Jo Nesbo - Police

The car parked behind City Hall. Mikael got out and walked up the steps to the entrance. Some claimed this was the real main entrance, the way the architects Arneberg and Poulsson had designed it in the 1920s, and that the drawing had been turned round by mistake. And when the error was discovered in the late 1940s the building was so far along that they hushed the matter up and went on as if nothing was wrong, hoping that people sailing up Oslo Fjord to Norway’s capital city wouldn’t realise the sight that met them was the kitchen entrance.

Mikael Bellman’s Italian leather soles gently caressed the stone floor as he marched over to reception, where the woman behind the counter flashed him a dazzling smile.

‘Good morning, sir. You are expected. Ninth floor, end of the corridor on the left.’ Bellman studied himself in the lift mirror on his way up. And reflected that was exactly what he was: on his way up. Despite this murder case. He straightened the silk tie Ulla had bought him in Barcelona. Double Windsor knot. He had taught Truls how to tie a knot at school. But only the thin, easy one. The door at the end of the corridor was ajar. Mikael pushed it open.

The office was bare. The desk cleared, the shelves empty and the wallpaper had light patches where pictures had hung. She was sitting on a windowsill. Her face had the conventional good looks that women often call ‘nice’, but it had no sweetness or charm despite the blonde doll’s hair arranged in comic ringlets. She was tall and athletic with broad shoulders and broad hips which had been negotiated into a tight leather skirt for the occasion. Her thighs were crossed. The masculinity in her face — emphasised by an aquiline nose and a pair of cold, blue lupine eyes — combined with a self-confident, provocative, playful gaze had caused Bellman to make a couple of quick assumptions the first time he saw her. Isabelle Skøyen was an initiative-taker and a risk-loving cougar.

‘Lock,’ she said.

He hadn’t been mistaken.

Mikael closed the door behind him and turned the key. Walked over to one of the other windows. City Hall towered above Oslo’s modest development of four- and five-storey buildings. Overlooking Rådhusplassen, the City Hall square, was the 700-year-old Akershus Fortress, on high ramparts with ancient, war-damaged cannons pointing at the fjord, which seemed to have goose pimples as it trembled in the freezing gusts of wind. It had stopped snowing, and under the leaden grey sky the town was bathed in a bluish-white light. Like the colour of a dead body, Bellman thought. Isabelle’s voice echoed off the bare walls. ‘Well, my dear, what do you think of the view?’

‘Impressive. If I remember rightly the previous councillor had an office that was both smaller and lower down.’

‘Not that view,’ she said. ‘This one.’

He turned to her. Oslo’s latest Councillor for Social Affairs had spread her legs. Her panties were on the windowsill beside her. Isabelle had repeatedly said she didn’t understand the attractions of a shaven pussy, but Mikael reckoned there had to be a halfway house as he stared into the thick bush and mumbled a repeat of his comment about the view. Truly impressive.

Her heels hit the parquet floor hard and she walked over to him. Brushed an invisible speck of dust off his lapel. Even without stilettos she would have been a centimetre taller than him, but now she towered over him. He didn’t find this intimidating. On the contrary, her physical size and domineering personality were an interesting challenge. It required more of him as a man than Ulla’s slender figure and gentle compliance. ‘I think it’s only right and proper that you’re the person to inaugurate my office. Without your. . willing cooperation I wouldn’t have got this job.’

‘Ditto,’ Mikael Bellman said. He breathed in the fragrance of her perfume. It was familiar. It was. . Ulla’s. The Tom Ford perfume — what was it called? Black Orchid. Which he’d bought for her when he was in Paris or London because it was impossible to get hold of in Norway. The coincidence seemed highly improbable.

He saw the laughter in her eyes as she saw the astonishment in his. She interlaced her fingers behind his neck and leaned back laughing. ‘Sorry, I couldn’t stop myself.’

What the hell. After the house-warming Ulla had complained that the bottle of perfume had disappeared and that one of the celeb guests he’d invited must have stolen it. He’d been pretty sure it had been one of the local Mangleruders, namely Truls Berntsen. He wasn’t exactly unaware that Truls had been head over heels in love with Ulla ever since their boyhood days. Which of course he had never mentioned to her or Truls. Nor the business with the bottle of perfume. After all, it was better that Truls pinched Ulla’s perfume than her panties.

‘Have you ever wondered if that might be your problem?’ Mikael said. ‘Stopping yourself?’

She laughed softly. Closed her eyes. Her long, broad fingers opened behind his neck, moved down his back and stole inside his belt. She looked at him with mild disappointment in her gaze.

‘What’s up, my stallion?’

‘The doctors say he’s not going to die,’ Mikael said. ‘And recently he’s been showing signs of coming out of the coma.’

‘In what way? Is he moving?’

‘No, but they can see changes in his EEG, so they’ve started doing neurophysiological examinations.’

‘So what?’ Her lips were close to his. ‘Are you frightened of him?’

‘I’m not frightened of him but of what he could say. About us.’

‘Why would he do anything so stupid? He’s alone and he has nothing to gain by it.’

‘Let me put it this way, my love,’ Mikael said, shoving her hand away. ‘The thought that there’s someone out there who can testify that you and I have been working with a dope dealer to further our careers-’

‘Listen,’ Isabelle said. ‘All we did was make a careful intervention to prevent market forces ruling. It’s good, tried and tested Socialist Party politics, my dear. We let Asayev have a monopoly on dope, and we arrested all the other drug barons because Asayev’s goods caused fewer ODs. Anything else would have been an unsatisfactory drugs policy.’

That made Mikael smile. ‘I can hear you’ve been honing your rhetoric on the debating course.’

‘Shall we change the topic, darling?’ She slipped her hand around his tie.

‘You know how it will be interpreted in a court of law, don’t you? I got the Chief of Police number and you the Councillor job because it looked as if we’d personally cleaned up Oslo’s streets and brought down the death rate. While in reality we let Asayev destroy the evidence, remove his rivals and sell a type of drug that was four times as potent and addictive as heroin.’

‘Mmm, you make me so hot when you talk like that. .’ She pulled him close. Her tongue was in his mouth, and he could hear the crackle of her stockings as she rubbed her thigh against his. She towed him after her as she backed unsteadily to the desk.

‘If he wakes up in the hospital and starts blabbing-’

‘Stop it. I didn’t get you here for a chit-chat.’ Her fingers were working on his belt.

‘We’ve got a problem we have to solve, Isabelle.’

‘I know, but now you’re Chief of Police you’re in the prioritisation business, my love. And right now your City Hall prioritises this .’

Mikael parried her hand.

She sighed. ‘Fine. Let me hear. What have you got planned?’

‘He has to feel threatened. In a credible way.’

‘Why threaten him? Why not just kill him now?’

Mikael laughed. Right up to the moment he realised she was serious.

‘Because. .’ Mikael held her eyes, his voice firm. Trying to be the same masterful Mikael Bellman who, half an hour ago, had stood in front of the assembled detectives. Trying to come up with an answer. But she was quicker on her feet.