Jo Nesbo - Police

Let it be a mirage, a dream, Mikael thought and started walking. But checked in his coat pocket that the safety catch on the Glock 22 was off. In the other pocket he had the wad of notes. If the situation demanded, he would have to pay up. If there were several of them, for example. But he didn’t think there would be. The amount was too small to be shared. The secret too great.

He passed a coffee machine, rounded a corner and saw the corridor continue with this same flat whiteness. But he also saw the chair. The chair that Asayev’s guard had sat on. It hadn’t been removed.

He turned to be sure that no one was behind him before he went on.

Took long paces and placed his soles softly, almost soundlessly, on the floor. Felt the doors as he passed. They were all locked.

Then he was there, in front of the door, by the chair. A sudden intu-ition made him put his left hand on the chair seat. Cold.

He took a deep breath in and his gun out. Looked at his hand. It wasn’t trembling, was it?

Best at decisive moments.

He put the gun back in his pocket, pressed the handle of the door, and it opened.

No reason to surrender whatever surprise element there was, Mikael Bellman thought, pushing open the door and stepping in.

The room was bathed in light but was empty and bare, apart from the bed where Asayev had been. It had been pushed into the centre of the room and there was a lamp over it. Beside it, sharp, polished instruments gleamed on a metal trolley. Perhaps they had converted the room into a basic operating theatre.

Mikael caught a movement behind the one window and his hand squeezed his gun as he squinted. Did he need glasses?

By the time he had focused, realised it was a reflection and the movement was behind him, it was much too late.

He felt a hand on his shoulder and reacted at once, but it was as if the stab of pain in his neck instantly severed the connection to his gun hand. And before the darkness descended he saw the man’s face close to his own in the black reflection from the window. It wore a green cap and a green mask over its mouth. Like a surgeon. A surgeon about to operate.

Katrine was too busy with the computer to react to the fact that she hadn’t received an answer from the person who had walked in behind her. But she repeated the question when the door closed, locking out the noises from the culvert.

‘Where have you been, Bjørn?’

She felt a hand on her shoulder and neck. And her first thought was that it was not at all unpleasant to feel a hot hand on the bare skin of her neck, a man’s friendly hand.

‘I’ve been to the crime scene to lay some flowers,’ the voice behind her said.

Katrine frowned in surprise.

No files found , the screen said. Really? No files anywhere showing the statistics for dead key witnesses? She pressed Harry’s name on the phone. The hand had started massaging her neck muscles. Katrine groaned, mostly to show she liked it, closed her eyes and leaned her head forward. Heard it ring at the other end.

‘Down a bit. Which crime scene?’

‘A country road. A girl. Hit-and-run. Never solved.’

Harry didn’t answer. Katrine took the phone from her ear and tapped in a message. No files found for statistic . Pressed Send.

‘That took a long time,’ Katrine. ‘What did you do afterwards?’

‘Helped the other person there,’ the voice said. ‘He broke down, you might say.’

Katrine had finished doing what she had to do, and it was as though the other things in the room finally had access to her senses. The voice, the hand, the aroma. She swivelled slowly in her chair. Looked up.

‘Who are you?’ she asked.

‘Who am I?’

‘Yes, you’re not Bjørn Holm.’

‘No?’

‘No. Bjørn Holm is prints, ballistics and blood. He doesn’t do massages that leave you with your mouth tasting of sugar. So, what is it you want?’

She saw the blush shoot up the pale, round face. The cod-eyes bulged even more than usual, and Bjørn drew back his hand and started frenetically scratching one mutton chop.

‘Er, well, sorry, I didn’t mean. . I just. . I. .’

The redness of his cheeks and the stuttering became more intense until finally he just dropped his hand and looked at her with a desperate expression of capitulation. ‘Goddamn, Katrine, this is pathetic.’

Katrine looked at him. Started laughing. The prat looked so sweet when he was like that.

‘Did you drive here?’ she asked.

Truls Berntsen woke up.

Staring ahead of him, around him, everything was white and well lit. And he no longer felt any pain. On the contrary, it felt wonderful. White and wonderful. He had to be dead. Of course he was dead. Strange. Or even stranger that he had been sent to the wrong place. To the good place.

He felt his body turn. Perhaps he was a bit premature about the good place, he was still on the way there. And now he could hear sounds as well. The distant lament of a foghorn rising and falling. The ferryman’s foghorn.

Something appeared in front of him, something that shielded him from the light.

A face.

Another face appeared. ‘He can have more morphine if he starts screaming.’

And then Truls felt it return. The pain. His whole body ached, his head felt like it was about to explode.

They turned again. Ambulance. He was in an ambulance with its sirens wailing.

‘I’m Ulsrud from Kripos,’ the face above him said. ‘Your ID card says you’re Officer Truls Berntsen.’

‘What happened?’ Truls whispered.

‘A bomb went off. It smashed all the windowpanes in the neighbourhood. We found you in the fridge inside the flat. What happened?’

Truls closed his eyes and heard the question repeated. Heard the other man, presumably a medic, telling the policeman not to push the patient. Who after all was on morphine, so could make up anything he liked.

‘Where’s Hole?’ Truls whispered.

He noticed the bright light was blocked again. ‘What did you say, Berntsen?’

Truls tried to moisten his lips, feeling he had no lips to moisten.

‘The other guy. Was he in the fridge too?’

‘There was only you in the fridge, Berntsen.’

‘But he was there. He. . he saved my life.’

‘If there was anyone else in the flat I’m afraid whoever it was is now new wallpaper and paint. Everything inside was blown to smithereens. Even the fridge you were in was pretty smashed up, so you’re lucky to be alive. If you can tell me who was behind the bomb we could start looking for him.’

Truls shook his head. Imagined he was shaking his head at least. He hadn’t seen him, he had been behind him when he led him from his own car to another where he had sat at the back with the gun trained on Truls’s head while Truls drove. Drove them to Hausmanns gate 92. An address so tainted with narcotic criminality he had almost forgotten it was a crime scene. Gusto. Of course. And it was then that he knew what until then he had managed to repress. That he was going to die. That it was the cop killer behind him as they went up the steps, in through the metal door, who taped him to the chair, staring at him from behind the green mask. Truls had watched him walk around the portable TV and insert a screwdriver, noticed that the counter, which had started working on the screen when the door closed behind them, had stopped and was then turned back to six minutes. A bomb. Then the man in green had taken out a baton, identical to the one he himself had used, and had started hitting Truls in the face. With concentration, without any visible enjoyment or emotional involvement. Light blows, not enough to break bones, but enough to burst veins and arteries, swelling the face with the blood pouring out and lying beneath the skin. Then he had started to hit him harder. Truls had lost all feeling in his skin, he could only feel that it burst, could feel the blood running down his neck and chest, the dull pain in his head, in his brain — no, even deeper than his brain — whenever the baton landed. And he saw the man in green, a dedicated church bell-ringer convinced of the importance of his work, swinging the hammer at the inside of the bronze bell, as little jets of blood spattered Rorschach blots on the green smock. Heard the crunch of nasal bone and cartilage being crushed, felt his teeth crack and fill his mouth, felt his jaw loosen and hang from its own nerve fibres. . and then — finally — everything went black.