“Go?” Katrine threw her hands up. “Really? That’s all you have to say?”
“No, but it would be better if I left before I say it.”
Katrine groaned. She put her elbows on her desk, clasped her hands together and leaned her forehead against them. “Fine. GO.”
Harry closed his eyes. He could feel the thick birch trunk against his back and the sharp spring sun warming his face. In front of him was a simple, brown wooden cross. It had Rakel’s name on it, but nothing else, no date. The woman at the funeral parlour had called it a “temporary marker,” something they usually erected while they were waiting for the headstone to be ready, but Harry couldn’t help putting his own interpretation on it: it was only temporary because she was waiting for him.
“I’m still asleep,” Harry said. “I hope that’s OK. Because if I wake up, I’ll fall apart and then I won’t be able to catch him. And I’m going to get him, I swear. Do you remember how frightened you were of the flesh-eating zombies in Night of the Living Dead? Well...” Harry raised his hip flask. “Now I’m one of them.”
Harry took a large swig. Possibly because he was already so tranquillised that the alcohol didn’t seem to offer any further relief, he slid down the trunk until he was sitting against it, feeling the snow beneath his backside and thighs.
“By the way, there’s a rumour that you wanted me back... Was that Old Tjikko? You don’t have to answer.”
He put the flask to his lips again. Removed it. Opened his eyes.
“It’s lonely,” he said. “Before I met you I was alone a lot, but I was never lonely. Loneliness is new, loneliness is... interesting. You weren’t filling any sort of vacuum when we got together, but you left a huge, gaping hole when you went. There’s probably an argument that love is a process of loss. What do you think?”
He closed his eyes again. Listened.
The light beyond his eyelids grew weaker and the temperature dropped. Harry knew it must be a cloud passing in front of the sun, and waited for the warmth to come back as he drifted off to sleep. Until something made him stiffen. Hold his breath. Because he could hear someone else breathing. It wasn’t a cloud; someone or something was standing over him. And Harry hadn’t heard anyone coming, even though there was snow all around him. He opened his eyes.
The sunlight spread out like a halo from the silhouette in front of him.
Harry’s right hand felt inside his jacket.
“I’ve been looking for you,” the silhouette said quietly.
Harry stopped.
“You’ve found me,” Harry said. “What now?”
The silhouette moved aside, and for a moment Harry was blinded by the sun.
“Now we go back to mine,” Kaja Solness said.
“Thanks, but do I really need it?” Harry asked, grimacing as he smelled the tea in the bowl Kaja had handed him.
“I don’t know.” Kaja smiled. “How was the shower?”
“Lukewarm.”
“Because you were in there for three-quarters of an hour.”
“Was I?” Harry sat back on the sofa with his hands around the bowl. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine. Do the clothes fit?”
Harry looked down at the trousers and sweater.
“My brother was a bit smaller than you.” She smiled again.
“So you’ve changed your mind and want to help me after all?” Harry tasted the tea. It was bitter, and reminded him of the rosehip tea he used to be given as a child when he had a cold. He could never stand it, but his mum said it strengthened the immune system, and that one cup contained more vitamin C than forty oranges. Maybe those overdoses were the reason why he had hardly ever caught a cold since. And why he never ate oranges.
“Yes, I want to help you,” she said, sitting down on the chair opposite him. “But not with your investigation.”
“Oh?”
“Do you know, you’re showing all the classic signs of PTSD?”
Harry stared at her.
“Post-traumatic stress disorder,” Kaja said.
“I know what it is.”
“Great. But do you know what the symptoms are?”
Harry shrugged his shoulders. “Repeated experience of the trauma. Dreams, flashbacks. Limited emotional response. You become a zombie. You feel like a zombie, an outsider on happy pills, flat and with no desire to live any longer than necessary. The world feels unreal, your sensation of time changes. As a defense mechanism you fragment the trauma, only remember specific details, but keep them apart so the whole experience and context remain in the dark.”
Kaja nodded. “Don’t forget hyperactivity. Anxiety, depression. Irritability and aggressiveness. Problems sleeping. How come you know so much about it?”
“Our resident psychologist has talked me through it.”
“Ståle Aune? And he thought you didn’t have PTSD?”
“Well, he didn’t rule it out. But on the other hand, I’ve had those symptoms since I was a teenager. And because I can’t remember it ever being different, he said it might just be my personality. Or that it started when I was a boy, when my mum died. Apparently grief can easily be confused with PTSD.”
Kaja shook her head firmly. “I’ve had my share, Harry, and I know what grief is. And you remind me far too much of the soldiers I’ve seen leave Afghanistan with full-blown PTSD. Some of them were invalided out, some of them took their own lives. But you know what? The worst were the ones who came back. Who managed to slip beneath the psychologists’ radar and were left as unexploded bombs, a danger to both themselves and their fellow soldiers.”
“I haven’t been to war, I’ve just lost someone.”
“You have been to war, Harry. And you’ve been there for far too long. You’re one of the few police officers who’ve had to kill several people in the course of their duty. And if there’s one thing we learned in Afghanistan, it’s what killing someone can do to a person.”
“And I’ve seen what it doesn’t do to a person. People who shake it off as if it was nothing. Or who just wait for the next opportunity.”
“Obviously you’re right, in that we react very differently to the experience of killing someone. But for vaguely normal people, the reason why they had to kill matters too. One study by RAND shows that at least 20, probably more like 30 percent of American soldiers who served in Afghanistan or Iraq had PTSD. The same goes for American soldiers in Vietnam. The equivalent figure for Allied soldiers in the Second World War seems to have been only half that. Psychologists believe that’s because the soldiers didn’t understand the wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Whereas everyone understood why Hitler had to be fought. The soldiers who’d been in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan came home to a society that didn’t organise parades, and looked at them with suspicion. And the soldiers weren’t able to fit their actions into a comprehensive narrative that justified them. That’s why it’s easier to kill for Israel. The PTSD rate there is down at 8 percent. Not because the violence is any less grotesque, but because the soldiers can tell themselves that they’re defending a small country surrounded by enemies, and because they have broad support among their own population. That gives them a simple, ethically justifiable reason for killing. What they do is necessary, meaningful.”
“Mm. You’re saying I’m traumatised, but the people I’ve killed, I’ve killed out of necessity. Yes, they come to me at night, but I still pull the trigger without hesitation. Time after time.”
“You belong to the 8 percent who get PTSD even though they have every possibility of justifying their actions,” Kaja said. “The ones who don’t do that. Who are unconsciously but actively looking for a way to blame themselves. The way you’re now trying to take the blame for—”