‘Both.’
‘Sometimes I think she’s smiling because she likes me. Then I think she’s smiling because she wants me to do something. But when she stops smiling the beam of light in her eyes dies and it’s too late to find out, she won’t talk to me any more. So I think perhaps it’s the amp. Or something.’
‘Erm. . the amp?’
‘Yes.’ Pause. ‘The one I told you about. The one Dad used to switch off when he came into my room, when he said I’d been playing that record so long it was bordering on insanity. And then I said you could see the little red light beside the off switch fade and disappear. Like an eye. Or a sunset. And then I thought I was losing her. That’s why she says nothing at the end of the dream. She’s the amp that goes quiet when Dad switches it off. And then I can’t talk to her.’
‘Did you play records and think about her?’
‘Yes. All the time. Until I was sixteen. And not records. The record.’
‘Dark Side of the Moon?’
‘Yes.’
‘But she didn’t want you?’
‘I don’t know. Probably not. Not then.’
‘Hm. Our time’s up. I’ll give you something to read for next time. And then I want us to make a new ending for the story in the dream. She has to speak. She has to say something to you. Something you wished she would say. That she likes you perhaps. Can you give that a bit of thought for next time?’
‘Fine.’
The patient stood up, took his coat from the stand and walked towards the door. Aune sat at his desk and looked at the calendar shining at him from the computer screen. It already looked depressingly full. And he realised it had happened again: he had completely forgotten the name of the patient. He found it on the calendar. Paul Stavnes.
‘Same time next week OK, Paul?’
‘Yes.’
Ståle entered it. When he looked up, Stavnes had already gone.
He got up, grabbed the newspaper and went to the window. Where the hell was the global warming they had been promised? He looked at the newspaper, but suddenly couldn’t be bothered, threw it down, weeks and months of grinding his way through the papers were enough. Beaten to death. Terrible force. Fatal blows to the head. Erlend Vennesla leaves behind a wife, children and grandchildren. Friends and colleagues in shock. ‘A warm, kind person.’ ‘Impossible to dislike.’ ‘Good-natured, honest and tolerant, absolutely no enemies.’ Ståle Aune took a deep breath.
He gazed at the phone. They had his number. But the phone was mute. Just like the girl in the dream.
4
The head of crime squad, Gunnar Hagen, ran his hand across his forehead and then further up, through the entrance to the lagoon. The sweat collecting on his palm was caught by the thick atoll of hair at the back of his head. In front of him sat the investigative team. For a standard murder there would typically be twelve officers. But the murder of a colleague was not typical and K2 was full, down to the last chair, just shy of fifty people. Including those on the sick list, the group consisted of fifty-three members. And soon more of them would be on the sick list, as they felt the full force of the media. The best that could be said about this case was that it had brought the two big murder investigation units in Norway — Crime Squad and Kripos — closer together. All the rivalry had been cast aside, and for once they were collaborating with no other agenda than to find the person who had killed their colleague. In the first weeks with an intensity and passion that convinced Hagen the case would soon be solved, despite the lack of forensic evidence, witnesses, possible motives, possible suspects and possible or impossible leads. Simply because the collective will was so formidable, the net spread was so tight, the resources they had at their disposal boundless. And yet.
The tired, grey faces stared at him with an apathy that had become more and more visible over the last few weeks. And yesterday’s press conference — which had been like an ugly capitulation, his plea for help, wherever it might come from — had not raised fighting spirits. Today there were two further absentees, and they weren’t exactly throwing in the towel over a sniffly nose. In addition to the Vennesla case there was the Gusto Hanssen murder which had gone from solved to unsolved after Oleg Fauke had been released and Chris ‘Adidas’ Reddy had withdrawn his confession. Ah, there was one positive side to the Vennesla case: the murder of the policeman overshadowed that of the young beautiful drug dealer called Gusto Hanssen so completely that the press hadn’t written a word about the resumption of this investigation.
Hagen glanced down at the sheet of paper on the lectern. There were two lines. That was all. Two lines for a morning meeting.
Gunnar Hagen cleared his throat. ‘Morning, folks. As most of you are aware, we have received some calls after yesterday’s conference. Eighty-nine in all, of which several are being followed up now.’
He didn’t need to say what everyone knew, that after close on three months they were now scraping the bottom; ninety-five per cent of all calls were a waste of time: the usual nutters who always rang in, drunks, people wanting to cast suspicion on someone who had run off with their other half, a neighbour shirking their cleaning duties, practical jokes or just people who wanted some attention, someone to talk to. By ‘several’ he meant four. Four tip-offs. And when he said they were being ‘followed up’ it was a lie, they had finished following them up. And they had led where they were now: nowhere.
‘We’ve got an illustrious visitor today,’ Hagen said, and immediately heard that this could be construed as sarcasm. ‘The Chief of Police would like to join us and say a few words. Mikael. .’
Hagen closed his folder, raised it and placed it on the table as though it contained a pile of new, interesting documents instead of the one sheet of paper, hoping he had smoothed over the ‘illustrious’ by using Bellman’s Christian name and nodding to the man standing by the door at the back of the room.
The young Chief of Police was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, waiting for the brief moment when everyone turned round to look at him, then in one sleek, powerful movement he pulled himself away from the wall and strode to the rostrum. He was half smiling as though he was thinking about something amusing, and when he turned to the lectern with a casual swing of his heel, rested his forearms on it, leaned forward and looked straight at them as if to emphasise that he had no typed speech ready, it struck Hagen that Bellman had better deliver now what his entrance promised.
‘Some of you may know that I’m a climber,’ Mikael said. ‘And when I wake up in the morning on days like today, look out of the window and there’s zero visibility and more snow and gusting winds are forecast, I think about a mountain I once had plans to conquer.’
Bellman paused, and Hagen could see the unexpected introduction was working; Bellman had caught their attention. For the moment. But Hagen knew that the overworked unit’s bullshit tolerance was at an all-time low, and they wouldn’t go out of their way to hide it. Bellman was too young, had taken up his post too recently and had arrived there with too much haste for them to allow him to test their patience.
‘Coincidentally, the mountain has the same name as this room. Which is the same name some of you have given the Vennesla case. K2. It’s a good name. The world’s second-highest mountain. The Savage Mountain. The hardest mountain in the world to conquer. One in four climbers dies. We’d planned to tackle the southern ascent, also known as the Magic Line. It’s only been done twice before and is considered by many to be ritual suicide. A slight change in weather and wind, and you and the mountain are enveloped in snow and temperatures none of us is made to survive, not with less oxygen per cubic metre than you have underwater. And, as this is the Himalayas, everyone knows there will be a change in the weather and wind.’