Jo Nesbo - Police

Until he woke again, to the pains of hell, and he saw him without the surgeon outfit. Harry Hole standing in front of a fridge.

At first he was confused.

Then it seemed logical. Hole would want to dispatch someone who knew his litany of sins in such detail and he would disguise it as one of the police murders.

But Hole was taller than the other man. His expression was different. And Hole was clambering into a damn fridge. Fighting his way in. They were in the same boat. They were just two officers at the same crime scene. Who would die together. The two of them, what irony! If he hadn’t been in such pain he would have laughed.

Then Hole got out of the fridge, cut the tape and lifted him into the fridge. Which is more or less when he lost consciousness again.

‘Can I have some more morphine?’ Truls whispered, hoping he would be heard over the bloody sirens, waiting impatiently for the wave of well-being he knew would wash through his body, washing away the unnerving pain. And thought it had to be the drug that was making him think what he was thinking. Because actually it suited him down to the ground. Nevertheless he thought it anyway.

How irritating that Harry Hole should die like this.

Like a bloody hero.

Giving his place to, sacrificing himself for, an enemy.

And the enemy would have to cope with the fact that he was alive because a better man had chosen to die for him.

Truls felt it coming from the small of his back, the chill the pain was pushing ahead of it. To die for something, anything, just something different from the wretchedness which was yourself. Perhaps that was what this was about ultimately. In which case, fuck you, Hole.

He looked for the medic, saw the window was wet, it must have started to rain.

‘More morphine, for Christ’s sake!’

The policeman with the phonetic tripwire of a name — Karsten Kaspersen — was sitting in the duty office at PHS staring at the rain. It was falling like stair rods in the black of the night, drumming on the gleaming black tarmac, dripping from the gate.

He had switched off the light so that no one could see the office was manned so late. By ‘no one’ he meant the types who steal batons and other equipment. Some of the old cordon tape they used in training was gone too. And as there were no signs of a break-in it had to be someone with a pass. And as it was someone with a pass this was not just a matter of a few lousy batons or cordon tape but the fact that they had thieves in their midst. Thieves who might be walking around as police officers in the not-too-distant future. And they weren’t damn well having any of that, not in his police force.

Now he could see someone approaching in the rain. The figure had emerged from the darkness down by Slemdalsveien, passed under the lights by Chateau Neuf and was heading for the gate. Not a walk he recognised, exactly. More like a stagger. And the guy was listing, as though there was a gale on the port side.

But he swiped a card in the machine and next minute he was inside the college. Kaspersen — who knew the walks of everyone who belonged to this section of the building — jumped up and stepped out. For this was not something that could be explained away. Either you had access or you didn’t, there was no middle ground.

‘Hello there!’ Kaspersen shouted, leaving the office, having already puffed himself up, something from the animal kingdom making itself look as big as possible; he didn’t really know why it worked, only that it did. ‘Who the hell are you? What are you doing here? How did you get hold of that card?’

The stooped, drenched individual in front of him turned, tried to straighten up. The face was hidden in the shadow from the hoodie, but a pair of eyes sparkled inside, and it struck Kaspersen that he could feel the heat, so intense was the gaze. He instinctively gasped for breath, and for the first time he remembered he wasn’t armed. How on earth had he not thought about that? He should have brought something to deter thieves.

The individual pushed the hood back.

Forget deter , Kaspersen thought. I need something to defend myself with.

The individual in front of him was not from this world. His coat was torn with great gaping holes, and the same applied to his face.

Kaspersen backed into his office, wondering if the key was on the inside of the door.

‘Kaspersen.’

The voice.

‘It’s me, Kaspersen.’

Kaspersen stopped. Angled his head. Could that really be. .?

‘Jesus, Harry. What happened to you?’

‘Only an explosion. It looks worse than it is.’

‘Worse? You look like a Christmas orange studded with cloves.’

‘It’s just-’

‘I mean a Christmas blood orange, Harry. You’re bleeding. Hang on a sec, I’ll get the first-aid box.’

‘Can you come up to Arnold’s office? I’ve got to sort something urgently.’

‘Arnold isn’t there now.’

‘I know.’

Karsten Kaspersen dashed towards the medicine cabinet in the office. And while he was removing plasters, gauze bandages and scissors it was as if his subconscious was re-examining the conversation and stopping at the final sentence. The way Harry had said it. The emphasis. I know . As though he hadn’t said it to him, Karsten Kaspersen, but to himself, Harry Hole.

Mikael Bellman woke up and opened his eyes.

And pinched them shut again as the light broke into the membranes and lenses of his eyes, but still it felt as though the light was burning a bare nerve.

He was unable to move. He twisted his head and tried to look around him. He was still in the same room. He looked down. Saw the white tape used to bind him to the bed. To bind his arms to his sides and his legs together. He was a mummy.

Already.

He heard the clink of metal behind him and twisted his head the other way. The person standing by his side fiddling with the instruments was dressed in green and wore a mask over his mouth.

‘Oh dear,’ said the man in green. ‘Has the anaesthetic worn off already? Yes, well, I’m not exactly an anaesthetics expert, am I? To tell the truth, I’m not a specialist in anything at all in the hospital.’

Mikael engaged his mind, tried to hack his way out of the confusion. What the hell was going on?

‘By the way, I found the money you brought with you. Nice of you, but I don’t need it. And it’s impossible to compensate for what you did, Mikael.’

If he wasn’t the anaesthetic nurse, how did he know about the connection between Mikael and Asayev?

The man in green held up an instrument to the light.

Mikael could hear the fear pounding. He didn’t feel it yet; the drug was still floating through his brain like wisps of fog, but when the veil of anaesthetics had lifted completely what was behind would be revealed: pain and fear. And death.

Because Mikael had understood now. It was so obvious that he should have known before he left home. This was the scene of an unsolved murder.

‘You and Truls Berntsen.’

Truls? Did he believe that Truls had anything to do with the murder of Asayev?

‘But he’s already received his punishment. What do you think it’s best to use when you cut off a face? A handle number three with a blade number ten is for skin and muscles. Or this one: a handle number seven with a blade number fifteen?’ The man in green held up two seemingly identical scalpels. The light was reflected in one of the blades, casting a thin stripe of light over the man’s face, including one eye. And in that eye he saw something he vaguely recognised.

‘The supplier didn’t write which one was best for this particular operation, you see.’

There was something familiar about his voice as well, wasn’t there?