Her laughter mixed with the tears. And Harry wondered at how much it was possible to miss a sound, a certain oscillation of the air. How long you can yearn for a certain laugh.
‘I need to be off now,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘I have three meetings left.’
‘Left? Before what?’
‘I’ll ring you tomorrow.’
Harry got up. He had heard music from the first floor. Slayer. Slipknot.
After getting into the taxi and giving the next address, he thought about her question. Before what? Before he wanted to have everything finished. To be free. Maybe.
It was a short drive.
‘This one might take a bit longer,’ he said.
He breathed in, opened the gate and went to the door of the fairytale house.
He thought he could see the turquoise eyes following him from the kitchen window.
92
Free Fall
MIKAEL BELLMAN STOOD INSIDE THE ENTRANCE DOOR OF Oslo District Prison watching Sigurd Altman and a prison officer sauntering towards the counter.
‘Checking out?’ the officer behind the counter asked.
‘Yes,’ said Altman, handing over a form.
‘Anything from the minibar?’
The second officer chuckled at what was undoubtedly a stock-in-trade at releases.
Personal effects were unlocked from a cupboard and returned with a broad smile. ‘Hope your stay met expectations, herr Altman, and that we see you again soon.’
Bellman held the door open for Altman. They walked down the stairs together.
‘The press are outside,’ Bellman said. ‘So let’s go through the culvert. Krohn’s waiting for you in a car at the rear of Police HQ.’
‘Master of bluffs,’ Altman said with a barbed smile.
Bellman didn’t ask which he was alluding to. He had other questions. The final ones. And three hundred metres within which to have them answered. The lock buzzed, and he pushed open the door to the culvert. ‘Now the deal is done I thought you might be able to tell me a couple of things.’
‘Shoot, Bellman.’
‘Like why you didn’t correct Harry as soon as you realised he was going to arrest you?’
Altman shrugged. ‘I considered the misunderstanding a priceless treat. I understood entirely, of course. What was not understandable was that the arrest would take place in Ytre Enebakk. Why there? And when there’s something you don’t understand, it’s best to keep your trap shut. So I did, until the blinding light, until I saw the whole picture.’
‘And what did the whole picture tell you?’
‘That I was in a see-saw situation.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘I knew about the conflict between Kripos and Crime Squad. And I saw it gave me an option. Being in a see-saw situation means that you’re in a position to apply weight to one side or the other.’
‘But why didn’t you try the same deal with Harry that you did with me?’
‘In a see-saw situation you always turn to the losing party. That’s the party which is more desperate, more willing to pay for what you have to offer. It’s a simple gambling theory.’
‘Why were you so sure that Harry wasn’t on the losing side?’
‘I wasn’t sure, but there was another factor. I had begun to get to know Harry. He’s not like you, Bellman, a man of compromises. He couldn’t care less about personal prestige, he only wants to catch the bad boys. All the bad boys. He would have seen things in the following way: if Tony was the main actor, I was the director. And therefore I should not get off lightly. I reckoned that a career man like you would see things differently. And Johan Krohn agreed with me. You would see the personal gain in being the person who caught the murderer. You knew that people were keen to know who did it, who physically performed the killing, not who did the thinking. If a film flops, it’s great for a director to have Tom Cruise in the main role because he’s the one people will slaughter. Audiences and the press like to have things simple, and my crime is indirect, complicated. A court of law would undoubtedly have handed down a life sentence, but this case isn’t about courts of law, but about politics. If the press and the people are happy, the Ministry of Justice is happy, so everyone can go home more or less happy. Getting away with a slap on the wrist, maybe a suspended sentence, is a cheap price to pay.’
‘Not for everyone,’ Bellman said.
Altman laughed. The echo drowned his footsteps. ‘Take some advice from someone who knows. Let it go. Don’t let it eat you up. Injustice is like the weather. If you can’t live with it, move. Injustice is not part of the system’s machinery. It is the machinery.’