Nemesis(138)
'Hard to say,' she said. 'Is it fiction?'
'Yes and no,' Harry said. 'We think the person who killed Anna Bethsen wrote them.'
'So it must be a man.'
Harry studied the table and she shot a quick glance at him. He wasn't good-looking, but he had something going for him. She had–as improbable as it sounded–noticed it as soon as she saw him lying on the landing outside her door. Perhaps because she had had one more Cointreau than usual, but she had thought he looked peaceful, almost handsome, as he lay there, like a sleeping prince someone had placed in front of her door. The contents of his pockets had been scattered over the staircase and she had picked them up one by one. She had even had a peep in his wallet and found his name and address.
Harry raised his eyes and hers quickly darted away. Could she have liked him? Certainly. The problem was he wouldn't have liked her. Hysterical fuss. Groundless fears. The sobbing. He wouldn't like that. He wanted women like Anna Bethsen. Like Ramona.
'Are you sure you don't recognise her?' he asked slowly.
She gave him a horrified look. It was only then she noticed he was holding up a photograph. He had shown her this photograph before. A woman and two children on the beach.
'On the night of the murder, for example.'
'Never seen her in my whole life,' Astrid Monsen said firmly.
* * *
Snow was beginning to fall again. Large, wet snowflakes, which were grey and dirty before they landed on the brown earth between Police HQ and Botsen. A message from Weber lay waiting in the office. It confirmed Harry's suspicions, the same suspicions which had made him see the e-mails in a new light. Nevertheless, Weber's concise message came as a shock. A kind of expected shock.
Harry was on the telephone for the rest of the day, between running to and from the fax machine. In the breaks, he brooded, placed one brick on top of another and tried not to think about what he was looking for. But it was all too clear. This roller coaster could climb, fall, twist and turn as much as it liked, but it was the same as all other roller coasters–it would end up where it started.
When Harry's brooding was over and most of the picture was clear, he leaned back in the office chair. He didn't feel any triumph, just a void.
Rakel didn't ask any questions when he rang to say she shouldn't wait for him. Afterwards he went up the stairs to the canteen and onto the terrace roof where some smokers were standing and shivering. The city lights twinkled beneath them in the early-afternoon gloom. Harry lit a cigarette, ran his hand along the wall and made a snowball. Rolled it up. Tighter and tighter, hit it with his palms, squeezed it until the melted ice ran between his fingers. Then he threw it down towards the city. He followed the shiny snowball with his eyes as it fell, faster and faster, until it disappeared into the grey-white background.
'There was a boy in my class called Ludwig Alexander,' Harry said out loud.
The smokers stamped their feet and looked at the inspector.
'He was linguistically inclined and was called Kebab. Because once in the English lesson he had been stupid enough to tell the teacher he liked the word "barbecue" spelt as "BBQ" because that would be kebab backwards. When the snows came, there was a snowball fight between the classes in every break. Kebab didn't want to join in, but we forced him to. It was the only thing we let him join in. As cannon fodder. He was so bad at throwing that all he managed was a few weak lobs. The other class had Roar, a fat kid who played handball for Oppsal. He used to head Kebab's snowballs away for fun and then pepper him black and blue with his underarm swings. One day Kebab put a big stone in a snowball and threw it as high as he could. Roar jumped up with a smile and headed it. The sound was like a stone hitting a stone in shallow water, hard and soft at the same time. That was the only time I saw an ambulance in the school yard.'
Harry sucked hard on his cigarette.
'In the staff room they argued for days about whether Kebab should be punished. After all, he hadn't thrown the snowball at anyone, so the question was: Should a person be punished for showing no consideration towards an idiot behaving like an idiot?'
Harry stubbed out his cigarette and went inside.
* * *
It was after half past four. The cold wind had picked up speed in the open stretch between the Akerselva and the metro station in Grřnlands torv. Schoolchildren and pensioners were giving way to women and men with closed faces and ties hurrying home from their offices. Harry bumped into one of them as he ran down the stairs into the underground and a swear word echoed between the walls and followed him. He stopped in front of the window between the toilets. It was the same elderly lady who had sat there last time.