Jo Nesbo - The Devil's star

One of her girlfriends nudged her and nodded towards a man coming up Akersbakken.

‘Look. He’s drunk,’ one girl whispered.

‘Poor man,’ one of the others said.

‘Those are the lost souls Jesus wants to redeem.’

It was Sofie who said that. She always said things like that. The others nodded. Marit did too. And then she realised. This was it, the opportunity. And without a moment’s hesitation she left her throng of girlfriends and stood in the man’s path.

He stopped and peered down at her. He was taller than she had anticipated.

‘Do you know Jesus?’ Marit asked in a loud, clear voice and with a smile.

The man’s face was bright red and his vision was blurred. The conversation behind her had suddenly died, and out of the corner of her eye she could see that Roy and the girls on the steps had turned towards them.

‘Unfortunately, I don’t,’ the man snuffled. ‘And neither do you, my girl, but perhaps you know Roy Kvinsvik?’

Marit could feel her blushes suffusing her face, and her follow-up – Do you know he’s just waiting to meet you? – became ensnared in her throat.

‘Well?’ the man asked. ‘Is he here?’

She took in the man’s cropped skull and his boots. She suddenly went very red. Was this man a neo-Nazi, someone from Roy’s past? Someone come to avenge his betrayal? Or to persuade him to return?

‘I…’

But the man had already sidestepped her.

She turned round, just in time to see Roy beat a hasty retreat into the church hall and slam the door behind him.

The drunk strode across the crunching gravel, his upper body tipped like a mast caught in a sudden gust of wind. In front of the steps he slipped and fell to his knees.

‘Oh my God…’ one of the girls gasped.

The man got up again.

Marit saw Kristian hurriedly draw back as the man ran up the steps. He stood on the top step, swaying to and fro. For a moment he teetered on the point of falling backwards. Then he regained control over the forces of gravity and snatched at the door handle.

Marit held her hand in front of her mouth.

He pushed. Fortunately Roy had locked the door.

‘Fuck!’ The man shouted in a voice thick with alcohol. He leaned back and then brought his head forward in a bow.

There was the crisp crack of broken glass as his forehead smashed the circular window in the door and the splintered glass fell to the steps.

‘Stop it!’ Kristian shouted. ‘You can’t…’

The man turned round and gaped at him. A triangular fragment of glass was protruding from his forehead. Blood ran down from it in a tiny stream and forked at the ridge of his nose.

Kristian didn’t say another word.

The man opened his mouth and began to howl. The sound was as chilling as a steel blade. He began to attack the door again with a fury that Marit had never witnessed before, beating the solid, white door with clenched fists. Howling like a wolf, he struck again and again, flesh against wood. It sounded like axe-blows in the stillness of the morning forest. Then he began to beat the wrought-iron Star of Bethlehem in the circular window. She thought she heard the sound of ripping skin as the splatter of blood began to discolour the white door.

‘Someone do something,’ a voice screamed. She saw Kristian take out his mobile phone.

The iron star was loose. All of a sudden the man sank to his knees.

Marit went closer. The others had moved back, but she had to go nearer. Her heart was thumping in her chest. In front of the steps she felt Kristian’s hand on her shoulder and she stopped. She could hear the man gasping for breath on the steps, like a fish drowning on dry land. It sounded as if he was weeping.

When the police car came to collect him a quarter of an hour later, he was lying in a heap on the steps. They got him to his feet, and he allowed himself to be led to the car without putting up any resistance. One of the policewomen asked if anyone had any damage to report. They just shook their heads, too shocked to give the smashed window another thought.

Then the car was gone and all that was left was the warm summer night. It went through Marit’s mind that it was as if nothing had happened. She hardly noticed Roy emerge, pale and worn, and then disappear, or Kristian put his arm around her. She stared at the damaged star in the window. It was bent over and twisted; two of the five points of the star pointed upwards and one down. Despite the heat of the night, she pulled her jacket tighter round her shoulders.

It was well past midnight, and the moon was reflected in the windows of Police HQ. Bjarne Moller walked across the empty car park and into the custody block. As he entered, he took a quick look around. The three reception desks were unmanned; two officers were staring at the TV in the guard room. As an old Charles Bronson fan, Moller recognised the film. Death Wish. And he recognised the older of the two officers. It was Groth, also known as the ‘Griever’ on account of the liver-coloured scar that ran down from his left eye to the top of his cheek. Groth had worked in the custody block for as long as Moller could remember and everyone knew that to all intents and purposes he ran the place.

‘Hello?’ Moller shouted.

Without taking his eyes off the television screen, Groth raised a finger and pointed to the younger officer who reluctantly twisted in his chair to face him.

Moller flashed his ID card, but apparently that was superfluous. They knew him.

‘Where’s Hole?’ he shouted.

‘The idiot?’ Groth snorted as Charles Bronson raised his gun to exact revenge.

‘Cell five, I think,’ the younger officer said. ‘Check with one of the warders in there, if you can find one.’

‘Thank you,’ Moller said, and went through the door leading to the cells.

There were approximately a hundred detention cells and the number of inmates varied according to the season. Now it was definitely low season. Moller didn’t bother going to the warders’ guard room and began to walk down the corridors between the metal cubicles. His footsteps reverberated. He had always loathed the custody block. Firstly, it was absurd that living people should be incarcerated here. Secondly, there was the atmosphere of the gutter and ruined lives. Thirdly, he knew the kind of thing that went on here. Such as the time a prisoner had reported Groth for using a fire hose on him. SEFO rejected the claim when they took out the fire hose and discovered that it only reached halfway to the cell where the hosing down was alleged to have taken place. It seemed that SEFO were the only people at Police HQ who didn’t know that when Groth knew there would be a spot of bother, he would just cut a chunk off the fire hose.

Like all the other cells, number five had no lock and key, just a basic device for opening the door from the outside.

Harry was sitting on the floor with his head in his hands. The first thing that Moller noticed was that the bandage on Harry’s right hand was soaked in blood. Harry raised his head slowly and looked at him. He had a plaster on his forehead and his eyes were swollen as if he had been crying. There was the smell of vomit.

‘Why don’t you lie on the bunk?’ Moller asked.

‘Don’t want to sleep,’ Harry whispered in an unrecognisable voice. ‘Don’t want to dream.’

Moller pulled a face to hide the fact that he was shaken. He had seen Harry down before, but not like this, not so low. Never crushed.

He cleared his throat.

‘Let’s go.’

‘Griever’ Groth and the young officer did not even cast a glance their way as they passed the guard room, but Moller caught Groth’s telling shake of the head.

Harry threw up in the car park. He stood bent over, spitting and cursing as Moller lit a cigarette and passed it over to him.