Truls reacted instantly and pressed the ‘speak’ button on the radio. ‘Detective Constable Truls Berntsen here, I’m closer, I’ll take it.’
He had already started the engine, and revved it hard as he pulled out onto the road, hearing a car coming round the bend behind him blow its horn angrily.
‘Copy,’ Emergency Control said. ‘And where are you, Berntsen?’
‘Just round the corner, I said. 31, I want you as backup, so wait if you get there first. Suspect that the assailant is armed. Repeat, armed.’
Saturday night, almost no traffic. If he drove through the Opera Tunnel at full speed, cutting straight through the centre beneath the fjord, he wouldn’t be more than seven or eight minutes behind car 31. Those minutes could, of course, be critical, both for the victim and for the perpetrator to get away, but Detective Constable Truls Berntsen could also be the officer who arrested the vampirist. And who knew what VG would be willing to pay for a report from the first man on the scene. He blew the car’s horn repeatedly and a Volvo swerved out of his way. Dual carriageway now. Three lanes. Foot on the floor. His heart was pounding against his ribs. A speed camera in the tunnel flashed. Police officer on duty, a licence to tell everyone in this whole damn city to fuck off. On duty. His blood was pulsing through his veins, brilliant, as if he was about to get a hard-on.
‘Ace of space!’ Truls roared. ‘Ace of space!’
‘Yes, we’re car 31. We’ve been waiting!’ The man and woman were standing behind the patrol car parked in front of doorway B.
‘Slow lorry that wouldn’t let me pass,’ Truls said, checking that his pistol was loaded and the cartridge full. ‘Heard anything?’
‘It’s all quiet in there. No one’s entered or left.’
‘Let’s go.’ Truls pointed to the male officer. ‘You come with me, and bring a torch.’ He nodded to the woman. ‘You stay here.’
The two men walked up to the entrance. Truls peered through the window at the darkened stairwell. He pressed the button beside the name Amundsen.
‘Yes?’ a voice whispered.
‘Police. Have you heard anything since you called?’
‘No, but he could still be out there.’
‘OK. Open the door.’
The lock clicked and Truls pulled the door open. ‘You go first with the torch.’
Truls heard the officer swallow. ‘I thought you said backup, not up front.’
‘Just be grateful you’re not here on your own,’ Truls whispered. ‘Come on.’
Rakel looked at Harry.
Two murders. A new serial killer. His type of hunt.
He was sitting there eating, making out that he was following the conversation around the table, was polite towards Helga, listened with apparent interest to Oleg. Perhaps she was wrong, perhaps he really was interested. Perhaps he wasn’t completely enchained by it after all, perhaps he had changed.
‘Gun licences are pointless when people will soon be able to buy a 3D printer and make their own pistols,’ Oleg said.
‘I thought 3D printers could only make things out of plastic?’ Harry said.
‘Home printers, yes. But plastic is durable enough if you just want a weapon and you’re only going to use it once to murder someone.’ Oleg leaned across the dining table. ‘You don’t even need an original pistol as the template, you just borrow one for five minutes, dismantle it, take wax copies of the pieces, then use those to make a 3D model that you feed into the computer that controls the printer. Once the murder has been committed, you just melt the whole plastic pistol down. And if anyone did work out that that was the murder weapon, it wouldn’t be registered to anyone.’
‘Hm. But the pistol could still be traced back to the printer that produced it. Forensics can already do that with inkjet printers.’
Rakel looked at Helga, who was looking rather lost.
‘Boys …’ Rakel said.
‘Whatever,’ Oleg said. ‘It’s really crazy – they can make practically anything. So far there are just over two thousand 3D printers in Norway, but imagine when everyone’s got one, when terrorists can 3D-print a hydrogen bomb.’
‘Boys, can’t we talk about something more pleasant?’ Rakel said, feeling strangely breathless. ‘Something a bit more cultured, just for once, seeing as we’ve got a guest?’
Oleg and Harry turned towards Helga, who smiled and shrugged, as if to say that she was fine with anything.
‘OK,’ Oleg said. ‘What about Shakespeare?’
‘That sounds better,’ Rakel said, looking at her son suspiciously as she passed the potatoes to Helga.
‘OK, Ståle Aune and Othello syndrome,’ Oleg said. ‘I haven’t told you that Jesus and I recorded the entire lecture. I was wearing a hidden microphone and transmitter under my shirt, and Jesus was in the next room recording it. Do you think Ståle would be OK if we uploaded it to the Net? What do you think, Harry?’
Harry didn’t answer. Rakel studied him. Was he drifting away again?’
‘Harry?’ she said.
‘Well, obviously I can’t answer that,’ he said, looking down at his plate. ‘But why didn’t you just record it on your phone? It isn’t forbidden to record lectures for private use.’
‘They’re practising,’ Helga said.
The others turned towards her.
‘Jesus and Oleg dream of working as undercover agents.’
‘Wine, Helga?’ Rakel picked up the bottle.
‘Thanks. But aren’t you having any?’
‘I’ve taken a headache pill,’ Rakel said. ‘And Harry doesn’t drink.’
‘I’m a so-called alcoholic,’ Harry said. ‘Which is a shame, because that’s supposed to be a really good wine.’
Rakel saw Helga’s cheeks burn, and hurried to ask: ‘So Ståle’s teaching you about Shakespeare?’
‘Yes and no,’ Oleg said. ‘Othello syndrome implies that jealousy is the main reason for the murders in the play, but that isn’t true. Helga and I read Othello yesterday—’
‘You read it together?’ Rakel put her hand on Harry’s arm. ‘Isn’t that sweet?’
Oleg looked up at the ceiling. ‘Either way, my interpretation is that the real, underlying cause of all the murders isn’t jealousy but a humiliated man’s envy and ambition. In other words, Iago. Othello is just a puppet. The play ought to be called Iago, not Othello.’
‘And do you agree with that, Helga?’ Rakel liked the slim, slightly anaemic, well-mannered girl, and she seemed to have found her feet pretty quickly.
‘I like Othello as the title. And maybe there isn’t a deep-seated reason. Maybe it’s like Othello himself says. That the full moon is the real cause, because it drives men mad.’
‘No reason,’ Harry declaimed solemnly in English. ‘I just like doing things like that.’
‘Impressive, Harry,’ Rakel said. ‘You can quote Shakespeare.’
‘Walter Hill,’ Harry said. ‘The Warriors, 1979.’
‘Yeah,’ Oleg laughed. ‘Best gang film ever.’
Rakel and Helga laughed. Harry raised his glass of water and looked across the table at Rakel. Smiled. Laughter round the family dinner table. And she thought that he was here now, he was with them. She tried to hold on to his gaze, hold on to him. But imperceptibly, as the sea turns from green to blue, it happened. His eyes turned inward again. And she knew that even before the laughter had died out, he was on his way again, into the darkness, away from them.
Truls walked up the stairs in the dark, crouching with his pistol behind the big, uniformed police officer with the torch. The silence was only broken by a ticking sound, like a clock somewhere further up inside the building. The cone of light from the torch seemed to push the darkness ahead of them, making it denser, more compact, like the snow Truls and Mikael used to shovel for pensioners in Manglerud. Afterwards they would snatch the hundred-krone note from gnarled, trembling hands, and say they would come back with the change. If they ever did wait for them, they were waiting still.