“OK, let’s say that, then,” Harry interrupted.
“...Rakel’s death.”
Silence fell in the living room. Harry stared out into space. Blinked over and over again.
Kaja swallowed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. At least, I didn’t mean to say it like that.”
“You’re right,” Harry said. “Apart from the business of looking for blame. It is my fault, that’s a fact. If I hadn’t killed Svein Finne’s son...”
“You were doing your job.”
“...Rakel would still be alive.”
“I know people who specialise in PTSD. You need help, Harry.”
“Yes. Help to catch Finne.”
“That’s not your biggest problem.”
“Yes, it is.”
Kaja sighed. “How long did you have to look for his son before you found him?”
“Who’s counting? I found him.”
“No one catches Finne, he’s like a ghost.”
Harry looked up.
“I worked in Vice within the Crime Squad Unit,” Kaja said. “I’ve read the reports about Svein Finne, they were on the syllabus.”
“A ghost,” Harry said.
“What?”
“That’s what we’re all looking for.” He got to his feet. “Thanks for the hot water. And the tip-off.”
“Tip-off?”
The old man was staring at the blue dress that was swaying and drifting in the current of the river. Life as a dance performed by mayflies. You stand in a room full of testosterone and perfume, moving your feet in time to the music and smiling at the prettiest one because you think she’s meant for you. Until you ask her to dance and she says no and looks over your shoulder at the other guy, the guy who isn’t you. Then, once you’ve patched up your broken heart, you adjust your expectations and ask the next prettiest to dance. Then the third. Until you get to the one who says yes. And if you’re lucky, and you dance well together, you ask her for the next dance as well. And the next. Until the evening is over and you ask if she wants to spend eternity with you.
“Yes, darling, but we’re mayflies,” she says, and dies.
And then comes night, real night, and the only thing you’ve got is a memory, a blue dress waving enticingly, and the promise that it won’t be more than a day until you can follow her. The blue dress is the only thing that makes it possible to dream that you will one day dance again.
“I’d like a wildlife camera.”
The deep, hoarse voice came from the other side of the counter.
The old man turned round. It was a tall man. Broad-shouldered but thin.
“We’ve got several different types...” Alf said.
“I know, I bought one here a while back. I’d like the fancy sort this time. The one that sends messages to your phone when someone’s there. The sort that can be hidden.”
“I get you. Let me just get one I think would do the job.”
The old man’s son-in-law went off to the shelves of wildlife cameras and the tall man turned and met the old man’s gaze. The old man remembered the face, not only because he had seen it in the shop before, but because he hadn’t been able to figure out if it belonged to a herbivore or a carnivore. Odd, because there was no doubt now. The man was a carnivore. But there was something else familiar about that look. The old man strained his eyes. Alf came back, and the tall man turned back towards the counter.
“When this camera detects movement in front of the lens, it takes an image and sends it directly to the phone number you install...”
“Thanks, I’ll take it.”
When the tall man had left the shop, the old man looked back at the television screen. One day all the blue dresses would be torn to pieces and drift away, the memories would let go and disappear. He saw the scars of loss and resignation in his own eyes in the mirror every day. That was what he had recognised in the tall man’s expression. Loss. But not resignation. Not yet.
Harry heard the gravel crunch beneath his boots and thought that this was what happened when you got old, you spent more and more time in cemeteries. Got to know your future neighbours in the place you’d be spending eternity. He stopped in front of the small, black stone. Crouched down, dug a hole in the snow and put the vase of white lilies in it. He packed the snow around it and arranged the stems. He stepped back to make sure it looked right. He looked up and surveyed the ranks of headstones. If the rule was that you were buried in the cemetery closest to your home, Harry would end up here somewhere, not next to Rakel, who lay in Voksen Cemetery. It had taken him seven minutes to get here from his flat — three and a half if he hurried, but he had taken his time. Burial plots were only left alone for twenty years; after that new coffins could be buried in the same plot, alongside the ones that were already there. So if fate was so inclined, they could be reunited in death. Harry shivered in his coat as a cold shudder ran through his body. He looked at the time. Then hurried towards the exit.
“How are you doing?”
“Fine,” Oleg said.
“Fine?”
“Up and down.”
“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’re not there 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 onto The River album, “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.