‘I’ll check the database.’
‘Well done, Bjørn.’
‘Wait, there’s more. You asked us to look harder for a nurse’s uniform and we did. We found one with PSG on it. And I’ve checked. There’s a disused PSG factory in Oslo, up in Nydalen. If it’s empty and the eighth guest had sex with Adele there, we may still be able to find semen there.’
‘Mm. Knobbed in Nydalen and humped in Håvass. The eighth guest may just have fucked his bolt-hole. PSG, you said. Is that the Kadok factory?’
‘Yes, how … ?’
‘Pal’s father worked there.’
‘Repeat, there’s a helluva racket now.’
‘They’re crossing the finishing line. See you.’
Harry put the phone in his jacket pocket, swivelled round in his chair, so he didn’t see the gloomy faces of the losers around the felt course, nor the croupier’s smile. ‘Conglatulations again, Hally!’
Harry got up, donned his jacket and looked at the note the Vietnamese man was holding out for him. With the portrait of Edvard Munch. A thousand kroner.
‘Mm, velly lucky,’ Harry said. ‘Put it on the green horse in the next race. I’ll pick up the cash another day, Duc.’
Lene Galtung was sitting in the living room staring at the double-glazed window, at the double-exposed reflection. Her iPod was playing Tracy Chapman. ‘Fast Car’. She could listen to the song again and again, never got tired of it. It was about a poor girl wanting to flee from everything, just get in her lover’s fast car and leave the life she had, working on the till at the supermarket, being responsible for her drunken father, burn all the bridges. This could not have been further from Lene’s own life, nevertheless the song was about her. The Lene she could have been. The Lene she actually was. One of the two she saw in the double reflection. The ordinary one, the grey one. In all her years at school she had been scared stiff that the classroom door would open, someone would come in, point a finger at her and say, we’re on to you now, take off those fine clothes. Then they would toss her a few rags and say, now everyone can see who you really are, the illegitimate child. She had been sitting there, year in, year out, hiding, as quiet as a mouse, glancing at the door, just waiting. Listening to friends, listening for the telltale signs that would give her away. The embarrassment, the fear, the defence she put up seemed like arrogance to others. And she knew she overplayed her role as rich, successful, spoilt and carefree. She was not at all good-looking and radiant, like the other girls in her circle, the ones who could chirrup with a selfassured smile ‘I don’t have a clue’, in the charming knowledge that whatever they didn’t know couldn’t possibly be important and that the world would never require any more from them than their beauty. So she had to pretend. That she was beautiful. Radiant. Superior to everything. But she was so tired of it. Had just wanted to sit in Tony’s car and ask him to leave everything behind. Drive to a place where she could be the real Lene and not these two false personae who hated each other. As the song said, together, she and Tony could find that place.
The reflection in the glass moved. Lene recoiled when she realised it was not her face after all. She hadn’t heard her come in. Lene straightened up and pulled out the earphones.
‘Put the coffee tray there, Nanna.’
The woman hesitated. ‘You should forget him, Lene.’
‘Stop it!’
‘I’m just saying. He won’t be a good man for you.’
‘Stop it, I told you!’
‘Shh!’ The woman smacked down the tray with a clatter on the table, and her turquoise eyes flashed. ‘You have to see common sense, Lene. We’ve all had to do that in this house when the situation demanded it. I’m just saying this as your—’
‘As my what?’ Lene snorted. ‘Look at you. What could you be to me?’
The woman ran her hands down the white apron, went to put one on Lene’s cheek, but Lene waved it away. The woman sighed, and it sounded like a drop of water falling in a well. Then she turned and left. As the door closed behind her, the black phone next to Lene rang. She felt her heart leap. Since Tony had disappeared, her phone had been constantly switched on and always within arm’s length. She grabbed it. ‘Lene Galtung.’
‘Harry Hole, Crime Squ— I mean, Kripos. I’m sorry to intrude, but I need to ask you for some help with a case. It’s about Tony.’
Lene could feel her voice careering out of control as she replied: ‘Has … has something happened?’
‘We’re looking for someone we suspect died from a fall in the mountains around Ustaoset.’