Jo Nesbo - Police

‘So how do you know who we are?’

‘He only told me the story. Then I checked out the descriptions with someone at Kripos. And it had to be you two.’ When the guy saw his face in the mirror it had sounded like the whine a Hoover makes after you switch it off. ‘My God! You’ve destroyed my face!’

‘Shut up and sit still. Does the man you say we beat up know you’re blackmailing us?’

‘Him? No, no, he’d never-’

‘Are you his lover?’

‘No! He might think so, but-’

‘Anyone else know?’

‘No! I promise! Just let me go. I promise not to-’

‘So no one else knows you’re here now.’

Truls enjoyed the sight of the guy’s gawping expression as the implication of what Truls had said laboriously trickled through to his brain. ‘Yes, yes, they do! Lots of people do-’

‘You’re not that bad at lying,’ Truls said, putting the barrel to the man’s forehead. The gun had felt surprisingly light. ‘But not that good, either.’

Then Truls had pulled the trigger. It hadn’t been a difficult decision. Because there had been no choice. It was just something that had to be done. Sheer survival instinct. The guy had something on them, which sooner or later he would find a way to use. That was the way hyenas like him ticked. Cowardly and subservient face to face, but greedy and patient. They would allow themselves to be humiliated, to be cowed, and wait, but attack as soon as you turned your back.

Afterwards he had wiped the seat and wherever he had left fingerprints, wrapped a scarf around his hand as he released the handbrake and put the car into neutral. Rolled it over the cliff. Listened to the eerie silence as the vehicle fell. Followed by a dull report and the sound of metal buckling. Looked down at the car lying in the river beneath him.

He had got rid of the baton as quickly and efficiently as possible. Quite a way down the forest road he had opened the window and slung it through the trees. It was unlikely to be found, but if it was, there still wouldn’t be any fingerprints or DNA to link it to the murder or him.

The gun was a different matter; the bullet could be linked to the gun and so to him.

Thus he had waited until he drove over Drammen Bridge. He had driven slowly and watched the gun fly over the railing and down to where the river meets the fjord. A place where it would never be found, under ten or twenty metres of water. Brackish water. Dubious water. Neither completely salt water nor completely fresh water. Neither completely wrong nor completely right. Death in marginal areas. But he had read somewhere that there were species which specialised in surviving in these hybrid waters. Species that were so perverted they couldn’t cope with the water normal life forms had to have.

Truls pressed the remote before he reached the car park, and the alarm was silenced right away. There was no one to be seen outside or on the balconies surrounding him, but Truls thought he could detect a collective sigh from the blocks: about bloody time too, pay more attention to your car, you could have set the length of the alarm, you muppet.

A side window was smashed in, that was true. Truls stuck his head in. He couldn’t see any sign of anyone having tampered with the radio. What had Aronsen meant by. . and who was Aronsen? C block, could be anyone. Anyone at all. .

Truls’s brain had come to a conclusion a fragment of a second before he felt the steel on his neck. He instinctively knew it was steel. The steel of a gun barrel. He knew there was no Aronsen. No gang of youths breaking in.

The voice whispered by his ear:

‘Don’t turn, Berntsen. And when I put my hand in your trousers, don’t move. Well, well, feel that. Nice tight abs. .’

Truls knew he was in danger, he just didn’t understand what kind. There was something familiar about Aronsen’s voice.

‘Oooh, bit sweaty, eh, Berntsen? Or do you like it? But this is what I was after. Jericho? What were you going to do with this? Shoot someone in the face? Like you did to René?’

And now Truls Berntsen knew what kind of danger.

Mortal danger.

Rakel stood by the kitchen window squeezing the phone and staring into the dusk again. She may have been imagining things, but she thought she’d seen a movement between the spruces on the other side of the drive.

But she was always seeing movements in the darkness.

That was how deep the wound was. Don’t think about it. Be frightened, but don’t think about it. Let your body play its stupid games, but ignore them the way you ignore an unreasonable child.

She was bathed in the light from the kitchen, so if there was really someone outside they would be able to study her at their leisure. But she didn’t move. She had to practise, mustn’t let fear determine what she did, where she stood, this was her house, her home, for goodness’ sake!

Music was coming from the first floor. He was playing one of Harry’s old CDs. One of them she liked as well. Talking Heads. Little Creatures .

She looked down at the phone again, urging it to ring. Twice she had rung Harry, but still there was no answer. They had planned it as a nice surprise. The news had come from the clinic the day before. It was earlier than the date they’d set, but they had decided he was ready. Oleg had been so excited and it had been his idea not to say anything before they arrived. Just go home and then when Harry came home, jump out and say boo.

That was the word he had used: ‘boo’.

Rakel had had her doubts. Harry didn’t like surprises. But Oleg had insisted. Harry would bloody well have to put up with suddenly being happy. And so she had gone along with it.

But now she regretted having done so.

She went from the window, put the phone down on the worktop beside his coffee cup. Usually he was painfully scrupulous about clearing everything away before leaving the house. He must have been stressed by these police murders. He hadn’t mentioned Beate Lønn in their nightly conversations recently, a sure sign that he was thinking about her.

Rakel spun round. It wasn’t her imagination this time, she had heard something. Shoes crunching on the gravel. She went back to the window. Stared into the darkness, which seemed to her to be deepening by the second.

Froze.

Someone was there. A figure had just moved from the tree it had been standing by. And it was coming this way. A person dressed in black. How long had it been there?

‘Oleg!’ Rakel shouted, her heart racing. ‘Oleg!’

The music upstairs was turned down. ‘Yes?’

‘Come down here! Now!’

‘Is he coming?’

Yes, she thought. He’s coming.

The figure that approached was smaller than she’d thought at first. It was moving towards the front door, and as it came closer in the light from the outside lamps, she saw to her surprise and relief that it was a woman. No, a girl. In a tracksuit, it appeared. Three seconds later, the bell rang.

Rakel hesitated. Glanced at Oleg, who had stopped halfway down the stairs and was looking at her with a quizzical expression.

‘It’s not Harry,’ Rakel said with a quick smile. ‘I’ll get it. Just go back up, Oleg.’

The girl standing on the step calmed Rakel’s heart rate even further. She looked frightened.

‘You’re Rakel,’ she said. ‘Harry’s girlfriend.’

It struck Rakel that this introduction ought to have unsettled her. A beautiful young girl with a trembling voice addressing her with a reference to her husband-to-be. Probably she ought to check the tight-fitting tracksuit top for an incipient stomach bulge.

But she wasn’t unsettled, and she didn’t check. Just nodded by way of a response.

‘That’s me.’