Jo Nesbo - The Devil's star

She breathed in, turned round and looked him in the eyes.

‘It’s you, Harry. You’re the problem.’

Harry saw the tears welling up in her eyes.

‘Go now,’ she whispered.

He wanted to say something, but changed his mind. Instead he nodded towards the sailing boats on the fjord.

‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I am the problem. I’ll have a chat with Oleg and then I’ll be off.’

He took a few steps, then stopped and turned round.

‘Don’t sell the house, Rakel. Don’t do it, do you hear? I’ll come up with something.’

She smiled through her tears.

‘You’re a strange man,’ she whispered and reached out a hand as if she was going to stroke his cheek, but he was too far away and she let it drop again.

‘Take care of yourself, Harry.’

As Harry left, a shiver ran down his spine. It was 5.15. He would have to hurry to get to the meeting.

I’m in the building. It smells of cellar. I’m standing quite still and studying the names on the noticeboard in front of me. I can hear voices and footsteps on the stairs, but I’m not afraid. They cannot see that, but I am invisible. Did you hear? They cannot see that, but… It isn’t a paradox, darling. I just expressed it in that way to sound like one. Everything can be formulated as a paradox. It isn’t difficult. It’s just that true paradoxes don’t exist. True paradoxes, ha, ha. Do you see how easy it is? It’s just words, the lack of precision in language. I have finished with words. With language. I’m looking at my watch. This is my language. It’s clear and there are no paradoxes. I’m ready.

Monday. Barbara.

Barbara Svendsen had begun to think a lot about time of late, not that she was particularly philosophical by nature; most people she knew would have said exactly the opposite. It was just that she had never given it a thought before. She had never considered that there was a time for everything and that this time was being eaten away. She had realised several years ago that she was never going to make it as a model and would have to be satisfied with the title of ex-mannequin. It sounded good even if the word originating from Dutch did mean ‘little man’. Petter had told her that. As he had told her most things he thought she ought to know. He had got her the job in the bar at Head On. And because of the pills she hadn’t felt like going straight from work to Blindern University, where she was studying to become a sociologist.

However, the time for Petter, pills and dreams of becoming a sociologist was over and one day she found herself alone with debts for unfinished studies and pills to pay off, and a job at the most boring bar in Oslo. So Barbara dropped everything, borrowed money from her parents and went off to Lisbon to get her life back on an even keel and perhaps learn a little Portuguese. Lisbon was a wonderful time. The days passed in a whirl, but this didn’t bother her. Time was simply something that came and went, until the money stopped coming, until Marco was no longer ‘true until eternity’ and the fun was over. She returned home a few experiences older; she had learned, for example, that Ecstasy was cheaper in Portugal than in Norway, but it made a mess of your life in just the same way, that Portuguese was an extremely difficult language and that time was a limited, nonrenewable resource.

Then she went with, and allowed herself to be kept by, Rolf, Ron and Roland in chronological order. It sounded like more fun than it was, except in Roland’s case. Roland was wonderful, but time passed and Roland with it.

It was only when she moved back into her old room at her parents’ house that the world stopped spinning and time slowed down. She stopped going out, managed to give up the pills and she began to play with the idea that she might resume her studies. In the meantime, she did temp work for Manpower. After four weeks’ contract work with a firm of solicitors called Halle, Thune amp; Wetterlid who were geographically situated in Carl Berners plass and hierarchically in the lower reaches of solicitors specialising in debt collection, she was offered a permanent job.

That was four years ago.

The reason she accepted was primarily because she had discovered that at the offices of Halle, Thune amp; Wetterlid time went slower than anywhere else she had ever been. The tardy advance of time started the moment you entered the redbrick building and pressed number 5 in the lift. Half of eternity passed before the doors glided back into place and the lift rose slowly towards a heaven where time was even slower to pass. Well ensconced behind the counter, Barbara was able to record the movement of the second hand on the clock over the entrance and the snaillike, reluctant ticking of seconds, minutes and hours. Some days she could almost make time stop completely, it was just a question of concentration. The strange thing was that time seemed to go much faster for the other people around her, as if they existed in parallel, but different, time dimensions. The telephone in front of her rang continuously and people flew in and out like in silent movies, but it was all as if it were happening separate from her, as if she were a robot with mechanical parts moving as fast as everyone else while her inner life proceeded in slow motion.

Only last week was a case in point. A fairly large debt collection office had suddenly gone bankrupt and at this everyone had started running around and making telephone calls as if demented. Wetterlid told her that it was open season for vultures to gobble up new shares on the market, and a golden opportunity to move up among the elite market leaders. This morning he asked Barbara if she could stay on a bit longer today. He said there were meetings with customers of the bankrupt company until 6.00, and they did want to give the impression that everything was in order at Halle, Thune amp; Wetterlid, didn’t they. As usual Wetterlid stared at her boobs while talking to her, and as usual she smiled, automatically pulling her shoulders back as Petter had told her when she was working at Head On. It had become a reflex action. Everyone flaunted what they had. At least, that was what Barbara Svendsen had learned. The courier who had just that moment walked in was an example. She would have bet anything that he was nothing to look at under the helmet, racing goggles and the handkerchief tied round his mouth. That was probably why he kept them on. Instead he said that he knew which office the parcel was for and walked slowly down the corridor in his tight cycling shorts so that she could have a really good look at his muscular buttocks. The cleaning lady who was due soon was another example. She was a Buddhist or a Hinduist, or whatever you call them, and Allah said that she had to conceal her body beneath a pile of bed linen, but she had excellent teeth, so what did she do? Yes, she went round smiling like a crocodile on E. Flaunt, flaunt, flaunt.

Barbara was watching the second hand on the clock when the door opened.

The man who walked in was fairly short and plump. He was breathing heavily and his glasses were steamed up, so Barbara assumed that he had walked up the stairs. When she had begun four years ago, she couldn’t tell the difference between a two-thousand kroner dress from Dressman and a Prada, but bit by bit she had put in the training and now she could not only judge dresses, but ties too and – the surest determiner of what level of service she should offer – shoes.

The new arrival didn’t seem particularly impressive as he stood there cleaning his glasses. In fact, he reminded her of the fatso in Seinfeld whose name she didn’t know because she didn’t actually watch Seinfeld. However, if clothes were anything to go by – and they were – the light pinstriped suit, the silk tie and the hand-sewn shoes gave cause for optimism that Halle, Thune amp; Wetterlid would soon have an interesting customer.