“Oh, shit,” Øystein said in a low voice.
Harry glanced up at the mirror in front of him. A man was approaching. Short, with a light step, shaking his head, with a grin under his black, greasy fringe. It was the sort of grin you see on golfers or footballers when they’ve just shot the ball high into the stands, a grin that’s probably supposed to suggest that it was such a fuck-up that all they can do is smile.
“Hole.” A high, disconcertingly friendly voice.
“Ringdal.” Not high. Not disconcertingly friendly.
Harry saw Øystein shiver, as if the temperature in the bar had just plunged below zero.
“So, what are you doing in my bar, Hole?” There was a jangle of keys and coins in Ringdal’s pockets as he took off his blue Catalina jacket and hung it on the hook behind the door to the back room.
“Well,” Harry said. “Would ‘seeing how the inheritance is being managed’ be a satisfactory answer?”
“The only satisfactory answer is ‘getting out of here.’ ”
Harry put the memory card in his pocket and pushed himself off the bar stool. “You don’t look as badly hurt as I’d hoped, Ringdal.”
Ringdal was rolling up his shirtsleeves. “Hurt?”
“To deserve a lifetime ban I should have broken your nose at the very least. But perhaps you haven’t got any bones in your nose?”
Ringdal laughed as if he genuinely thought Harry was funny. “You landed your first punch because I wasn’t expecting it, Hole. A bit of a nosebleed, but not enough to break anything, I’m afraid. And after that you hit nothing but air. And that wall over there.” Ringdal filled a glass with water from the tap behind the bar. Perhaps it was a paradox that a teetotaller was running a bar. Perhaps not. “But all credit to you for trying, Hole. Maybe you should try to be a bit less drunk next time you attempt to take on a Norwegian judo champion.”
“And there we have it,” Harry said.
“What?”
“Have you ever heard of anyone involved in judo who has good taste in music?”
Ringdal sighed, Øystein raised his eyebrows and Harry realised that the ball had ended up in the stand.
“Getting out of here,” Harry said, and stood up.
“Hole.”
Harry stopped and turned around.
“I’m sorry about Rakel.” Ringdal raised his glass of water in his left hand as if in a toast. “She was a wonderful person. A shame she didn’t have time to carry on.”
“Carry on?”
“Oh, didn’t she tell you? I asked her to stay on as chair after you were gone. Well, let’s draw a line under all that, Harry. You’re welcome here, and I promise to listen to Øystein here when it comes to the choice of music. I can see that takings have dropped a bit, although of course that could be due to something other than a slightly less…”—he searched for the right words—“strict music policy.”
Harry nodded and opened the door.
He stopped in the doorway and looked around.
Grünerløkka. The scraping sound of a skateboard, ridden by a guy closer to forty than thirty, wearing Converse and flannels. Harry guessed design studio, clothing boutique or one of the hipster burger joints that Helga, Oleg’s girlfriend, had said “sold the same shit, same wrapping as everywhere else, but they put truffles on the fries so they can charge three times the price and still be on-trend.”
Oslo. A young man with an impressive, unkempt beard—like an Old Testament prophet—hanging like a bib over his tie and impeccable suit, his Burberry coat open. Finance? Irony? Or just confusion?
Norway. A couple in Lycra suits, jogging with skis and sticks in their hands, ski wax worth a thousand kroner, energy drinks and protein bars in their bumbags, on their way to the last patches of snow in the highest shadows of Nordmarka.
Harry pulled out his phone and called Bjørn’s number.
“Harry?”
“I’ve found the memory card from the wildlife camera.”
