“The crystal chandelier in Rakel’s living room,” Harry said. “I’m lying right under it, looking up, and can see the pieces of glass form the letter S.”
“Good. That gives us a location and a situation, so we can try associative memory retrieval. Just let me get my pocket watch first.”
“You mean the sort you can swing in front of me?”
Ståle Aune raised an eyebrow. “Any objections?”
“No, not at all, it just seems…a bit old-school.”
“If you’d rather be hypnotised in a more modern way, I can recommend a number of respected but obviously less qualified psychologists who—”
“Get the watch,” Harry said.
—
“Fix your eyes on the face of the watch,” Ståle said. He had sat Harry on the tall-backed armchair in the living room, and was himself sitting on a footstool alongside. The old watch was swinging on its chain, back and forth, twenty centimetres in front of the detective’s pale, anguished face. Ståle couldn’t remember ever having seen his friend in such a state before. And he felt guilty about not going to see Harry since the funeral. Harry wasn’t the sort of person who found it easy to ask other people for help, and when he did it meant that things were pretty bad.
“You’re safe and relaxed,” Ståle chanted slowly. “Safe and relaxed.”
Had Harry ever been that? Yes, he had. When he was with Rakel, Harry had become someone who seemed to be at peace with both himself and his surroundings. He had—however much of a cliché it might sound—found the right woman for him. And on the occasions when Harry had invited Ståle to give guest lectures at Police College, Ståle got the distinct impression that Harry was genuinely happy with his job and his students.
So what had happened? Had Rakel thrown Harry out, had she left him just because he had fallen off the wagon? When you choose to marry a man who has been an alcoholic for so long, who has fallen apart so many times, you know that the chances of him doing so again are pretty high. Rakel Fauke had been an intelligent and realistic woman, would she really wreck a driveable car just because there was a dent in it, because it had gone into the ditch? The thought had obviously occurred to him that Rakel might have met someone else, and that she had used Harry’s alcohol abuse as an excuse to leave him. Maybe the plan was to wait until the dust had settled, until Harry had come to terms with the break-up, before showing herself in public with her new man.
“You’re sinking deeper and deeper into a trance each time I count down from ten.”
Ingrid had had lunch with Rakel after they broke up, but Rakel hadn’t mentioned another man. On the contrary, when she got home Ingrid had said Rakel seemed sad and lonely. They weren’t close enough friends for Ingrid to feel comfortable asking Rakel, but she said that if there had been another man, she thought Rakel had already dumped him and was trying to find a way back to Harry. Nothing Rakel had said gave any basis for that sort of speculation, but the professor of psychology was under no illusions that when it came to reading other people, Ingrid was far superior to him.
“Seven, six, five, four…”
Harry’s eyelids were half closed now, and his irises looked like pale blue half-moons. People’s susceptibility to hypnosis varied. Only 10 percent were what were regarded as extremely unreceptive, and some didn’t react at all to this sort of intervention. In Ståle’s experience, you could pretty much assume that people with imagination, who were open to new experiences, and who often worked in the creative industries, were the easiest to hypnotise. Anyone who had anything to do with engineering was harder. This made it tempting to believe that murder detective Harry Hole, who wasn’t exactly a tea-drinking daydreamer, would be a tough nut to crack. But without Ståle ever having performed any of the more popular personality tests on Harry, he had a suspicion that he would score unusually highly on one point: imagination.
Harry’s breathing was even, like someone asleep.
Ståle Aune counted down one more time.
There was no doubt, Harry was in a trance.
“You’re lying on a floor,” Ståle said slowly and calmly. “You’re on the floor of the living room in Rakel’s and your house. And above you, you see a crystal chandelier where the crystals form the letter S. What else can you see?”
—
Harry’s lips moved. His eyelids fluttered. The first two fingers on his right hand flexed in an involuntary twitch. His lips moved again, but no sound came out, not yet. He started to move his head back and forth at the same time as he pushed himself harder against the back of the chair, with a look of pain on his face. Then, like someone having a fit, two strong jolts ran through his long body, and Harry sat there with his eyes wide open, staring in front of him.
“Harry?”
“I’m here.” Harry’s voice was hoarse, thick. “It didn’t work.”
“How do you feel?”
“Tired.” Harry stood up. Swayed. He blinked hard and stared into space. “I need to go home.”
“Maybe you should sit down for a while,” Ståle said. “If you don’t finish the session properly, it can leave you feeling dizzy and disorientated.”
“Thanks, Ståle, but I have to go. Goodnight.”
“In the worst cases it can lead to anxiety, depression and other unpleasantness. Let’s just take a little while to make sure you’re back on your feet, Harry.”
But Harry was already on his way to the door. Ståle got to his feet, but by the time he reached the hall the front door was already closing.
