Kaja sighed. “How long did you have to look for his son before you found him?”
“Who’s counting? I found him.”
“No one catches Finne, he’s like a ghost.”
Harry looked up.
“I worked in Vice within the Crime Squad Unit,” Kaja said. “I’ve read the reports about Svein Finne, they were on the syllabus.”
“A ghost,” Harry said.
“What?”
“That’s what we’re all looking for.” He got to his feet. “Thanks for the hot water. And the tip-off.”
“Tip-off?”
—
The old man was staring at the blue dress that was swaying and drifting in the current of the river. Life as a dance performed by mayflies. You stand in a room full of testosterone and perfume, moving your feet in time to the music and smiling at the prettiest one because you think she’s meant for you. Until you ask her to dance and she says no and looks over your shoulder at the other guy, the guy who isn’t you. Then, once you’ve patched up your broken heart, you adjust your expectations and ask the next prettiest to dance. Then the third. Until you get to the one who says yes. And if you’re lucky, and you dance well together, you ask her for the next dance as well. And the next. Until the evening is over and you ask if she wants to spend eternity with you.
“Yes, darling, but we’re mayflies,” she says, and dies.
And then comes night, real night, and the only thing you’ve got is a memory, a blue dress waving enticingly, and the promise that it won’t be more than a day until you can follow her. The blue dress is the only thing that makes it possible to dream that you will one day dance again.
“I’d like a wildlife camera.”
The deep, hoarse voice came from the other side of the counter.
The old man turned round. It was a tall man. Broad-shouldered but thin.
“We’ve got several different types…” Alf said.
“I know, I bought one here a while back. I’d like the fancy sort this time. The one that sends messages to your phone when someone’s there. The sort that can be hidden.”
“I get you. Let me just get one I think would do the job.”
The old man’s son-in-law went off to the shelves of wildlife cameras and the tall man turned and met the old man’s gaze. The old man remembered the face, not only because he had seen it in the shop before, but because he hadn’t been able to figure out if it belonged to a herbivore or a carnivore. Odd, because there was no doubt now. The man was a carnivore. But there was something else familiar about that look. The old man strained his eyes. Alf came back, and the tall man turned back towards the counter.
“When this camera detects movement in front of the lens, it takes an image and sends it directly to the phone number you install…”
“Thanks, I’ll take it.”
When the tall man had left the shop, the old man looked back at the television screen. One day all the blue dresses would be torn to pieces and drift away, the memories would let go and disappear. He saw the scars of loss and resignation in his own eyes in the mirror every day. That was what he had recognised in the tall man’s expression. Loss. But not resignation. Not yet.
—
Harry heard the gravel crunch beneath his boots and thought that this was what happened when you got old, you spent more and more time in cemeteries. Got to know your future neighbours in the place you’d be spending eternity. He stopped in front of the small, black stone. Crouched down, dug a hole in the snow and put the vase of white lilies in it. He packed the snow around it and arranged the stems. He stepped back to make sure it looked right. He looked up and surveyed the ranks of headstones. If the rule was that you were buried in the cemetery closest to your home, Harry would end up here somewhere, not next to Rakel, who lay in Voksen Cemetery. It had taken him seven minutes to get here from his flat—three and a half if he hurried, but he had taken his time. Burial plots were only left alone for twenty years; after that new coffins could be buried in the same plot, alongside the ones that were already there. So if fate was so inclined, theycouldbe reunited in death. Harry shivered in his coat as a cold shudder ran through his body. He looked at the time. Then hurried towards the exit.
—
“How are you doing?”
“Fine,” Oleg said.
“Fine?”
“Up and down.”
