“Just say it,” Harry said.
“This is hatred. This is a horrible mixture of hatred and grief.”
“You’re right,” Harry said. He took the cigarette from his mouth and put it back in the packet. “And I was wrong. Ihaven’tlost everything. I’ve still got the hatred.”
He stood up and walked out of the living room, hearing the buzzing sound as Ian Gillan shrieked in a shrill vibrato that he was going to make it hard for you, that you’d…The sentence remained unfinished, Ritchie Blackmore’s guitar took over before Gillan launched into the conclusion:into the fire…Harry walked out of the house, onto the steps, out into the blinding daylight.
—
Pia Bohr knocked on the door of her daughter’s bedroom.
Waited. There was no answer.
She pushed the door open.
He was sitting on the bed with his back to her. He was still wearing his camouflage uniform. On the bedspread lay the pistol, the sheathed dagger and his NVGs—night-vision goggles.
“You need to stop,” she said. “Do you hear me, Roar? This can’t go on.”
He turned towards her.
His bloodshot eyes and streaked face showed he’d been crying. And that he probably hadn’t slept.
“Where were you last night? Roar? You can tell me.”
Her husband, or the man who had once been her husband, turned back to the window again. Pia Bohr sighed. He never said where he’d been, but the mud on the floor suggested he could have been out in the forest. Or a field. Or a rubbish dump.
She sat down on the opposite side of the bed. She needed the distance. The distance you’d want to maintain towards a stranger.
“What have you done?” she asked. “What have you done, Roar?”
She waited fearfully for what he was going to say in reply. And when he hadn’t answered after five seconds, she got up and quickly walked out. Almost relieved. Regardless of whatever he might have done, she was innocent. She had asked three times. What more could anyone demand?
18
Dagny looked at her watch under the light above the entrance to the Catholic church. Nine. What if Finne didn’t come? The traffic was rumbling on Drammensveien and Munkedamsveien, but when she stared along the narrow street leading to Slottsparken she couldn’t see any cars or people. Nor in the direction of Aker Brygge and the fjord either. The eye of the storm, the city’s blind spot. The church was squeezed between two office blocks, and there was little to show that it was a house of God. The building got thinner towards the top, and there was a spire, but there was no cross on the facade, no Jesus or Mary, no Latin quotes. The carvings on the solid wooden door—which was wide, tall and unlocked—may perhaps have led your thoughts in a religious direction, but apart from that, for all Dagny knew, it could have been the entrance to a synagogue, mosque or temple for some other small congregation. But if you went closer, you could read on a poster in a glass-fronted cabinet beside the door that there had been masses since early morning that Sunday. In Norwegian, English, Polish and Vietnamese. The last one—in Polish—had ended just half an hour ago. The noise never stopped, but this street remained quiet. How alone was she? Dagny hadn’t asked Harry Hole how many colleagues he had positioned to keep an eye on her, if any of them were out here, or if they were all inside the church. Possibly because she didn’t want to know, because she might then give herself away. She looked along the windows and doorways on the other side of the street, hopefully. But also hopelessly. Because deep down she had a feeling it was just Hole. Him and her. That was what Hole had tried to tell her with that look. And after he had left, she had checked on the Internet and found confirmation of what she thought she’d read in the papers. That Harry Hole was a famous police officer and the husband of the poor woman who had recently been murdered. With a knife. That explained the look in his eyes, of something broken, the cracked mirror. But it was too late now. She had set this in motion herself, and she could have stopped it. But she hadn’t been able to. No, she probably wasn’t lying to herself any less than Hole had done. She had seen his pistol.
She was freezing, she should have worn warmer clothes. Dagny looked at the time again.
“Is it me you’re waiting for?”
Her heart stopped.
How in all the world had he managed to sneak right up on her without her seeing him coming?
She nodded.
“Are we alone?”
Dagny nodded again.
“Really? No one else has come to celebrate our marital covenant?”
Dagny opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out.
Svein Finne smiled. His thick, wet lips curled against his yellow teeth. “You need to breathe, darling. We don’t want our child to suffer brain damage from lack of oxygen, do we?”
Dagny did as he said. Breathed. “We need to talk,” she said in a shaky voice. “I think I’m pregnant.”
