By the time the door had slammed behind her Harry had brewed up his first cup of coffee and made a start.
After reading for three hours he had to have a break to fight the despondency stealing over him. He took the cup and stood by the kitchen window. Told himself he was here to question guilt, not to confirm innocence. Doubt was enough. And yet. The evidence was unambiguous. And all his years of experience as a murder investigator worked against him: things were surprisingly often exactly as they looked.
After three more hours the conclusion was the same. There was nothing in the documents that hinted at a different explanation. That didn’t mean there wasn’t one, but it wasn’t here, he told himself.
He left before Rakel came home, telling himself he had jet lag, he had to sleep. But he knew why. He couldn’t bring himself to say that from what he had read it was harder to cling to a doubt, the doubt that was the way, the truth, the life and the only hope of redemption.
So he grabbed his coat and left. Walked all the way from Holmenkollen, past Ris, over Sogn and Ullevål and Bolteløkka to Schrøder’s. Considered going in but decided against it. Headed east instead, over the river to Tøyen.
And when he pushed open the door to the Watchtower, daylight had already started to fade. Everything was as he remembered. Pale walls, pale cafe decor, large windows that let in the maximum amount of light. And in this light the afternoon clientele sat around the tables with coffee and sandwiches. Some customers hung their heads over plates as if they had just reached the finishing line after a fifty-kilometre race, some carried on staccato conversations in impenetrable junkie-speak, others you wouldn’t have been surprised to see drinking an espresso among the bourgeois pram armada at United Bakeries.
Some had been provided with new second-hand clothes they either kept in plastic bags or were wearing. Others looked like insurance agents or provincial schoolmistresses.
Harry headed for the counter, and a rotund, smiling girl in a Salvation Army hoodie offered him free filter coffee and wholewheat bread with brown cheese.
‘Not today, thank you. Is Martine here?’
‘She’s working in the clinic.’
The girl pointed her finger at the ceiling and the Salvation Army first-aid room above.
‘But she should be finished—’
‘Harry!’
He turned.
Martine Eckhoff was as small as ever. The smiling kitten face had the same disproportionately broad mouth and a nose that was no more than a knoll in her tiny face. And her pupils looked as if they had run to the edge of the brown irises, forming the shape of a keyhole. She had once explained to him it was congenital and known as iris coloboma.
Martine stretched up and gave him a long, lingering hug. And when she had finished she still would not let go of him, but held both of his hands while looking up at him. He saw a shadow flit across her smile when she saw the scar on his face.
‘How … how thin you are.’
Harry laughed. ‘Thank you. But while I’ve got thinner—’
‘I know,’ Martine cried. ‘I’ve got fatter. Everyone’s got fatter, though, Harry. Except you. By the way, I do have an excuse for being fat …’
She patted her stomach where the black lambswool jumper was stretched to its limit.
‘Mm. Did Rikard do this to you?’
She laughed and nodded with enthusiasm. Her face was red, the heat was coming off her like a plasma screen.
They walked over to the only free table. Harry sat down and watched the black hemisphere of a stomach trying to lower itself onto a chair. It looked incongruous against the backdrop of capsized lives and apathetic hopelessness.
‘Gusto,’ he said. ‘Do you know anything about the case?’
She heaved a deep sigh. ‘Of course. Everyone here does. He was part of the community. He didn’t come here often, but we saw him now and then. The girls working here were in love with him, every last one. He was so good-looking!’
‘What about Oleg, the guy who it’s claimed killed him?’
‘He came sometimes, with a girl.’ She frowned. ‘Claimed? Is there some doubt about it then?’
‘That’s what I’m trying to establish. A girl you say?’
‘Lovely, but a wan little thing. Ingunn? Iriam?’ She turned to the counter. ‘Hey! What’s the name of Gusto’s foster-sister?’ And before anyone had a chance to answer she answered herself: ‘Irene!’
‘Red hair and freckles?’ Harry asked.
‘She was so pale that if it hadn’t been for her hair she would have been invisible. I mean that. In the end the sun shone right through her.’
‘In the end?’