“Don’t worry,” Harry said, closing the laptop. “I need to get home and change clothes.” He stood up and kissed her forehead. “Nice tattoo, by the way.”
“Do you think? I seem to remember that you don’t like tattoos?”
“Really?”
She smiled. “You said that human beings are by definition idiots, and therefore shouldn’t inscribe anything in either stone or skin, and should only use water-soluble paint. That we needed to be able to erase the past and forget who we used to be.”
“Christ. Did I say that?”
“A blank page, you said. The freedom to become someone new, something better. That tattoos define you, force you to stick to old values and opinions. You used the example of having a tattoo of Jesus on your chest, which would then be an incentive to cling to old superstitions, because the tattoo would look ridiculous on an atheist.”
“Not bad. I’m impressed you remember that.”
“You’re a thoughtful man with many peculiar ideas, Harry.”
“I used to be better, maybe I should have had them tattooed.” Harry rubbed the back of his neck. The alarm didn’t want to stop, like an old-style car alarm that kept blaring outside the bedroom window, waiting for someone to come and turn it off. Had something other than a creaking floorboard set it off?
Kaja followed him into the hallway as he put his boots on.
“You know what?” she said when he was about to open the door. “You look like you’ve decided to survive.”
“What?”
“When I saw you at the church, you looked like you were waiting for the first decent excuse to die.”
Katrine looked at the screen of her phone to see who was calling. She hesitated, looked at the heap of reports on her desk and sighed.
“Good morning, Mona. So you’re working on a Sunday?”
“ISB,” Mona Daa said.
“Sorry?”
“In the same boat. Text speak.”
“Yes, I’m at work. Without trucks, Norway stops.”
“Sorry?”
“Old saying. Without women... Never mind, how can I help VG?”
“An update on the Rakel case.”
“That’s what we have press conferences for.”
“And it’s getting to be quite a while since you last had one of those. And Anders seems—”
“The fact that you’re living with a forensics officer doesn’t mean you can jump the queue, Mona.”
“No, it puts me at the back of the queue. Because you’re all so terrified it’ll look like I’m getting special treatment. What I was about to say is that Anders obviously isn’t saying anything, but he seems moody. Which I interpret as meaning that you’re treading water.”
“Investigations are never treading water,” Katrine said, massaging her forehead with her free hand. Dear God, she was tired. “We and Kripos are working systematically and tirelessly. Every line of inquiry that doesn’t take us closer to our goal takes us closer to our goal.”
“Great, but I think I’ve had that quote from you before, Bratt. Have you got anything a bit more sexy?”
“Sexy?” Katrine felt something come loose, something that had been threatening to come out for a long time. “OK, here’s sexy. Rakel Fauke was a wonderful person. And that’s more than I can say about you and your colleagues. If you can’t keep the day of rest sacred, then at least try to keep her memory and whatever remnants of integrity you’ve got left sacred, you fucking bitch. There, is that sexy enough for you?”
In the seconds that followed, Katrine was as speechless at what she had just said as Mona Daa.
“Do you want me to quote you on that?” Mona asked.
Katrine leaned back in her chair and cursed silently. “I don’t know, what do you think?”
“Bearing in mind future cooperation,” Mona said, “I think this conversation never happened.”
“Thanks.”
They hung up, and Katrine leaned her head on the cool desktop. It was too much. The responsibility. The headlines. The impatience of the people on the top floor. The baby. Bjørn. The uncertainty. The certainty. Certainty about so much, about knowing she was at work because she didn’t want to be at home, with them. And it was too little. She could read as many reports as she liked, her own and those from Winter and Kripos, but it didn’t help. Because Mona Daa was right: they were treading water.
Harry stopped abruptly in the middle of Stensparken. He had taken a slight detour to give himself time to think, but had forgotten it was Sunday. Angry barking competed with the excited cries of children, which in turn competed with the shouted commands of the owners of the dogs and children. Yet all this hadn’t managed to drown out the alarm that wouldn’t stop ringing. Until he suddenly remembered. Because he did remember. Remembered where he had seen a left hand holding a glass of water.
“What do you think about the fact that you can get sent to prison for ordering a sex doll in the shape of a child?” Øystein Eikeland asked as he leafed through the newspaper on the counter in the Jealousy Bar. “I mean, it’s disgusting, but thoughts ought to be free, surely?”
“There have to be boundaries for disgusting things,” Ringdal said, then licked a finger and went on counting the notes from the till. “We had a good night last night, Eikeland.”
“It says here that experts disagree about whether messing about with child sex dolls increases the likelihood of assaults on children.”
“But we’re not getting enough babes. Maybe we should advertise cheaper drinks for ladies under thirty-five.”
“If that’s the case, why don’t parents get sent to prison for buying toy guns for their kids and teaching them to carry out school massacres?”
Ringdal put a glass under the tap. “Are you a pedophile, Eikeland?”
Øystein Eikeland stared out into space. “I’ve considered it, naturally. Just out of curiosity, you know? But no, no tingling anywhere. What about you?”
Ringdal filled the glass. “I can assure you that I’m an extremely normal man, Eikeland.”
“What does that mean?”
“What does what mean?”
“Extremely normal. It sounds kind of creepy.”
“Extremely normal means I like babes above legal age. Just like our male clientele.” Ringdal raised his glass. “And that’s why I’ve employed a new bartender.”
Øystein’s mouth fell open.
“She’ll be in addition to the two of us,” Ringdal said. “So we can have a bit more time off. Rotate the team, so to speak. Mourinho-style.” He drank.
“Firstly, it was Sir Alex who introduced the rotation system. Secondly, José Moronho is a pompous jerk who may have won a few titles with the most expensive players in the world, but like most people he’s been deceived by the comments of so-called experts into believing that his own unique gifts were the cause. Even if all research shows that it’s a myth that the coach has anything to do with a football team’s results. The team with the highest-paid players wins, it’s as easy as that. So if you want the Jealousy to come top of the bar league in Grünerløkka, all you have to do is increase my wages, Ringdal. Simple as that.”
“You’re entertaining, I’ll give you that, Eikeland. That must be why the customers seem to like you. But I don’t think it would do any harm to mix things up a bit.”
Øystein flashed his brown stumps of teeth in a grin. “Mix bad teeth with big tits? She’s got big tits, hasn’t she?”
“Well...”
“You’re an idiot, Ringdal.”