Jo Nesbo - The Devil's star

The escapades of the previous day – his time in the cell and another night of nightmares – they had taken their toll. It was the meeting with Wilhelm Barli, however, that had really drained him. Sitting there and promising that they would catch the perpetrator, holding back when Barli said that his wife was ‘harmed’. For if there was one thing Harry was certain about, it was that Lisbeth Barli was dead.

Harry had felt the gnawing ache for alcohol from the moment he woke up that morning. First as an instinctive physical craving, then as a panic-stricken fear because he had put a distance between himself and his medicine by not taking his hip flask or any money with him to work. Now the ache was entering a new phase in which it was both a wholly physical pain and a feeling of blank terror that he would be torn to pieces. The enemy below was pulling and tugging at the chains, the dogs were snarling up at him from the pit, somewhere in his stomach beneath his heart. God, how he hated them. He hated them as much as they hated him.

Harry got to his feet. He had stashed away half a bottle of Bell’s in the filing cabinet on Monday. Had that just occurred to him now or had he been aware of it the whole time? Harry was used to Harry playing tricks on Harry in hundreds of ways. He was just about to pull out the drawer when suddenly he looked up. He had spotted a movement. Ellen was smiling at him from her photo. Was he going mad or had her mouth just moved?

‘What are you looking at, you bitch?’ he mumbled, and the very next moment the picture fell from the wall, hitting the floor and smashing the glass to smithereens. Harry stared at Ellen who was smiling imperturbably up at him from the broken frame. He held his right hand where the pain was throbbing under the bandages.

It was only when he turned to open the drawer that he noticed the two of them standing in the doorway. He realised that they must have been standing there for quite a while and that it must have been their reflection in the glass of the picture frame that he had seen moving.

‘Hi,’ Oleg said, looking at Harry with a mixture of wonder and fear.

Harry swallowed. His hand let go of the drawer.

‘Hi, Oleg.’

Oleg was wearing trainers, a pair of blue trousers and the yellow national strip of Brazil. Harry knew that on the back of his shirt there was a number nine with the name of Ronaldo above it. He had bought it at a petrol station one Sunday when Rakel, Oleg and he had been on their way to Norefjell to go skiing.

‘I found him downstairs,’ Tom Waaler said.

He had his hand on Oleg’s head.

‘He was asking for you in reception, so I brought him up here. So you play football then, Oleg?’

Oleg didn’t answer, he just looked at Harry. With those dark eyes of his mother’s that could at times be so unendingly gentle and at others so hard and pitiless. At this moment Harry couldn’t read which they were, but then, it was dark.

‘A striker, eh?’ Waaler asked, smiling and ruffling the young boy’s hair.

Harry stared at his colleague’s strong, sinewy fingers, Oleg’s dark strands of hair against the back of Waaler’s tanned hand, hair that stood up on its own. He could feel his legs giving way under him.

‘No,’ Oleg said, with his eyes still firmly fixed on Harry. ‘I play in defence.’

‘No,’ Oleg said, with his eyes still firmly fixed on Harry. ‘I play in defence.’

‘Hey, Oleg,’ Waaler said, looking over at Harry enquiringly. ‘Harry has still got a bit of shadow-boxing to do in here – I do the same when something gets on my nerves – but perhaps you and I could go up top and see the view from the roof terrace while Harry tidies up.’

‘I’m staying here,’ Oleg stated unequivocally.

Harry nodded.

‘OK. Nice to meet you, Oleg.’

Waaler patted the boy on his shoulder and left. Oleg stood in the doorway.

‘How did you get here?’ Harry asked.

‘Metro.’

‘On your own?’

Oleg nodded.

‘Does Rakel know you’re here?’

Oleg shook his head.

‘Don’t you want to come in?’ Harry’s throat was dry.

‘I want you to come home,’ Oleg said.

Four seconds after Harry pressed the bell, Rakel tore open the door. Her eyes were black with fury.

‘Where’ve you been?’

For an instant Harry thought that the question was directed to them both before her eyes swept past Harry and beamed in on Oleg.

‘I didn’t have anyone to play with,’ Oleg said with his head bowed. ‘I took the metro to town.’

‘The metro. On your own? But how…?’

Her voice failed her.

‘I slipped out,’ Oleg said. ‘I thought you would be happy, Mummy. After all you said you also wanted…’

She suddenly took Oleg into her arms.

‘Do you realise how worried I’ve been about you, my lad?’

She viewed Harry askance while she hugged Oleg.

Rakel and Harry stood by the fence at the back of the garden and gazed down over Oslo and Oslo fjord. They were silent. The sailing boats stood out against the blue sea like tiny white triangles. Harry turned to face the house. Summer birds took off from the lawn and flitted between the apple trees in front of the open windows. It was a large house, with black timber cladding – a house constructed for winter, not for summer.

Harry looked at her. Her legs were bare and she was wearing a thin, red cotton button-up jacket over a light blue dress. The sun glistened on the droplets of sweat on her bare skin under the necklace with the cross that she had inherited from her mother. Harry mused that he knew everything about her: the smell of the cotton jacket, the gentle curve of her back under the dress, the smell of her skin when it was sweaty and salty, what she wanted from her life, why she didn’t say anything.

All this knowledge to no end.

‘How’s it going?’ he asked.

‘Fine,’ she said. ‘I’ve rented a log cabin. We can’t have it until August. I was late getting in.’

The tone was neutral, the accusation scarcely perceptible.

‘Have you injured your hand?’

‘Just a cut,’ Harry said.

A strand of hair blew across her face. He resisted the temptation to brush it away.

‘I had someone round to value the house yesterday,’ she said.

‘To value it? You’re not thinking of selling it, are you?’

‘The house is too big for only two people, Harry.’

‘Yes, but you love this house. You grew up here. And so did Oleg.’

‘You don’t need to remind me. The thing is that the work over the winter cost twice as much as I had imagined. And now the roof has to be redone. It’s an old house.’

‘Mm.’

Harry watched Oleg kicking a ball against the garage door. He smashed the ball again and as soon as it left his foot he closed his eyes and raised his arms to an imaginary crowd of fans.

‘Rakel.’

She sighed.

‘What is it, Harry?’

‘Can’t you at least look at me when I’m talking?’

‘No.’ Her voice was neither angry nor upset; she was just establishing a fact.

‘Would it make any difference if I gave it up?’

‘You can’t give it up, Harry.’

‘I mean the police.’

‘I guessed that.’

He kicked at the grass.

‘I may not have a choice,’ he said.

‘Haven’t you?’

‘No.’

‘Why the hypothetical question then?’

She blew away the strand of hair.

‘I could find a quieter job, be at home more, take care of Oleg. We could -’

‘Stop it, Harry!’

Her voice was like a whiplash. She bowed her head and crossed her arms as if she were frozen in the burning sun.

‘The answer’s no,’ she whispered. ‘It won’t make any difference. It’s not your job that’s the problem. It’s…’