She grabbed the letter opener from the bureau, forced it in above the lock and leaned with all her strength against the shaft. The old, dry wood creaked. And while she was thinking the letter opener would break, the front of the drawer split along its length. She pulled out the drawer with a jerk, brushed away the wooden splinters and looked down at the envelopes. The piles of them. Her fingers flipped through them. Hafslund Energi. Den norske Bank. Intelligent Finance. The Salvation Army. A blank envelope. She opened it. 'Dear Son,' it said at the top. She continued to flick through the pile. There! The envelope bore the investment fund's name – Gilstrup Invest – in a discreet pale blue, down in the right-hand corner.
Relieved, she took out the letter.
When she had finished reading she laid the letter aside and felt the tears streaming down her cheeks. It was as though her eyes had been opened again, as though she had been blind and now she could see and everything was as it had been. As though everything she had believed in and had once rejected was true again. The letter had been brief, yet, after reading it, everything was changed.
The vacuum cleaner groaned without remorse and drowned everything except the simple, unambiguous sentences on the writing paper, their absurd and at the same time self-evident logic. She didn't hear the traffic from the street, the creaking of the door or the person standing right behind her chair. It wasn't until she caught his aroma that the hairs on her neck stood up.
The SAS plane landed at Flesland Airport buffeted by westerly gales. In the taxi to Bergen the windscreen wipers hissed and the studded winter tyres crunched on wet, black tarmac as they cut their way between cliff faces with comb-overs of wet grassy tufts and bare trees. Winter in western Norway.
When they arrived in Fyllingsdalen, Skarre rang.
'We've found something.'
'Out with it then.'
'We've been through Robert Karlsen's hard drive. The only thing of doubtful character was cookies to a couple of porn sites on the Net.'
'We would have found that on your computer too, Skarre. Get to the point.'
'We didn't find any persons of doubtful character in the papers or letters, either.'
'Skarre . . .' Harry warned.
'On the other hand, we did find an interesting ticket stub,' he said. 'Guess where to.'
'I'll clobber you.'
'To Zagreb,' Skarre hurried to add. And then when Harry didn't answer: 'In Croatia.'
'Thank you. When was he there?'
'In October. Departure 12 October, returning the same evening.'
'Mm. Just the one October day in Zagreb. Doesn't sound like a holiday.'
'I checked with his boss at Fretex in Kirkeveien, and she says that Robert didn't do any jobs abroad for them.'
Harry rang off wondering why he hadn't told Skarre he was pleased with his work. He could have done that, no problem. Was he becoming mean in his old age? No, he thought, as he took the four kroner change from the taxi driver; he had always been mean.
Harry stepped out into a sad, gonorrhoeal discharge of a Bergen squall which, according to myth, starts one afternoon in September and finishes one afternoon in March. He walked the few paces to the front door of Børs Kafé and stood inside scanning the room and wondering what the imminent smoking law would do to places like this. Harry had been to Børs twice before and it was a place where he instinctively felt at home, yet an outsider at the same time. The waiters bustled around wearing red jackets and expressions that said they were working at a high-class establishment while serving half-litres and bone-dry witticisms to local crabbers, retired fishermen, hardy wartime seamen and others whose lives had capsized. The first time Harry went there a washed-up celeb had been dancing the tango with a fisherman between the tables while an older lady dressed to the nines had sung German ballads to accordion accompaniment and reeled off rhythmic obscenities with heavily rolled 'r's during the instrumental breaks.
Harry's eyes found what they were looking for, and he headed for the table where a tall, thin man towered over one empty and one almost empty beer glass.
'Boss.'
The man's head bobbed up at the sound of Harry's voice. His eyes followed after a slight delay. Behind the mist of intoxication his pupils were contracting.
'Harry.' To his surprise, the voice was clear and distinct.
Harry pulled over a free chair from a neighbouring table.
'Travelling through?' asked Bjarne Møller.
'Yes.'
'How did you find me?'
Harry didn't answer. He had been prepared, but still he could hardly believe what he was seeing.
'So they're gossiping at the station, are they? Well, well.' Møller took another deep draught from the glass. 'Strange change of roles, isn't it. It used to be me who found you like this. Beer?'
Harry leaned over the table. 'What's happened, boss?'
'What's usually happened when a grown man drinks during working hours, Harry?'