Jo Nesbo - Police

‘Please don’t misunderstand,’ Ståle said, knowing that he had not been misunderstood. He wanted to get rid of him, but professional therapists didn’t kick out tricky patients. They just gritted their teeth harder, didn’t they? He adjusted his bow tie. ‘I’d like to treat you, but it’s important that we trust each other. And right now it doesn’t seem-’

‘I’m just having a bad day, Ståle.’ Paul splayed his hands in defence. ‘Sorry. I know you’re good. You worked on the serial murders at Crime Squad, didn’t you? You helped to catch the guy who was drawing pentagrams at crime scenes. You and that inspector.’

Ståle studied the patient as he got up and buttoned his jacket.

‘Yep, you’re more than good enough for me, Ståle. Next week. And I’ll think about whether I’m a homo in the meantime.’

Ståle didn’t get up. He could hear Paul humming in the corridor while waiting for the lift. There was something familiar about the tune.

As indeed there was about some of the things Paul had said. He had used the expression ‘serial murders’, a police preference, rather than the more common ‘serial killings’. He had called Harry Hole an inspector and most people had no idea about police ranks. Generally they remembered the gory details from the newspaper reports, not insignificant details such as a pentagram carved into a beam beside the body. But what had particularly caught his attention — because it could turn out to be significant for the therapy — was that Paul had compared him to ‘those detectives who can’t even nail a bloody serial killer and rapist. .’

Ståle heard the lift come and go. But he had remembered what the tune was now. In fact, he had listened to Dark Side of the Moon to find out if there were any hints to interpreting Paul Stavnes’s dream. The song was called ‘Brain Damage’. It was about lunatics. Lunatics who were on the grass, who were in the hall. Who end up inside.

Rapist.

The murdered policemen hadn’t been raped.

Of course the case might have interested him so little that he had confused the murdered policemen with the earlier victims at the crime scene. Or he had assumed as a general rule that serial killers rape. Or he dreamt about raped policemen, which naturally would reinforce the theory about repressed homosexuality. Or. .

Ståle Aune froze mid-movement and stared in amazement at the hand poised to move towards his bow tie.

Anton Mittet took a sip of coffee and looked down at the man sleeping in the hospital bed. Shouldn’t he also feel a certain pleasure? The same pleasure that Mona had expressed, which she had called ‘one of the small everyday miracles that make all the slog worthwhile’? Well, yes, of course it was good that a coma patient they assumed would die should suddenly change his mind and drag himself back to life and wake up. But the person in the bed, the pale, ravaged face on the pillow meant nothing to him. All it meant was that the job was coming to an end. It didn’t necessarily mean it was the end of his relationship with Mona, of course. They hadn’t spent their most intimate hours here anyway. On the contrary, now they didn’t need to worry if their colleagues noticed the tender gazes they sent each other whenever she went in and out of the patient’s room, or the conversations that were just a little too long, the chats that ended a little too abruptly when someone appeared. But Anton Mittet had a nagging feeling that precisely this had been the spark in their relationship. The secrecy. The illicit. The excitement of seeing but not being able to touch. Having to wait, having to sneak away from home, serving up the lie to Laura about another extra shift, a lie which had become easier and easier to perform and which nevertheless filled his mouth and he knew that sooner or later it would suffocate him. He knew that infidelity didn’t make him a better man in Mona’s eyes and that she could envisage him serving up the same excuses to her at some point in the future. She had told him it had happened to her before with other men, that they had deceived her. And then she had been younger and slimmer than she was now, so if he wanted to drop the fat, middle-aged woman she had become it wouldn’t exactly shock her. He had tried to explain to her that she mustn’t say things like that, not even if she meant them. It made her less attractive. It made him less attractive. Made him into a man who would take anything he could get, as it were. But now he was glad she had said it. It had to stop somewhere, and she had made it easier for him.

‘Where did you get the coffee?’ the new nurse asked, straightening the round glasses as he read the doctor’s notes he unhooked from the end of the bed.

‘There’s an espresso machine down the corridor. I’m the only person who uses it but you can-’

‘Thanks for the offer,’ the nurse said. Anton could hear there was something odd about his pronunciation. ‘But I don’t drink coffee.’ The nurse had taken a sheet of paper from his jacket pocket and was reading it. ‘Let me see. . he needs to have some propofol.’

‘I’ve no idea what that is.’

‘It means he’ll sleep for a good while.’

Anton scrutinised the nurse as he pierced the foil on a little bottle of a transparent liquid with a syringe. The nurse was short, slightly built and resembled a famous actor. Not one of the good-looking ones. One of the ones who had made it, though. The one with the ugly teeth and the Italian name it was impossible to remember. The way he had forgotten the name the nurse had given when he introduced himself.

‘It’s complicated with patients who come out of a coma,’ the nurse said. ‘They’re extremely vulnerable and have to be carefully brought into a conscious state. One injection out of place and we risk sending them back to where they were.’

‘I see,’ Anton said. The man had shown him his ID card, produced the password and waited for Anton to ring the duty room to confirm that the person in question had been scheduled to do this shift.

‘So you’ve had lots of experience with anaesthetics?’ Anton asked.

‘I worked in the anaesthetics department for long enough, yes.’

‘But you don’t work there now?’

‘I’ve been travelling for two or three years.’ The nurse held the syringe up to the light. Released a jet that dissolved into a cloud of microscopic drops. ‘This patient looks as if he’s had a hard life. Why’s there no name on the notes?’

‘He’s supposed to be anonymous. Didn’t they tell you?’

‘They haven’t told me anything.’

‘They should have done. It’s thought an attempt may be made on his life. That’s why I sit out here in the corridor.’

The man leaned down close to the patient’s face. Closed his eyes. Looked as if he was inhaling the patient’s breath. Anton shivered.

‘I’ve seen him before,’ the nurse said. ‘Is he from Oslo?’

‘I’ve taken an oath of confidentiality.’

‘And what do you think I’ve done?’ The nurse rolled up the patient’s sleeve. Flicked the inside of his forearm. There was something about the way the nurse spoke, something Anton couldn’t quite put his finger on. He shivered again as the syringe slid into the skin, and in the total silence he thought he could hear a rasp, the friction of the needle against flesh. The flow of the liquid being squeezed through the syringe as the plunger was pressed.

‘He lived in Oslo for several years before moving abroad,’ Anton said with a swallow. ‘But then he returned. Rumours say it was because of a boy. He was a junkie.’

‘That’s a sad story.’

‘Yes, but it looks as if it will have a happy ending.’

‘That’s a bit too early to say,’ the nurse said, pulling out the needle. ‘Lots of coma patients have sudden relapses.’