The woman by the door smiled at Hagen and indicated that she wanted to say hello to Harry first.
The skin of her hand felt just as soft as he remembered.
“My condolences. I really do feel for you, Harry.”
Her voice too.
“Thanks. This is Oleg. And his girlfriend, Helga. This is Kaja Solness, an old colleague.”
They all shook hands.
“So you’re back,” Harry said.
“Not for long.”
“Mm.” He tried to think of something to say. Found nothing.
She put a feather-light hand on his arm. “You carry on, and I’ll go and talk to Gunnar and the others.”
Harry nodded and watched as her long legs wove their way between the chairs to the other end of the table.
Oleg leaned closer to him. “Who’s she? Apart from an old colleague?”
“Long story.”
“So I saw. What’s the short version?”
Harry took a sip of coffee. “That I once let her go in favour of your mother.”
—
It was three o’clock when the first of the final three guests, Øystein, stood up, misquoted a Bob Dylan lyric in parting and left.
One of the two remaining guests moved to the chair next to Harry’s.
“Haven’t you got a job to go to?” Kaja asked.
“Not tomorrow either. Suspended until further notice. You?”
“I’m on standby for the Red Cross. I mean, I’m getting paid, but right now I’m just waiting at home for shit to kick off somewhere in the world.”
“Which it will, of course?”
“Which it will. When you look at it like that, it’s a bit like working in Crime Squad. You go around almost hoping that something terrible is going to happen.”
“Mm. The Red Cross. That’s a bit of a leap from Crime Squad.”
“Yes and no. I’m in charge of security. My last deployment was two years in Afghanistan.”
“And before that?”
“Another two years. In Afghanistan.” She smiled, revealing her small, pointed teeth, the imperfect feature that made her face interesting.
“What’s so good about Afghanistan?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “To start with it was probably just the fact that you were confronted with problems so big that your own personal problems seemed small. And that you could be useful. And then you get to like the people you meet and work with.”
“Like Roar Bohr?”
