Nemesis(155)

Then someone had turned off the light, the sun disappeared and she was immersed in the cold. She had awoken again in the cold. As if the first awakening had only been part of a new dream. And she had started counting again. But now she was counting places she had never been, people she had never met, tears she had never cried, words she had never heard said as yet.





* * *





'Yes, I do,' Harry said. 'I have this piece of evidence.' He produced a sheet of paper and set it on the long table.





Ivarsson and Mřller leaned forward together, clunking heads.





'What is this?' Ivarsson barked. ' "A Wonderful Day".'





'Scribbles,' Harry said. 'Written on a notepad at Gaustad hospital. Two witnesses, Lřnn and myself, were present and can testify that the writer was Trond Grette.'





'So?'





Harry looked at them. He turned his back and walked slowly to the window. 'Have you examined your own scribbles when you imagine you're thinking about something else? They can be quite revealing. That was why I took the piece of paper, to see if it made any sense. At first, it didn't. I mean when your wife has just been killed and you're sitting in a closed psychiatric ward writing "A Wonderful Day" again and again, then you're absolutely barking mad or you're writing the opposite of what you think. Then I discovered something.'





Oslo was pale grey, like the face of a tired old man, but today in the sun the few colours still remaining shone. Like a final smile before saying goodbye, Harry mused.





' "A Wonderful Day",' he said. 'It's not a thought, a comment or an assertion. It's a title. Of the kind of essay you write at primary school.'





A hedge sparrow flew past the window.





'Trond Grette wasn't thinking, he was just scribbling on automatic pilot. As he had done from his school days when he sat practising the new handwriting style. Jean Hue, the handwriting expert at Kripos, has already confirmed the same person wrote the suicide letter and the school essays.'





The film seemed to be stuck, the image frozen, not a movement, not a word, only the repeated actions of a photocopier outside in the corridor.





Finally, Harry turned around and broke the silence: 'Seems like the mood is for Lřnn and me to bring Trond Grette in for a little bit of questioning.'





* * *





Fuck, fuck, fuck! Harry tried to hold the gun steady, but the pain was making him giddy and the blasts of wind were pulling and pushing at his body. Trond had reacted to the blood as Harry had hoped, and for a moment Harry had a clear line of fire. But Harry had hesitated and now Trond had Beate in front of him so that Harry could only see part of his head and his shoulder. She was similar, he could see that now, my God she was so similar. Harry blinked hard to get them in focus. The next blast of wind was so strong it caught hold of the grey coat on the bench and for a moment it seemed as if an invisible man clad only in a coat was running across the tennis court. Harry knew a downpour was on its way; this was the air mass the wall of rain was pushing forward as the final warning. Then it went as dark as night, the two bodies in front of him merged and then the rain was overhead; large, heavy drops hammered down.





'Twenty-five.' Beate's voice was suddenly loud and clear.





In the flash of light Harry could see their bodies casting shadows on the red shale. The crack which followed was so loud it attached itself to their ears like a lining. One body slipped away from the other and fell to the ground.





Harry sank to his knees and heard his voice roar: 'Ellen!'





He saw the figure still standing turn and begin to walk towards him, gun in hand. Harry took aim, but the rain was streaming down his face and blinding him. He blinked and aimed. He no longer felt anything, neither pain nor cold, sorrow nor triumph, only a huge void. Things were not meant to make sense; they just repeated themselves in an eternal, self-explanatory mantra–living, dying, being reborn, living, dying. He squeezed the trigger halfway. Took aim.





'Beate?' he whispered.





She kicked open the door and passed the AG3 to Harry, who grabbed it.





'What…happened?'





'The Setesdal Twitch,' she said.





'The Setesdal Twitch?'





'He went down like a pile of bricks, poor thing.' She showed him her right hand. The rain washed and rinsed away the blood from the two wounds on her knuckles. 'I was just waiting for something to distract him. And the clap of thunder scared the living daylights out of him. You too, it seems.'





They looked at the motionless body in the left-hand service box.





'Will you help me with the handcuffs, Harry?' Her blonde hair was stuck to her face, but she didn't seem to notice. She smiled.