truls more was that the number on the screen was vaguely familiar. The City Treasurer’s department? Internal Investigations? Some questionable old contact he’d done a burner job for? Someone he owed money or a favour? It wasn’t Mona Daa’s number anyway. Most likely it was a work call, and probably one that meant he was going to have to do something. Either way, he concluded that this was unlikely to be a call he had anything to win by answering. He put the phone in a drawer and concentrated on Vic Mackey and his colleagues on the STRIKE team. He loved Vic, The Shield really was the only cop series that showed how people in the force actually thought. Then all of a sudden he realised why the number had seemed familiar. He yanked the drawer open and grabbed the phone. ‘Detective Constable Berntsen.’