The Devil's star hh-5

by Jo Nesbo

  Harry had felt the gnawing ache for alcohol from the moment he woke up that morning. First as an instinctive physical craving, then as a panic-stricken fear because he had put a distance between himself and his medicine by not taking his hip flask or any money with him to work. Now the ache was entering a new phase in which it was both a wholly physical pain and a feeling of blank terror that he would be torn to pieces. The enemy below was pulling and tugging at the chains, the dogs were snarling up at him from the pit, somewhere in his stomach beneath his heart. God, how he hated them. He hated them as much as they hated him.

  Harry got to his feet. He had stashed away half a bottle of Bell’s in the filing cabinet on Monday. Had that just occurred to him now or had he been aware of it the whole time? Harry was used to Harry playing tricks on Harry in hundreds of ways. He was just about to pull out the drawer when suddenly he looked up. He had spotted a movement. Ellen was smiling at him from her photo. Was he going mad or had her mouth just moved?

  ‘What are you looking at, you bitch?’ he mumbled, and the very next moment the picture fell from the wall, hitting the floor and smashing the glass to smithereens. Harry stared at Ellen who was smiling imperturbably up at him from the broken frame. He held his right hand where the pain was throbbing under the bandages.

  It was only when he turned to open the drawer that he noticed the two of them standing in the doorway. He realised that they must have been standing there for quite a while and that it must have been their reflection in the glass of the picture frame that he had seen moving.

  ‘Hi,’ Oleg said, looking at Harry with a mixture of wonder and fear.

  Harry swallowed. His hand let go of the drawer.

  ‘Hi, Oleg.’

  Oleg was wearing trainers, a pair of blue trousers and the yellow national strip of Brazil. Harry knew that on the back of his shirt there was a number nine with the name of Ronaldo above it. He had bought it at a petrol station one Sunday when Rakel, Oleg and he had been on their way to Norefjell to go skiing.

  ‘I found him downstairs,’ Tom Waaler said.

  He had his hand on Oleg’s head.

  ‘He was asking for you in reception, so I brought him up here. So you play football then, Oleg?’

  Oleg didn’t answer, he just looked at Harry. With those dark eyes of his mother’s that could at times be so unendingly gentle and at others so hard and pitiless. At this moment Harry couldn’t read which they were, but then, it was dark.

  ‘A striker, eh?’ Waaler asked, smiling and ruffling the young boy’s hair.

  Harry stared at his colleague’s strong, sinewy fingers, Oleg’s dark strands of hair against the back of Waaler’s tanned hand, hair that stood up on its own. He could feel his legs giving way under him.

  ‘No,’ Oleg said, with his eyes still firmly fixed on Harry. ‘I play in defence.’

  ‘No,’ Oleg said, with his eyes still firmly fixed on Harry. ‘I play in defence.’

  ‘Hey, Oleg,’ Waaler said, looking over at Harry enquiringly. ‘Harry has still got a bit of shadow-boxing to do in here – I do the same when something gets on my nerves – but perhaps you and I could go up top and see the view from the roof terrace while Harry tidies up.’

  ‘I’m staying here,’ Oleg stated unequivocally.

  Harry nodded.

  ‘OK. Nice to meet you, Oleg.’

  Waaler patted the boy on his shoulder and left. Oleg stood in the doorway.

  ‘How did you get here?’ Harry asked.

  ‘Metro.’

  ‘On your own?’

  Oleg nodded.

  ‘Does Rakel know you’re here?’

  Oleg shook his head.

  ‘Don’t you want to come in?’ Harry’s throat was dry.

  ‘I want you to come home,’ Oleg said.

  Four seconds after Harry pressed the bell, Rakel tore open the door. Her eyes were black with fury.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’

  For an instant Harry thought that the question was directed to them both before her eyes swept past Harry and beamed in on Oleg.

  ‘I didn’t have anyone to play with,’ Oleg said with his head bowed. ‘I took the metro to town.’

  ‘The metro. On your own? But how…?’

  Her voice failed her.

  ‘I slipped out,’ Oleg said. ‘I thought you would be happy, Mummy. After all you said you also wanted…’

  She suddenly took Oleg into her arms.

  ‘Do you realise how worried I’ve been about you, my lad?’

  She viewed Harry askance while she hugged Oleg.

  Rakel and Harry stood by the fence at the back of the garden and gazed down over Oslo and Oslo fjord. They were silent. The sailing boats stood out against the blue sea like tiny white triangles. Harry turned to face the house. Summer birds took off from the lawn and flitted between the apple trees in front of the open windows. It was a large house, with black timber cladding – a house constructed for winter, not for summer.

  Harry looked at her. Her legs were bare and she was wearing a thin, red cotton button-up jacket over a light blue dress. The sun glistened on the droplets of sweat on her bare skin under the necklace with the cross that she had inherited from her mother. Harry mused that he knew everything about her: the smell of the cotton jacket, the gentle curve of her back under the dress, the smell of her skin when it was sweaty and salty, what she wanted from her life, why she didn’t say anything.

  All this knowledge to no end.

  ‘How’s it going?’ he asked.

  ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘I’ve rented a log cabin. We can’t have it until August. I was late getting in.’

  The tone was neutral, the accusation scarcely perceptible.

  ‘Have you injured your hand?’

  ‘Just a cut,’ Harry said.

  A strand of hair blew across her face. He resisted the temptation to brush it away.

  ‘I had someone round to value the house yesterday,’ she said.

  ‘To value it? You’re not thinking of selling it, are you?’

  ‘The house is too big for only two people, Harry.’

  ‘Yes, but you love this house. You grew up here. And so did Oleg.’

  ‘You don’t need to remind me. The thing is that the work over the winter cost twice as much as I had imagined. And now the roof has to be redone. It’s an old house.’

  ‘Mm.’

  Harry watched Oleg kicking a ball against the garage door. He smashed the ball again and as soon as it left his foot he closed his eyes and raised his arms to an imaginary crowd of fans.

  ‘Rakel.’

  She sighed.

  ‘What is it, Harry?’

  ‘Can’t you at least look at me when I’m talking?’

  ‘No.’ Her voice was neither angry nor upset; she was just establishing a fact.

  ‘Would it make any difference if I gave it up?’

  ‘You can’t give it up, Harry.’

  ‘I mean the police.’

  ‘I guessed that.’

  He kicked at the grass.

  ‘I may not have a choice,’ he said.

  ‘Haven’t you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why the hypothetical question then?’

  She blew away the strand of hair.

  ‘I could find a quieter job, be at home more, take care of Oleg. We could -’

  ‘Stop it, Harry!’

  Her voice was like a whiplash. She bowed her head and crossed her arms as if she were frozen in the burning sun.

  ‘The answer’s no,’ she whispered. ‘It won’t make any difference. It’s not your job that’s the problem. It’s…’

  She breathed in, turned round and looked him in the eyes.

  ‘It’s you, Harry. You’re the problem.’

  Harry saw the tears welling up in her eyes.

  ‘Go now,’ she whispered.

  He wanted to say something, but changed his mind. Instead he nodded towards the sailing boats on the fjord.

  ‘You’re
right,’ he said. ‘I am the problem. I’ll have a chat with Oleg and then I’ll be off.’

  He took a few steps, then stopped and turned round.

  ‘Don’t sell the house, Rakel. Don’t do it, do you hear? I’ll come up with something.’

  She smiled through her tears.

  ‘You’re a strange man,’ she whispered and reached out a hand as if she was going to stroke his cheek, but he was too far away and she let it drop again.

  ‘Take care of yourself, Harry.’

  As Harry left, a shiver ran down his spine. It was 5.15. He would have to hurry to get to the meeting.

  I’m in the building. It smells of cellar. I’m standing quite still and studying the names on the noticeboard in front of me. I can hear voices and footsteps on the stairs, but I’m not afraid. They cannot see that, but I am invisible. Did you hear? They cannot see that, but… It isn’t a paradox, darling. I just expressed it in that way to sound like one. Everything can be formulated as a paradox. It isn’t difficult. It’s just that true paradoxes don’t exist. True paradoxes, ha, ha. Do you see how easy it is? It’s just words, the lack of precision in language. I have finished with words. With language. I’m looking at my watch. This is my language. It’s clear and there are no paradoxes. I’m ready.

  14

  Monday. Barbara.

  Barbara Svendsen had begun to think a lot about time of late, not that she was particularly philosophical by nature; most people she knew would have said exactly the opposite. It was just that she had never given it a thought before. She had never considered that there was a time for everything and that this time was being eaten away. She had realised several years ago that she was never going to make it as a model and would have to be satisfied with the title of ex-mannequin. It sounded good even if the word originating from Dutch did mean ‘little man’. Petter had told her that. As he had told her most things he thought she ought to know. He had got her the job in the bar at Head On. And because of the pills she hadn’t felt like going straight from work to Blindern University, where she was studying to become a sociologist.

  However, the time for Petter, pills and dreams of becoming a sociologist was over and one day she found herself alone with debts for unfinished studies and pills to pay off, and a job at the most boring bar in Oslo. So Barbara dropped everything, borrowed money from her parents and went off to Lisbon to get her life back on an even keel and perhaps learn a little Portuguese. Lisbon was a wonderful time. The days passed in a whirl, but this didn’t bother her. Time was simply something that came and went, until the money stopped coming, until Marco was no longer ‘true until eternity’ and the fun was over. She returned home a few experiences older; she had learned, for example, that Ecstasy was cheaper in Portugal than in Norway, but it made a mess of your life in just the same way, that Portuguese was an extremely difficult language and that time was a limited, nonrenewable resource.

  Then she went with, and allowed herself to be kept by, Rolf, Ron and Roland in chronological order. It sounded like more fun than it was, except in Roland’s case. Roland was wonderful, but time passed and Roland with it.

  It was only when she moved back into her old room at her parents’ house that the world stopped spinning and time slowed down. She stopped going out, managed to give up the pills and she began to play with the idea that she might resume her studies. In the meantime, she did temp work for Manpower. After four weeks’ contract work with a firm of solicitors called Halle, Thune amp; Wetterlid who were geographically situated in Carl Berners plass and hierarchically in the lower reaches of solicitors specialising in debt collection, she was offered a permanent job.

  That was four years ago.

  The reason she accepted was primarily because she had discovered that at the offices of Halle, Thune amp; Wetterlid time went slower than anywhere else she had ever been. The tardy advance of time started the moment you entered the redbrick building and pressed number 5 in the lift. Half of eternity passed before the doors glided back into place and the lift rose slowly towards a heaven where time was even slower to pass. Well ensconced behind the counter, Barbara was able to record the movement of the second hand on the clock over the entrance and the snaillike, reluctant ticking of seconds, minutes and hours. Some days she could almost make time stop completely, it was just a question of concentration. The strange thing was that time seemed to go much faster for the other people around her, as if they existed in parallel, but different, time dimensions. The telephone in front of her rang continuously and people flew in and out like in silent movies, but it was all as if it were happening separate from her, as if she were a robot with mechanical parts moving as fast as everyone else while her inner life proceeded in slow motion.

  Only last week was a case in point. A fairly large debt collection office had suddenly gone bankrupt and at this everyone had started running around and making telephone calls as if demented. Wetterlid told her that it was open season for vultures to gobble up new shares on the market, and a golden opportunity to move up among the elite market leaders. This morning he asked Barbara if she could stay on a bit longer today. He said there were meetings with customers of the bankrupt company until 6.00, and they did want to give the impression that everything was in order at Halle, Thune amp; Wetterlid, didn’t they. As usual Wetterlid stared at her boobs while talking to her, and as usual she smiled, automatically pulling her shoulders back as Petter had told her when she was working at Head On. It had become a reflex action. Everyone flaunted what they had. At least, that was what Barbara Svendsen had learned. The courier who had just that moment walked in was an example. She would have bet anything that he was nothing to look at under the helmet, racing goggles and the handkerchief tied round his mouth. That was probably why he kept them on. Instead he said that he knew which office the parcel was for and walked slowly down the corridor in his tight cycling shorts so that she could have a really good look at his muscular buttocks. The cleaning lady who was due soon was another example. She was a Buddhist or a Hinduist, or whatever you call them, and Allah said that she had to conceal her body beneath a pile of bed linen, but she had excellent teeth, so what did she do? Yes, she went round smiling like a crocodile on E. Flaunt, flaunt, flaunt.

  Barbara was watching the second hand on the clock when the door opened.

  The man who walked in was fairly short and plump. He was breathing heavily and his glasses were steamed up, so Barbara assumed that he had walked up the stairs. When she had begun four years ago, she couldn’t tell the difference between a two-thousand kroner dress from Dressman and a Prada, but bit by bit she had put in the training and now she could not only judge dresses, but ties too and – the surest determiner of what level of service she should offer – shoes.

  The new arrival didn’t seem particularly impressive as he stood there cleaning his glasses. In fact, he reminded her of the fatso in Seinfeld whose name she didn’t know because she didn’t actually watch Seinfeld. However, if clothes were anything to go by – and they were – the light pinstriped suit, the silk tie and the hand-sewn shoes gave cause for optimism that Halle, Thune amp; Wetterlid would soon have an interesting customer.

  ‘Good evening. May I help you?’ she said, smiling her next best smile. Her best smile she kept in reserve for the day when the man walked in whom she would have as her own.

  ‘I hope so,’ the man smiled back, taking a handkerchief out of his breast pocket and pressing it against his forehead. ‘I have a meeting, but perhaps you would be so kind as to fetch me a glass of water first?’

  Barbara thought she could detect a foreign accent, but she couldn’t quite place it. Nevertheless, the courteous yet commanding way he asked strengthened her conviction that this customer was a big cheese.

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘One moment.’

  As she walked down the corridor she remembered that Wetterlid had mentioned something about a possible bonus for all employees if their annual figures came up to scratch this year. Perhaps then the firm
could also afford to think about getting a water cooler like those she had seen in other places. Then, completely out of the blue, something odd happened. Time accelerated. It jerked forward. It only lasted a few seconds and then time went back to being slow again, but it felt as if, quite unaccountably, the seconds had been taken from her.

  She went into the ladies’ lavatory and turned on the tap above one of the three basins. She pulled a plastic beaker out of the container and waited as she held her finger under the water. Lukewarm. The man outside would just have to be patient. They said on the radio today that sea temperatures in Nordmarka would be around 22 degrees. Yet, if you let the water run for long enough, the drinking water that came from Lake Maridal was wonderfully cold. While staring at her finger, she wondered how that could be. When the water was really cold, her finger would go white and almost completely lose feeling. The ring finger on her left hand. When would she wear a wedding ring? She hoped before her heart went white and lost feeling. She felt a current of air and then it was gone, so she didn’t bother to turn round. The water was still lukewarm. And time was passing. Running out, just as the water was. Nonsense. She wouldn’t be 30 for another 20 months. She had plenty of time.

  A sound made her look up. In the mirror she saw two white cubicle doors. Had someone come in without her noticing?

  She almost gave a start when the water suddenly went ice cold. Deep cavities under the earth. That’s what it was, that’s why it was so cold. She put the beaker under the tap and it was soon full to the brim. She felt an urge to hurry, to get out. She turned and dropped the beaker on the floor.

  ‘Did I frighten you?’

  The voice appeared to be genuinely concerned.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, forgetting to pull her shoulders back. ‘I’m a bit jittery today.’ She bent down to pick up the beaker and added: ‘Actually, you’re in the ladies’ lavatory.’

  The beaker had whirled around and stopped in an upright position. There was still some water left in it, and as she reached out towards it, she could see her own face reflected in the circular white surface. Beside her face, on the outer edge of the narrow reflection, she saw something move. Again time seemed to pass slowly. Unendingly slowly. Once more she caught herself thinking that time was ticking away.