Jo Nesbo - Police

Harry sat still for a few seconds.

Then he took his hands away.

Looked at the big black telephone on the desk. Hesitated. Then he lifted the receiver. Got the switchboard’s dialling tone. Hit the redial key and with small, excited beeps the phone started ringing the last number that had been dialled. He heard the number ringing. The call being answered.

The same gentle, melodic voice.

‘Bellman.’

‘Sorry, wrong number,’ Harry said, cradling the receiver. Closed his eyes. Shit, shit, shit!

Not how or why.

Harry tried to purge his brain of all the redundant information. To concentrate on the only issue that was important now. Where.

Where the hell could Arnold Folkestad be?

At a crime scene.

With surgical equipment.

When Harry understood, there was one thing and one thing alone that surprised him: that he hadn’t clicked before. It was so obvious that even a first-year student with a mediocre imagination would have managed to crunch the data and follow the perpetrator’s train of thought. Crime scene. A scene where a man dressed and masked like a surgeon would not attract much attention.

It was two minutes by car from PHS to the Rikshospital.

He could do it. Delta couldn’t.

It took Harry twenty-five seconds to get out of the building.

Thirty to reach his car, start it and turn into Slemdalsveien, which would take him almost straight to where he was heading.

One minute and forty-five seconds after that he pulled up in front of the entrance to the Rikshospital.

Ten seconds after that he had pushed through the swing door and passed reception. He heard a ‘Hey, you there!’ but steamed ahead. His footsteps resounded against the walls and ceiling of the corridor. As he ran he fumbled behind his back. Got hold of the Odessa he had stuffed inside his belt. Felt his pulse counting down, faster and faster.

He passed the coffee machine. Slowed down so as not to make too much noise. Stopped by the chair outside the door that led to the crime scene. Many people knew a dope baron had died in there, but not many knew he had been murdered. And that the crime was unsolved. However, Arnold Folkestad did.

Harry stepped up to the door. Listened.

Checked the safety catch was off.

His pulse had counted down and was calm.

Along the corridor he heard running footsteps. They were on their way to stop him. And before Harry Hole silently opened the door and stepped inside, he had time for one more thought: this was a very bad dream where everything recurred, time after time, and it had to stop here. He had to wake up. To blink into the sun one morning, wrapped in a cold, white duvet, with her arms holding him tight. Refusing to let go, refusing to let him be anywhere except with her.

Harry closed the door quietly behind him. Stared at a man in green bent over a bed containing a man he knew. Mikael Bellman.

Harry raised his gun. Cocked the trigger. Already imagining the salvo ripping up the green material, severing the nerves, smashing the marrow, the back arching and falling forward. But Harry didn’t want that. He didn’t want to shoot this man in the back and kill him. He wanted to shoot him in the face and kill him.

‘Arnold,’ Harry said in a husky voice, ‘turn around.’

There was a clatter on the metal table as the man in green dropped something shiny, a scalpel. He turned slowly. Pulled down the green mask. Looked at Harry.

Harry stared back. His finger tightened around the trigger.

The footsteps outside were getting closer. There were a lot of them. He would have to hurry if he was going to do this without witnesses. He felt the resistance on the trigger ceding; he had reached the trigger’s eye of the storm, where all is still. The silence before the explosion. Now. Not now. He had let his finger slip back a tiny fraction. It wasn’t him. It wasn’t Arnold Folkestad. Had he been mistaken? Had he been mistaken again? The face before him was smooth, the mouth open, the black eyes unfamiliar. Was this the cop killer? He looked so. . uncomprehending. The green figure took a step to the side, and it was only now that Harry saw the person the green outfit covered was a woman.

At that moment the door burst open behind him, and he was pushed to the side by two other people in green operating attire.

‘What’s the score?’ asked one of the new arrivals in a high-pitched authoritative voice.

‘Unconscious,’ the woman answered. ‘Low pulse.’

‘Blood loss?’

‘There’s not much blood on the floor, but it could have run into the stomach.’

‘Determine the blood type and order three bags.’

Harry lowered his gun.

‘Police,’ he said. ‘What’s happened here?’

‘Get out. We’re trying to save a life here,’ the authoritative voice said.

‘Same here,’ Harry said, raising his gun again. The man stared at him. ‘I’m trying to stop a murderer, Mr Surgeon. And we don’t know if he’s finished his handiwork for the day, OK?’

The man turned away from Harry. ‘If it’s only this wound and no damage to the inner organs then there won’t have been much blood lost. Is he in shock? Karen, help this officer.’

The woman spoke through her mask without moving away from the bed. ‘Someone in reception saw a man in bloodstained scrubs and a mask come from the empty wing and walk straight out. This was so unusual she sent someone in to check. The patient was on the way to dying when he was found.’

‘Anyone know where the man could have gone?’ Harry asked.

‘They say he just disappeared.’

‘When will the patient come round again?’

‘We don’t know if he’ll survive. You look as if you need medical help yourself by the way.’

‘Not much else we can do beyond covering it with a patch,’ the authoritative voice said.

No more information to be gleaned. Yet Harry stayed where he was. Took two steps forward. Stopped. Stared at Mikael Bellman’s white face. Was he conscious? It was hard to say.

One eye stared straight up at him.

The other wasn’t there.

Just a black cavity with blood-streaked shreds of sinew and white threads hanging out.

Harry turned and left. Took out his phone as he strode down the corridor in search of fresh air.

‘Yes?’

‘Ståle?’

‘You sound upset, Harry.’

‘The cop killer got Bellman.’

‘Got?’

‘He performed an operation on him.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He removed one of his eyes. And left him to bleed to death. And it was the cop killer who was behind the explosion this evening, which I’m sure you heard about on the news. He tried to kill two policemen, one of whom was me. I need to know what he’s thinking because I’ve got no bloody idea any more.’

Silence. Harry waited. Heard Ståle Aune’s heavy breathing. And then at last his voice again.

‘I really don’t know. .’

‘That’s not what I want to hear, Ståle. Pretend you know, all right?’

‘OK, OK. What I can say is that he’s out of control, Harry. The emotional pressure has escalated, he’s boiling over now, so he’s stopped following patterns. He could do anything from now on.’

‘So what you’re saying is you have no idea what his next move will be?’

Another silence.

‘Thanks,’ Harry said and hung up. The phone rang at once. Bjørn.

‘Yes?’

‘Delta’s on the way to Folkestad’s address.’

‘Good! Tell them that he could be heading there now. And that we’ll give them an hour before we sound a general alert so he doesn’t get a tip-off from police radio or something. Call Katrine and tell her to come to the Boiler Room. I’m going there now.’