'You probably did the right thing.' Again the expression said something different from the mouth.
'What do the doctors say? . . . Will he . . . ?'
'He'll be in a coma until his condition improves. But whether his life can be saved, they don't know yet. Let's move on.'
'It's like a recurring nightmare,' Jon whispered. 'It just keeps happening. Again and again.'
'Please don't make me repeat myself. You have to speak into the microphone,' Toril Li intoned.
Harry stood by the hotel-room window surveying the town in which maimed and mangled TV aerials made strange signs and gestures to the yellow-brown sky. The sound of Swedish from the TV was muted by the thick, dark carpets and curtains. Max von Sydow was playing Knut Hamsun. The minibar door was open. The hotel's brochure lay on the coffee table. On the front page was a picture of the statue of Josip Jelacic in Jelacic Square, and on top of Jelacic were four miniature bottles. Johnnie Walker, Smirnoff, Jägermeister and Gordon's. As well as two bottles of Ozujsko beer. None of the bottles had been opened. Yet. Skarre had phoned an hour ago to tell him what had happened in Gøteborggata.
He wanted to be sober when he made this call.
Beate answered on the fourth ring.
'He's alive,' she said before Harry could ask. 'They've put him on a respirator and he's in a coma.'
'What do the doctors say?'
'They don't know, Harry. He could have died on the spot because it looks as though Stankic tried to sever his main artery, but he managed to get his hand in between. He has a deep cut on the back of his hand and bleeding from smaller arteries on both sides of the neck. Then Stankic stabbed him several times in the chest above the heart. The doctors say the knife may have caught the tip.'
Apart from an almost imperceptible tremor in the voice, she could have been talking about any victim at all. Harry knew it was the only way she could talk about this right now; as a part of the job. In the silence Max von Sydow roared with indignation. Harry was searching for words of comfort.
'I've been talking to Toril Li,' he said instead. 'She reported back on Karlsen's statement. Have you got anything to add?'
'We found the bullet in the front of the building, to the right of the door. The ballistics guys are checking it out now, but I'm pretty sure it will match the bullets in Egertorget, Jon's flat and outside the Hostel. This is Stankic.'
'What makes you so sure?'
'A couple driving by stopped when they saw Halvorsen lying on the pavement. They said they saw someone resembling a beggar crossing the street in front of them. The girl said he slipped on the pavement a bit further down. We checked the place. My colleague, Bjørn Holm, found a foreign coin buried so deep in the snow that at first we thought it must have been there for a few days. He didn't know where it was from, either, as all we could see was Republika Hrvatska and five kune. So he checked.'
'Thanks, I know the answer,' Harry said. 'So it is Stankic.'
'We've taken samples of the vomit on the ice to make sure. The pathologists are checking the DNA against hairs we found on the pillow in his hostel room. We get the results tomorrow, I hope.'
'Then we know we have DNA at any rate.'
'Well, funnily enough, a pool of vomit is not the ideal place to get DNA. Surface cells from the mucous membranes are scattered when there is such a volume of sick. And under the open sky—'
'—they are exposed to pollution from innumerable other DNA sources. I know all that, but at least we have something to go on now. What are you doing at the moment?'
Beate sighed. 'I've received a rather strange text message from the Veterinary Institute and have to ring up and find out what they mean.'
'The Veterinary Institute?'
'Yes, we found some half-digested bits of meat in the vomit, so we sent them for DNA analysis. The idea was they would check them against the meat archive which the Agricultural High School in Ås uses to trace meat to its place of origin and the producer. If it has any special qualities perhaps we can link it to an eating house in Oslo. It's a shot in the dark, but if Stankic has found a bolt-hole in the last twenty-four hours he must be moving as little as possible. And if he has eaten somewhere close by it's probable he would go there again.'
'Well, why not? What was the text message?'
'In which case it must be a Chinese restaurant. Bit cryptic.'
'Mm. Call back when you know any more. And . . .'
'Yes?'
Harry could hear that what he was going to say would sound ridiculous: Halvorsen was a toughie; they could do the most extraordinary things nowadays and everything would be fine.
'Nothing.'
After Beate had rung off, Harry addressed himself to the table and the bottles. Eeny, meeny . . . Mo was the bottle of Johnnie Walker. Harry held the miniature with one hand and unscrewed – or to be more precise – twisted the top with the other. He felt like Gulliver. Trapped in a foreign land with pygmy bottles. He breathed in the familiar, sweet smell from the narrow opening. It was just a mouthful, but his body was already alarmed by the prospect of a toxic attack and was on full alert. Harry dreaded the inevitable first fit of puking, but knew this would not stop him. On the TV Knut Hamsun said he was tired and could not write any more.