Harry stood up and left the office, screwed the door hinges back in place, hung the screwdriver on the board, jogged up the stairs, switched off the light and went out into the hallway. He heard the neighbour’s dog barking outside. On his way to the front door, he opened the door to the only room he hadn’t been in. A combination of toilet and utility room. He was about to close it again when he caught sight of a white sweater lying on the tiled floor in the heap of dirty underwear and T-shirts in front of the washing machine. The sweater had a blue cross on the chest. And flecks of what looked like blood. To be more precise: sprays of blood. Harry closed his eyes. The cross had triggered something in his memory. He saw himself walk into the Jealousy Bar, Ringdal behind the counter. That was the sweater Ringdal had been wearing that night, the night Rakel died.
Harry had punched Ringdal. They had both bled. Butthatmuch?
If the sweater got washed before the house was searched, they would never know.
Harry hesitated for a moment. The dog had stopped barking. Then he bent down, carefully rolled the sweater up and squeezed it into his coat pocket. He stepped back out into the passageway.
And stopped abruptly.
The sound of footsteps on gravel.
Harry moved back, into the darkness farther along the passageway.
Through the half-moon glass he saw a shape step into the light out on the steps.
Shit.
The glass was too low for him to see the other man’s face, but he saw a hand searching in the pockets of a blue Catalina jacket, followed by subdued swearing. The door handle was pushed down. Harry tried to remember: had he turned the lock?
The man outside tugged at the door. Cursed more loudly now.
Harry silently let the air out of his lungs. He had locked it. And, once again, it was as if something had been triggered. Rakel’s lock. He had checked it, as if to make sure it was locked.
Something lit up outside. A mobile. A pale face was pressed against the half-moon in the door, nose and cheek pressed flat against the glass, lit up by the phone being held to his ear. Ringdal was almost unrecognisable, his face like a bank robber’s under a nylon stocking, demonic, but his eye was staring into the darkness of the hallway.
Harry stood motionless, holding his breath. They were five metres apart, at most. Could Ringdal really not see him? As if in response, Ringdal’s voice echoed through the half-moon window with an odd, muffled resonance, low and calm.
“There you are.”
Shit, shit.
“I can’t find the keys to the house,” Ringdal said. The heat of his mouth settled as grey condensation on the glass.
—
“Eikeland,” Øystein had said rather stiffly when, after a moment of panic, he had gone into the back room to take Ringdal’s call.
“There you are,” Ringdal had said. Then: “I can’t find the keys to the house.”
Øystein closed the door so he could hear better.
“Oh?” Øystein did his best to sound calm. Where the hell was Harry, and why the hell had he turned his phone off?
“Can you see if they’re lying on the floor under the hook where I hang my jacket?”
“OK, hang on a moment,” Øystein said, and took the phone from his mouth. He was breathing hard, as if he’d been holding his breath, which he might well have been. Think, think!
“Eikeland? Are you there, Eikeland?” Ringdal’s voice sounded thin and less threatening when Øystein was holding the phone farther away from him. Reluctantly he moved it closer to his ear again.
“Yes. No, I can’t see any keys. Where are you?”
“I’m standing outside my house.”
Harry’s inside, Øystein thought. If he’s heard Ringdal approach, he needs time to get away, a window at the back, a back door.
“Maybe the keys are out in the bar,” Øystein said. “Or in the toilet. Give me a couple of minutes and I’ll go and check.”
“I never put my keys down anywhere, Eikeland.” This was said with such certainty that Øystein realised there was no point trying to sow any doubt. “I’ll just have to break the glass.”
