Jo Nesbo - The Devil's star

Wednesday. Under Water.

When Harry parked outside the open-air pool in Frogner a little before 3.00 he realised where all the people who were left in Oslo had gone. There was a queue a hundred metres long in front of the ticket window. He read Verdens Gang while the queue shuffled forward towards their chlorine redemption.

There was nothing new in the serial killer case, but they had still dug up enough material to cover four whole pages. The headlines were somewhat cryptic and directed at readers who had been following the case for a while. They referred to the murders as the ‘courier killings’ now. Everything was in the open, the police were no longer one step ahead of the press, and Harry guessed that the morning meetings with the editors would be identical to those he had with other detectives on the case. He read the statements of the witnesses they had themselves interviewed at Police HQ, but who remembered even more for the papers. He read newspaper surveys in which people said that they were afraid, very afraid or terrified, and about courier businesses who thought they should receive compensation because they couldn’t do their jobs if people wouldn’t let them in, and ultimately it was the authorities’ responsibility to catch this man, wasn’t it? The connection between the courier killings and Lisbeth Barli’s disappearance was no longer referred to as speculative, it was a fact. A big photograph below the headline ‘Takes Over From Sister’ showed Toya Harang and Wilhelm Barli standing in front of the National Theatre. The caption under the photograph ran: ‘The dynamic producer has no intention of cancelling.’

Harry’s eyes ran down to the main text where Wilhelm Barli was quoted as saying: ‘“The show must go on” is more than a cheap cliche, it is deadly serious in our line of business, and I know that Lisbeth is behind us on this, whatever has happened to her. Naturally, the situation has had an impact, but, nevertheless, we are trying to stay positive. The show will be a tribute to Lisbeth; she is a great artist who has still not realised her potential, but she will. I simply cannot allow myself to think otherwise.’

When Harry finally made his way through the entrance, he stopped and looked around. It must have been 20 years since he last came to the open-air pool in Frogner, but apart from the renovated exteriors of the buildings and a large blue water slide in the shallow end, not a great deal had changed. There was still the smell of chlorine, the fine spray which drifted from the showers into the pools making small rainbows, the sound of the patter of feet on the asphalt, shivering children in wet bathing costumes queuing in the shade in front of the kiosk.

He found Rakel and Oleg on the grass slope beneath the children’s pool.

‘Hi.’

Rakel smiled with her mouth, but it was difficult to see what her eyes were doing behind the large Gucci sunglasses. She was wearing a yellow bikini. There are not many women who can make a yellow bikini look good, but Rakel was one of them.

‘Do you know what?’ Oleg burst out, his head cocked to one side as he tried to shake the water out of his ears. ‘I jumped off the five-metre board.’

Harry sat down on the grass beside them, even though there was plenty of space on the rug.

‘Now you’re telling me whoppers.’

‘I’m telling you the truth, I am.’

‘Five metres? You’re a real stunt man.’

‘Have you ever jumped from five metres, Harry?’

‘Only just.’

‘From seven?’

‘Well, I did a belly flop.’

Harry sent Rakel a meaningful look, but she was looking at Oleg who suddenly stopped shaking his head and asked in a low voice:

‘From ten?’

Harry glanced up at the diving pool, from where all the screams of pleasure and the braying voice of the lifeguard on the loudhailer were coming. Ten metres. The diving tower stood out like a black-and-white T against the blue sky. It wasn’t true that the last time he had been here was 20 years ago. He had come here one summer’s night a few years after that. He and Kristin had clambered over the fence, gone up the steps on the diving tower and lay side by side on the top board. They had stayed like that and just talked and talked, with the rough, rigid matting sticking into their skin and the starry sky twinkling above them. He had thought she was the only love he would ever have.

‘No, I’ve never jumped from ten metres,’ he said.

‘Never.’

Harry could hear the disappointment in Oleg’s voice.

‘Never. Just dived.’

‘Dived?’ Oleg leapt up. ‘But that’s even cooler. Did many people see you?’

Harry shook his head. ‘I did it at night. All on my own.’

Oleg groaned. ‘What’s the point of that? What’s the point of being brave if no-one sees you…?’

‘I wonder about that too now and then.’

Harry tried to catch Rakel’s eye, but her sunglasses were too dark. She had packed her bag, put on a T-shirt and a blue denim miniskirt over her bikini.

‘But that’s what the most difficult thing about it is,’ Harry said. ‘Being alone with no-one watching.’

‘Thanks for doing me this favour, Harry,’ Rakel said. ‘It’s really good of you.’

‘The pleasure’s all mine,’ he said. ‘Take all the time you need.’

‘The dentist needs,’ she said. ‘Which is not too long, I hope.’

‘How did you land?’ Oleg asked.

‘The usual way,’ Harry said without taking his eyes off Rakel.

‘I’ll be back at five,’ she said. ‘Don’t move position.’

‘We won’t move a thing,’ Harry said and regretted it the instant he had said it. This was not the time and place to be pathetic. There would be more suitable occasions.

Harry watched her go until she had disappeared. He wondered how difficult it had been to get an appoint ment in the middle of the national holiday.

‘Will you watch me jumping from five?’ Oleg asked.

‘Of course,’ Harry said, taking off his T-shirt.

Oleg stared at him.

‘Don’t you ever sunbathe, Harry?’

‘Never.’

After Oleg had jumped twice, Harry took off his jeans and joined him on the diving board. His droopy boxer shorts with the EU flag on were attracting disapproving stares from a couple of boys in the queue as he was telling Oleg how to do a jackknife. He held his hand out flat.

‘The trick is to stay horizontal in the air. It looks really weird. People think you’re going to land as flat as pancake. But then at the last minute…’

Harry pressed his thumb against his index finger.

‘… you bend in the middle, like a jackknife, and break the surface of the water with your hands and feet at the same time.’

Harry took a run up and jumped. He just caught the lifeguard’s whistle as he jackknifed and the surface of the water hit his forehead.

‘Hey, you, I said five was off-limits,’ he heard the megaphone voice bray as he reemerged from the water.

Oleg made a sign from the diving platform and Harry raised his thumb to show that he had understood.

He got out of the water, stepped gingerly down the stairs and stood by one of the windows looking into the diving pool. He ran two fingers across the cool glass and made a drawing in the condensation while staring through the green and blue underwater landscape. Up at the surface he could see swimming costumes, kicking legs and the contours of a cloud in the blue sky. He thought of Underwater.

Then Oleg arrived. He braked sharply with a cloud of bubbles, but instead of swimming up to the surface he gave a couple of kicks and swam to the window where Harry was standing.

They looked at each other. Oleg was smiling, waving his arms and pointing. His face was pale, greenish. Harry couldn’t hear a sound from inside the pool; he could just see Oleg’s mouth moving and his black hair floating weightlessly above his head, dancing like sea grass, and him pointing upwards. It reminded Harry of something, something he didn’t want to think about at this moment. Standing there, with Oleg on the opposite side of the glass, with the sun burning down from the sky, amid all the joyful sounds of life around him, yet in absolute stillness, Harry had a sudden premonition that something terrible was going to happen.