‘Why?’
She didn’t answer.
He looked her in the eye.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Because you’re feeling that contempt now?’
Mikael Bellman saw Isabelle Skøyen’s impressive nostrils flare as she took a deep breath. ‘You are so many things,’ she said. ‘You have so many qualities that have brought you to where you are.’
‘And?’
‘And one of them is your ability to know when to take cover and let others take the blow, when cowardice will pay off. It’s just that this time you forgot that you had an audience – and not just the usual audience, but the worst possible audience.’
Mikael Bellman nodded. Journalists from both home and abroad. He and Isabelle had a lot of work ahead of them. He picked up a pair of East German binoculars from her windowsill, presumably a gift from a male admirer. Pointed them at the fjord. He had seen something out there.
‘What do you think would be the best outcome for us?’ he asked.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Isabelle said. In spite of the fact that she had grown up in the country, or perhaps precisely because of that, she still spoke like the upper classes of western Oslo used to, without it sounding odd. Mikael had tried, and it hadn’t worked. Growing up in the east of the city had caused irreparable damage.
‘For Truls to die, or for him to survive?’ He adjusted the focus on the binoculars. It took him a moment to hear her laughter.
‘And that’s another of those qualities,’ she said. ‘You can switch off all emotion when the situation demands it. This is going to damage you, but you’ll survive.’
‘Dead would be best, wouldn’t it? Then it would be beyond question that he took the wrong decision, and that I was right. And then he won’t be able to give any interviews, and the whole thing will have a limited shelf life.’
He felt her hand on his belt buckle as her voice whispered right next to his ear: ‘So you’d like the next text to your phone to tell you that your best friend is dead?’
It was a dog. Far out on the fjord. Where on earth was it going?
The next thought came automatically.
And it was a new thought. A thought that had basically never before occurred to Police Chief and soon-to-be Justice Minister Mikael Bellman at any point in his forty-year life.
Where on earth are we going?
Harry had a high-pitched buzzing in his ear, and his own blood on one eye. And the blows were still coming. He no longer felt any pain, only that the car was getting colder and the darkness deeper.
But he wasn’t letting go. He had let go so many times before. Had given in to pain, fear, a death wish. But he had also given in to a primitive, egocentric survival instinct that had shouted down any longing for a painless nothingness, sleep, darkness. And that was why he was here. Still here. And this time he wasn’t letting go.
His jaw muscles ached so badly that his whole body was shaking. And the blows were still coming. But he didn’t let go. Seventy kilos of pressure. If he had managed to get a firmer grip of the neck, he could have stemmed the flow of blood to the brain, and Smith would have lost consciousness fairly quickly. By only stopping the supply of air that could take several minutes. Another blow to his temple. Harry felt his own consciousness waver. No! He jerked in the seat. Clenched his teeth tighter. Stick it out, stick it out. Lion. Water buffalo. Harry counted as he breathed through his nose. One hundred. The blows kept coming, but weren’t the gaps between them longer, weren’t they a bit less forceful? Smith’s fingers closed over his face and tried to push Harry away. Then gave up. Let go of him. Was Smith’s brain finally so starved of oxygen that he had stopped functioning? Harry felt relief, swallowed some more of Smith’s blood, and at that moment the thought struck him. Valentin’s prediction. You’ve been waiting for your turn to be a vampire. And one day you too will drink. Perhaps it was that thought, a gap in his concentration, but at that instant Harry felt the revolver move under the sole of his shoe, and realised that he had eased the pressure without noticing. That Smith had stopped punching him in order to reach for the gun. And that he had succeeded.
Katrine stopped in the doorway to the auditorium.
The room was empty apart from the two women who were sitting in the front row with their arms round each other.
She looked at them. An odd couple. Rakel and Ulla. The wives of sworn enemies. Was it the case that women found it easier to seek comfort in one another than men? Katrine didn’t know. So-called sisterhood had never interested her.
She went over to them. Ulla Bellman’s shoulders were shaking, but her sobbing was soundless.
Rakel looked up at Katrine with a questioning look.
‘We haven’t heard anything,’ Katrine said.
‘OK,’ Rakel said. ‘But he’ll be OK.’
It occurred to Katrine that that was her line, not Rakel’s. Rakel Fauke. Dark-haired, strong, with soft brown eyes. Katrine had always felt jealous. Not because she wanted the other woman’s life or to be Harry’s woman. Harry might be able to make a woman giddy and happy for a while, but in the long term he created sorrow, despair, destruction. For the long term you ought to have a Bjørn Holm. Yet even so she envied Rakel Fauke. She envied her for being the one Harry Hole wanted.
‘Sorry.’ Ståle Aune had come in. ‘I’ve got hold of a room where we can have a talk.’
Ulla Bellman nodded, still sniffing, then stood up and left the room with Aune.
‘Emergency psychiatry?’ Katrine asked.
‘Yes,’ Rakel said. ‘And the weird thing is that it works.’
‘Does it?’
‘I’ve been there. How are you holding up?’
‘Me?’
‘Yes. All this responsibility. Pregnant. And you’re close to Harry as well.’
Katrine stroked her stomach. And was struck by a strange thought, or at least one she had never had before. How close they were, birth and death. It was as if one foretold the other, as if life’s never-ending game of musical chairs demanded a death before granting new life.
‘Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?’
Katrine shook her head.
‘Names?’
‘Bjørn’s suggested Hank,’ Katrine said. ‘After Hank Williams.’
‘Of course. So he thinks it’s going to be a boy?’
‘Regardless of sex.’
They laughed. And it didn’t feel absurd. They were laughing and talking about a life that was about to start, instead of impending death. Because life was magical and death trivial.
‘I’ve got to go, but I’ll let you know as soon as we hear anything,’ Katrine said.
Rakel nodded. ‘I’ll stay here, but just say if there’s anything I can do to help.’
Katrine hesitated, then made her mind up. Stroked her stomach again. ‘I sometimes worry that I’m going to lose it.’
‘That’s natural.’
‘And then I wonder what would be left of me afterwards. If I’d be able to go on.’
‘You would,’ Rakel said firmly.
‘You have to promise that you’d do the same,’ Katrine said. ‘You say that Harry will be OK, and hope is important, but I also think it’s right that I tell you that I’ve spoken to the Delta group, and their evaluation is that the hostage taker – Hallstein Smith – probably won’t … well, the most common …’
‘Thanks,’ Rakel said, taking Katrine’s hand. ‘I love Harry, but if I lose him now, I promise to carry on.’
‘And Oleg, how would he …?’
Katrine saw the pain in Rakel’s eyes and instantly regretted saying it. Saw Rakel try to say something, but she failed and ended up shrugging her shoulders instead.
When she went outside again she heard a chopping sound and looked up. The sunlight shimmered off the body of the helicopter up in the sky.