'Why don't you tell me all the rest while you're at it then?'
'That I killed her, you mean?' He laughed, louder this time. 'It's your job to find out, isn't it?'
They had come to the gates.
'You just wanted to see how I would react, didn't you.' Albu rubbed the cigarette against the marble. 'And you wanted to exact your revenge, that was why you told my wife. You were angry. An angry little boy who hits out at whatever comes in his way. Are you happy?'
'When I find the e-mail address, I've got you,' Harry said. He wasn't angry any more. Just tired.
'You won't find any e-mail address,' Albu said. 'Sorry, old chap. We can continue this game, but you can't win.'
Harry struck out. The sound of knuckles on flesh was dull and brief. Albu staggered back a pace, holding his brow.
Harry could see his own grey breath in the darkness of the night. 'You'll have to get that sewn up,' he said.
Albu looked at his blood-stained hand and guffawed. 'My God, Harry, what a terrible loser you are. Is it OK if we use first names? I think this has brought us closer together, don't you?'
Harry didn't answer, and Albu laughed louder.
'What did she see in you, Harry? Anna didn't like losers. At least she wouldn't let them fuck her.'
The laughter rose higher and higher as Harry walked back to the taxi, and the jagged edges of the car keys cut into his skin as his hand closed tighter and tighter around them.
23
Horsehead Nebula
HARRY WOKE UP TO THE TELEPHONE RINGING AND SQUINTED at the clock. 7.30. It was Řystein. He had left Harry's flat only three hours ago. Then he had located the server in Egypt and now he had made further progress.
'I've e-mailed an old friend. He lives in Malaysia and does a bit of small-time hacking. The ISP is in El Tor, on the Sinai peninsula. They have quite a few ISPs there, it's a sort of centre. Were you asleep?'
'Kind of. How will you find our client?'
'There's only one way, I'm afraid. Go there with a thick wad of American greenbacks.'
'How much?'
'Enough to make someone tell you who to talk to. And to make the person you talk to tell you who you really have to talk to. And to make the person you really—'
'I've got you. How much?'
'A grand should make some headway.'
'Do you think so?'
'Off the top of my head. What the fuck do I know?'
'OK. Will you take the job?'
'Course.'
'I pay shit. You travel on the cheapest plane and stay in a crap hotel.'
'Deal.'
* * *
It was twelve o'clock and the Police HQ canteen was packed. Harry clenched his teeth and went in. He didn't dislike his colleagues on principle; he disliked them by instinct. And, as the years went by, it was getting worse.
'Completely normal paranoia,' Aune had called it. 'I feel the same myself. I think all psychologists are after me, whereas in reality it is probably no more than half of them.'
Harry scanned the room and spotted Beate with her packed lunch and the back of someone keeping her company. Harry tried not to notice the looks he received from the tables he passed. Someone mumbled a 'Hi', but Harry assumed it was meant ironically and didn't answer.
'Am I disturbing?'
Beate looked up at Harry as if he had caught her in the act.
'Not at all,' said a familiar voice, getting up. 'I was about to go anyway.'
The hairs on Harry's neck rose–not on principle, but by instinct.
'See you this evening then.' Tom Waaler smiled, a white flash to Beate's beetroot face. He took his tray, nodded to Harry and left. Beate stared down into her goat's cheese as she tried her best to assume a sensible expression while Harry took a seat.
'Well?'
'Well what?' she chirped, overdoing the failure to understand.
'You said on my answerphone you had something new,' Harry said. 'I gathered it was urgent.'
'I've worked it out.' Beate drank from the glass of milk. 'The drawings the program made of the Expeditor's face. I've been racking my brains who they reminded me of.'
'Do you mean the printouts you showed me? There's nothing even remotely like a face, it's just random lines on paper.'
'Nevertheless.'
Harry shrugged. 'You're the one with the fusiform gyrus. Out with it.'
'Last night it came to me who it was.' She took another mouthful of milk and wiped her milky smile on the serviette.
'Well?'
'Trond Grette.'
Harry stared at her. 'You're kidding, aren't you?'
'No,' she said. 'I just said there was a certain likeness. After all, Grette was not far from Bogstadveien at the time of the murder. But, as I said, I've worked it out.'