Cockroaches(86)

“Which means?”

“It means I’ve been told to make sure you’re sitting on a plane in the next couple of days.”

“And?”

“I told them planes are generally fully booked in January, so it could be at least a week.”

“So we’ve got a week?”

“No, if economy class is full I was told to book first class.”

Harry laughed. “Thirty thousand kroner. Tight budgets? They’re getting jumpy, Liz.”

As Liz leaned back in her chair it creaked.

“Do you want to talk about it, Harry?”

“Do you?”

“I don’t know if I want to,” she said. “Some things are best left in peace, aren’t they.”

“So why don’t we do that?”

She turned her head, opened the blinds and looked out. Harry sat in such a way that the sunlight gave Liz’s shiny pate a kind of white halo.

“Do you know what the average salary of a recruit in the national police force is, Harry? A hundred fifty bucks a month. There are a hundred twenty thousand officers in the force trying to provide for their families, but we can’t even pay them enough to provide for themselves. Is it so strange that some of them try to supplement their wages by turning a blind eye?”

“No.”

She sighed. “Personally, I’ve never managed to leave things be. God knows, I could have done with a bit extra, but I’m not comfortable with that. It probably sounds a bit like a Girl Scout pledge, but in fact someone has to do the job.”

“Furthermore, it’s your—”

“Responsibility, yes.” She gave a weary smile. “We all have our crosses to bear.”

Harry started to talk. Liz fetched some coffee, told the central switchboard she wasn’t taking any incoming calls, made a note, got more coffee, studied the ceiling, cursed and finally told Harry to go out so that she could think.

An hour later she called him in again. She was furious.

“Shit, Harry, do you know what you’re asking me to do here?”

“Yes. And I can see you know too.”

“I’m risking my job if I agree to cover you and this Løken.”

“Thanking you.”

“Fuck you!”

Harry grinned.


The woman who answered the telephone at Bangkok’s Chamber of Commerce rang off when Harry spoke English. He asked Nho to ring instead, and wrote the name Phuridell, which he’d seen on the front page of the report in Klipra’s office. “Just find out what they do, who owns it and so on.”

Nho went to call, and Harry drummed his fingers on the desk until he picked up the phone and made a call.

“Hole,” came the reply. It was of course his father’s name, but Harry knew it was habit and it meant the whole family. He made it sound as if his mother was still in the green sitting-room chair doing embroidery or reading a book. Harry had a suspicion he had started talking to her too.

His father had just got up. Harry asked how he was going to spend the day and was surprised to hear he was going to the cabin in Rauland.

“To chop some wood,” he said. “I’m running out.”

He rarely went to the cabin.

“How’s it going?” his father asked.

“Great. I’ll soon be home. How’s Sis?”

“She’s coping. But she’s never going to be a cook.”

They both grinned. Harry could visualize what the kitchen looked like after Sis had made the Sunday lunch.

“Well, you’d better bring her something nice back,” he said.

“I’ll find her something. What about you? Anything you fancy?”

The line went silent. Harry cursed himself; he knew that they were both thinking the same thing, that what he wanted Harry couldn’t buy in Bangkok. That was how it was every time; whenever he thought he had finally got his father out of himself, he said or did something that reminded his father of her and he was lost again, back into his self-imposed, silent isolation. It was worse for Sis. She was doubly alone when Harry wasn’t there.

His father coughed. “You could … you could bring one of those Thai shirts.”

“Yes?”

“Yes, that would be nice. And a pair of proper Nike trainers, they’re supposed to be so cheap in Thailand. I took out my old ones yesterday and they’re no good anymore. How’s your jogging by the way? Are you up for a test in Hanekleiva?”

As Harry put the receiver down he felt a strange lump at the top of his chest.


For the rest of the day Harry did nothing.

He doodled and wondered if the doodles resembled anything.

Jens called to ask how the case was going. Harry answered that it was a state secret, and Jens understood, but said he would sleep better if he knew they had another lead suspect. Then Jens told him a joke he had just heard on the phone, about a gynecologist who said to a colleague that one of his patients had a clitoris like a pickled gherkin. “That big?” the colleague had asked. “No,” the gynecologist had answered. “That salty.”