Harry Hole Mysteries 3-Book Bundle (140 page)

Then I hugged him. I could feel he hadn’t lowered his head; he was looking over my shoulder. At Irene. And through his denim jacket I could feel his heart accelerating.

Officer Berntsen sat with his feet on the desk and the telephone receiver to his ear. He had rung the police station in Lillestrøm, Romerike Police District, and introduced himself as Thomas Lunder, a laboratory assistant for Kripos. The officer he was speaking to had just confirmed they had received the bag of what they assumed was heroin from Gardermoen. The standard procedure was that all confiscated drugs in the country were sent for testing to the Kripos laboratory in Bryn, Oslo. Once a week a Kripos vehicle went round collecting from all the police districts in Østland. Other districts sent the material via their own couriers.

‘Good,’ Berntsen said, fidgeting with the false ID card displaying a photo and the signature of Thomas Lunder, Kripos, underneath. ‘I’ll be in Lillestrøm anyway, so I’ll pick up the bag for Bryn. We’d like such a large seizure to be tested at once. OK, see you early tomorrow.’

He rang off and looked out of the window. Looked at the new area around Bjørvika rising towards the sky. Thought of all the small details: the sizes of screws, the thread on nuts, the quality of mortar, the flexibility of glass, everything that had to be right for the whole to function. And felt a profound satisfaction. Because it did. This town did function.

THE LONG, SLIM FEMININE LEGS
of the pine trees rose into the skirt of green that cast hazy afternoon shadows across the gravel in front of the house. Harry stood at the top of the drive, drying his sweat after mounting the steep hills from Holmendammen and observing the dark house. The black-stained, heavy timber expressed solidity, security, a bulwark against trolls and nature. It hadn’t been enough. The neighbouring houses were large, inelegant detached houses undergoing continuous improvement and extension. Øystein, called Ø in his phone contacts list, had said that cog-jointed timbers were a statement of the bourgeoisie’s longing for nature, simplicity and health. What Harry saw was sick, perverted, a family under siege from a serial killer. Nonetheless, she had chosen to keep the house.

Harry walked to the door and pressed the bell.

Heavy footsteps sounded from inside. And Harry realised that he should have phoned first.

The door opened.

The man standing before him had a blond fringe, the type of fringe that had been full in its prime and had undoubtedly brought him advantages, and which therefore one took into later life hoping that the somewhat more straggly version would still work. The man was wearing
an ironed light blue shirt of the kind Harry guessed he had also worn in his youth.

‘Yes?’ the man said. Open, friendly features. Eyes looking as if they had not met anything other than friendliness. A small polo player sewn into the breast pocket.

Harry felt his throat go dry. He cast a glance at the nameplate under the doorbell.

Rakel Fauke.

Yet the man with the attractive, weak face was standing there and holding the door open as though it were his. Harry knew he had several options for a great opening gambit, but the one he chose was: ‘Who are you?’

The man in front of him produced the facial expression Harry had never been able to achieve. He frowned and smiled at the same time. The superior person’s condescending amusement at the inferior person’s impudence.

‘Since you are on the outside and I am on the inside it would seem more natural that you should say who you are. And what you want.’

‘As you wish,’ Harry said with a loud yawn. Of course, he could blame that on jet lag. ‘I’m here to speak to the lady whose name is by the doorbell.’

‘And you are from?’

‘The Jehovah’s Witnesses,’ Harry said, checking his watch.

The man automatically shifted his eyes from Harry to look for the obligatory second man in the team.

‘My name’s Harry and I come from Hong Kong. Where is she?’

The man arched an eyebrow.
‘The
Harry?’

‘Since it has been one of Norway’s least trendy names for the last fifty years, we can probably assume it is.’

The man studied Harry now, with a nod and a half-smile on his lips as though his brain was playing back the information it had received about the character in front of him. But with no suggestion that he was going to move from the doorway or answer any of Harry’s questions.

‘Well?’ Harry said, shifting weight from one leg.

‘I’ll tell her you were here.’

Harry’s foot was swift. Out of instinct he flipped the sole upward so that the door hit it instead of the shoe upper. That was the kind of trick his new occupation had taught him. The man looked down at Harry’s foot and then at him. The condescending amusement was gone. He was about to say something. A withering remark that would re-establish order. But Harry knew he would change his mind. When he saw the look on Harry’s face that made people change their minds.

‘You’d better—’ the man said. Stopped. Blinked once. Harry waited. For the confusion. The hesitation. The retreat. Blink number two. The man coughed. ‘She’s out.’

Harry stood stock-still. Let the silence ring out. Two seconds. Three seconds.

‘I … er, don’t know when she’ll be back.’

Not a muscle stirred in Harry’s countenance while the man’s face leapt from one expression to another as if searching for one to hide behind. And ended up where it had started: with the friendly one.

‘My name’s Hans Christian. I … apologise for having to be so negative. But a lot of bizarre enquiries regarding the case have come in, and it’s essential that Rakel has some peace now. I’m her solicitor.’

‘Hers?’

‘Theirs. Hers and Oleg’s. Would you like to come in?’

Harry nodded.

On the living-room table there were piles of papers. Harry went over to them. Case documents. Reports. The height of the pile suggested they had not stinted on their searches.

‘Dare I ask what has brought you here?’ Hans Christian asked.

Harry flicked through the papers. DNA tests. Witness statements. ‘Well, do you?’

‘Do I what?’

‘Why are
you
here? Haven’t you got an office where you can prepare the defence?’

‘Rakel wants to be involved. She is a lawyer herself. Listen, Hole. I
know very well who you are and I know you’ve been close to Rakel and Oleg, but—’

‘And how close are you exactly?’

‘Me?’

‘Yes, it sounds as if you’ve assumed responsibility for their all-round care.’

Harry ignored the overtone to his voice and knew that he had revealed himself, knew the man was watching him in amazement. And knew he had lost the upper hand.

‘Rakel and I are old friends,’ Hans Christian said. ‘I grew up close to here, we studied law together, and … well. When you spend the best years of your life together there are bonds of course.’

Harry nodded. Knew that he should keep his mouth shut. Knew that everything he said would make things worse.

‘Mm. With bonds of that kind it’s strange I never saw or heard about you when Rakel and I were together.’

Hans Christian was unable to answer. The door opened. And there she was.

Harry felt a claw close around his heart and wrench it round.

Her figure was the same: slim, erect. The face was the same: heart-shaped with dark brown eyes and the broadish mouth that liked to laugh so much. The hair was almost the same: long, though the darkness was perhaps a tad lighter. But the eyes were changed. They were the eyes of a hunted animal, widened, wild. But when they fell on Harry it was as if something returned. Something of the person she had been. Of what they had been.

‘Harry,’ she said. And at the sound of her voice, the rest came, everything came back.

He took two long strides and held her in his arms. The scent of her hair. Her fingers on his spine. She was the first to let go. He retreated a step and looked at her.

‘You look good,’ he said.

‘You too.’

‘Liar.’

She smiled quickly. Tears had already formed in her eyes.

They stayed standing like that. Harry let her study him, let her absorb his older face with its new scar. ‘Harry,’ she repeated, tilted her head and laughed. The first tear trembled on her eyelashes and fell. A stripe ran down her soft skin.

Somewhere in the room a man with a polo player on his shirt coughed and said something about having to go to a meeting.

Then they were alone.

While Rakel was making coffee he saw her gaze fix on his metal finger, but neither of them made a comment. There was an unspoken agreement that they would never mention the Snowman. So Harry sat at the kitchen table and instead talked about his life in Hong Kong. Told her what he was able to tell. What he wanted to tell. That the job as ‘debt consultant’ for Herman Kluit’s outstanding accounts consisted in meeting customers with payments that had fallen behind and jogging their memories in a friendly way. In brief, the consultation involved advising them to pay as soon as was practical and feasible. Harry said his major and basically sole qualification was that he measured 1 metre 92 centimetres in his stockinged feet, had broad shoulders, bloodshot eyes and a newly acquired scar.

‘Friendly, professional. Suit, tie, multinationals in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Shanghai. Hotels with room service. Elegant office blocks. Civilised, Swiss-style private banks with a Chinese twist. Western handshakes and courtesy phrases. And Asian smiles. By and large they pay the next day. Herman Kluit is content. We understand each other.’

She poured coffee for both of them and sat down. Took a deep breath.

‘I got a job with the International Court of Justice in The Hague, with offices in Amsterdam. I thought that if we left this house behind us, this town, all the attention …’

Me, Harry thought.

‘… the memories, everything would be alright. And for a while it was.
But then it started. At first, the senseless bouts of temper. As a boy Oleg never raised his voice. He was grumpy, yes, but never … like that. Said I’d ruined his life by taking him away from Oslo. He said that because he knew I had no defence. And when I started to cry, he started to cry. Asked me why I’d pushed you out. You’d saved us from … from …’

He nodded so that she didn’t have to say the name.

‘He began to come home late. Said he was meeting friends, but they were friends I had never met. One day he admitted he’d been to a coffee shop in Leidseplein and smoked hash.’

‘The Bulldog Palace with all the tourists?’

‘Right. I suppose that’s part of the Amsterdam experience, I thought. But I was afraid at the same time. His father … well, you know.’

Harry nodded. Oleg’s aristocratic Russian genes from his father. Highs, furies and lows. Dostoevsky land.

‘He sat in his room a lot listening to music. Heavy, gloomy stuff. Well, you know these bands …’

Harry nodded again.

‘But your records, too. Frank Zappa. Miles Davis. Supergrass. Neil Young. Supersilent.’

The names came so quickly and naturally that Harry suspected she had been eavesdropping.

‘Then, one day I was hoovering his room and I found two pills with smileys on.’

‘Ecstasy?’

She nodded. ‘Two months later I applied for and got a job at the Office of the Attorney General and moved back here.’.

‘To safe old innocent Oslo.’

She shrugged. ‘He needed a change of scene. A new start. And it worked. He’s not the type to have lots of friends, as you know, but he met a couple of old pals and got on well at school until …’ Her voice fell apart at the seams.

Harry waited. He took a swig of coffee. Braced himself.

‘He could be away for several days in a row. I didn’t know what to do.
He did as he wanted. I rang the police, psychologists, sociologists. He wasn’t legally an adult, yet there was nothing anyone could do unless there was evidence of taking drugs or law-breaking. I felt so helpless. Me! Who always thought it was the parents who were at fault, who always had a solution at hand when other parents’ children went off the rails. Don’t be apathetic, don’t repress. Action!’

Harry looked at her hand beside his on the coffee table. The delicate fingers. The fine veins on the pale hand that was normally tanned so early in the autumn. But he didn’t obey his impulse to cover her hand with his. Something was in the way. Oleg was in the way.

She sighed.

‘So I went to the city centre and searched for him. Night after night. Until I found him. He was standing on a corner of Tollbugata and was pleased to see me. Said he was happy. He had a job and was sharing a flat with some friends. He needed his freedom. I shouldn’t ask so many questions. He was “travelling”. This was his version of a gap year, sailing round the world, like all the other kids on Holmenkollen Ridge. Sailing round the world of Oslo city centre.’

‘What was he wearing?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Nothing. Go on.’

‘He said he would be home again soon. And would finish his studies at school. So we agreed he would come back and have Sunday lunch with me.’

‘And did he?’

‘Yes. And when he’d left I saw that he had been in my bedroom and stolen my jewellery box.’ She took a long, quivering breath. ‘The ring you bought me in Vestkanttorget was in the box.’

‘Vestkanttorget?’

‘Don’t you remember?’

Harry’s brain rewound at top speed. There were a few black holes, some white ones he had repressed and large, blank expanses alcohol had consumed. But also areas with colour and texture. Like the day they were
walking around the second-hand market in Vestkanttorget. Was Oleg with them? Yes, he was. Of course. The photograph. The self-timer. The autumn leaves. Or was that another day? They had ambled from stall to stall. Old toys, crockery, rusty cigar boxes, vinyl records with and without sleeves, lighters. And a gold ring.

It had looked so lonely there. So Harry had bought it and put it on her finger. To give it a new home, he had said. Or some such thing. Something flippant he knew she would perceive as shyness, as a disguised declaration of love. And perhaps it was – at any rate they had both laughed. About the act, about the ring, about their both knowing the other knew. And about all of that being fine. For everything they wanted and yet did not want lay in this cheap, tatty ring. A vow to love each other as passionately and for as long as they could, and to part when there was no love left. When she had parted it had been for other reasons of course. Better reasons. But, Harry established, she had taken care of their tawdry ring, kept it in the box with the jewellery she had inherited from her Austrian mother.