She froze. Jon's flat.
'Fine property. But do you know what? There was police tape over the door to one of the flats. A resident told me there had been a shooting there. Can you imagine?'
'Well I never,' she shouted. 'What was the police tape for?'
'That's what the police do, secure the premises while they turn the flat upside down for fingerprints and DNA to find out who's been there. Anyway, the Salvation Army may be willing to lower the price if there's been a shooting in the building, don't you think?'
'They don't want to sell. I've told you.'
'They didn't want to sell, darling.'
A thought struck her. 'Why would the police search the flat if the shooting came from the corridor outside?'
She heard Mads turn off the tap and looked up. He was standing in the doorway, with a yellow smile in the white shaving foam and a razor in his hand. And soon he would sprinkle on the expensive aftershave she could not bear.
'What are you talking about?' he said. 'I didn't say anything about corridors. And why so pale, darling?'
The day had risen late and there was still a layer of transparent icy mist hanging over Sofienberg Park as Ragnhild hurried up Helgesens gate breathing into her beige Bottega Veneta scarf. Even wool bought in Milan for nine thousand kroner could not keep the cold out, but at least it covered her face.
Fingerprints. DNA. To find out who had been there. That must not happen; the consequences would be disastrous.
She rounded the corner to Goteborggata. There weren't any police cars outside anyway.
The key slid into the lock of the main entrance, and she scuttled in towards the lift. It was a long time since she had been here, and the first time she was arriving unannounced, of course.
Her heart was pounding as the lift was going up and she was thinking of her hair in his shower cabinet, clothing fibres in the carpet, fingerprints everywhere.
The corridor was empty. The orange tape across the door showed that no one was at home, but she knocked anyway and waited. Then she took out the key and tried it. It didn't fit. She tried again, but could only get the tip into the cylinder. Christ, had Jon changed the lock? She took a deep breath, turned the key round and said a silent prayer.
The key slipped in and the lock gave a gentle click as it opened.
She inhaled the smell of the flat that she knew so well and made for the wardrobe where she knew he kept the vacuum cleaner. It was a black Siemens VS08G2040, the same model as they had at home, 2000 watts, the most powerful on the market. Jon liked things to be clean. The vacuum cleaner gave a hoarse roar as she plugged it in at the wall. It was ten o'clock. She should be able to clean all the floors and wipe all the walls and surfaces within an hour. She regarded the closed bedroom door and wondered whether to start there. Where the memories, and the evidence, were strongest. No. She placed the nozzle of the vacuum cleaner against her forearm. It felt like a bite. She pulled it away and saw that blood had already gathered.
She had been cleaning for a few minutes when she remembered. The letters! God, she had almost forgotten they might find the letters she had written. The first ones in which she had written about her innermost dreams and desires, and the last ones, the desperate, naked ones where she had implored him to get in touch. She left the vacuum cleaner on, draped the hose over a chair and ran over to Jon's desk and began to pull out the drawers. The first contained pens, tape and a hole punch. The second telephone directories. The third was locked. Of course.
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 Bors Kafe and stood inside scanning the room and wondering what the imminent smoking law would do to places like this. Harry had been to Bors 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.