‘Yes.’
‘You … Okay, I understand. What we’re left with, some sort of syndrome, is invariably a serious problem.’
‘Over or under fifty per cent, Steffens?’
‘I can’t—’
‘Steffens, I know we’re in no man’s land here, but I’m begging you. Please.’
The doctor stared at Harry for a long time before seeming to make a decision.
‘As things stand, based on her test results, I think the risk of losing her is a little over fifty per cent. Not much more than fifty, but slightly more. The reason I don’t like telling relatives these percentages is that they usually read too much into them. If a patient dies during an operation where we estimated the risk of death at twenty-five per cent, they often accuse us of having misled them.’
‘Forty-five per cent? A forty-five per cent chance of her surviving?’
‘At the moment. Her condition is deteriorating, so a bit lower if we can’t identify the cause within a day or two.’
‘Thanks.’ Harry stood up. Dizzy. And the thought came automatically: a hope that everything would go completely dark. A fast and pain-free exit, stupid and banal, yet no less senseless than everything else.
‘It would be useful to know how to get hold of you if …’
‘I’ll make sure you can reach me at any time,’ Harry said. ‘I’ll go back to her now, if there isn’t anything else I should know.’
‘Let me come with you, Harry.’
They headed back to room 301. The corridor stretched away and vanished into shimmering light. Presumably a window, with the low autumn sun shining directly through it. They passed nurses in ghostly white, and patients in dressing gowns, slowly moving towards the light with their living-dead shuffle. Yesterday he and Rakel had been embracing in the big bed with its slightly too soft mattress, and now she was here, in the land of coma, among ghosts and spirits. He needed to call Oleg. He needed to work out how to tell him. He needed a drink. Harry didn’t know where the thought came from, but there it was, as if someone had shouted it, spelling it out, straight into his ear. The thought needed to be drowned out, quickly.
‘Why were you Penelope Rasch’s doctor?’ he said in a loud voice. ‘She wasn’t a patient here.’
‘Because she needed a blood transfusion,’ Steffens said. ‘And I’m a haematologist and bank manager. But I also do shifts in A&E.’
‘Bank manager?’
Steffens looked at Harry. And perhaps he realised that Harry’s mind needed distracting, a brief pause from everything he found himself in the middle of.
‘The local branch of the blood bank. I should probably be called bath manager, because we took over the old rheumatic baths that used to be in the basement beneath this building. We call it the bloodbath. Don’t try to tell me that haematologists haven’t got a sense of humour.’
‘Hm. So that’s what you meant about buying and selling blood.’
‘Sorry?’
‘You said that was why you were able to use pictures from the crime scene in Penelope Rasch’s stairwell to calculate how much blood she’d lost. By eye.’
‘You’ve got a good memory.’
‘How is she doing?’
‘Oh, Penelope Rasch is recovering physically. But she’s going to need psychological help. Coming face-to-face with a vampire—’
‘Vampirist.’
‘—it’s an omen, you know.’
‘An omen?’
‘Oh yes. He was predicted and described in the Old Testament.’
‘The vampirist?’
Steffens smiled thinly. ‘Proverbs 30:14. “A sort whose teeth are swords, and whose jaws are set with knives, who devour the poor from the earth and the needy out of house and home.” Here we are.’
Steffens held the door open and Harry walked in. Into the night. On the other side of the closed curtain the sun was shining, but in here the only light was a shimmering green line jumping across a black screen, over and over again. Harry gazed down at her face. She looked so peaceful. And so far away, floating in a dark space where he couldn’t reach her. He sat down on the chair beside the bed, waited until he heard the door close behind him. Then he took hold of her hand and pressed his face to the covers.
‘No further away now, darling,’ he whispered. ‘No further.’
Truls Berntsen had moved the screens in the open-plan office so that the corner he shared with Anders Wyller was completely hidden from view. Which is why he was annoyed that the only person who could see him, Wyller, was so damn curious about everything, and especially who he was talking to on the phone. But right now the snooper was out at some tattoo and piercing parlour, because they’d had a tip-off saying they were importing vampire accessories, among them denture-like metal objects with pointed canine teeth, and Truls was planning to make the most of the break. He’d downloaded the final episode of the second season of The Shield, and had turned the volume so low that only he could hear it. For that reason he definitely wasn’t at all pleased when his phone started to flash and buzz like a vibrator on the desk in front of him as it played the start of Britney Spears’s ‘I’m Not a Girl’, which Truls, for reasons that weren’t entirely clear, was very fond of. The words, about her not being a woman yet, prompted vague thoughts of a girl who was under the age of consent, and Truls hoped that wasn’t why he had it as his ringtone. Or was it? Britney Spears in that school uniform, was it perverse to wank off to that? OK, in that case he was a perv. But what worried Truls more was that the number on the screen was vaguely familiar. The City Treasurer’s department? Internal Investigations? Some questionable old contact he’d done a burner job for? Someone he owed money or a favour? It wasn’t Mona Daa’s number anyway. Most likely it was a work call, and probably one that meant he was going to have to do something. Either way, he concluded that this was unlikely to be a call he had anything to win by answering. He put the phone in a drawer and concentrated on Vic Mackey and his colleagues on the STRIKE team. He loved Vic, The Shield really was the only cop series that showed how people in the force actually thought. Then all of a sudden he realised why the number had seemed familiar. He yanked the drawer open and grabbed the phone. ‘Detective Constable Berntsen.’
Two seconds passed before he heard anything at the other end, and he thought she had hung up. But then the voice was there, right by his ear, soft and tantalising.
‘Hello, Truls, this is Ulla.’
‘Ulla …?’
‘Ulla Bellman.’
‘Oh, hi, Ulla, is that you?’ Truls hoped he sounded convincing. ‘How can I help you?’
She let out a little laugh. ‘I don’t know about “help”. I saw you in the atrium of Police HQ the other day, and realised how long it had been since we last had a proper chat. You know, like we used to.’
We never had a proper chat, Truls thought.
‘Could we meet up sometime?’
‘Yeah, sure.’ Truls tried to stifle his grunting laughter.
‘Great. How about tomorrow? Mum’s got the kids then. We could go for a drink or a bite to eat?’
Truls could hardly believe his ears. Ulla wanted to meet him. To interrogate him about Mikael again? No, she must know they didn’t see much of each other these days. Besides: a drink or a bite to eat? ‘That would be great. Is there something on your mind?’
‘I just thought it would be nice to meet up, I don’t really have much contact with too many people from the old days.’
‘No, of course,’ Truls said. ‘So, where?’
Ulla laughed. ‘I haven’t been out for years. I don’t know what there is in Manglerud these days. You do still live there, don’t you?’
‘Yes. Er … Olsen’s is still there, down in Bryn.’
‘Is it? Right, then. Let’s say there. Eight o’clock?’