He had put the gun in the guy’s nose, fired, seen the jerk, as if it were in a film. Then he had rolled the car over the cliff and driven off. Further down the road he had wiped the baton and thrown it into the forest. He had several more in the bedroom cupboard at home. Weapons, night-vision goggles, bulletproof vest, even a Märklin rifle which they thought was still in the Evidence Room.
Truls drove down the tunnels and into Oslo’s belly. The car lobby, on the political right, had called the recently constructed tunnels the capital’s vital arteries. A representative of the environment lobby had responded by calling them the town’s bowels. They might be vital but they still carried shit.
He manoeuvred his way through the spur roads and roundabouts, signposted in the Oslo tradition, so that you had to be a local not to fall foul of the Department of Transport’s practical jokes. Then he was high up. East Oslo. His part of town. On the radio they were rabbiting away. One of the voices was drowned out by a rattling sound. The metro. The idiots. Did they think he couldn’t work out their childish codes? They were in Bergslia. They were outside the yellow house.
Harry lay on his back watching cigarette smoke slowly curling up to the bedroom ceiling. It formed figures and faces. He knew whose. He could mention them by name, one by one. The Dead Policemen’s Society. He blew on them and they disappeared. He had made a decision. He didn’t know exactly when he’d decided, he only knew it was going to change everything.
For a while he had tried to convince himself that it didn’t have to be such a risk, that he was exaggerating, but he had been an alcoholic for too many years not to recognise the fool’s ill-judged disdain of the cost. After he’d said what he was going to say now, it would change everything in his relationship with the woman he was lying next to. He was dreading it. Rolled some of the phrases around in his mouth. It was now or never.
He took a deep breath, but she intervened.
‘Can I have a drag?’ Rakel murmured, snuggling closer to him. Her naked skin had that tiled-stove glow he could begin to long for at the most astonishing times. It was warm underneath the duvet, cold on top. White bedlinen, always white bedlinen, nothing else got cold in the same, authentic way.
He passed her the Camel. Watched her hold it in that clumsy manner of hers, her cheeks hollowing as she squinted at the cigarette, as though it was safest to keep an eye on it. He reflected on all he had.
All he had to lose.
‘Shall I run you to the airport tomorrow?’ he asked.
‘You don’t need to.’
‘I know. But my first lecture isn’t until late.’
‘Drive me then.’ She kissed him on the cheek.
‘On two conditions.’
Rakel rolled over onto her side and eyed him with a quizzical look.
‘The first is you never stop smoking like a teenager at a party.’
She sniggered quietly. ‘I’ll try. And the second?’
Harry swallowed. Knowing he could come to regard this as the last happy moment of his life.
‘I expect. .’
Oh, shit.
‘I’m considering breaking a promise,’ he said. ‘A promise I’d made primarily to myself, but I’m afraid it affects you as well.’
He sensed rather than heard her breathing change in the darkness. Shorten, quicken. Fear.
Katrine yawned. Looked at her watch. At the luminous second hand counting down the time. None of the detectives on the original case had reported receiving a call.
She should have felt the tension mounting as the deadline approached, but instead it was the opposite, she had already started to work on her disappointment by forcing herself to think positively. Of the hot bath she would have when she got back to her flat. Of the bed. Of the coffee early tomorrow. Another day with new possibilities. There was always something new, there had to be.
She could see the car headlights on Ring 3: life in Oslo incomprehensibly following its inexorable course. The darkness deepening after the clouds had drawn a curtain in front of the moon. She was about to turn when she froze. A noise. A crack. A twig. Here.
She held her breath and listened. The position she had been allocated was surrounded by dense bushes and trees, well hidden from any of the paths he might choose. But there hadn’t been any twigs on the paths.
Another crack. Closer this time. Katrine instinctively opened her mouth, as though the blood, which was pounding through her veins, needed more oxygen.
Katrine reached for the walkie-talkie. But never got that far.
He must have moved like greased lightning, yet the breath she felt on her neck was quite calm and the whispering voice by her ear unruffled, cheerful almost.
‘What’s happening?’
Katrine turned to him and released her breath in a long hiss. ‘Nothing.’
Mikael Bellman took her binoculars and studied the house below. ‘Delta has two positions inside the railway line there, don’t they?’
‘Yes. How-?’
‘I was given a copy of the ops map,’ Bellman said. ‘That’s how I found this observation post. Well hidden, I must say.’ He smacked himself on the forehead. ‘Well I never. Mosquitoes in March.’
‘Midges,’ Katrine said.
‘Wrong,’ said Mikael Bellman, who was still holding the binoculars to his eyes.
‘Well, we’re both right. Midges are similar to mosquitoes, just much smaller.’
‘You’re wrong about-’
‘Some of them are so small that they don’t suck the blood of humans but other insects. Or their bodily fluids.’ Katrine knew she was babbling out of nervousness, without really knowing why she was nervous. Perhaps because he was the Chief of Police. ‘Of course, insects don’t have-’
‘-nothing happening. A car has stopped outside the house. Someone’s getting out and approaching the house.’
‘And if a midge. . What did you say?’
She took the binoculars from him. Chief of Police or not, this was her post. And he was right. In the light from the street lamps she saw someone who had already walked through the gate and was heading for the front door. He was dressed in red and carrying something she couldn’t identify. Katrine felt her mouth going dry. It was him. It was happening. It was happening now. She grabbed her mobile phone.
‘And I don’t break promises lightly,’ Harry said. Staring at the cigarette she had passed back to him. Hoping there was enough for at least one big drag. He was going to need it.
‘And which promise is that?’ Rakel’s voice sounded small, helpless. Alone.
‘It’s a promise I made to myself. .’ Harry said, pressing his lips round the filter. Inhaled. Tasted the smoke, the end of the cigarette which for some strange reason has a completely different flavour from the beginning. ‘. . about never asking you to marry me.’
In the silence that followed he could hear a gust of wind rustling through the deciduous trees, like an excited, shocked, whispering audience.
Then came her answer. Like a short walkie-talkie message.
‘Repeat.’
Harry cleared his throat. ‘Rakel, will you marry me?’
The wind had moved on. And all that remained was silence, calm. Night. In the midst of it, Harry and Rakel.
‘Are you pulling my leg?’ She had moved away from him.
Harry closed his eyes. He was in free fall. ‘I’m not joking.’
‘Quite sure?’
‘Why would I joke? Do you want this to be a joke?’
‘First off, Harry, you have a very bad sense of humour.’
‘Agreed.’
‘Second, I have Oleg to consider. And you do, too.’
‘When I think about us getting married, Oleg is a big plus.’
‘Third, even if I had wanted to, getting married has a number of legal implications. My house-’
‘I had been thinking of separate estates. I’m damned if I’m going to hand over my fortune to you on a silver platter. I can’t promise much, but I can promise the world’s most pain-free divorce.’