“No, but come on, I haven’t turned into a stalker. Rakel was frightened enough as it is, and I just wanted to check that everything was OK. And, as it turns out, it wasn’t.”
“So she didn’t know about the camera either?”
Harry shrugged his shoulders.
“Harry?”
“Hmm?”
“You’requitesure that you set that camera up because of Finne?”
“You mean, did I want to find out if my ex was seeing anyone else?”
“Did you?”
“No,” Harry said firmly. “If Rakel doesn’t want me, she’s welcome to try someone else.”
“Do you really believe that?”
Harry sighed.
“OK,” Aune said. “You said you caught a glimpse of someone who looked like Finne, locked up?”
“No, that’s what you said. It wasn’t Finne.”
“No?”
“No, it was…me.”
Ståle Aune ran his hand through his thinning hair. “And now you want a diagnosis?”
“Come on. Anxiety?”
“I think your brain is looking for reasons why Rakel would need you. For instance, to protect her from external threats. But you’re not locked up, Harry—you’ve been locked out. Accept it and move on.”
“Apart from the ‘accept it’ stuff, any medication you can prescribe?”
“Sleep. Exercise. And maybe you could try meeting someone who could take your mind off Rakel.”
Harry stuck a cigarette in the corner of his mouth and held up his clenched fist with his thumb sticking out. “Sleep. I drink myself senseless every night. Check.” His index finger shot up. “Exercise. I get into fights with people in bars I used to own. Check.” The grey, titanium finger. “Meet someone. I fuck women, nice ones, nasty ones, and afterwards I have meaningful conversations with some of them. Check.”
Aune looked at Harry. Then he let out a deep sigh, stood up and fastened his tweed jacket. “Well, you should be fine, then.”
—
Harry sat there staring out of the window after Aune had gone. Then he got up and walked through the rooms in the flat. The married couple’s bedroom was tidy, clean, the bed neatly made. He looked in the cupboards. The wife’s wardrobe was spread across four spacious cupboards, while the husband’s clothes were squeezed into one. A considerate husband. There were rectangles on the wallpaper in the daughter’s room where the colours were brighter. Harry guessed they had been made by teenage posters she had taken down now she was nineteen. There was still one small picture, a young guy with a Rickenbacker electric guitar slung round his neck.
Harry looked through the little collection of records on the shelf by the mirror. Propagandhi. Into It. Over It. My Heart to Joy. Panic! at the Disco. Emo stuff.
So he was surprised when he switched on the record player to listen to the album already on it and heard the gentle, soothing tones of something that sounded like early Byrds. But despite the Roger McGuinn–style twelve-string guitar, he quickly recognised that it was a far more recent production. It didn’t matter how many valve amps and old Neumann microphones they used, retro production never fooled anyone. Besides, the vocalist had a distinct Norwegian accent, and you could tell he’d listened to more 1995-vintage Thom Yorke and Radiohead than Gene Clark and David Crosby from 1965. He glanced at the album sleeve lying upside down next to the record player and, sure enough, the names all looked Norwegian. Harry’s eyes moved on to a pair of Adidas trainers in front of the wardrobe. They were the same sort as his, he’d tried to buy a new pair a couple of years ago but they had already stopped making them then. He thought back to the interview transcripts, in which both father and daughter had said she left the flat at 20:15 and returned thirty minutes later after a run to the top of the sculpture park in Ekeberg, coming back via the Ekeberg Restaurant. Her running gear was on the bed, and in his mind’s eye he could see the police letting the poor girl in and watching as she got changed and packed a bag of clothes. Harry crouched down and picked up the trainers. The leather was soft, the soles clean and shiny, the shoes hadn’t been used much at all. Nineteen years. An unused life. His own pair had split. He could buy new ones, obviously, a different type. But he didn’t want to, he’d found the only design he wanted from now on. The only design. Maybe they could still be repaired.
Harry went back into the living room. He wiped the cigarette ash from the floor. Checked his phone. No messages. He put his hand in his pocket. Two hundred kroner.
4
“Last orders, then we’re closing.”
Harry stared down at his drink. He had managed to drag it out. Usually he necked them because it wasn’t the taste he liked, but the effect. “Liked” wasn’t really the right word, though.Needed. No, notneededeither.Had to have.Couldn’t live without. Artificial respiration when half your heart had stopped beating.
