Nemesis

14

Luck

The bells over the door rang wildly in the dark, cramped kiosk as the two men came running in. Elmer's Fruit amp;Tobacco shop was one of the last kiosks of its kind with car, hunting and fishing magazines on one wall and soft porn, cigarettes and cigars on the other, and three piles of pools coupons on the counter between sweaty liquorice bars and dry, grey marzipan pigs from the previous Christmas tied in a ribbon.

'Just made it,' said Elmer, a thin, bald man of sixty with a beard and a Nordland accent.

'Wow, that was sudden,' Halvorsen said, brushing the rain off his shoulders.

'Typical Oslo autumn,' the northerner said in his acquired bokmеl. 'Either a drought or a deluge. Twenty Camel?'

Harry nodded and took out his wallet.

'And two scratch cards for the young officer?' Elmer held out the scratch cards to Halvorsen, who gave him a broad smile and quickly pocketed them.

'Is it alright if I light up in here, Elmer?' Harry asked, peering out into the downpour, which was lashing the now deserted pavements outside the dirty window.

'By all means,' Elmer said, giving them their change. 'Poisons and gambling are my bread and butter.'

He bent down and went out through a crooked brown curtain behind which they could hear a coffee machine gurgling.

'Here's the photo,' Harry said. 'I'd just like you to find out who the woman is.'

'Just?' Halvorsen looked at the dog-eared, grainy photograph Harry passed him.

'Start by finding out where the photo was taken,' Harry said and had a severe coughing fit when he tried to hold the smoke in his lungs. 'Looks like a holiday area. If it is, there must be a small grocer's or someone who rents out chalets, that sort of thing. If the family in the photo are regular visitors, someone working there knows who they are. When you know that, leave the rest to me.'

'All of this is because the photo was in the shoe?'

'It's not the usual place to keep photos, is it now?'

Halvorsen shrugged and walked into the street.

'It's not stopping,' Harry said.

'I know, but I have to get home.'

'What for?'

'For something called a life. Nothing that would interest you.'

Harry imitated a smile to show that he understood it was meant to be a witticism. 'Enjoy yourself.'

The bells rang and the door slammed behind Halvorsen. Harry sucked at his cigarette and, while studying Elmer's selection of reading matter, he was struck by how few interests he shared with the average Norwegian man. Was it because he no longer had any? Music, yes, but no one had done anything good in the last ten years, not even his old heroes. Films? If he came out of a cinema nowadays without feeling he had been lobotomised, he counted himself as fortunate. Nothing else. In other words, the only thing he was still interested in was finding people and locking them up. And not even that made his heart beat like before. The spooky thing was, Harry mused, laying a hand on Elmer's cold, smooth counter, that this state didn't bother him in the slightest. The fact that he had capitulated. It simply felt liberating to be older.

The bells rang furiously again.

'I forgot to tell you about the guy we pulled in for illegally possessing a weapon last night,' Halvorsen said. 'Roy Kinnsvik, one of the skinheads in Herbert's Pizza.' He stood in the doorway with the rain dancing around his wet shoes.

'Mm?'

'He was obviously frightened, so I told him to give me something I needed and I would let him off.'

'And?'

'He said he saw Sverre Olsen in Grьnerlшkka the night Ellen was killed.'

'So what? We've got several witnesses who can confirm that.'

'Yes, but this guy saw Olsen sitting and chatting with someone in a car.'

Harry's cigarette fell to the ground. He ignored it.

'Did he know who it was?' he asked slowly.

Halvorsen shook his head. 'No, he only recognised Olsen.'

'Did you get a description?'

'He could only remember he thought the person looked like a policeman. But he said he would probably recognise him again.'

Harry could feel himself getting warm under his coat and articulated each word with care: 'Could he say what car it was?'

'No, he had just rushed by.'

Harry nodded, running his hand up and down the counter.

Halvorsen cleared his throat: 'But he thought it was a sports car.'

Harry noticed the cigarette smoking on the ground. 'Colour?'

Halvorsen showed one upturned palm in apology.

'Was it red?' Harry asked in a low, thick voice.

'What did you say?'

Harry straightened up. 'Nothing. Remember the name. And go home to your life.'

The bells jingled.

Harry stopped stroking the counter, but held his hand there. All of a sudden it felt like cold marble.

Astrid Monsen was forty-five years old and made her living by translating French literature in the study of her flat in Sorgenfrigata. She didn't have a man in her life, but she had a tape loop of a dog barking, which she put on at night. Harry heard her steps and at least three locks being released behind the door before it opened a fraction and a small, freckled face peered out from beneath black curls.

'Ugh,' it exclaimed when it saw Harry's towering frame.

The face may have been unfamiliar, but he had the immediate sensation that he had met her before. Presumably because of Anna's detailed description of her ghastly neighbour.

'Harry Hole, Crime Squad,' he said, showing his card. 'I apologise for disturbing you so late in the afternoon. I have a few questions about the evening Anna Bethsen died.'

He tried to smile reassuringly when he saw she was having problems closing her mouth. From the corner of his eye, Harry saw movement behind the glass in the neighbour's door.

'Could I come inside, fru Monsen? It won't take a minute.'

Astrid Monsen took two steps back, and Harry seized the opportunity to slip in and close the door behind him. Now he could see the whole of her Afro hairdo. She had obviously dyed it black, and it enclosed her little white head like an enormous globe.

They stood opposite each other in the frugal light of the hallway, beside dried flowers and a framed poster from the Chagall Museum in Nice.

'Have you seen me before?' Harry asked.

'What…do you mean?'

'Just whether you've seen me before. I'll come to the rest afterwards.'

Her mouth opened and closed. Then she shook her head firmly.

'Fine,' Harry said. 'Were you at home on Tuesday night?'

She nodded tentatively.

'Did you see or hear anything?'

'Nothing,' she said. Rather too hastily for Harry's taste.

'Take your time and think it over,' he said with an attempt at a friendly smile, not the most practised feature in his repertoire of facial expressions.

'Nothing…' she said, her eyes searching for the door behind Harry. 'At all.'

Back on the street, Harry lit up. He had heard Astrid Monsen apply the safety lock the second he was on the other side of her door. Poor thing. She was the last on his list and he was able to conclude that no one had either seen or heard him or anyone else on the stairway the night Anna died.

After two drags, he threw away the cigarette.

He sat in his chair at home watching the red eye of the answer machine for a long time before pressing the PLAY button. It was Rakel wishing him goodnight, and there was a journalist wanting a comment on the two bank raids. Afterwards he rewound the tape and listened to Anna's message: 'And would you mind wearing the jeans you know I like so much?'

He stroked his face. Then he took out the tape and threw it in the bin. Outside, the rain dripped and, inside, Harry zapped. Women's handball, soaps and some quiz game in which you could become a millionaire. Harry stuck with a discussion on a Swedish channel between a philosopher and a social anthropologist about the concept of revenge. One maintained that a country like the USA, which stands for certain values like freedom and democracy, has a moral responsibility to avenge attacks on its territory as they are also attacks on its values. 'Alone the desire for retaliation-and the execution of it-can protect such a vulnerable system as democracy.'

'What about if the values the democracy stands for themselves fall victim to an act of vengeance?' the other replied. 'What about if another nation's rights as laid down by international law are violated? What kind of values are you defending if you deprive innocent civilians of rights in your hunt for guilty parties? And what about the moral value of turning the other cheek?'

'The problem is that we only have two cheeks,' said the other man, with a smile. 'Isn't it?'

Harry switched off. Wondered whether he should ring Rakel, but decided it was too late. He tried to get his nose in a Jim Thompson book, but discovered that were missing. He got up and paced up and down his room. He opened the refrigerator and stared in frustration at a white cheese and a jar of strawberry jam. He felt like something, but didn't know what. He slammed the refrigerator door shut. Who was he trying to kid? What he wanted was a drink.

At two o'clock in the morning he woke up in his chair, fully clothed. He got up, went to the bathroom and drank a glass of water.

'Fuck,' he said to himself in the mirror. He went to the bedroom and turned on his PC. He found 104 articles in Norwegian on the Net about suicide, but none about revenge, just keywords and links to motives for revenge in literature and Greek mythology. He was just going to switch it off when he realised he hadn't checked his e-mails for a couple of weeks. There were two e-mails. One was from his ISP, who warned him two weeks ago the service was going to be closed down. The other address was anna. beth@chello. no. He double-clicked and read the message: Hi Harry. Don't forget the key. Anna. The time showed it had been sent two hours before he was due to meet her for the last time. He read the message again. So short. So…simple. He assumed that was how people e-mailed each other. Hi Harry. To outside observers it must have seemed as if they were old friends, but they had known each other for six weeks, a long time ago, and he hadn't even realised she had his e-mail address.

When he fell asleep, he dreamed that he was standing in the bank with the gun again. The people around him were made of marble.