by Headhunters
“Why do you think Norwegians are so skeptical about George Bush, Arve Støp?”
“Because we’re an overprotected nation that has never fought in any wars. We’ve been happy to let others do it for us: England, the Soviet Union and America. Yes, ever since the Napoleonic Wars we’ve hidden behind the backs of our older brothers. Norway has based its security on others taking the responsibility when things got tough. That’s been going on for so long that we’ve lost our sense of reality and we believe that the earth is basically populated by people who wish us—the world’s richest country—well. Norway, a gibbering, peabrained blonde who gets lost in an alley in the Bronx and is now indignant that her bodyguard is so brutal with muggers.”
Harry dialed Rakel’s number. Aside from Sis’s, Rakel’s telephone number was the only one he knew by heart. When he was young and inexperienced, he thought that a bad memory was a handicap for a detective. Now he knew better.
“And the bodyguard is Bush and the U.S.A.?” the host asked.
“Yes. Lyndon B. Johnson once said that the U.S. hadn’t chosen this role, but he had realized there was no one else, and he was right. Our bodyguard is a born-again Christian with a father complex, a drinking problem, intellectual limitations and not enough backbone to do his military service with honor. In short, a guy we should be pleased is going to be reelected president today.”
“I assume you mean that ironically?”
“Not at all. Such a weak president listens to his advisers, and the White House has the best, believe you me. Even though from that laughable TV series about the Oval Office one may have formed the impression that the Democrats have a monopoly on intelligence, it is on the extreme right wing of the Republicans, surprisingly enough, that you find the sharpest minds. Norway’s security is in the best possible hands.”
“A girlfriend of a girlfriend has had sex with you.”
“Really?” said Harry.
“Not you,” Rakel said. “I’m talking to the other guy. Støp.”
“Sorry,” Harry said, turning down the radio.
“After a lecture in Trondheim. He invited her up to his room. She was interested, but drew his attention to the fact that she’d had a mastectomy. He said he would give that some thought and went to the bar. And came back and took her with him.”
“Mm. I hope expectations were fulfilled.”
“Nothing fulfills expectations.”
“No,” Harry said, wondering what they were talking about.
“What’s happening this evening?” Rakel asked.
“Palace Grill at eight is fine. But what’s all this garbage about not being able to reserve tables in advance?”
“It gives the whole place cachet, I suppose.”
They arranged to meet in the bar area first. After they had hung up, Harry sat thinking. She had sounded pleased. Or bright. Bright and cheery. He tried to sense if he had succeeded in being pleased on her behalf, pleased that the woman he had loved so much was happy with another man. Rakel and he had had their time, and he had been given chances. Which he wasted. So why not be pleased that she was well, why not let the thought that things could have been different go, and move on with his life? He promised to try a bit harder.
The morning meeting was soon over. As head of the Crime Squad, Politioverbetjent—POB for short—Gunnar Hagen ran through the cases they were working on. Which were not many, as for the time being there weren’t any fresh murder cases under investigation, and murder was the only thing that got the unit’s pulse racing. Thomas Helle, an officer from the Missing Persons Unit of the uniformed police, was present and gave a report on a woman who had been missing from her home for a year. Not a trace of violence, not a trace of the perpetrator and not a trace of her. She was a housewife and had last been seen at the daycare center where she had left her son and daughter in the morning. Her husband and everyone in her closer circle of acquaintances had an alibi and had been cleared. They agreed that the Crime Squad should investigate further.
Magnus Skarre passed on regards from Ståle Aune—the Crime Squad’s resident psychologist—whom he had visited at Ullevål University Hospital. Harry felt a pang of conscience. Ståle Aune was not just his adviser on criminal cases; he was his personal supporter in his fight against alcohol and the closest thing he had to a confidant. It had been more than a week since Aune had been admitted with some vague diagnosis, but Harry had still not overcome his reluctance to enter hospitals.
Tomorrow, Harry thought. Or Thursday.
“We have a new officer,” Gunnar Hagen announced. “Katrine Bratt.”
A young woman in the first row stood up unbidden, but without offering a smile. She was very attractive. Attractive without trying, thought Harry. Thin, almost wispy hair hung lifelessly down both sides of her face, which was finely chiseled and pale and wore the same serious, weary features Harry had seen on other stunning women who had become so used to being observed that they had stopped liking or disliking it. Katrine Bratt was dressed in a blue suit that underlined her femininity, but the thick black tights below the hem of her skirt and her practical winter boots invalidated any possible suspicions that she was playing on it. She let her eyes run over the gathering, as if she had risen to see them and not vice versa. Harry guessed that she had planned both the suit and this little first-day appearance at the Police HQ.
“Katrine worked for four years at the Bergen Police HQ, dealing mainly with public-decency offenses, but she also did a stint at the Crime Squad,” Hagen continued, looking down at a sheet of paper Harry presumed was her CV. “Law degree from University of Bergen 1999, the police academy and now she’s an officer here. For the moment no children, but she’s married.”
One of Katrine Bratt’s thin eyebrows rose imperceptibly, and either Hagen saw this or he thought this last scrap of information was superfluous, because he added, “For those who may be interested …”
In the oppressive and telling pause that followed, Hagen seemed to think he had made matters worse; he coughed twice with force and said that those who had not yet signed up for the Christmas party should do so before Wednesday.
Chairs scraped and Harry was already in the corridor when he heard a voice behind him.
“Apparently I belong to you.”
Harry turned and looked into Katrine Bratt’s face. Wondering how attractive she would be if she made an effort.
“Or you to me,” she said, showing a line of even teeth but without letting the smile reach her eyes. “Whichever way you look at it.” She spoke Bergen-flavored standard Norwegian with moderately rolled r’s, which suggested, Harry wagered, that she was from Fana or Kalfaret or some other solidly middle-class district.
He continued on his way, and she hurried to catch up with him.
“Seems the Politioverbetjent forgot to inform you.”
She pronounced the word with a slightly exaggerated stress on all the syllables.
“But you should show me around and take care of me for the next few days. Until I’m up and running. Can you do that, do you think?”
Harry eased off a smile. So far he liked her, but of course he was open to changing his opinion. Harry was always willing to give people another chance to wind up on his blacklist.
“I don’t know,” he said, stopping by the coffee dispenser. “Let’s start with this.”
“I don’t drink coffee.”
“Nevertheless. It’s self-explanatory. Like most things here. What are your thoughts on the case of the missing woman?”
Harry pressed the button for Americano, which, in this machine, was as American as Norwegian ferry coffee.
“What about it?” Bratt asked.
“Do you think she’s alive?” Harry tried to ask in a casual manner so that she wouldn’t realize it was a test.
“Do you think I’m stupid?” she said and watched with undisguised revulsion as the machine coughed and spluttered something black into a white plastic cup. “Didn’t you hear the Politioverbetjent say tha
t I worked at the Sexual Offenses Unit for four years?”
“Mm,” Harry said. “Dead, then?”
“As a dodo,” said Katrine Bratt.
Harry lifted the white cup. He pondered the possibility that he had just been allocated a colleague he might come to appreciate.
Walking home in the afternoon, Harry saw that the snow was gone from the streets, and the light, flimsy flakes whirling through the air were eaten up by the wet sidewalk as soon as they hit the ground. He went into his regular music shop on Akersgata and bought Neil Young’s latest even though he had a suspicion it was a stinker.
As he unlocked his apartment he noticed that something was different. Something about the sound. Or perhaps it was the smell. He pulled up sharp at the threshold to the kitchen. The whole of one wall was gone. That is, where early this morning there had been bright flowery wallpaper and plasterboard, he now saw rust-red bricks, gray mortar and grayish-yellow studwork dotted with nail holes. On the floor was the mold man’s toolbox and on the countertop a note saying he would be back the following day.
He went into the sitting room and slipped in the Neil Young CD, then glumly took it out again after a quarter of an hour and put on Ryan Adams. The thought of a drink came from nowhere. Harry closed his eyes and stared at the dancing pattern of blood and total blindness. He was reminded of the letter again. The first snow.
Toowoomba.
The ringing of the telephone interrupted Ryan Adams’s “Shakedown on 9th Street.”
A woman introduced herself as Oda, said she was calling from Bosse and it was nice to talk to him again. Harry couldn’t remember her, but he did remember the TV program. They had wanted him to talk about serial killers, because he was the only Norwegian police officer to have studied with the FBI, and furthermore he had hunted down a genuine serial killer. Harry had been stupid enough to agree. He had told himself he was doing it to say something important and moderately qualified about people who kill, not so that he could be seen on the nation’s most popular talk show. In retrospect, he was not so sure about that.
But that wasn’t the worst aspect. The worst was that he’d had a drink before going on the air. Harry was convinced that it had been only one.
But on the program it looked as if it had been five. He had spoken with clear diction; he always did. But his eyes had been glazed and his analysis sluggish, and he hadn’t managed to draw any conclusions, so the show host had been forced to introduce a guest who was the new European flower-arranging champion. Harry had not said anything, but his body language had clearly shown what he thought about the flower debate. When the host, with a surreptitious smile, had asked how a murder investigator related to flower arranging, Harry had said that wreaths at Norwegian burials certainly maintained high international standards. Perhaps it had been Harry’s slightly befuddled, nonchalant style that had drawn laughter from the studio audience and contented pats on the back from the TV people after the program. He had “delivered the goods,” they said. And he had joined a small group of them at Kunstnernes Hus, had been indulged and had woken up the next day with a body that screamed, demanded, it had to have more. It was a Friday and he had continued to drink all weekend. He had sat at Schrøder’s and shouted for beer as they were flashing the lights to encourage customers to leave, and Rita, the waitress, had gone over to Harry and told him that he would be refused admission in the future unless he went now, preferably to bed. On Monday morning Harry had turned up for work at eight on the dot. He had contributed nothing useful to the department, thrown up in the sink after the morning meeting, clung to his office chair, drunk coffee, smoked and thrown up again, but this time in the toilet. And that was the last time he had succumbed; he hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol since.
And now they wanted him back on the air.
The woman explained that the topic was terrorism in Arab countries and what turned well-educated middle-class people into killing machines. Harry interrupted her before she was finished.
“No.”
“But we would so much like to have you. You are so … so … rock ’n’ roll!” She laughed, with an enthusiasm whose sincerity he could not be sure of, but he recognized her voice now. She had been with them at Kunstnernes Hus that night. She had been good-looking in a boring, young way, had talked in a boring, young way and had eyed Harry hungrily, as though he were an exotic meal she was considering; was he too exotic?
“Try someone else,” Harry said and hung up. Then he closed his eyes and heard Ryan Adams wondering, “Oh, baby, why do I miss you like I do?”
The boy looked up at the man standing beside him at the kitchen counter. The light from the snow-covered yard shone on the hairless skin drawn tightly around his father’s massive skull. Mommy had said that Dad had such a big head because he was such a brain. He had asked her why she said he was a brain and not that he had a brain, and when she had laughed, she had stroked his forehead and said that was the way it was with physics professors. Right now the brain was rinsing potatoes under the tap and putting them straight into a pan.
“Aren’t you going to peel the potatoes, Dad? Mommy usually—”
“Your mother isn’t here, Jonas. So we’ll have to do it my way.”
He hadn’t raised his voice, yet there was an irritation that made Jonas cringe. He never quite knew what made his father so angry. Or, now and then, even whether he was angry. Until he saw his mother’s face with the anxious droop around the corners of her mouth, which seemed to make Dad even more irritable. He hoped she would be there soon.
“We don’t use them plates, Dad!”
His father slammed the cupboard door and Jonas bit his bottom lip.
His father’s face came down to his. The square, paper-thin glasses sparkled.
“It’s ‘those’ plates, not ‘them’ plates,” his father said. “How many times do I have to tell you, Jonas?”
“But Mommy says—”
“Mommy doesn’t speak properly. Do you understand? Mommy comes from a place and a family where they’re not bothered about language.”
His father’s breath smelled salty, of rotten seaweed.
The front door banged.
“Hello,” she sang out from the hall.
Jonas was about to run to her, but his father held him by the shoulder and pointed to the unlaid table.
“How good you are!”
Jonas could hear the smile in her breathless voice as she stood in the kitchen doorway behind him while he set out glasses and cutlery as quickly as he could.
“And what a big snowman you’ve made!”
Jonas turned in surprise to his mother, who was unbuttoning her coat. She was so attractive. Dark skin, dark hair, just like him, and those gentle, gentle eyes she almost always had. Almost. She wasn’t quite as slim as in the photos from the time she and Dad got married, but he had noticed that men looked at her whenever the two of them took a stroll in town.
“We didn’t make a snowman,” Jonas said.
“You didn’t?” His mommy frowned as she unfurled the big pink scarf he had given her for Christmas.
Dad went over to the window. “Must be the neighbors’ boys,” he said.
Jonas stood up on one of the kitchen chairs and peered out. And, sure enough, there on the lawn in front of the house was a snowman. It was, as his mother had said, big. Its eyes and mouth were made with pebbles and the nose was a carrot. The snowman had no hat, cap or scarf, and only one arm, a thin twig Jonas guessed had been taken from the hedge. However, there was something odd about the snowman. It was facing the wrong way. He didn’t know why, but it ought to have been looking out onto the road, toward the open space.
“Why—” Jonas began, but was interrupted by his father.
“I’ll talk to them.”
“Why’s that?” Mommy said from the hall, where Jonas could hear her unzipping her high black leather boots. “It doesn’t matter.”
“I don’t want that sort roaming around our property. I’ll do it wh
en I’m back.”
“Why isn’t it looking out?” Jonas asked.
In the hall, his mother sighed. “When will you be back, love?”
“Tomorrow sometime.”
“What time?”
“Why? Have you got a date?” There was a lightness of tone in his father’s voice that made Jonas shiver.
“I was thinking I would have dinner ready,” Mommy said, coming into the kitchen, going over to the stove, checking the pans and turning up the temperature on two of the burners.
“Just have it ready,” his father said, turning to the pile of newspapers on the countertop. “And I’ll be home at some point.”
“OK.” Mommy went over to Dad’s back and put her arms around him. “But do you really have to go to Bergen tonight?”
“My lecture’s at eight tomorrow morning,” Dad said. “It takes an hour to get to the university from the time the plane lands, so I wouldn’t make it if I caught the first flight.”
Jonas could see from the muscles in his father’s neck that he was relaxing, that once again Mommy had managed to find the right words.
“Why is the snowman looking at our house?” Jonas asked.
“Go and wash your hands,” Mommy said.
