‘WHAT THE HELL?!’ Katrine bratt yelled, throwing the rubber she’d picked up from her desk. It hit the wall just above Harry Hole’s head where he was sitting slumped in a chair. ‘As if we didn’t have enough problems, you manage to break pretty much every damn rule in the book, plus a couple of the country’s laws for good measure. What were you thinking?’
Rakel, Harry thought, tipping backwards until his chair hit the wall. I was thinking about Rakel. And Aurora.
‘What?’
‘I was thinking that if there was a shortcut which meant we could bring Valentin Gjertsen in just one day earlier, it might save someone’s life.’
‘Don’t give me that, Harry! You know bloody well that isn’t how it works. If everyone thought and acted—’
‘You’re right, I know that. And I know that Valentin Gjertsen came very close to being caught. He saw Mehmet, recognised him from the bar, realised what was going on and snuck out the back way while Mehmet was in the changing room phoning me. And I know that if it had been Valentin Gjertsen sitting in that steam room when we got there, you’d already have forgiven me and started praising proactive, creative police work. Exactly what you set up the boiler-room team for.’
‘You bastard!’ Katrine snarled, and Harry saw her searching her desk for something else to throw at him. Fortunately she rejected the stapler and the sheaf of judicial correspondence from America relating to Facebook. ‘I did not give you licence to act like cowboys. I haven’t seen a single newspaper that isn’t running the raid at the baths as the lead on their website. Weapons in a peaceful bathhouse, innocent civilians in the firing line, a naked ninety-year-old threatened with a pistol. And no arrest! It’s all just so …’ She raised her hands and looked up at the ceiling, as if she were surrendering judgement to higher powers. ‘… amateurish!’
‘Am I being fired?’
‘Do you want to be fired?’
Harry saw her in front of him. Rakel, sleeping, her thin eyelids twitching, like Morse code from the land of coma. ‘Yes,’ he said. And he saw Aurora, the anxiety and pain in her eyes, the damage in there that could never be healed. ‘And no. Do you want to fire me?’
Katrine groaned, stood up and went over to the window. ‘Yes, I want to fire someone,’ she said with her back to him. ‘But not you.’
‘Mm.’
‘Mm,’ she mimicked.
‘Do you feel like elaborating?’
‘I’d like to fire Truls Berntsen.’
‘That goes without saying.’
‘Yes, but not for being useless and lazy. He’s the one who’s been leaking to VG.’
‘And how did you find that out?’
‘Anders Wyller set a trap. He went a bit too far – I think perhaps there was a degree of payback as far as Mona Daa was concerned. Either way, we won’t have any trouble from her if she’s been paying a public official for information, seeing as she should have known that could lead to charges for corruption.’
‘So why haven’t you fired Berntsen?’
‘Guess,’ she said, going back to her desk.
‘Mikael Bellman?’
Katrine threw a pencil, not at Harry but the closed door. ‘Bellman came in here, sat where you’re sitting now, and said that Berntsen had convinced him of his innocence. And then he implied that it could have been Wyller himself who had been talking to VG and then tried to pin the blame on Berntsen. But that we couldn’t prove anything yet, so it would be best to let it go and concentrate on catching Valentin, that was the only thing that mattered. What do you make of that?’
‘Well, maybe Bellman’s right, maybe it’s best to delay washing our own dirty laundry until we’ve stopped wrestling in the gutter.’
Katrine pulled a face. ‘Did you think of that one all by yourself?’
Harry extracted his packet of cigarettes. ‘Speaking of leaks. The papers are saying I was at the bathhouse, and that’s OK, I got recognised. But no one apart from the boiler room and you know about Mehmet’s role in this. And I’d rather keep it that way, just to be on the safe side.’
Katrine nodded. ‘I actually raised that with Bellman and he agreed. He says we’ve got a lot to lose if it gets out that we’re using civilians to do our work for us, that it makes us look desperate. He said that Mehmet and his role in this shouldn’t be mentioned to anyone, including the investigative team. I think that makes sense, even if Truls is no longer allowed to take part in meetings.’
‘Really?’
Katrine raised one corner of her mouth. ‘He’s been given his own office where he can file away reports about cases that are nothing to do with the vampirist murders.’
‘So you have fired him after all,’ Harry said, sticking a cigarette between his lips. His phone vibrated against his thigh. He pulled it out. A text from Dr Steffens.
Tests finished. Rakel’s back in 301.
‘I need to go.’
‘Are you still with us, Harry?’
‘I need to think about that.’
Outside Police HQ Harry found his lighter in a hole in the lining of his jacket, and lit the cigarette. He looked at the people walking past him on the path. They seemed so calm, so untroubled. There was something very disconcerting about that. Where was he? Where the hell was Valentin?
‘Hi,’ Harry said as he walked into room 301.
Oleg was sitting next to Rakel’s bed, which was back in place. He looked up from the book he was reading but didn’t respond.
Harry sat down on the other side of the bed. ‘Any news?’
Oleg leafed through the book.
‘OK, listen,’ Harry said, taking his jacket off and hanging it on the back of his chair. ‘I know you think that when I’m not sitting here it means I care more about work than I do about her. That there are others who could solve the murders, but that she only has you and me.’
‘Isn’t that true, then?’ Oleg said, without looking up from the book.
‘I’m of no use to her right now, Oleg. I can’t save anyone in here, but out there I can make a difference. I can save lives.’
Oleg closed his book and looked at Harry. ‘Good to hear that you’re driven by philanthropy. Otherwise one might think it was something else.’
‘Something else?’
Oleg dropped the book in his bag. ‘A desire for glory. You know, all that Harry-Hole-is-back-to-save-the-day stuff.’
‘Do you think that’s what it’s about?’
Oleg shrugged. ‘The important thing is what you think. That you can convince yourself with that bullshit.’
‘Is that how you see me? A bullshitter?’
Oleg stood up. ‘Do you know why I always wanted to be like you? It wasn’t because you were all that great. It was because I didn’t have anyone else. You were the only man in the house. But now I can see you more clearly, I need to do all I can not to end up like you. Deprogramming initiated, Harry.’
‘Oleg …’
But he had already left the room.
Damn, damn.
Harry felt his phone buzz in his pocket and switched it off without looking at it. Listened to the machine. Someone had increased the volume so that it made a slightly delayed bleeping sound every time the green line jumped.
Like a clock counting down.
Counting down for her.
Counting down for someone out there.
What if Valentin was sitting looking at a clock right now, as he waited for the next one?
Harry started to pull out his phone. Then let go of it again.
The low, slanting light meant that when he put his broad hand on top of Rakel’s thin one, blue veins cast shadows across the back of his hand. He tried not to count the bleeps.
By 806 he couldn’t sit still any longer, and stood up and walked round the room. He went out, found a doctor who didn’t want to go into any details but said that Rakel’s condition was stable, and that they had discussed bringing her out of the coma.