Therefore it came as a blow to the solar plexus to suddenly have to think the unthinkable. Because it simply wasn’t so unthinkable.
* * *
The girl who came through the glass door at the Hard Rock Cafe was a different girl from the one he had seen in the garden and at the funeral, the one with the turned-off, introverted body language and the bad-tempered, defiant expression. Runa’s face opened into a beam when she spotted him sitting with an empty bottle of Coke and a newspaper in front of him. She was wearing a short-sleeved, blue flowery dress. Like a practiced illusionist her prosthesis was hardly noticeable.
“You’re early,” she said with delight.
“It’s difficult to get the times right with the traffic,” he said. “I didn’t want to be late.”
She grabbed a seat and ordered an iced tea.
“Yesterday. Your mother—”
“Was asleep,” she said curtly. So curt that Harry guessed it was meant as a warning. But he didn’t have time to beat around the bush anymore.
“Drunk, you mean?”
She looked up at him. The happy smile had evaporated.
“Was it my mother you wanted to talk about?”
“Among other things. What was your parents’ relationship like?”
“Why don’t you ask her?”
“Because I think you’re worse at lying,” he answered honestly.
“Oh yes? In that case they got on like a house on fire.” She had the defiant expression back.
“That bad, eh?”
She squirmed.
“Sorry, Runa, but this is my job.”
She shrugged. “My mother and I don’t get on so well. But Pappa and I were great friends. I think she was jealous.”
“Of whom?”
“Of both of us. Of him. I don’t know.”
“Why of him?”
“He didn’t seem to need her. She was so much air to him …”
Harry couldn’t believe what he was about to ask. But he had seen so many terrible things over the years. He paused. “Did your father sometimes take you to a hotel, Runa? The Maradiz Hotel, for example.”
He saw the astonishment on her face.
“What do you mean? Why would he?”
He stared down at the newspaper on the table, but forced himself to lift his gaze.
“What?” she burst out, stirring the spoon in her cup vigorously and making the tea slop over. “You say the weirdest things. What are you getting at?”
“Well, Runa, I know this is difficult, but I think your father has done things he would have regretted.”
“Pappa? Pappa always regretted. He regretted and shouldered the blame and complained … but the witch wouldn’t leave him in peace. She hounded him all the time, you’re not this and you’re not that and you’ve dragged me here and so on. She thought I didn’t hear, but I did. Every word. She wasn’t made to live with a eunuch, she was a full-blooded woman. I told him he should leave, but he stuck it out. For my sake. He didn’t say that, but I knew that was why.”
“What I’m trying to say,” he said, lowering his head to catch her eyes, “is that your father didn’t have the same sexual feelings as some others.”
“Is that why you’re so bloody stressed? Because you think I didn’t know my father was gay?”
Harry resisted the impulse to drop his jaw. “What do you mean by gay exactly?” he asked.
“Poof. Homo. Faggot. Bender. Buttfucker. I’m the result of the few shags the witch managed to get off Pappa. He thought she was disgusting.”
“Did he say that?”
“He was far too decent to say something like that. But I knew. I was his best friend. He said that. Now and then it seemed as if I was his only friend. ‘You and horses are the only things I like,’ he said to me once. Me and horses. That’s a good one, eh? I think he had a lover—a guy—when he was a student, before he met my mother. But the guy left him, didn’t want to acknowledge the relationship. Fair enough. Pappa didn’t want to, either. It was a long time ago. Things were different then.”
She said that with the unshakable confidence of a teenager. Harry lifted the Coke to his mouth and sipped slowly. He had to gain time. This hadn’t developed in the way he had anticipated.
“Do you want to know who was at the Maradiz Hotel?” she asked. “Mum and her lover.”
21
Tuesday, January 14
White, frozen branches spread their fingers toward the pale winter sky over the Palace Gardens. Dagfinn Torhus stood by the window and watched a man run shivering up Haakon VIIs gate with his head buried between his shoulders. The telephone rang. Torhus saw from the clock that it was lunchtime. He followed the man until he was out of sight by the Metro station, then he lifted the receiver and said his name. There was a hissing and crackling until the voice reached him.