‘No cheeky miniskirt and bonnet with a red cross?’
‘Nope. There was a pair of light blue hospital trousers and top there, but nothing to get you going exactly.’
‘Mm. Perhaps she couldn’t get hold of the miniskirt variety. Or couldn’t be bothered. Could you examine the hospital stuff for me?’
Holm sighed. ‘As I said, we went through all the clothes there, and whatever could be washed had been washed. Not so much as a stain or a hair.’
‘Could you take it to the lab? Give it a thorough going-over?’
‘Harry . . .’
‘Thanks, Bjørn. And I was only kidding, you’ve got a terrific conk. Really.’
It was four o’clock when Harry fetched Sis in the Kripos car Bellman had placed at his disposal until further notice. They drove to Rikshospital and talked to Dr Abel. Harry translated the bits Sis didn’t understand, and she shed some tears. Then they went to see their father who had been moved to another room. Sis squeezed Olav’s hand and whispered his name again and again as if to rouse him gently from sleep.
Sigurd Altman popped by, put a hand on Harry’s shoulder, not too long, and said a few words, not too many.
After dropping off Sis at her little flat by Lake Sognsvann, Harry drove to the city centre where he kept going, twisting this way and that through one-way streets, roadworks and dead ends. He drove through the red-light district, the shopping area, the drugs zone and it wasn’t until he had emerged and the town lay beneath him that he was aware he had been on his way to the German bunkers. He rang Øystein, who appeared ten minutes later, parked his taxi beside Harry’s car, opened the door, turned up the music, came over and sat on the brick wall next to Harry.
‘Coma,’ Harry said. ‘Not the worst thing that could happen, I suppose. Got a smoke?’
They sat listening to Joy Division. ‘Transmission’. Ian Curtis. Øystein had always liked singers who died young.
‘Shame I never got to talk to him after he fell ill,’ Øystein said, taking a deep drag.
‘You wouldn’t have done, however long it had taken,’ Harry said.
‘No, that’ll have to be my consolation.’
Harry laughed. Øystein sent him a sideways glance, smiled, unsure whether you were allowed to laugh when fathers lay on their deathbeds.
‘What are you going to do now?’ Øystein asked. ‘Go on a bit of a binge? I can ring Tresko and—’
‘No,’ Harry said, stubbing out his cigarette. ‘I have to work.’
‘You’d prefer death and depravity to a glass or two?’
‘You can drop by and say goodbye while he’s still breathing, you know.’
Øystein shivered. ‘Hospitals give me the creeps. Anyway, he can’t hear jackshit, can he?’
‘It wasn’t him I was thinking about, Øystein.’
Øystein screwed up his eyes against the smoke. ‘The little upbringing I had, Harry, I got from your father. D’you know that? My own dad wasn’t worth a bloody fly’s droppings. Go there tomorrow, I will.’
‘Good for you.’
He stared up at the man above him. Saw his mouth move, heard the words issuing forth, but something must have been damaged, he couldn’t assemble them into anything sensible. All he understood was that the time had come. The revenge. That he would have to pay. And in a way it was a relief.
He was sitting on the floor with his back to the large, round wood burner. His arms were forced backwards around the stove, his hands tied with two ski belts. He threw up from time to time, probably due to concussion. The bleeding had stopped and sensation had returned to his body, but there was a mist over his vision that came and went. Nonetheless, he was not beset by doubt. The voice. It was a ghost’s voice.
‘You’re going to die quite soon,’ it whispered. ‘As she did. But there is still something to gain. You see, you still have to choose how. Unfortunately, there are only two options. Leopold’s apple . . .’
The man held up a metal ball perforated with holes and a small loop of wire hanging from one of them.
‘Three of the girls have tasted it. None of them liked it much. But it’s pain-free and swift. And you only need to answer this: How? And who else knows? Who have you been working with? Believe me, the apple is preferable to the alternative. Which you, as an intelligent man, have probably worked out is . . .’
The man stood up, flailed his arms in an exaggerated manner, to keep warm, and put on a broad smile. The whisper was all there was to break the silence.
‘It’s a bit cold in here, don’t you think?’