Harry thought he would feel happiness or at least relief. Instead he only felt the knot in his stomach tightening. 'So what do you need to know?'
'Just the name of your friend and the bank in Egypt where he wants to pick up the money.'
'You'll have them in an hour.' Harry got to his feet.
Raskol rubbed his wrists as if he had taken off handcuffs. 'I hope you don't think you understand me, Spiuni.' He said it in a low voice without looking up.
Harry came to a halt. 'What do you mean?'
'I'm a gypsy. My world can be an inverted world. Do you know what God is in Romany?'
'No.'
'Devel. Devil. Strange, isn't it? When you sell your soul, it's good to know who you're selling it to, Spiuni.'
* * *
Halvorsen thought Harry looked drained.
'Define "drained",' Harry said, leaning back in his office chair. 'Or, in fact, don't.'
When Halvorsen asked Harry how things were going and Harry asked him to define 'going', Halvorsen sighed and left the office to try his luck with Elmer.
Harry dialled the number he had received from Rakel, but again got the Russian voice he assumed was telling him he was generally barking up the wrong tree. So he rang Bjarne Mřller and tried to give his boss the impression he wasn't barking up the wrong tree. Mřller didn't sound convinced.
'I want good news, Harry. Not reports on how you've been spending your time.'
Beate came in to say she had watched the video ten more times and she no longer had any doubt that the Expeditor and Stine Grette knew each other. 'I think the last thing he tells her is that she is going to die. You can see it in her eyes. Defiant and frightened at the same time, just like in the war films where you see resistance fighters lined up ready to be shot.'
Pause.
'Hello?' She waved a hand in front of his eyes. 'You look drained.'
He rang Aune.
'Harry here. How do people react when they know they're going to be executed?'
Aune chuckled. 'They're focused,' he said. 'On time.'
'And frightened? Panic-stricken?'
'That depends. What sort of execution are we talking about?'
'A public execution. In a bank.'
'I see. I'll ring you back in two minutes.'
Harry studied his watch as he waited. It took 120 seconds.
'The process of dying, much like the process of being born, is a very intimate affair,' Aune said. 'The reason people in such situations instinctively have a desire to hide is not just because they feel physically vulnerable. Dying in the sight of others, as in a public execution, is a double punishment as it is an affront to the victim's modesty in the most brutal way conceivable. It was one of the reasons public executions were considered to have a more criminally preventative effect on the population than execution in the solitude of the cell. Some allowances were made, however, such as obliging the executioner to wear a mask. That wasn't, as many think, to conceal the executioner's identity–everyone knew it was the local butcher or rope-maker. The mask was out of consideration for the condemned man, so that he didn't feel a stranger was close to him at the moment of death.'
'Mm. The bank robber was also wearing a mask.'
'The use of masks is a whole field of psychological research. For example, the modern notion that wearing a mask deprives us of freedom can be turned on its head. Masks can depersonalise in a way which allows freedom. To what do you otherwise attribute the popularity of masked balls in Victorian times? Or the use of masks in sexual games? A bank robber, on the other hand, has more prosaic reasons for wearing a mask, of course.'
'Maybe.'
'Maybe?'
'I don't know,' Harry sighed.
'You seem…'
'Tired. See you.'
* * *
Harry's position on earth slowly moved away from the sun and the afternoons became dark earlier and earlier. The lemons outside Ali's shop shone like small yellow stars and a silent spray of fine rain fell as Harry walked up Sofies gate. The afternoon had been spent arranging the transfer of funds to El Tor. It hadn't been such a major job. He had chatted to Řystein, got his passport number plus the address of the bank beside the hotel where he was staying and phoned the information through to the prison inmates' newspaper the Returning Phantom, where Raskol was working on an article about Sun Tzu. Then it was simply a question of waiting.
Harry had arrived at the front door and was about to search for keys when he heard a padding of feet on the pavement behind him. He didn't turn.
Not until he heard the low growl.
In fact, he was not surprised. If you heat up a pressure cooker, you know that sooner or later something has to happen.