by Jo Nesbo
He looked at the screen between the seats in front of him. He saw that it must be angled in such a way that it reflected his face, because from where he was sitting it looked like his own ravaged face was filling VG’s website. He looked down at the headline under the reflection.
LIVE report from press conference: SUSPECTED KILLER HARRY HOLE MISSING.
Harry screwed his eyes shut, both to assure himself he was awake and that he wasn’t seeing things. He read the headline again. Looked at the picture, which wasn’t a reflection, but a photograph taken after the vampirist case.
Harry sat back in his seat and pulled the front of his hat down over his face.
Fuck, fuck.
That picture would be everywhere within the next couple of hours. He’d be recognised in the street, because in the city a limping man in camouflage clothes that were too small for him would be the very opposite of camouflaged. And if he was arrested now, the whole plan would be shot to hell. So the plan needed to change.
Harry tried to think. He couldn’t move about openly, so he would have to get hold of a phone as soon as possible, so he could call the people he needed to talk to. In five or six minutes they would be pulling into the bus station. There was a pedestrian walkway to Central Station. Around the station, in the bustling crowds, among junkies and beggars and the more eccentric elements of the city, he wouldn’t stand out so badly. And, more important, since Telenor had shut down all their public phones in 2016, they had—almost as a curiosity—installed a few old-fashioned coin-operated payphones, one of them at Central Station.
But even if he made it that far, he still had the same problem.
How to get from Oslo to Trondheim.
Without a single krone in his pocket.
* * *
—
“No comment,” Katrine Bratt said. “I can’t comment on that at present.” And: “That’s a question for Kripos.”
Sung-min felt sorry for her as she sat there letting the reporters pepper her with questions. She looked like she was at her own funeral. Was that a good choice of expression, though? What reasons did we really have to assume that death was a worse place? Harry Hole evidently hadn’t thought it was.
Sung-min slipped out from the otherwise-empty row of seats. He had heard enough. Enough to see that Winter had got what he wanted. Enough to see that he might not be able to challenge the alpha male for the foreseeable future. Because this case would strengthen Winter’s position still further, and now that Sung-min had fallen out of favour he would have to ask himself if it was time to seek a transfer to a different club. Katrine Bratt seemed to be the sort of coach he could imagine working for. Working with. He could step into the gap left by Harry Hole. If he was Messi, then Hole had been Maradona. A divinely blessed cheat. And no matter how brightly Messi shone, he would never be as great a legend as Maradona. Because Sung-min knew that even if he faced resistance at the moment, his own story was going to lack the fall from grace, the tragedy of Hole and Maradona. His story was going to be one of boring success.
* * *
—
Kasko was wearing his Oakley sunglasses.
He had pinched them from the windowsill of a coffee bar he had gone in to get one of the paper cups he used to beg for money for gear. The owner of the sunglasses had put them down to study a girl in the street outside the bar. The sun was glinting off the snow outside, so it seemed a bit odd to be taking the sunglasses off. But presumably he wanted the girl to see that he was looking at her. Well, served the idiot right for being full of the joys of spring.
“Idiot!” Kasko groaned loudly to anyone and everyone.
His thighs and buttocks felt numb beneath him. It took its toll, sitting on your arse all day on a hard, stone floor looking like you were suffering. Well, he was suffering. And it was high time he got his evening fix.
“Thanks!” he sang out when a coin fell into the paper cup. It was important to show you were in good spirits.
Kasko had put the sunglasses on because he thought they made him less recognisable. Not that he was frightened of the police, he had told them what he knew. But they hadn’t found and caught David yet, and if David had found out that Kasko had blabbed to the Chinese detective, there was a good chance he was looking for Kasko now. Which was why it made sense to sit here in the crowd in front of the ticket desk at Central Station, where at least no one could threaten to kill you.
And perhaps the mixture of decent spring weather and fewer delays on the trains had put people in a better mood. They had certainly dropped more money than usual into the paper cup in front of him. Even a couple of kids in the emo gang that usually hung around the steps down to Platform 19 had given him a bit of change. The evening fix was as good as sorted; he wouldn’t have to sell the sunglasses tonight.
Kasko noticed a figure in camouflage uniform. Not because he was limping, had a bandage under his hat and generally looked dishevelled, but because he was walking in a way that broke the pattern, he was walking across everyone else, like a predator fish in a shoal of plankton-eaters. To be more precise, he was heading straight for Kasko. Kasko didn’t like that. The people who gave him money were on their way past him, not towards him. Towards him wasn’t good.
The man stopped in front of him.
“Can I borrow a couple of coins from you?” His voice was as rough as Kasko’s.
“Sorry, mate,” Kasko said. “You’ll have to get your own, I’ve only got enough for myself.”
“I only need twenty, thirty kroner.”
Kasko gave a short laugh. “I can see you need medicine but, like I said, so do I.”
The man crouched down beside him. Pulled something from his inside pocket. It was a police ID. Shit, not again. The man in the picture looked vaguely like the man in front of him.
“I am hereby seizing your takings from illegal begging in a public place,” he said, reaching for the cup.
“Like fuck you are!” Kasko yelled, snatching the cup. He clutched it to his chest.
A couple of passersby glanced at them.
“You’re giving that to me,” the man said. “Or I’ll take you down to the station, have you arrested, then there’ll be no fix for you until sometime later on tomorrow. How does a night like that sound?”
“You’re bluffing, you fucking junkie bastard! At a vote in the City Council on 16 December 2016, both primary and subsidiary proposals to ban fundraising in public, including begging, were chucked out.”
“Mm,” the man said, pretending to think this over. He moved closer to Kasko, screening him from people walking past, and whispered: “You’re right. It was a bluff. But this isn’t.”
Kasko stared. The man had put his hand inside his camouflage jacket, and was now holding a pistol aimed at Kasko. A big, noisy fucking pistol in the middle of evening rush hour at Central Station! The guy must be completely fucking deranged. The bandage around his head and a scary fucking scar from his mouth to his ear. Kasko knew all too well what drug cravings could do to otherwise perfectly normal people—he’d only recently seen what an iron bar could do, and here was this guy with a gun. He would have to sell the sunglasses after all.
“Here,” he groaned, giving the guy the paper cup.
“Thanks.” The man took it and looked inside.
“How much for the shades?”
“Huh?”
“The sunglasses.” The man pulled out all the notes that were in the cup and offered them to him. “Is this enough?”
Then he snatched the shades from Kasko, put them on, stood up and limped across the flow of people, towards the old phone box outside the 7-Eleven.
* * *
—
First Harry called his own voicemail, tapped in the code and checked that Kaja Solness hadn’t left a message to suggest she had tried to answer any of his calls. The only message was from a s
haken Johan Krohn: “I need to ask you to keep this message between the two of us. Svein Finne is engaged in blackmail. Of me. And my family. I…er, please, get back to me. Thanks.”
He’ll have to call someone else, I’m dead, Harry thought as he watched the coins drop into the phone.
He called directory inquiries. Got the numbers he asked for, making a note of them on the back of his hand.
The first number he called was Alexandra Sturdza’s.
“Harry!”
“Don’t hang up. I’m innocent. Are you at work?”
“Yes, but—”
“How much do they know?”
He heard her hesitate. Heard her make a decision. She gave him a brief summary of her conversation with Sung-min Larsen. She sounded close to tears by the time she finished.
“I know how it looks,” Harry said. “But you have to believe me. Can you do that?”
Silence.
“Alexandra. If I believed I’d killed Rakel, would I have bothered to rise from the dead?”
Still silence. Then a sigh.
“Thanks,” Harry said. “Do you remember that last evening I was at yours?”
“Yes,” she sniffed. “Or no.”
“We were lying on your bed. You asked me to use a condom because you were sure I didn’t want another kid. There was a woman who rang.”
“Oh yes. Kaja. Nasty name.”
“Right,” Harry said. “Now I need to ask you something I’m sure you don’t want to answer.”
“OK?”
Harry asked a yes/no question. He heard Alexandra pause. That was almost enough of an answer. Then she said yes. He had what he needed.
“Thanks. One more thing. Those trousers with blood on them. Can you run an analysis of it?”
“Rakel’s blood?”
“No. I was bleeding from my knuckles, so there’s my blood on the trousers as well, if you remember.”
“Yes.”
“Good. I want you to analyse my blood.”
“Yours? What for?”
Harry explained what he was after.
“That’s going to take a bit of time,” Alexandra said. “Let’s say an hour. Can I call you somewhere?”
Harry thought for a moment. “Send the results by text to Bjørn Holm.”
He gave her Bjørn’s number, then hung up.
Harry fed more money into the phone, noting that the coins were going faster than his words. He needed to be more efficient.
He knew Oleg’s number.
“Yes?” His voice sounded distant. Either because he was a long way away, or because his thoughts were. Possibly both.
“Oleg, it’s me.”
“Dad?”
Harry had to swallow.
“Yes,” Harry said.
“I’m dreaming,” Oleg said. It didn’t sound like a protest, just a sober statement of fact.
“You’re not,” Harry said. “Unless I’m dreaming too.”
“Katrine Bratt said you’d driven into a river.”
“I survived.”
“You tried to kill yourself.”
Harry could hear his stepson’s astonishment start to give way to rising anger.
“Yes,” Harry said. “Because I thought I had killed your mother. But at the last moment I realised that that’s what I was supposed to think.”
“What are you saying?”
“It’s too much to explain now, I haven’t got enough money. I need you to do something for me.”
A pause.
“Oleg?”
“I’m here.”
“The house is yours now, which means you can check the electricity consumption online. It shows the usage from hour to hour.”
“So?”
Harry explained what he needed, and told him to text the results to Bjørn Holm.
When he was done, he took a deep breath and called Kaja Solness’s number.
The phone rang six times. He was about to hang up, and almost jumped when he heard Kaja’s voice.
“Kaja Solness.”
Harry moistened his mouth. “It’s Harry.”
“Harry? I didn’t recognise the number.” She sounded stressed. Talking quickly.
“I tried calling you several times from my own phone,” Harry said.
“Did you? I haven’t checked. I…I have to go. The Red Cross. I’ve had to drop everything, that’s how it is when you’re on standby.”
“Mm. Where are they sending you?”
“To…it’s all happened so quickly that I don’t even remember the name. Earthquake. A small island in the Pacific, a hell of a long journey. That’s why I haven’t called you back, I’ve basically been sitting in a transport plane.”
“Mm. You sound like you’re nearby.”
“Phones are pretty good these days. Listen, I’m in the middle of something. What did you want?”
“I need somewhere to sleep.”
“Your flat?”
“Too risky. I need somewhere to hide.” Harry could see the amount of money left on the phone shrinking. “I can explain later, but I need to find somewhere else fast.”
“Hang on!”
“What?”
A pause.
“Come to mine,” Kaja said. “To my house, I mean. There’s a key under the doormat.”
“I can sleep at Bjørn’s.”
“No! I insist. I want you to go there. Really.”
“OK. Thanks.”
“Great. See you soon. I hope.”
Harry stood there looking in front of him for a few moments after he hung up. He found himself looking at a television screen above the counter of a café that jutted out into the concourse. It showed a clip of him walking into Oslo Courthouse. From the vampirist case, again. Harry quickly turned back towards the phone. Called Bjørn’s number, which he also knew by heart.
“Holm.”
“Harry.”
“No,” Bjørn said. “He’s dead. Who are you?”
“Don’t you believe in ghosts?”
“I said, who are you?”
“I’m the person you gave Road to Ruin to.”
Silence.
“I still like Ramones and Rocket to Russia better,” Harry said. “But it was a bloody good thought.”
Harry heard a noise. It took him a few moments to realise that it was crying. Not a child’s crying. A grown man’s.
“I’m at Central Station,” Harry said, pretending he hadn’t heard. “They’re looking for me, I’ve got a wounded knee, not a single krone to my name, and I need free transport to Lyder Sagens gate.”
Harry heard heavy breathing. A half-stifled “bloody hell” muttered to himself. Then Bjørn Holm said in a voice so thin and shaky it was as if Harry had never heard it before.
“I’m on my own with the lad. Katrine’s at a press conference up at Kripos. But…”
Harry waited.
“I’ll bring the baby, he needs to get used to cars,” Bjørn said. “Shopping centre entrance in twenty?”
“A couple of people have been looking at me a bit too closely, so if you could manage fifteen?”
“I’ll try. Stand by the tax—”
His voice was cut off by a long bleeping tone. Harry looked up. His last coin was gone. He put his hand inside his jacket and stroked his chest and rib.
* * *
—
Harry was standing in the shade outside the north-side entrance to Oslo Central Station when Bjørn’s red Volvo Amazon slid past the armada of waiting taxis and stopped. A couple of the drivers who were standing talking glanced over suspiciously, as if they thought the vintage car was a black-market taxi or, even worse, Uber.
Harry limped over to the car and got in the passenger seat.
<
br /> “Hello, ghost,” Bjørn whispered from his usual half-lying position. “To Kaja Solness’s?”
“Yes,” Harry said, realising that the whispering was because of the baby carrier that was strapped to the back seat.
They pulled out onto the roundabout next to Spektrum, where Bjørn had persuaded Harry to go to a Hank Williams tribute concert last summer. Then Bjørn had called Harry on the morning of the concert to say he was at the maternity ward, and that things had started a bit earlier than expected. And that he suspected the little kid was eager to get out so he could go with his dad to hear his first Hank Williams songs.
“Does Miss Solness know you’re on your way?” Bjørn asked.
“Yes. She says she’s left a key under the doormat.”
“No one leaves keys under the doormat, Harry.”
“We’ll see.”
They passed beneath Bispelokket and the government buildings. Past the mural of The Scream and Blitz, past Stensberggata where Bjørn and Harry had driven on the way to Harry’s flat early on the night of the murder. When Harry had been so out of it that he wouldn’t have noticed a bomb going off. Now he was concentrating hard, hearing every change in the sound of the engine, every creak of the seats, and—when they stopped at a red light on Sporveisgata close to Fagerborg Church—the child’s almost silent breathing in the back seat.
“You’ll have to tell me, when you think the time is right,” Bjørn Holm said quietly.
“I will,” Harry said, and heard how odd his voice sounded.
They drove through Norabakken and turned into Lyder Sagens gate.
“Here,” Harry said.
Bjørn stopped. Harry didn’t move.
Bjørn waited a bit, then switched the engine off. They looked at the dark house behind the fence.
“What do you see?” Bjørn asked.
