Nemesis(137)

'Aune.'





'I want you to read the e-mails one more time and tell me if you think they were written by a man or a woman.'





42

Kebab





THE SNOW MELTED OVERNIGHT. ASTRID MONSEN HAD JUST come out of the apartment building and was making her way across the wet, black tarmac towards Bogstadveien when she saw the blond policeman on the opposite pavement. Her pulse, like her walking speed, leapt. She stared rigidly ahead, hoping he wouldn't see her. There had been photographs of Alf Gunnerud in the papers and for days detectives had been trudging up and down the stairs disrupting her quiet working routine. But now it was over, she had told herself.





She scuttled towards the pedestrian crossing. To Hansen's bakery. If she got there, she would be safe. A cup of tea and a doughnut at the table behind the counter, at the far end of the long, thin café. Every day at precisely 10.30.





'Tea and a doughnut?' 'Yes, please.' 'That'll be 38 kroner.' 'Here you are.' 'Thank you.'





Most days that was the longest conversation she had with anyone.





For the last weeks an elderly man had been sitting at her table when she arrived, and even though there were several unoccupied tables, this was the only table she could sit at because…no, she didn't want to think about these things now. Nevertheless, she had been forced to arrive a quarter of an hour earlier to get to the table first. Today that was perfect because otherwise she would have been at home when he rang. And she would have had to open the door. She had promised Mother. Ever since the time she had refused to answer the telephone or the doorbell for two months, and in the end the police had come and her mother had threatened to have her readmitted.





She didn't lie to Mother.





To others, yes. She lied to them all the time. On the telephone to the publishers, in shops and on Internet chat sites. Especially there. She could pretend to be someone else, one of the characters in the books she translated, or Ramona, the decadent, promiscuous but fearless woman she had been in an earlier life. Astrid had discovered Ramona when she was small. She was a dancer, had long black hair and brown almond-shaped eyes. Astrid used to draw Ramona, especially her eyes, but she had to do it clandestinely because Mother tore the drawings to shreds and said she didn't want to see hussies like her in the house. Ramona had been gone for many years, but she had returned, and Astrid had noticed how Ramona had begun to take over, in particular when she wrote to the male writers she translated. After the preamble about language and cultural references, she liked to write more informal e-mails, and after a couple of those, the French writers would beg to meet her. When they were in Oslo to launch the book. Besides, she alone was reason enough to make the trip. She would always refuse although that did not seem to deter the suitors, more the opposite. This was what constituted her writerly activities now, after waking up from the dream of publishing her own books several years ago. A publishing consultant had finally cracked on the telephone and hissed that he could no longer put up with her 'hysterical fussing'; no reader would ever pay to share her thoughts, but, for a fee, a psychologist might.





'Astrid Monsen!'





She felt her throat constrict and for a moment she panicked. She didn't want to have respiratory problems here on the street. She was about to cross when the lights changed to red. She could have made it, but she would never cross on red.





'Hello, I was on my way to see you.' Harry Hole caught up with her. He still had the same hunted expression, the same red eyes. 'Let me first say I read Inspector Waaler's report of the conversation he had with you. I understand you lied to me because you were frightened.'





She could feel she would start hyperventilating soon.





'It was extremely inept of me not to tell you about my role in the whole business straight away,' the police officer said.





She looked at him in surprise. He did sound genuinely sorry.





'And I've read in the paper that the guilty party has been apprehended,' she heard herself say.





They stood looking at each other.





'Is dead, I mean,' she added in a soft voice.





'Well,' he said with a tentative smile. 'Perhaps you wouldn't mind helping me with a couple of questions anyway?'





* * *





That was the first time she had not sat alone at her table in Hansen's bakery. The girl behind the counter had sent her a kind of knowing girlfriend's smile, as if the tall man with her were an escort. Since he looked as if he had just crawled out of bed, perhaps the girl even thought…no, she didn't want to entertain that idea now.





They had sat down and he had given her printouts of several e-mails he wanted her to read through. Could she, as a writer, decipher whether they had been written by a man or a woman? She had examined them. As a writer, he had said. Should she tell him the truth? She raised her teacup so that he couldn't see her smiling at the thought. Of course not. She would lie.