It took almost three hours to drive into the city centre. Several times he pulled over to the side of the road, into a bus bay, or up on to the kerb, and turned off the engine. Sat looking out of the front window as she told her story. By the time he stopped at the barrier outside Oslo police station, it had become evening.
– I’ll come with you.
She shook her head.
– Then I’ll wait here, he insisted, pointing to an empty space on the other side of the little cul-de-sac.
– Jomar Vindheim, haven’t you understood a single thing?
– I’ll wait.
The girl behind the counter was about her own age. She was dark, with Asiatic features. There was a photo of her on the ID that was pinned to her uniform shirt.
– Yes, how can I help? she said in a voice pitched midway between friendly and dismissive.
– I want to talk to a detective chief inspector named Viken.
She’d thought about it. It had to be him.
– Viken from Violent Crimes? I can’t just…
– It’s about a murder.
The girl behind the counter blinked several time before she managed to say:
– Are you certain? Then we need to talk to the crime response unit.
Liss supported herself with both hands against the counter. – It happened a long time ago, more than a month. And it wasn’t here, it was in Amsterdam.
The girl picked up the phone. When she put it down again, she said:
– He’ll come and fetch you in about two minutes.
Liss waited by the column in the middle of the great hall. Through the windows at the top, up on the eighth floor, she saw that it had stopped snowing. She let her gaze drift down the galleries, towards the main exit. Two minutes, she thought. It’ll take him two minutes to finish what he’s doing, walk down that red corridor, take the lift and get down here. For the next two minutes it’s still possible to leave by that door with neither Viken nor anyone else here ever knowing why I came.
About Torkil Damhaug
Torkil Damhaug studied literature and anthropology in Bergen, and then medicine in Oslo, specialising in psychiatry. Having worked as a psychiatrist for many years, he now writes full time. In 2011 Torkil’s third Oslo Crime Files novel, FIRERAISER, won the Riverton Prize for Norwegian crime fiction – an accolade also awarded to Jo Nesbø and Anne Holt – and his books have been published in fifteen languages. He lives with his wife and children near Oslo.
There are four deeply dark thrillers to discover in Torkil Damhaug’s Oslo Crime Files series: MEDUSA, DEATH BY WATER, FIRERAISER and CERTAIN SIGNS THAT YOU ARE DEAD.
