“Mm.” Harry pressed the phone closer to his ear, as if to reduce the distance between them, between a flat on Sofies gate where Bruce Springsteen was singing “Stray Bullet” in the evening darkness, and the house two thousand kilometres farther north where Oleg had a view of the Air Force base and Porsanger Fjord. “I’m calling to tell you to be careful.”
“Careful?”
Harry told him about Svein Finne. “If Finne is out for revenge for me killing his son, that means you could be in danger too.”
“I’m coming to Oslo,” Oleg said firmly.
“No!”
“No? If he killed Mum, am I supposed to just sit here and—”
“Firstly, Crime Squad wouldn’t let you anywhere near the investigation. Just think what a defense lawyer could do to a case in which you, the victim’s son, had taken part. And secondly, it’s likely that he picked your mother rather than you because you’re well outside his normal territory.”
“I’m coming.”
“Listen! If he comes after you, I want you up there for two reasons. He won’t drive two thousand kilometres by car, so he’d have to fly. To a small airport where you’ll be able to give them pictures of him. Svein Finne isn’t the sort of person it’s easy to ignore in a small place. With you where you are, we’re increasing the chances of catching him. OK?”
“But—”
“Reason number two. Imagine that you’renotthere when he arrives. And finds Helga at home on her own.”
Silence. Just Springsteen and a piano.
Oleg cleared his throat. “You’ll keep me orientated as things progress?”
“Orientated. OK?”
After they hung up, Harry sat and stared at the phone where he’d put it down on the coffee table. The Boss was in the middle of another track that hadn’t made it ontoThe Riveralbum, “The Man Who Got Away.”
Like hell. Not this time.
The phone lay cold and dead on the table.
When it was half past eleven, he couldn’t sit still any longer.
He put his boots on, grabbed his phone and went out into the hallway. His car keys weren’t on the dresser where he usually kept them, so he hunted through all his trouser and jacket pockets until he found them in the bloody jeans he’d tossed in the laundry basket. He went down to his Ford Escort, got in, adjusted the seat, turned the key in the ignition and reached automatically for the radio, but changed his mind. He had it tuned to Stone Hard FM because they didn’t talk and played nothing but brain-dead, pain-numbing hard rock twenty-four hours a day, but he didn’t need anything pain-numbing right now. He needed pain. So he drove in silence through the drowsy streets of Oslo city centre, and up into the hills that wound past Sjømannsskolen to Nordstrand. He pulled over to the side of the road, took his flashlight from the glove compartment, got out and looked down at the Oslo Fjord as it lay bathed in moonlight, black and copper-smooth towards the south, towards Denmark and the open sea. He opened the boot and took out the crowbar. He stood and looked at it for a moment. There was something that wasn’t right, something he hadn’t thought of, but it was so small, like a fragment floating across his retina, and now he’d forgotten it. He tried biting his false finger, and shivered when his teeth came into contact with the titanium. But it didn’t help, it was gone, like a dream slipping helplessly out of mind.
Harry waded through the snow to the edge of the hill, to the old bunkers where he, Øystein and Tresko used to come and drink themselves stupid while their contemporaries were celebrating graduation, National Day, Midsummer and whatever the fuck else they used to celebrate.
The council had padlocked the doors after a series of articles in one of the city’s papers. It wasn’t that they hadn’t known that the bunkers were used by drug addicts and prostitutes, and there had been pictures published before. Pictures of young people injecting heroin into arms covered in scars, and foreign women in slutty outfits lying on filthy mattresses. What made them react this time was one single picture. It wasn’t even particularly brutal. A young man sitting on a mattress with a user’s accessories beside him. He was staring into the camera with puppy-dog eyes. The shock factor was that he looked like an ordinary Norwegian youth: blue-eyed, with a traditional sweater and short, neat hair. You could have imagined it was taken one Easter holiday at his family’s cabin. The next day the council had put locks on all the doors, and set up signs warning about trespassing and saying the bunkers were regularly patrolled. Harry knew that was an empty threat—the Chief of Police didn’t even have enough money and people to investigate break-ins where things were actuallystolen.
He inserted the crowbar into the crack in the door.
He had to use the whole of his weight before the lock gave way.
Harry stepped inside. The only sound breaking the silence was the echo of dripping from deep inside the darkness, which made Harry think of the sonar pulse from a submarine. Tresko had said he’d downloaded a soundtrack of sonar pulses from the net, put it on a loop and used it to get to sleep. Said the feeling of being underwater made him calm.
Harry could only identify three ingredients in the stench: piss, petrol and wet concrete. He switched the flashlight on and walked farther in. The beam found a wooden bench that looked like it had been stolen from the surrounding parkland, and a mattress that was black with damp and mould. Planks had been nailed over the horizontal firing slits facing the fjord.
It was—as he had thought—the perfect place.
And he couldn’t help himself.
He turned the flashlight off.
Closed his eyes. He wanted to try out the feeling now, in advance.
He tried to see it in front of him, but the images wouldn’t come.
