Harry Hole Mysteries 3-Book Bundle (45 page)

Harry fidgeted with the coffee jar. ‘I happened to frighten Salma and Muhammad in the yard the other day.’

‘Yes, I heard.’

‘I’m sorry. I was a bit stressed, that’s all.’

‘That’s OK. I was just afraid you’d started drinking again.’

Harry shook his head and gave a weak smile. He liked the Pakistani’s direct approach.

‘Good,’ said Ali, counting out the change. ‘How’s the redecorating going?’

‘Redecorating?’ Harry took his change. ‘Do you mean the mould man?’

‘The mould man?’

‘Yes, the guy who’s checking the cellar for fungus. Stormann or something like that.’

‘Fungus in the
cellar
?’ Ali sent Harry a horrified look.

‘Didn’t you know?’ Harry said. ‘You’re the chairman of the residents’ committee. I’d have thought he would have spoken to you.’

Ali shook his head slowly. ‘Perhaps he spoke to Bjørn.’

‘Who’s Bjørn?’

‘Bjørn Asbjørnsen who’s lived on the ground floor for thirteen years,’ Ali said, sending Harry a reproving look. ‘And has been the vice chair for just as long.’

‘Oh, right, Bjørn,’ Harry said, pretending to note the name.

‘I’ll check that out,’ Ali said.

Upstairs in his flat, Harry pulled off his boots, headed straight for the bedroom and fell asleep. He had hardly slept at the hotel in Bergen. When he awoke his mouth was dry and he had stomach pains. He got up to drink some water and came to a sudden halt when he entered the hall.

He hadn’t noticed when he got in, but the walls were back.

He walked from room to room. Magic. It had been done to such perfection that he could swear they hadn’t been touched. No old nail holes visible, no lines askew. He touched the sitting-room wall as if to assure himself that this was not a hallucination.

On the sitting-room table, in front of the wing chair, there was a yellow piece of paper. A handwritten message. The letters were neat and strangely attractive.

Harry fell into the wing chair and studied the smooth walls.

It was only when he went into the kitchen that he discovered the miracle was not complete. The calendar with Rakel and Oleg was gone. The sky-blue dress. He swore aloud and feverishly ransacked the rubbish bins and even the plastic refuse container in the yard before concluding that the happiest time of his life had been eradicated along with the fungus.

It was definitely a different workday for psychiatrist Kjersti Rødsmoen. And not just because the sun had made a rare appearance in the Bergen
sky and was at this moment shining through the windows where she was hurrying along a corridor at Haukeland Hospital’s psychiatric department in Sandviken. The department had changed its name so many times that very few Bergensians knew that the current official name was Sandviken Hospital. However, a closed ward was, until further notice, a closed ward while Bergen waited for someone to claim that the terminology was misleading or at any rate stigmatising.

She was both dreading and looking forward to the imminent session with the patient confined under the strictest security measures she could ever remember in the department. They had reached agreement on the ethical boundaries and procedures with Espen Lepsvik from Kripos and Knut Müller-Nilsen from Bergen Police. The patient was psychotic and could therefore not attend a police interview. Kjersti was a psychiatrist and entitled to talk to the patient, but with the patient’s best interests at heart, not in a way that might have the same purpose as police questioning. And ultimately there was the issue of client confidentiality. Kjersti Rødsmoen would have to assess for herself whether any information that emerged from the conversation could be construed as having such great significance for the police that she should take it further. And this information would have no validity in a court of law anyway as it came from a psychotic person. In short, they were moving in a legal and ethical minefield where even the slightest slip might have catastrophic consequences, as everything she did would be scrutinised by the judicial system and the media.

A carer and a uniformed policeman stood outside the door of the consulting room. Kjersti pointed to the ID card pinned to her white medical coat, and the officer opened the door.

The agreement was that the carer would keep an eye on what was happening in the room and sound the alarm if necessary.

Kjersti Rødsmoen sat down on the chair and scrutinised the patient. It was hard to imagine that she represented any danger, this small woman with hair hanging over her face, black stitches where her torn mouth had been sewn up and wide-open eyes that seemed to be staring with unfathomable horror at something Kjersti Rødsmoen could not see.
Quite the contrary. The woman appeared so incapable of any action that you had the feeling she would be blown over if you so much as breathed on her. The fact that this woman had killed people in cold blood was quite simply inconceivable. But it always was.

‘Hello,’ said the psychiatrist. ‘I’m Kjersti.’

No response.

‘What do you think your problem is?’ she asked.

The question came straight from the manual governing conversations with psychotics. The alternative was:
How do you think I can help you?

Still no response.

‘You’re quite safe in this room. No one will harm you. I won’t hurt you. You’re absolutely safe.’

According to the manual, this solid statement was supposed to re-assure the psychotic patient, because a psychosis is primarily about boundless fear. Kjersti Rødsmoen felt like an air stewardess running through the safety procedures before take-off. Mechanical, routine. Even on routes crossing over the driest of deserts you demonstrate the use of the life jacket. Because the statement proclaims what you want to hear: you’re allowed to be frightened, but we’ll take care of you.

It was time to check her perception of reality.

‘Do you know what day it is today?’

Silence.

‘Look at the clock on the wall over there. Can you tell me what time it is?’

She received a hunted stare by way of an answer.

Kjersti Rødsmoen waited. And waited. The minute hand of the clock shifted with a quivering goose-step.

It was hopeless.

‘I’m going now,’ Kjersti said. ‘Someone will come and fetch you. You’re quite safe.’

She went to the door.

‘I have to talk to Harry.’ Her voice was deep, almost masculine.

Kjersti stopped and turned. ‘Who’s Harry?’

‘Harry Hole. It’s urgent.’

Kjersti tried to establish eye contact, but the woman was still staring into her own distant world.

‘I’m afraid you’ll have to tell me who Harry Hole is, Katrine.’

‘Crime Squad Inspector in Oslo. And if you have to say my name, use my surname, Kjersti.’

‘Bratt?’

‘Rafto.’

‘I see. But can’t you tell me what you want to talk to Harry Hole about, so that I can pass it on –’

‘You don’t understand. They’re all going to die.’

Kjersti sank slowly back onto the chair. ‘I do understand. And why do you think they’re going to die, Katrine?’

And finally there was eye contact. And what Kjersti Rødsmoen saw made her think of one of those red cards in the game of Monopoly she had in her holiday cabin: Your houses and hotels have all burned down.

‘None of you understands anything,’ answered the low, masculine voice. ‘It’s not me.’

At two o’clock Harry pulled in to the kerb beneath Rakel’s timber house in Holmenkollveien. It had stopped snowing and he thought it wouldn’t be wise to leave telltale tyre prints on the drive. The snow emitted soft, drawn-out screeches under his boots and the sharp daylight flashed against the sunglass-black windows as he approached.

He went up the steps by the front door, opened the hatch of the bird box, put Rakel’s watch inside and closed it again. He had turned round to leave as the door behind him was wrenched open.

‘Harry!’

Harry spun round, swallowed and essayed a smile. Before him stood a man naked but for a towel around his waist.

‘Mathias,’ he said bewildered, staring at the other man’s chest. ‘You gave me a shock. Thought you’d be working at this time of day.’

‘Sorry,’ Mathias laughed, quickly crossing his arms. ‘I was working late last night. Day off today. I was on my way to the shower when I heard some noise at the door. I assumed it would be Oleg; his key sticks a bit, you see.’

Sticks, Harry mused. That must mean Oleg has the key he used to have. And that Mathias has Oleg’s. A woman’s mind.

‘Can I help you, Harry?’ Harry noticed that his crossed arms were unnaturally high up his chest, as though he were trying to hide something.

‘Nope,’ Harry said casually. ‘I was just driving by and had something for Oleg.’

‘Why didn’t you knock?’

Harry swallowed. ‘I suddenly realised he wasn’t back from school yet.’

‘Oh? How did you know that?’

Harry nodded to Mathias, as though bestowing approval for an apposite question. There wasn’t a shred of suspicion in Mathias’s friendly, open face, only a genuine desire to have something clarified that he couldn’t grasp.

‘The snow,’ Harry said.

‘The snow?’

‘Yes. It stopped snowing two hours ago, and there are no prints on the steps.’

‘Well, I’ll be damned, Harry,’ Mathias burst out enthusiastically. ‘Now that’s what I call applying deductive reasoning to your everyday life. You’re a detective all right, no question about that.’

Harry’s laughter was strained. Mathias’s crossed arms had sunk a little, and now Harry could see what Rakel must have meant by Mathias’s physical quirk. Where you expected to see two nipples the skin just continued, white and unbroken.

‘It’s hereditary,’ said Mathias, who had clearly been following Harry’s eyes. ‘My father didn’t have any, either. It’s rare but quite harmless. And what are we men supposed to do with them anyway?’

‘No, indeed,’ Harry said, feeling his earlobes go warm.

‘Would you like me to give the something to Oleg?’

Harry shifted his gaze. It settled instinctively on the bird box, then moved on.

‘I’ll drop it off another time,’ Harry said, grimacing in a way he hoped inspired trust. ‘You have a shower.’

‘OK.’

‘See you.’

The first thing Harry did when he got back into the car was to smack both hands on the wheel and curse aloud. He had behaved like a twelve-year-old pilferer caught red-handed. He had lied to Mathias’s face. Lied and crawled and been a shit.

He gunned the engine and let the clutch go with a jerk to punish the car. He didn’t have the energy to think about it now. Had to focus on other things. But he couldn’t and his mind was racing in a chaotic chain of associations as he tore down to Oslo city centre. He thought of blemishes, of flat, red nipples that looked like bloodstains on bare skin. Of bloodstains on untreated wood. And for some reason the mould man’s words came into his head: ‘The alternative would have been to paint the wall red.’

The mould man had bled. Harry half closed his eyes and visualised the cut. It must have been a deep cut to have made such a mess that … that the alternative would have been to paint the wall red.

Harry jumped on the brakes. He heard hooting, looked in the mirror and saw a Hiace sliding on new snow until the tyres got a grip and it skidded alongside him and past.

Harry kicked open the car door, leapt out and saw that he was by the stadium at the bottom of Holmenkollveien. He took a deep breath and broke his tower of thoughts into pieces, dismantled it to see if he could reassemble it. Rebuilt it quickly, without forcing any of the bits. For they slotted in by themselves. His pulse was accelerating. If this made credible sense, everything was turned upside down. And it all fitted, it fitted that the Snowman had planned how to infiltrate Harry and had just walked in off the street and made himself comfortable.
And the bodies – that would explain what had happened to the bodies. Trembling, Harry lit a cigarette and started to try to reconstruct what he had seen in a flash. The chicken feathers with blackened edges.

Harry didn’t believe in inspiration, divine insights or telepathy. But he did believe in luck. Not the luck you were born with, but the systematic luck you earned through hard work and spinning yourself such a fine-meshed net that at some point chance would play into your hands. But this was not that kind of luck. This was just a fluke. An atypical fluke. If he was right of course. Harry looked down and discovered that he was wading through snow. That in fact – quite literally – he had his feet on the ground.

He walked back to the car, took out his mobile phone and rang Bjørn Holm’s number.

‘Yes, Harry?’ answered a sleepy, almost unrecognisable nasal voice.

‘You sound hung-over,’ Harry said, his suspicions alerted.

‘I wish,’ sniffled Holm. ‘Soddin’ cold. Freezing under two duvets. Ache all over –’

‘Listen,’ Harry interrupted. ‘Do you remember when I asked you to take the temperature of the chickens to find out how long it had been since Sylvia had been in the barn slaughtering them?’

‘Yes?’

‘And you said afterwards that one was warmer than the other two.’

Bjørn Holm sniffed. ‘Yes. Skarre suggested it had a temperature. A theory that’s perfectly plausible.’

‘I think it was warmer because it was killed after Sylvia was killed, in other words, at least an hour later.’

‘Oh? Who by?’

‘By the Snowman.’

Harry heard a long, loud snort as snot travelled backwards before Holm answered. ‘You mean she took Sylvia’s hatchet, went back and –’

‘No, it was in the forest. I should have reacted when I saw it, but of course I’d never heard of this cutting loop when we were there looking at the chicken carcasses.’

‘And what did you see?’

‘A sliced feather with a blackened edge. You see, I think the Snowman was using the cutting loop.’