Nemesis(38)

'Ugh,' it exclaimed when it saw Harry's towering frame.





The face may have been unfamiliar, but he had the immediate sensation that he had met her before. Presumably because of Anna's detailed description of her ghastly neighbour.





'Harry Hole, Crime Squad,' he said, showing his card. 'I apologise for disturbing you so late in the afternoon. I have a few questions about the evening Anna Bethsen died.'





He tried to smile reassuringly when he saw she was having problems closing her mouth. From the corner of his eye, Harry saw movement behind the glass in the neighbour's door.





'Could I come inside, fru Monsen? It won't take a minute.'





Astrid Monsen took two steps back, and Harry seized the opportunity to slip in and close the door behind him. Now he could see the whole of her Afro hairdo. She had obviously dyed it black, and it enclosed her little white head like an enormous globe.





They stood opposite each other in the frugal light of the hallway, beside dried flowers and a framed poster from the Chagall Museum in Nice.





'Have you seen me before?' Harry asked.





'What…do you mean?'





'Just whether you've seen me before. I'll come to the rest afterwards.'





Her mouth opened and closed. Then she shook her head firmly.





'Fine,' Harry said. 'Were you at home on Tuesday night?'





She nodded tentatively.





'Did you see or hear anything?'





'Nothing,' she said. Rather too hastily for Harry's taste.





'Take your time and think it over,' he said with an attempt at a friendly smile, not the most practised feature in his repertoire of facial expressions.





'Nothing…' she said, her eyes searching for the door behind Harry. 'At all.'





* * *





Back on the street, Harry lit up. He had heard Astrid Monsen apply the safety lock the second he was on the other side of her door. Poor thing. She was the last on his list and he was able to conclude that no one had either seen or heard him or anyone else on the stairway the night Anna died.





After two drags, he threw away the cigarette.





He sat in his chair at home watching the red eye of the answer machine for a long time before pressing the PLAY button. It was Rakel wishing him goodnight, and there was a journalist wanting a comment on the two bank raids. Afterwards he rewound the tape and listened to Anna's message: 'And would you mind wearing the jeans you know I like so much?'





He stroked his face. Then he took out the tape and threw it in the bin. Outside, the rain dripped and, inside, Harry zapped. Women's handball, soaps and some quiz game in which you could become a millionaire. Harry stuck with a discussion on a Swedish channel between a philosopher and a social anthropologist about the concept of revenge. One maintained that a country like the USA, which stands for certain values like freedom and democracy, has a moral responsibility to avenge attacks on its territory as they are also attacks on its values. 'Alone the desire for retaliation–and the execution of it–can protect such a vulnerable system as democracy.'





'What about if the values the democracy stands for themselves fall victim to an act of vengeance?' the other replied. 'What about if another nation's rights as laid down by international law are violated? What kind of values are you defending if you deprive innocent civilians of rights in your hunt for guilty parties? And what about the moral value of turning the other cheek?'





'The problem is that we only have two cheeks,' said the other man, with a smile. 'Isn't it?'





Harry switched off. Wondered whether he should ring Rakel, but decided it was too late. He tried to get his nose in a Jim Thompson book, but discovered that were missing. He got up and paced up and down his room. He opened the refrigerator and stared in frustration at a white cheese and a jar of strawberry jam. He felt like something, but didn't know what. He slammed the refrigerator door shut. Who was he trying to kid? What he wanted was a drink.





At two o'clock in the morning he woke up in his chair, fully clothed. He got up, went to the bathroom and drank a glass of water.





'Fuck,' he said to himself in the mirror. He went to the bedroom and turned on his PC. He found 104 articles in Norwegian on the Net about suicide, but none about revenge, just keywords and links to motives for revenge in literature and Greek mythology. He was just going to switch it off when he realised he hadn't checked his e-mails for a couple of weeks. There were two e-mails. One was from his ISP, who warned him two weeks ago the service was going to be closed down. The other address was anna.beth@chello.no. He double-clicked and read the message: Hi Harry. Don't forget the key. Anna. The time showed it had been sent two hours before he was due to meet her for the last time. He read the message again. So short. So…simple. He assumed that was how people e-mailed each other. Hi Harry. To outside observers it must have seemed as if they were old friends, but they had known each other for six weeks, a long time ago, and he hadn't even realised she had his e-mail address.