Harry stepped back three paces.
‘Let’s see … Mr Jussi Kolkka.’ Harry held an American Express card up to the light. ‘Finnish? I suppose you know some Norwegian then?’
No answer.
‘You’ve been a policeman, haven’t you. When I saw you in arrivals at Gardemoen, I thought you were an undercover narco cop. How did you know I was catching that particular flight, Jussi? It’s alright if I call you Jussi, isn’t it? It feels sort of natural to address a guy with his schlong hanging out by his first name.’
There was a brief throaty noise before a gobbet of spit came whirling through the air, rotating on its axis, and landed on Harry’s chest.
Harry looked down at his T-shirt. The black snus-spit had drawn a diagonal line through the second ‘o’ and it now read ‘Snow Patrøl’.
‘So you do understand Norwegian,’ Harry said. ‘Who do you work for then, Jussi? And what do you want?’
Not a muscle stirred in Jussi’s face. Someone shook the door handle outside, swore and went away.
Harry sighed. Then he raised his revolver until it was level with the Finn’s forehead and cocked it.
‘You might suppose, Jussi, that I’m a normal, sane person. Well, this is how sane I am. My father is lying helpless in his sickbed in there. You’ve found out, and that presents me with a problem. There’s only one way to solve it. Fortunately, you’re armed so I can tell the police it was self-defence.’
Harry pressed the hammer back still further. And felt the familiar nausea.
‘Kripos.’
Harry stopped the hammer. ‘Repeat.’
‘I’m in Kripos,’ he hissed in Swedish, with the Finnish accent of which witty speech-makers at Norwegian wedding receptions are so fond.
Harry stared at the man. He didn’t have a second’s doubt that he was telling the truth. Yet it was totally incomprehensible.
‘In my wallet,’ the Finn snarled, not letting the fury in his voice reach his eyes.
Harry opened the wallet and checked inside. Removed a laminated ID card. There wasn’t much information, but it was adequate. The man in front of Harry was employed by Krimpolitisentralen, Kripos for short, the central crime unit in Oslo that assisted in – and usually led – the investigations into murder cases affecting the whole of the country.
‘What the hell does Kripos want with me?’
‘Ask Bellman.’
‘Who’s Bellman?’
The Finn uttered a brief sound; it was difficult to determine whether it was a cough or laughter. ‘POB Bellman, you poor sod. My chief. Let me go now, handsome.’
‘Fuck,’ Harry said, inspecting the card again. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck.’ He dropped the wallet on the floor and made for the door.
‘Hey! Hey!’
The Finn’s shouts faded as the door slid to behind Harry and he walked down the corridor to the exit. The nurse who had been with his father was coming from the opposite direction and nodded with a smile when they were close enough. Harry tossed the tiny key for the handcuffs up in the air.
‘There’s a flasher in the boys’ room, Altman.’
Out of instinct, the nurse caught the key with both hands. Harry could feel the open-mouthed stare on his back until he was out of the door.
9
The Dive
IT WAS A QUARTER TO ELEVEN AT NIGHT. NINE DEGREES centigrade, and Marit Olsen remembered that the weather forecaster had said it would be even milder tomorrow. In Frogner Park there wasn’t a soul to be seen. Something about the lido made her think of laid-up ships, of abandoned fishing villages with the wind whispering through house walls, and fairgrounds out of season. Fragmented memories of her childhood. Like the drowned fishermen who haunted Tronholmen, who emerged from the sea at night, with seaweed in their hair and fish in their mouths and nostrils. Ghosts without breath, but who were wont to scream cold, hoarse seagull cries. The dead with their swollen limbs, which snagged on branches and were wrenched off with a ripping sound, not that this halted their advance towards the isolated house in Tronholmen. Tronholmen where Grandma and Grandpa lived. Where she herself lay trembling in the children’s room. Marit Olsen breathed out. Kept breathing out.
Down there the wind was still, but up here at the top of the ten-metre-high diving platform you could feel the air moving. Marit felt her pulse throbbing in her temples, in her throat, in her groin, blood streaming through every limb, fresh and life-giving. Living was wonderful. Being alive. She had hardly been out of breath after scaling all the steps of the tower, had just felt her heart, that loyal muscle, racing wildly. She stared down at the empty diving pool beneath her, to which the moonlight lent an almost unnatural bluish sheen. Further away, at the end of the pool, she could see the large clock. The hand had stopped at ten past five. Time stood still. She could hear the city, see car lights in Kirkeveien. So close. And yet too far. Too far away for anyone to hear her.