‘No,’ Harry said. ‘But like I said, you shouldn’t worry too much, they know what they’re doing. She’s been put in an induced coma, in a controlled way. OK?’
Oleg opened his mouth. Closed it again and nodded. And Harry saw it. That Oleg realised Harry was protecting him from the truth. And that he let him do it.
A nurse came over and told them they could go in and see her.
Harry went in first.
The blinds were down.
He went over to the bed. Looked down at the pale face. She looked like she was far away.
Far too far away.
‘Is … is she breathing?’
Oleg. He was standing right behind Harry, the way he used to when he was little and they had to walk past one of Holmenkollen’s many large dogs.
‘Yes,’ Harry said, nodding towards the flashing machines.
They sat down on either side of the bed. And glanced at the twitching green line on the screen when they didn’t think the other would notice.
Katrine looked out across the forest of hands.
The press conference had lasted barely fifteen minutes, and the impatience in the Parole Hall was already tangible. She wondered what had got them most worked up. The fact that there was nothing new on the police hunt for Valentin Gjertsen. Or that there was nothing new on Valentin Gjertsen’s hunt for fresh victims. It had been forty-six hours since the last attack.
‘I’m afraid it’s going to be the same answers to the same questions,’ she said. ‘So if there aren’t any new—’
‘What’s your reaction to the fact that you’re now working on three murders rather than two?’
The question had been called out by a journalist at the back of the room.
Katrine saw unease spread through the room like ripples on water. She glanced at Bjørn Holm who was sitting in the front row, but he just shrugged in response. She leaned into the microphones.
‘It’s possible that there is information that hasn’t reached me yet, so I’ll have to get back to you about that.’
Another voice: ‘The hospital has just released a statement. Penelope Rasch is dead.’
Katrine hoped her face didn’t betray the confusion she felt. Penelope Rasch’s survival hadn’t been in any doubt.
‘We’ll stop there and reconvene when we know more.’ Katrine gathered her papers and hurried away from the podium and out through the side door. ‘When we know more than you,’ she muttered to herself, and swore.
She marched down the corridor. What the hell had happened? Had something gone wrong with her treatment? She hoped so. Hoped there was a medical explanation, unforeseen complications, a sudden attack of something, even a mistake on the hospital’s part. No, it wasn’t possible, they’d placed Penelope in a secret room that only those closest to her knew the number of.
Bjørn came running up behind her. ‘I’ve just spoken to Ullevål. They say it was an unfamiliar poison, but which they wouldn’t have been able to do anything about anyway.’
‘Poison? From the bite, or did it happen in the hospital?’
‘Unclear – they say they’ll know more tomorrow.’
Bloody chaos. Katrine hated chaos. And where was Harry? Fuck, fuck.
‘Take care not to stab those heels through the floor,’ Bjørn said quietly.
Harry had told Oleg that the doctors didn’t know. About what was going to happen. About practical things that needed to be sorted out, even if there weren’t many of those. Apart from that, silence hung heavy between them.
Harry looked at the time. Seven o’clock.
‘You should go home,’ he said. ‘Grab something to eat and get some sleep. You’ve got college tomorrow.’
‘Only if I know you’re going to be here,’ Oleg said. ‘We can’t let her be alone.’
‘I’m going to be here until I get thrown out, which will be soon.’
‘But you’ll stay until then? You’re not going to go to work?’
‘Work?’
‘Yes. You’re staying here now, you’re not going on with … that case?’
‘Of course not.’
‘I know how you get when you’re working on a murder investigation.’
‘Do you?’
‘I remember some of it. And Mum’s told me.’
Harry sighed. ‘I’m staying here now. I promise. The world will go on without me, but …’ He fell silent, leaving the rest of the sentence hanging in the air between them: … not without her.
He took a deep breath.
‘How are you feeling?’
Oleg shrugged. ‘I’m scared. And it hurts.’
‘I know. Go now, and come back tomorrow after college. I’ll be here first thing in the morning.’
‘Harry?’
‘Yes?’
‘Is it going to be better tomorrow?’
Harry looked at him. The brown-eyed, black-haired boy didn’t have one drop of Harry’s blood in him, but it was still like looking in a mirror. ‘What do you think?’
Oleg shook his head, and Harry could see he was fighting back tears.
‘Right,’ Harry said. ‘I sat here the way you are now with my mother when she was ill. Hour after hour, day in, day out. I was only a little boy, and it ate me up from inside.’
Oleg wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and sniffed. ‘Do you wish you hadn’t done it?’
Harry shook his head. ‘That’s the weird thing. We couldn’t talk much, she was too ill. She just lay there with a weak smile, and faded away a little bit at a time, like the colour from a photograph left out in the sun. It’s simultaneously the worst and best memory from my childhood. Can you understand that?’
Oleg nodded slowly. ‘I think so.’
They hugged each other goodbye.
‘Dad …’ Oleg whispered, and Harry felt a warm tear against his neck.
But he himself couldn’t cry. Didn’t want to cry. Forty-five per cent, forty-five wonderful percentage points.
‘I’m here, my boy,’ Harry said. In a steady voice. With a numb heart. He felt strong. He could manage this.
19
MONDAY EVENING
MONA DAA HAD put her trainers on, but her footsteps still echoed between the containers. She had parked her little electric car by the gate and walked straight into the dark, empty container terminal, which was really a cemetery for defunct harbour equipment. The rows of containers were tombstones for dead and forgotten shipments, to recipients who had gone bankrupt or wouldn’t acknowledge the consignment, from senders who no longer existed and couldn’t accept returns. Now the goods were stuck in eternal transit here at Ormøya, in marked contrast to the redevelopment and gentrification of Bjørvika next to it. There, costly, luxurious buildings were rising up, one after the other, with the icy slopes of the Opera House as the jewel in the crown. Mona was convinced it would end up as a monument to the oil era, a Taj Mahal of social democracy.
Mona used the torch she had brought with her to find the way, with the help of the numbers and letters painted on the tarmac. She was wearing black leggings and a black tracksuit top. In one pocket she had pepper spray and a padlock, in the other the pistol, a 9mm Walther she had borrowed without permission from her father, who had served one year in the sanitation department of the military after his medical studies and never returned his gun.
And under the tracksuit top, beneath the transmitter belt, her heart was pounding faster and faster.
H23 was located between two rows of containers stacked three high.
And sure enough, there was a cage.
Its size suggested it had been used to transport something big. An elephant, maybe a giraffe or a hippo. The whole of one end of the cage could be swung open, but it was locked with a huge padlock that was brown with rust. In the middle of one of the long sides, though, was a small, unlocked door that Mona assumed was used by the people feeding the animals and cleaning the cage.