‘It was trampled to death by an elk. I consoled myself with the thought that it must be a good way for an elkhound to die. In service as it were.’
Harry nodded. They drove up to Ryen and snaked round the bends to Oslo’s best viewing points in the east.
‘It’s right here,’ Harry said, pointing to an unlit house. ‘Park at an angle so that the headlights are shining at the windows.’
‘Shall I …?’
‘No,’ Harry said. ‘You wait here. Keep your phone on and ring if anyone comes.’
Harry took the jemmy with him and walked up the shingle path to the house. Autumn, sharp night air, the aroma of apples. He had a moment of déjà vu. He and Øystein creeping into a garden and Tresko on the lookout by the fence. And then suddenly out of the dark a figure came hobbling towards them wearing an Indian headdress and squealing like a pig.
He rang.
Waited.
No one came.
Nonetheless Harry had the feeling someone was at home.
He slotted the jemmy inside the crack by the lock and carefully applied his weight. The door was old with soft, damp wood and an old-fashioned lock. Then he used his other hand to insert his ID card on the inside of the crooked snap latch. Pressed harder. The lock burst open. Harry slid inside and closed the door behind him. Stood in the darkness holding his breath. Felt a thin thread on his hand, probably the remains of a spider’s web. There was a damp, abandoned smell. But also something else, something acrid. Illness, hospital. Nappies and medicine.
Harry switched on his torch. Saw a bare coat stand. He continued into the house.
The sitting room looked as if it had been dusted with powder; the colours seemed to have been sucked out of the walls and the furniture. The cone of light moved across the room. Harry’s heart stopped when it was reflected back from a pair of eyes. Then went on beating. A stuffed owl. As grey as the rest of the room.
Harry ventured further into the house and was able to confirm afterwards that it was the same as the flat. Nothing out of the ordinary.
Until, that is, he reached the kitchen and discovered the two passports and the plane tickets on the table.
Although the passport photo had to be almost ten years old Harry recognised the man from his visit to the Radium Hospital. Her passport was brand new. In the photo she was almost unrecognisable, pale, hair hanging in lank strands. The tickets were to Bangkok, departure in ten days.
Harry went down to the basement. Headed for the only door he had not looked behind. There was a key in the lock. He opened it. The same smell he had noticed when he was in the hall met him. He flicked the switch inside the door, and a naked bulb lit the steps leading to the cellar. The feeling that someone was at home. Or ‘Oh, yes, the gut instinct’, which Bellman had said with light irony when Harry had asked whether he had checked Martin Pran’s record. A feeling that Harry now knew had misled him.
Harry wanted to go down, but something was holding him back. The cellar. Similar to the one he had grown up with. When his mother had asked him to fetch potatoes, which they kept in the dark in two big bags, Harry had raced down trying not to think. Trying to imagine that he was running because it was so cold. Because they were in a hurry to prepare the meal. Because he liked running. It had nothing to do with the yellow man waiting down there; a naked, smiling man with a long tongue you could hear slithering in and out of his mouth. But that wasn’t what stopped him. It was something else. The dream. The avalanche through the cellar corridor.
Harry repressed the thoughts and set his foot on the first step. There was an admonitory creak. He forced himself to tread slowly. Still with the jemmy in his hand. At the bottom, he began to walk along between the storerooms. A bulb in the ceiling cast meagre light. And created more shadows. Harry noticed that all the rooms were shut with padlocks. Who would lock a storeroom in their own cellar?
Harry inserted the pointed end of the jemmy under one hinge. Breathed in, dreading the noise. Pressed the jemmy back quickly, and there was a short crack. He held his breath, listened. The house seemed to be holding its breath as well. Not a sound.
Then he gently opened the door. The smell assailed his nostrils. His fingers found a switch on the inside, and the next moment Harry was bathed in light. Neon tube.
The storeroom was much larger than it had appeared from the outside. He recognised it. It was a copy of a room he had seen before. The lab at the Radium Hospital. Benches with glass flasks and test-tube stands. Harry lifted the lid off a big plastic box. The white powder was speckled with brown. Harry licked the tip of his index finger, dabbed it into the powder and rubbed it against his gums. Bitter. Violin.
Harry gave a start. A sound. He held his breath again. And there it was again. Someone sniffling.