by Jo Nesbo
Harry aimed a blow. The crowbar went through the ceiling with a lifeless groan and white gypsum sprinkled down over his face.
And Harry was not even a detective, just a civilian consultant, not part of the investigation, a private individual who could accordingly be held to account and found guilty of hooliganism. And Harry was willing to pay the price.
He closed his eyes and bent the crowbar back. Felt bits of plaster fall on his shoulders and forehead. And caught the stench. It was worse here. He smashed the crowbar in again, making the gap bigger. He hunted around for something he could put on the chair so that he could get his head through the opening.
There it was again. A movement by the window. Harry jumped down and raced over to the window, shading his eyes to keep out the light and leaning against the glass. But all he could see out there in the darkness were the silhouettes of apple trees. Some of the branches were swaying. Had the wind picked up?
Harry turned back into the room, found a large plastic IKEA box, which he put on the chair, and he was about to clamber up when he heard a sound from the hall. A click. He stood waiting, listening. But no further sounds reached him. Harry shrugged it off; it was just the creaking of an old wooden house when the wind starts blowing. He balanced on top of the plastic box, stretched up gingerly, put the palms of his hands against the ceiling and poked his head through the cavity in the plasterboard.
The stench was so intense that his eyes instantly filled with water and he had to concentrate on holding his breath. The stench was familiar. Flesh in that phase of the decomposition process when inhaling the gas seems dangerous to your health. He had only smelt such an intense stench once before, when they’d found a body that had been wrapped in plastic for two years in a dark cellar and they’d poked holes in it. No, this was not a rodent, not even from the rodent family. It was dark inside, and his head was blocking all the light, but he could glimpse something lying right in front of him. He waited for his pupils to dilate slowly to make the most of the little light there was. And then he saw it. It was a drill. No, a jigsaw. But there was something else, further back, something he couldn’t quite see; he just felt a physical presence. Something . . . He felt his throat constrict. A sound. Of footsteps. Beneath him.
He tried to retract his head, but it was as if the opening had become too narrow, as if it was growing smaller around his neck, closing with him inside the atmosphere of death. He felt the panic rise, he forced his fingers between his throat and the mangled ceiling and tore off chunks. And pulled his head out.
The footsteps had stopped.
Harry’s pulse was throbbing in his throat. He waited until he was perfectly calm. Took the lighter from his pocket, put his hand through the opening, the flame leapt up, and he was about to stick his head back in when he noticed something. The plastic curtain separating the two rooms. Something was outlined against it. A figure. Someone was watching him from behind the curtain.
Harry coughed. ‘Katrine?’
No answer.
Harry’s eyes sought the crowbar he had left somewhere on the floor. Found it, stepped down as quietly as he could. Got one foot on the floor, heard the curtain being moved to the side and realised he wouldn’t have time to reach it. The voice sounded almost cheerful.
‘So we meet again.’
He looked up. In the dim light it took him a few seconds to recognise the face. He cursed under his breath. His brain searched for conceivable scenarios for how the next few seconds would play out, tossing around the question: what the hell’s going to happen now? But found no answer.
29
SHE HAD A bag over her shoulder, which she let slide down. It hit the floor with a surprisingly heavy thud.
‘What are you doing here?’ Harry asked gruffly, aware this was a repeat performance. The same as her answer.
‘I’ve been doing some training. Martial arts.’
‘That’s no answer, Silje.’
‘Yes, it is,’ Silje Gravseng said, thrusting one hip forward. She was wearing a thin tracksuit top, black leggings, trainers, a ponytail and a sly smile. ‘I’d finished my training and saw you leaving the college. I followed you.’
‘Why?’
She shrugged. ‘To give you another chance perhaps.’
‘A chance to do what?’
‘To do what you want.’
‘Which is?’
‘I don’t think I need to spell it out, do I?’ She tilted her head. ‘I saw it on your face in Krohn’s office.You don’t exactly have a poker face, Harry. You want to shag me.’
Harry nodded towards the bag. ‘Your training, is it the ninja stuff with a cane sword?’ His voice rasped from the dryness in his mouth.
Silje Gravseng’s gaze took in the room. ‘Something like that. We even have a bed here.’ She grabbed her bag, walked past him and pulled out a chair. Put the bag on the bed and tried to move a large sofa which was in the way, but it was stuck. Leaned forward, held the back of the sofa and pulled. Harry looked at her bottom, where her tracksuit top had ridden up, the muscles tightening in her thighs and heard her low groan. ‘Aren’t you going to help me?’
Harry swallowed.
Shit, shit, shit.
Watched the blonde ponytail dancing on her back. Like a bloody handle. The material pulled up between her buttocks. She had stopped moving, just stood there, as though she had noticed something. Noticed it. Noticed what he was thinking.
‘Like this?’ she whispered. ‘Do you want me like this?’
He didn’t answer, his erection grew; like delayed pain from a punch to the stomach, it spread from a point in his groin. His head began to fizz, bubbles rose and burst with a rushing noise that grew and grew. He took a step forward. Stopped.
She half turned her head, but cast her eyes down, looking at the floor.
‘What are you waiting for?’ she whispered. ‘Do you . . . do you want me to put up some resistance?’
Harry swallowed. He wasn’t on autopilot. He knew what he was doing. This was him. This was the kind of person he was. Even though he was talking to himself aloud now, he was going to do it. Didn’t he want to?
‘Yes,’ he heard himself say. ‘Stop me.’
He saw her raise her bottom now; it struck him this was like a ritual from the animal world, perhaps he was programmed to do this after all. He placed a hand on the small of her back, on the arch, felt bare, sweaty skin where her leggings finished. Two fingers under the elastic. All he had to do was pull them down now. She had one hand resting on the back of the chair and the other on the bed, on the bag. The bag was open.
‘I’ll try,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll try.’
Harry drew a long, quivering breath.
Noticed a movement. It happened so fast he hardly had time to react.
‘What’s up?’ Ulla asked as she was hanging up Mikael’s coat in the inbuilt cupboard.
‘What should be up?’ he asked, rubbing his face with the palms of his hands.
‘Come on,’ she said, leading him into the living room. Placed him on the sofa. Stood behind him. Rested her fingers on the transition behind the shoulders and his neck, let the tips find the middle of the trapezius and squeezed. He groaned aloud.
‘Well?’ she said.
He sighed. ‘Isabelle Skøyen. She’s proposed that the old Police Chief should assist us until the present case is solved.’
‘I see. Is there anything wrong with that? You said yourself you need more resources.’
‘In practice it would mean he would be the de facto Chief of Police and I’d be brewing the coffee. It would be a vote of no confidence, which I couldn’t accept. Surely you can see that.’
‘But it’s only temporary, isn’t it?’
‘And afterwards? When the case is solved with him at the helm? Will the council say now it’s all over you can have your job back? Ow!’
‘Sorry, but it’s just here. Try to relax, darling.’
‘It’s her revenge, of course, you know. Dumped women .
. . ouch!’
‘Oh dear, did I hit the sore spot again?’
Mikael wriggled out of her hands. ‘The worst of it is that there’s nothing I can do. She’s good at this game; I’m just a beginner. If I’d only had a bit of time, time to build some alliances, see who was scratching whose back.’
‘You’ll have to use the alliances you’ve got,’ Ulla said.
‘All the important alliances are in her half of the court,’ Mikael said. ‘Sodding politicians, they don’t think about outcomes like we do. For them it’s all about votes, how things look to the stupid voters.’
Mikael lowered his head. Her hands started to work again. Gentler this time. Massaged him, stroked his hair. And as he was about to let his mind float away, it seemed to apply the brakes and returned to what she had said. Use the alliances you’ve got.
Harry was blinded. He had automatically let go of Silje and turned. The plastic curtain had been drawn to one side and he stared into white light. Harry raised his hand above his eyes.
‘Sorry,’ said a familiar voice and the torch was lowered. ‘Brought a torch along. Didn’t think you . . .’
Harry drained his lungs with a groan. ‘Jesus, Katrine, you frightened me! Er . . . us.’
‘Oh, yes, isn’t that the student . . . I saw you at PHS.’
‘I’m not there any more.’ Silje’s voice sounded completely unruffled, almost as though she was bored.
‘Oh? So what are you doing . . .?’
‘Moving furniture,’ Harry said, with a quick sniff, pointing to the gap in the ceiling. ‘Trying to find something more robust to stand on.’
‘There’s a stepladder outside,’ Katrine said.
‘Is there? I’ll go and fetch it.’ Harry dashed past Katrine and through the sitting room. Shit, shit, shit and bugger.
The stepladder was leaning against the wall between the paint pots.
There was total silence when he returned, pushed away the armchair and positioned the aluminium ladder beneath the opening. No suggestion that they had spoken either. Women with arms crossed and faces devoid of expression.
‘What’s the stink?’ Katrine asked.
‘Pass me the torch,’ Harry said, climbing up the ladder. Tore off a chunk of plasterboard, poked the torch inside, then his head. Reached for the green jigsaw. The blade was broken. He held it between two fingers and passed it to Katrine. ‘Careful. There may be fingerprints.’
He shone the torch inside again. Stared. The dead body lay on its side, squeezed between the old and the new ceiling. Harry was thinking he bloody deserved to be here inhaling the stench of death and rotting flesh, no, he deserved to be the rotting flesh. He was a sick man, a very sick man. And if he wasn’t shot on the spot, he needed help. He had been about to do it, hadn’t he? Or had he stopped? Or was the idea that he might have stopped something he invented to sow doubt?
‘Can you see anything?’ Katrine asked.
‘I can indeed,’ Harry said.
‘Do we need a forensics team?’
‘That depends.’
‘On what?’
‘Whether Crime Squad wants to investigate this death.’
30
‘THIS IS A bit tricky to talk about,’ Harry said, stubbing out the cigarette on the windowsill, leaving the window overlooking Sporveisgata open and going back to his chair. Ståle Aune had said he could come before the first patient at eight when Harry had rung him at six and said he was in a mess again.
‘You’ve been here before to talk about tricky matters,’ Ståle said. For as long as Harry could remember he had been the psychologist the officers in Crime Squad went to when things got tough. Not just because they had his phone number, but because Ståle Aune was one of the few psychologists who knew what their everyday working life was like. And they knew they could rely on him keeping his mouth shut.
‘Yes, but that was about drinking,’ Harry said. ‘This is . . . quite different.’
‘Is it?’
‘Don’t you think it is?’
‘I think that since the first thing you did was to ring me, you think it may be more of the same.’
Harry sighed, leaned forward in the chair and rested his forehead against his folded hands. ‘Maybe it is. I always had the feeling I chose the worst possible times to drink. I always succumbed when it was important to be at my most alert. As though there was a demon inside me who wanted everything to go down the Swanee. Wanted me to go down the Swanee.’
‘That’s what demons do, Harry.’ Ståle concealed a yawn.
‘In that case, this one has done a good job. I was about to rape a girl.’
Ståle was no longer yawning. ‘What did you say? When was this?’
‘Last night. The girl’s an ex-student of mine at PHS. She turned up while I was searching a flat where Valentin had lived.’
‘Oh?’ Ståle removed his glasses. ‘Did you find anything?’
‘A jigsaw with a broken blade. Must have been there for years. Of course, the builders may have left it there when they were lowering the ceiling, but they’re checking the serrated edge against what they found in Bergslia.’
‘Anything else?’
‘No. Yes. A dead badger.’
‘Badger?’
‘Yes. Looked as if it had been hibernating there.’
‘Heh heh. We had a badger once, but fortunately it stayed in the garden. It has a fearsome bite on it. Did it die during its hibernation then?’
Harry smirked. ‘If you’re interested I can get forensics on the case.’
‘Sorry, I . . .’ Ståle shook his head and put his glasses back on. ‘The girl arrived and you felt tempted to rape her, is that how it was?’
Harry raised his arms over his head. ‘I’ve just proposed to the woman I love more than anything else in the world. I want nothing more than for us to have a good life together. And just as I’ve articulated the thought, the devil jumps out and . . . and . . .’ He lowered his arms again.
‘Why have you stopped?’
‘Because I’m sitting here and making up a devil and I know what you’ll say. I’m absolving myself of all responsibility.’
‘Aren’t you?’
‘Of course I am. It’s the same guy in new clothes. I thought he was called Jim Beam. I thought he was called the mother who died young or the pressure of the job. Or testosterone or booze genes. And perhaps all of that’s true too, but when you undress him he’s still called Harry Hole.’
‘And you’re saying Harry Hole almost raped this girl last night.’
‘I’ve been dreaming about it for a long time.’
‘Rape? In general?’
‘No. This girl. She asked me to do it.’
‘Rape her? Strictly speaking, that’s not rape, is it?’
‘The first time she just asked me to fuck her. She provoked me, but I couldn’t. She was a student at PHS. And afterwards I began to fantasise about raping her. I . . .’ Harry ran a hand across his face. ‘I didn’t think I had it in me. Not a rapist. What’s happening to me, Ståle?’
‘So you had the inclination and the opportunity to rape her, but you chose to desist?’
‘Someone interrupted us. Was it rape? I don’t know, but she invited me to take part in a role play. And I was willing to take the role, Ståle. Very willing.’
‘Yes, but I still can’t see that as rape.’
‘Perhaps not in a legal sense, but . . .’
‘But what?’
‘But if we’d got going and she’d asked me to stop, I don’t know whether I would have done.’
‘You don’t know?’
Harry shrugged. ‘Have you got a diagnosis, Doctor?’
Ståle looked at his watch. ‘I need you to tell me a bit more, but my first patient’s waiting for me now.’
‘I haven’t got any time for therapy, Ståle. We’ve got a murderer to catch.’
‘In that case,’ Aune said, rocking his podgy stomach to and fro in his chair, ‘you’ll have to make do
with me shooting from the hip. You’ve come to me because you feel something you can’t identify, and the reason you can’t identify it is that the feeling is trying to disguise itself as something which it is not. Because what the feeling really is, is something you don’t want to feel. It’s classic denial, just like men who refuse to accept they’re homosexual.’
‘But I’m not denying that I’m a potential rapist! I’m asking you straight out.’
‘You’re not a rapist, Harry, you don’t become one overnight. I think this may be about one of two things. Or perhaps both. One is, you may feel some form of aggression towards this girl. And what it’s really about is you exercising control. Or to use layman’s language, a punishment fuck. Am I close?’
‘Mm. Maybe. What was the other one?’
‘Rakel.’
‘Sorry?’
‘What you’re being drawn towards is neither rape nor this girl, but being unfaithful. Unfaithful to Rakel.’
‘Ståle, you—’
‘Easy now. You’ve come to me because you need someone to tell you what you’ve already realised. To say it loud and clear. Because you’re unable to tell yourself. You don’t want to have to feel like that.’
‘Like what?’
‘That you’re petrified of committing yourself to her. The thought of marriage has driven you to the edge of panic.’
‘Oh? Why’s that?’
‘Since I may venture to claim that I know you a bit after all these years, I believe that in your case this is more about the fear of taking responsibility for other people. You’ve had bad experiences . . .’
Harry gulped. Felt something growing in his chest, like a cancerous tumour on fast forward.
‘. . . you start drinking when the world around you is dependent on you and because you can’t take the responsibility, you want things to go down the pan. It’s like when a house of cards is almost finished and the pressure’s so great you can’t cope, so instead of persisting you knock it down. To get the defeat over with. And I think that’s what you’re doing now. You want to fail Rakel as quickly as possible because you’re convinced it’s going to happen anyway. You can’t bear the long-drawn-out torment, so you’re proactive; you knock down the damned house of cards, which is how you see your relationship with Rakel.’
