Harry swung his legs off the sofa as he tried to remember what had made him cry out this time. Then immediately regretted doing so. He had been holding Rakel’s face in his hands, her shattered eyes had been staring, notathim, butthroughhim, like he wasn’t there. She had a thin layer of blood on her chin, as if she’d coughed and a bubble of blood had burst on her lips.
Harry grabbed the bottle of Jim Beam from the coffee table and took a swig. It no longer seemed to work. He took another. The odd thing was that even though he hadn’t seen her face, and didn’t want to see it before the funeral on Friday, it had been so real in the dream.
He looked at his phone, which lay black and dead beside the bottle on the table. It had been switched off since before the interview the previous morning. He ought to turn it on. Oleg was bound to have called. Things needed to be arranged. He needed to pull himself together. He picked up the cork of the bottle of Jim Beam from the end of the table. Sniffed it. It didn’t smell of anything. He threw the cork at the bare wall and closed his fist round the neck of the bottle in a tight stranglehold.
12
At three o’clock in the afternoon Harry stopped drinking. There was nothing special that happened, no particular resolution that stopped him from drinking until four o’clock, or five, or the rest of the evening. His body simply couldn’t take any more. He switched his phone on, ignored the missed calls and text messages, and called Oleg.
“Have you surfaced?”
“More like finished drowning,” Harry said. “You?”
“Keeping afloat.”
“Good. Beat me up first? Then talk about practical stuff?”
“OK. Ready?”
“Go for it.”
—
Dagny Jensen looked at the time. It was only nine, and they had only just finished the main course. Gunnar had been responsible for most of the conversation, but Dagny still felt she couldn’t handle any more. She explained that she had a headache, and Gunnar was very understanding, thank goodness. They skipped dessert, and he insisted on seeing her home even though she assured him that wasn’t necessary.
“I know Oslo’s safe,” he said. “I just like walking.”
He had talked about entertaining, harmless things, and she had done her best to pay attention and laugh in the right places, even though she was in complete meltdown inside. But as they passed Ringen Cinema and started the climb up Thorvald Meyers gate to the block where she lived, a silence arose. And then he said it, at last.
“You’ve seemed a little out of sorts in the past few days. It’s none of my business, but is anything wrong, Dagny?”
She knew she’d been waiting for it. Hoping for it. That someone would ask. That it might prompt her to dare. Unlike all the rape victims who kept quiet about it, who covered their silence with shame, impotence, fear of not being believed. She had thought that she’d never react like that. And sure enough, she felt none of those things. So why was she behaving like this? Was that why, after she got home from the cemetery, she had cried for two hours non-stop before calling the police, then, while she was waiting to be transferred to the Vice Squad or wherever it was they wanted her to report her rape, she had suddenly cracked and hung up? Then fell asleep on the sofa and woke up in the middle of the night, when her first thought was that the rape was just something she’d dreamed. And she had felt an immense relief. Until she remembered. But she had also caught a glimpse of the idea that it could have been a bad dream. And that if she decided that was the case, it could go on being a dream, as long as she didn’t tell a single soul about it.
“Dagny?”
She took a trembling breath and managed to say: “No, there’s nothing wrong. This is where I live. Thanks for walking me home, Gunnar. See you tomorrow.”
“Hope you’re feeling better then.”
“Thanks.”
He must have noticed that she shrank away when he hugged her, because he let go of her quickly. She walked towards stairwell D as she took her key out of her bag, and when she looked up again she saw that someone had stepped out of the darkness into the light shining from the lamp above the door. A broad-shouldered, slim man in a brown suede jacket and a red bandana around his long black hair. She stopped abruptly with a gasp.
“Don’t be scared, Dagny, I’m not going to hurt you.” His eyes were glowing like embers in his furrowed face. “I’m just here to check up on you and our child. Because I keep my promises.” His voice was low, barely more than a whisper, but he didn’t have to speak loudly for her to hear him. “Because you do remember my promise, don’t you? We’re engaged, Dagny. Until death do us part.”
Dagny tried to breathe, but it was as if her lungs were paralysed.
“To seal our union, let’s repeat our promise with God as our witness, Dagny. Let’s meet in the Catholic church in Vika on Sunday evening, when we’ll have it to ourselves. Nine o’clock? Don’t leave me standing at the altar.” He let out a short laugh. “Until then, sleep well. Both of you.”
He stepped aside, out into the darkness again, and the light from the stairwell momentarily blinded her. By the time she had raised her hand to her eyes, he was gone.
Dagny stood there in silence as warm tears trickled down her cheeks. She looked at the hand holding the key until it stopped shaking. Then she unlocked the door and went inside.
13
The altocumulus clouds lay like a crocheted cloth across the sky above Voksen Church.
“My condolences,” Mikael Bellman said in a heartfelt voice, with a well-practised facial expression. The former young Chief of Police, now an equally young Minister of Justice, shook Harry’s hand with his right as he placed his left hand on top of the handshake as if to seal it. As if to express that he really meant it. Or to assure himself that Harry wasn’t going to snatch his hand away before the assembled press photographers—who hadn’t been given permission to take pictures inside the church—had done their thing. Once Bellman had ticked offMinister of Justice takes time to attend funeral of former police colleague’s spouse, he disappeared towards the waiting black SUV. He had probably checked in advance that Harry wasn’t a suspect.
