‘Don’t try and talk your way out of answering my question, you stubborn Norwegian buck!’ She hit him over the head with a pillow, but after a brief wrestling match she ended up underneath. Harry held her hands tight while bending and trying to open her dressing-gown belt with his mouth. Birgitta screamed when she realised what he was up to and freed a knee which she planted firmly on his chin. Harry groaned and rolled over onto his side. In a flash she placed her knees on his arms and sat on him.
‘Answer me!’
‘All right, all right, I give in. Yes, I’ve found my niche in life. I’m the best copper you can imagine. Yes, I would rather catch bad boys than dig the soil – or go to gala dinners and stand on a balcony waving to the masses. And, yes, I know it’s perverse.’
Birgitta kissed him on the mouth.
‘You could have cleaned your teeth,’ Harry said through pinched lips.
As she leaned back and laughed, Harry seized the opportunity. He lifted his head, grabbed the belt with his teeth and pulled. The dressing gown slipped open and he rolled her over. Her skin was hot and moist from the shower.
‘Police!’ she screamed, wrapping her legs around him. Harry felt his pulse pounding right through his body.
‘Help,’ she whispered, and nibbled his ear.
Afterwards they lay gazing at the ceiling.
‘I wish . . .’ Birgitta began.
‘Yes?’
‘Oh, nothing.’
They got up and dressed. Harry saw from his watch that he was already late for the morning meeting. He stood by the front door with his arms around her.
‘I think I know what you wish,’ Harry said. ‘You wish I would tell you something about myself.’
Birgitta rested her head against his neck. ‘I know you don’t like doing it,’ she said. ‘I have a feeling that anything I know about you I’ve had to force out of you. Your mother was a kind, clever woman, half Sami, and you miss her. Your father’s a teacher and doesn’t like what you’re doing, but doesn’t say so. And the person you love above all else on earth, your sister, has “a touch of” Down’s syndrome. I like to know this sort of thing about you. But I want you to tell me things because you want to tell me them.’
Harry stroked her neck. ‘Do you want to know something real? A secret?’
She nodded.
‘Sharing secrets binds people together though,’ Harry whispered into her hair. ‘And that’s not always what people want.’
They stood in the hall without speaking. Harry took a deep breath.
‘All my life I’ve been surrounded by people who love me. I’ve been given everything I asked for. In short, I have no explanation for why I’ve turned out as I have.’ A puff of wind brushed Harry’s hair, so gently that he had to close his eyes. ‘Why I have become an alcoholic.’
He said it with brutal harshness. Birgitta clung to him without moving.
‘It takes quite a bit for a civil servant in Norway to be given the boot. Incompetence is not enough, laziness is a non-concept and you can abuse your boss as much as you like, no problem. To tell the truth, you can do just about anything – legislation protects you against most things. Except for drinking. If you turn up for work in an inebriated state more than twice in the police force, that’s grounds for immediate dismissal. For a time there it was easier to count the days I wasn’t drunk.’
He relaxed his grip and held her in front of him. He wanted to see how she was reacting. Then he drew her into him again.
‘Nevertheless, I got by somehow and those who guessed what was going on turned a blind eye. Someone should have reported me, but loyalty and solidarity are strong in the police. One evening a colleague and I were going to a flat on Holmenkollen Ridge to interview a guy about a drugs murder. He wasn’t even a suspect, but while we were outside ringing the doorbell we saw his car come steaming out of the garage and we jumped in ours and gave chase. We put the blue light on the roof and were doing 110 kph down Sørkedalsveien. The road curved left and right, we hit a couple of kerbs and my colleague asked if he shouldn’t take over at the wheel. I was so intent on catching our man that I just dismissed the suggestion.’
What happened later he only knew from reports. In Vinderen a car had pulled out from the petrol station. Driven by a young boy who had just passed his test and gone to the garage to buy cigarettes for his father. The two policemen shunted his car through the fence onto the train lines, dragging the bus shelter where two minutes earlier five or six people had been standing and came to a halt on the platform on the other side of the rails. Harry’s colleague was hurled through the windscreen and found twenty metres further down the line. He had struck a fence post head first. The force had been so great the post was bent at the top. They had had to take fingerprints to be absolutely sure of his identity. The boy in the other car was paralysed from the neck down.