The door was slammed so hard Harry got dust in his eyes.
Kaja parked in Maridalsveien, jumped over the crash barrier and trod carefully down the steep slope to the wood where the Kadok factory was situated. She switched on her torch and tramped through the shrubs, brushed away bare branches that wanted to thrust themselves into her face. The growth was dense, shadows leapt around like silent wolves and even when she stopped, listened and watched, shadows of trees fell upon trees, so that you didn’t know what was what, like in a labyrinth of mirrors. But she wasn’t frightened. It was an oddity that she who was so frightened of closed doors was not frightened of the dark. She listened to the roar of the river. Had she heard anything? A sound that ought not to be there? She went on. Ducked under a wind-blown tree trunk and stopped again. But the other sounds stopped the second she stopped. Kaja took a deep breath and finished her line of thought: as if someone who didn’t want to be seen was following her.
She turned and shone the light behind her. Was no longer so sure about not being scared of the dark. Some branches swayed in the light, but they must be the ones she had disturbed, mustn’t they?
She faced forward again.
And screamed when her torch lit up a deathly pale face with enlarged eyes. She dropped the torch and backed away, but the figure followed her with a grunting noise reminiscent of laughter. In the dark she could make out the figure bending down, standing up, then the next moment the blinding light from her torch was shining in her face.
She held her breath.
The grunted laughter stopped.
‘Here,’ rasped a man’s voice and the light jumped.
‘Here?’
‘Your torch,’ the voice said.
Kaja took it and shone the torch to the side of him. So that she could see him without blinding him. He had blond hair and a prognathous jaw.
‘Who are you?’ she asked.
‘Truls Berntsen. I work with Mikael.’
She had heard of Truls Berntsen, of course. The shadow. Beavis – wasn’t that what Mikael called him?’
‘I’m—’
‘Kaja Solness.’
‘Right, how do you … ?’ She swallowed, reformulated the question. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Same as you,’ he answered with a single-toned rasp.
‘Right. And what am I doing here?’
He laughed his grunt-laugh. But didn’t reply. Stood right in front of her with his arms hanging down and away from his sides. One eyelid twitched as if an insect were trapped beneath it.
Kaja sighed. ‘If you’re doing the same as me, you’re here to keep an eye on the factory,’ she said. ‘In case he might reappear.’
‘Yes, in case he might reappear,’ said the Beavis type without taking his eyes off her.
‘It’s not so unlikely, is it?’ she said. ‘He may not know it’s burned down.’
‘My father worked there,’ Beavis said. ‘He used to say he made PSG, coughed PSG and became PSG.’
‘Are there a lot of Kripos people in the area? Did Mikael give you orders to come here?’
‘You don’t meet him any more, do you? You meet Harry Hole.’
Kaja felt a chill in her stomach. How on earth did this man know that? Had Mikael really told people about them?
‘You weren’t at Håvass,’ she said to change the topic.
‘Wasn’t I?’ Grunted laughter. ‘I suppose I was free. Time off. Jussi was there.’
‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘He was there.’
A gust of wind swept in, and she twisted her head to prevent a branch scratching her face. Had he been following her or had he been here before she arrived?
When she turned to ask him, he wasn’t there. She shone her torch between the trees. He was gone.
It was two in the morning when she parked in the street, went through the gate and up the steps to the yellow house. She pressed the button over the painted ceramic tile bearing the words ‘fam. Hole’ in ornate looped writing.
After ringing for the third time she heard a low cough and turned to see Harry returning a service revolver to the lining of his trousers. He must have crept around the corner of the house without making any noise.
‘What’s up?’ she asked, terrified.
‘Just being extra careful. You should have phoned and said you were coming.’
‘Sh-shouldn’t I have come?’
Harry went up the steps past her and unlocked the door. She followed him in, put her arms around him from behind, clung to his back and kicked the door shut with her heel. He freed himself, turned, was about to say something, but she stopped him with a kiss. A greedy kiss that demanded reciprocity. She put her cold hands up his shirt, felt from the glowing hot skin that he had come straight from bed, removed the revolver from his trousers and banged it down on the hall table.