‘If you could choose,’ Rakel teased playfully, ‘if it didn’t have any consequences at all, would you rather spend tonight with me or your dream woman?’
‘Haven’t you got a doctor’s appointment?’
‘Just one night. No consequences.’
‘Are you trying to get me to say that you’re my dream woman?’
‘Come on.’
‘You’ll have to help me with suggestions.’
‘Audrey Hepburn.’
‘Necrophilia?’
‘Don’t try to wriggle out of it, Harry.’
‘OK. I suspect you of suggesting a dead woman because you assume I’ll think you’d find it less of a threat if it’s a woman I can’t spend the night with, in purely practical terms. But fine, thanks to your manipulative help and Breakfast at Tiffany’s, my answer is a loud and clear yes.’
Rakel let out a half-stifled yelp. ‘In that case, why don’t you just do it? Why not have a fling?’
‘To start with, I don’t even know if my dream woman would say yes, and I’m no good at dealing with rejection. And secondly, because the bit about “no consequences” doesn’t apply.’
‘Really?’
Harry focused on the newspaper again. ‘You might leave me. Even if you don’t, you won’t look at me the same way any more.’
‘You could keep it secret.’
‘I wouldn’t have the energy.’ The former Councillor for Social Affairs, Isabelle Skøyen, had criticised the current City Council for not having a contingency plan in advance of the so-called tropical storm that was forecast to hit the west coast early next week, with a force the country had never before experienced. Even more unusual was the fact that the storm was predicted to hit Oslo at only a marginally diminished strength a few hours later. Skøyen claimed that the Council Leader’s response (‘We don’t live in the tropics, so we don’t set money aside for tropical storms’) betrayed an arrogance and irresponsibility bordering on lunacy. ‘Evidently he believes that climate change is something that only affects other countries,’ Skøyen had said, beside a photograph of her in a characteristic pose which told Harry she was planning to make a political comeback.
‘When you say you wouldn’t have the energy to keep an affair secret, do you mean “couldn’t keep up the pretence”?’ Rakel asked.
‘I mean “couldn’t be bothered”. Keeping secrets is exhausting. And I’d feel guilty.’ He turned the page. No more pages. ‘Having a guilty conscience is exhausting.’
‘Exhausting for you, sure. What about me, haven’t you thought about how hard it would be for me?’
Harry glanced at the crossword before putting the newspaper down on the duvet and turning towards her. ‘If you don’t know about the affair, then surely you won’t feel anything at all, darling?’
Rakel took hold of his chin and held it while her other hand fiddled with his eyebrows. ‘But what if I found out? Or you found out that I’d slept with another man. Wouldn’t that upset you?’
He felt a sudden flash of pain as she plucked a straggly grey hair from one eyebrow.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Hence the guilty conscience if it was the other way round.’
She let go of his chin. ‘Darn it, Harry, you talk as if you were trying to figure out a murder case. Don’t you feel anything?’
‘Darn it?’ Harry gave a crooked smile and peered at her over his glasses. ‘Do people still say “darn it”?’
‘Just answer, dar— oh, tarnation!’
Harry laughed. ‘I feel that I’m trying to answer your questions as honestly as I can. But in order to do that, I need to think about them, and be realistic. If I were to follow my initial emotional instinct, I’d have said what I thought you wanted to hear. So here’s a warning. I’m not honest, I’m a slippery sod. My honesty now is merely a long-term investment in my own plausibility. Because there may come a day when I really need to lie, and then it might be handy if you think I’m honest.’
‘Wipe that grin off your face, Harry. So what you’re actually saying is that you’d be an adulterous bastard if it wasn’t so much bother?’
‘Looks like it.’
Rakel gave him a shove, swung her legs out of bed and shuffled out through the doorway in her slippers with a derisive snort.
Harry heard her snort again on the stairs.
‘Can you put the kettle on?’ he called.
‘Cary Grant,’ she called back. ‘And Kurt Cobain. At the same time.’
He heard her moving about downstairs. The rumbling sound of the kettle. Harry moved the newspaper to the bedside table and put his hands behind his head. Smiled. Happy. As he got up he caught sight of her part of the paper, still on her pillow. He saw a picture, a crime scene behind a police cordon, closed his eyes and went over to the window. He opened them again and looked out at the fir trees. He felt he could manage it now. Could manage to forget the name of the one who got away.
He woke up. He had been dreaming about his mother again. And a man who claimed to be his father. He wondered what sort of awakening this was. He was rested. He was calm. He was content. The main reason lay less than an arm’s length away from him. He turned towards her. He had gone into hunting mode yesterday. That hadn’t been the intention, but when he saw her – the policewoman – in the bar, it was as if fate had grabbed the wheel for a moment. Oslo was a small city, people were always bumping into each other, but all the same. He hadn’t run amok, though, he had learned the art of self-control. He studied the lines on her face, her hair, the arm lying at a slightly unnatural angle. She was cold, and she wasn’t breathing; the smell of lavender was almost gone, but that was OK, she had done her job.
He threw the covers back and went over to the wardrobe, and took the uniform out. He brushed it down. He could already feel the blood pumping faster through his body. It was going to be another good day.
7
FRIDAY MORNING
HARRY HOLE WAS walking down the corridor in Police College with Ståle Aune. At 192cm tall, Harry was some twenty centimetres taller than his friend, who was twenty years older than him and a good deal fatter.
‘I’m surprised that you can’t solve such an obvious case,’ Aune said, checking that his spotted bow tie was in the right place. ‘There’s no mystery, you became a teacher because your parents were. Or, to be more accurate, because your father was. Even post-mortem, you’re still trying to get his approval, which you never got as a police officer, and never actually wanted as a police officer, seeing as your rebellion against your father was about not being the same as him, whom you saw as a feeble individual because he hadn’t been able to save your mother’s life. You projected your own inadequacies onto him. And joined the police to make up for the fact that you weren’t able to save your mother either. You wanted to save us all from death, or, more precisely, from being murdered.’
‘Hm. How much do people pay per appointment to listen to stuff like that?’
Aune laughed. ‘Speaking of appointments, how did Rakel get on about her headaches?’
‘The appointment’s today,’ Harry said. ‘Her dad suffered from migraines, and they only started later in life.’
‘Heredity. It’s like going to a fortune-teller and regretting it. As human beings, we tend not to like things we can’t avoid. Death, for instance.’
‘Heredity isn’t unavoidable. My grandfather said he became an alcoholic the first time he ever had a drink, just like his father. Whereas my father enjoyed – as in actually enjoyed – alcohol all his life without becoming a alcoholic.’
‘So alcoholism skipped a generation. That sort of thing happens.’
‘Unless me blaming my genes is just an easy excuse for my own weak character.’