‘Why isn’t a beautiful woman like you married?’
The words sounded like they were being ground out, and Wenche turned to face the old man on the bicycle. He smiled at her. His face was thin, with wrinkles like deep valleys, big lips and long, thick, greasy hair. He was thin, but broad-shouldered. A bit like Mick Jagger. Apart from his red bandanna and truck driver’s moustache.
Wenche smiled and raised her ringless right hand. ‘Married. But I take it off when I exercise.’
‘Shame,’ the old man smiled. ‘Because I’m not married, and I could have offered a b-betrothal on the spot.’
He raised his own right hand. Wenche started. She thought for a moment that she was seeing things. Was that really a big hole, right through his hand?
‘Oleg Fauke is here,’ the voice said over the intercom.
‘Send him in,’ John D. Steffens said, pushing his chair away from his desk and looking out of the window at the laboratory building, the department of transfusion medicine. He had already seen young Fauke get out of the little Japanese car that was still in the car park with its engine running. Another young man was sitting behind the wheel, presumably with the heater at full blast. It was a sparklingly cold, sunny day. For many people it was a paradox that a cloudless sky in July promised heat but cold in January. Because many people couldn’t be bothered to understand the basics of physics, meteorology and the nature of the world. It no longer irritated Steffens that people thought that cold was a thing, and didn’t understand that it was merely the absence of heat. Cold was the natural, dominant state. Heat the exception. The way murder and cruelty were natural, logical, and mercy an anomaly, a result of the human herd’s intricate way of promoting the survival of the species. Because mercy stopped there, within the species, and it was humanity’s boundless cruelty towards other species that allowed it to survive. For instance, the growth of human beings as a species meant that meat wasn’t just hunted, but produced. The very words, meat production, the very idea! People kept animals in cages, stripping them of all their happiness and pleasure in life, inseminating them so that they involuntarily produced milk and tender young flesh, took their offspring away as soon as they were born, while the mothers bellowed with pain, and then made them pregnant again as soon as possible. People got furious if certain species were eaten, dogs, whales, dolphins, cats. But mercy, for unfathomable reasons, stopped there. The far more intelligent pigs could and would be humiliated and eaten, and we had been doing it for so long human beings no longer even thought about the calculated cruelty that was part and parcel of modern food production. Brainwashing!
Steffens stared at the closed door that would soon be opening. Wondered if they would ever understand. That morality – which some people imagine is God-given and eternal – is as malleable and learned as our ideas of beauty, our enemies, our fashion trends. It seemed unlikely. And as a result, it was hardly surprising that humanity was unable to understand and accept radical research projects which went against their own engrained thoughts. Unable to understand that it was as logical and necessary as it was cruel.
The door opened.
‘Good morning, Oleg. Come in, have a seat.’
‘Thanks.’ The young man sat down. ‘Before you take the sample, can I ask you for a favour?’
‘A favour?’ Steffens pulled on a pair of white rubber gloves. ‘You know that my research could benefit you, your mother and the whole of your future family?’
‘And I know that research is more important to you than a slightly longer life is to me.’
Steffens smiled. ‘Wise words for such a young man.’
‘I’m asking on my father’s behalf if you could spare two hours to attend and give a professional opinion during a friend’s disputation. Harry would very much appreciate it.’
‘A disputation? By all means, it would be an honour.’
‘The only problem is …’ Oleg said, then cleared his throat, ‘that it starts now, or soon, and we’d need to go as soon as you’ve got your blood sample.’
‘Now?’ Steffens looked down at the diary that lay open in front of him. ‘I’m afraid I have a meeting which—’
‘He’d really appreciate it,’ Oleg said.
Steffens looked at the young man as he rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘You mean … your blood in exchange for my time?’
‘Something like that,’ Oleg said.
Steffens leaned back in his office chair and clasped his hands together in front of his mouth. ‘Just tell me one thing, Oleg. What is it that leads you to have such a close relationship to Harry Hole? After all, he isn’t your biological father.’
‘You tell me,’ Oleg said.
‘Answer that and give me your blood, and I’ll go with you to this disputation.’
Oleg thought. ‘I almost said that it’s because he’s honest. That in spite of the fact that he isn’t the best father in the world or anything like that, I can trust what he says. But I don’t think that’s the most important thing.’
‘So what is the most important thing?’
‘That we hate the same groups.’
‘That you what?’
‘Music. We don’t like the same music, but we hate the same stuff.’ Oleg pulled his padded jacket off and rolled up his sleeve. ‘Ready?’
41
FRIDAY AFTERNOON
RAKEL LOOKED UP at harry as they walked arm in arm across Universitetsplassen towards the Domus Academica, one of three buildings belonging to the University of Oslo in the centre of the city. She had persuaded him to wear the smart shoes she had bought him in London, even though he had said they were too slippery for this sort of weather.
‘You ought to wear a suit more often,’ she said.
‘And the council should grit more often,’ Harry said, pretending to slip again.
She laughed and held him tight. Felt the hard yellow file he had folded and stuffed into his inside pocket. ‘Isn’t that Bjørn Holm’s car, and a very illegal piece of parking?’
They passed the black Volvo Amazon, which was parked right in front of the steps.
‘Police authorisation behind the windscreen,’ Harry said. ‘Clear case of misuse.’
‘It’s because of Katrine,’ Rakel smiled. ‘He’s just worried she’ll fall.’
There was a buzz of voices in the vestibule outside the Gamle festsal auditorium. Rakel looked for familiar faces. It was mostly professional colleagues and family. But there was someone she recognised at the other end of the room, Truls Berntsen. He evidently hadn’t understood that a suit was the correct attire for a disputation. Rakel forged a path for herself and Harry over to Katrine and Bjørn.