Rakel always used to read in bed. Sometimes she read out loud to him, if it was something he liked. Like Kjell Askildsen’s short stories. That made him happy. One evening she read a sentence that stuck in his mind. About a young girl who had lived her whole life alone with her parents in a lighthouse, until a married man, Krafft, arrived and she fell in love. And she thought to herself: Why did you have to come and make me so lonely?
Katrine cleared her throat, but her voice still sounded muffled. “They’ve found Rakel, Harry.”
He felt like asking how they could have found someone who wasn’t missing. But to do that he would have to breathe. He breathed. “And... that means what?”
Katrine was struggling to keep control of her face, but gave up and clapped her hand to her mouth, which was contorted into a grimace.
Gunnar Hagen took over. “The worst, Harry.”
“No,” Harry heard himself say. Angry. Pleading. “No.”
“She—”
“Stop!” Harry held his hands up defensively in front of him. “Don’t say it, Gunnar. Not yet. Just let me... just wait a bit.”
Gunnar Hagen waited. Katrine had covered her face with her hands. She was sobbing silently, but her shaking shoulders gave her away. His eyes found the window. There were still greyish-white islands and small continents of snow on the brown sea of Botsparken. But in the past few days buds had begun to appear on the lime trees that led up to the prison. A month or so from now, those buds would suddenly burst into life, and Harry would wake up and see that Oslo had once again been invaded by the blitzkrieg of spring overnight. And it would be utterly meaningless. He had been alone most of his life. It had been fine. Now it wasn’t fine. He wasn’t breathing. He was full of carbon dioxide. And he hoped it would take less than twenty minutes.
“OK,” he said. “Say it.”
“She’s dead, Harry.”
7
Harry weighed his mobile phone in his hand.
Eight digits away.
Four less than the time he had lived in Chungking Mansions in Hong Kong, those four grey tower blocks that were a small community in themselves, with hostels for guest workers from Africa and the Philippines, restaurants, prayer rooms, tailors, money-changers, maternity rooms and funeral parlours. Harry’s room had been on the second floor of C-block. Four square metres of bare concrete with space for a shabby mattress and an ashtray, where a dripping air-conditioning unit had counted the seconds, while he himself lost count of the days and weeks as he slid in and out of an opium haze that decided when he came and went. In the end, Kaja Solness from the Crime Squad Unit had turned up to take him home. But before then he had fallen into a rhythm. And every day, after eating glass noodles at Li Yuan or walking down Nathan Road and Melden Row to buy a lump of opium in a baby’s bottle, he had walked back, waited by the lift doors of the Chungking Mansions and looked at the payphone hanging on the wall.
He had been on the run from everything. From his work as a murder detective, because it was eating away at his soul. From himself, because he had become a destructive force that killed everyone near him. But first and foremost from Rakel and Oleg, because he didn’t want to hurt them as well. No more than he already had done.
And every day, as he waited for the lift, he had stood there staring at the payphone. Touching the coins in his trouser pocket.
Twelve numbers, and he would be able to hear her voice. Reassure himself that she and Oleg were OK.
But he couldn’t know that until he called.
Their lives had been in chaos, and anything could have happened since he’d left. It was possible that Rakel and Oleg had been dragged down into the maelstrom left in the Snowman’s wake. Rakel was strong, but Harry had seen it happen in other murder cases, where the survivors also ended up as victims.
But as long as he didn’t call, they were there. In his head, in the payphone, somewhere in the world. As long as he didn’t know better — or worse — he could carry on seeing them in front of him, hiking in Nordmarka in October. Where he, Rakel and Oleg had gone walking. The young boy running ahead of them, excitedly trying to catch falling leaves. Rakel’s warm, dry hand in Harry’s. Her voice, laughing as she asked what he was smiling for, him shaking his head when he realised that he had actually been smiling. So he never touched the payphone. Because as long as Harry resisted pressing those twelve numbers, he could always imagine that it could be like that again.
Harry tapped in the last of the eight digits.
The phone rang three times before he answered.
“Harry?” The first syllable expressed surprise and joy, the second surprise, but mixed with a degree of anxiety. On the rare occasions that Harry and Oleg called each other, it happened in the evening, not in the middle of the working day. And even then, it was to discuss things of a practical nature. Obviously the practical pretext was sometimes rather contrived, but neither Oleg nor Harry were that fond of talking on the phone, so even if they were really only calling to see how the other was, they usually kept things brief. None of that had changed since Oleg and his girlfriend Helga moved up north to Lakselv in Finnmark, where Oleg was doing a year’s practical training before his final year at Police College.
“Oleg,” Harry said, and heard that his voice sounded choked. Because he was about to pour boiling water over Oleg, and Oleg would bear the scars of the burns he was about to receive for the rest of his life. Harry knew that because he had so many similar scars himself.
“Is something wrong?” Oleg asked.
“It’s about your mother,” Harry said, then stopped abruptly because he couldn’t go on.
“Are you getting back together again?” Oleg’s voice sounded hopeful.
Harry closed his eyes.
Oleg had been angry when he found out that his mother had broken up with Harry. And because Oleg had been spared any explanation of the causes, his anger had been directed at Rakel rather than Harry. Not that Harry could see how he had been a good enough dad to warrant anyone taking his side. When Harry had come into their lives he had taken a very low profile, as both a parent and a shoulder to cry on, because it was obvious the boy didn’t need a replacement dad. And Harry definitely didn’t need a son. But the problem — if that’s what it was — was that Harry had taken a liking to the serious, sullen young man. And vice versa. Rakel used to accuse them of being like each other, and perhaps there was something in that. And after a while — when the boy was particularly tired or wasn’t concentrating — the word “Dad” would slip out instead of the “Harry” they had agreed on.
“No,” Harry said. “We’re not getting back together. Oleg, it’s bad news.”
Silence. Harry could tell Oleg was holding his breath. Harry poured the water.
“She’s been reported dead, Oleg.”
Two seconds passed.
“Can you say that again?” Oleg said.
Harry didn’t know if he could manage that, but he did.
“How do you mean, ‘dead’?” Oleg said, and Harry heard all the metallic desperation in his voice.