Jo Nesbo - The Devil's star

‘It could be. Ring me if anything occurs to you.’

When they separated Harry stood and stared up Drammensveien where the sun was shining on the tramlines and the shimmering hot air gave the impression that the tram was floating away.

Thursday and Friday. The Revelation.

Jim Beam is made with rye, barley and a whole 75 per cent of maize which gives bourbon the sweet, round taste that marks it out from straight whisky. The water in Jim Beam comes from a source near the distillery in Clearmont, Kentucky, where they also make the special yeast that some people maintain is taken from the same recipe Jacob Beam used in 1795. The result is stored for at least four years before it is sent all over the world and bought by Harry Hole, who doesn’t give a shit about Jacob Beam and knows that the guff about the water source is a marketing gimmick on a par with Farris, the Norwegian mineral water, and the Farris source. And the only percentage he cares about is the one in small letters on the label.

Harry stood in front of the fridge with a sheath knife in his hand staring at the bottle of golden-brown liquid. He was naked. The heat in the bedroom had forced him to strip off his underpants, which were still damp and smelled of chlorine.

He had been abstinent for four days now. The worst was over, he had said to himself. It wasn’t true; the worst was far from over. Aune had once asked him why he thought he drank. Harry had answered without hesitation: ‘Because I’m thirsty.’ Harry, in a variety of ways, bemoaned the fact that he was living in a society at a time when the disadvantages of drinking outweighed the advantages. His reasons for staying sober had never been principled, merely practical. It was extremely wearing to be a hard drinker and the reward was a brief, miserable life of boredom and physical pain. For an alcoholic, life consisted of being drunk and the intervals between being drunk. Which part was real life was a philosophical question he had never had sufficient time to study since the answer would not be able to offer him a life that was any better anyway. Or worse. According to the alcoholic’s basic law of life – The Big Thirst – everything that was good, everything, would be lost sooner or later. That was how he had viewed the equation until he met Rakel and Oleg. It had given temperance a new dimension. But it didn’t invalidate the alcoholic’s law. And now he couldn’t bear the nightmares any longer. Couldn’t bear the sound of her screams. Couldn’t bear to see the shock in her rigid, lifeless eyes as her head rose towards the ceiling in the lift. His hand moved towards the cupboard. He could leave no stone unturned. He put the sheath knife down beside Jim Beam and closed the cupboard door. Then he went back to the bedroom.

He didn’t switch on the light; a shaft of moonlight fell between the curtains.

The pillows and the mattress seemed to be trying to rid themselves of the clammy, twisted bed linen.

He crawled into bed. The last time he had slept without having a nightmare was when he fell asleep for a few minutes on Camilla Loen’s bed. He had dreamed about death then too, but the difference was that he hadn’t been frightened. A man can lock himself in, but he has to sleep. And in sleep no-one can hide.

Harry closed his eyes.

The curtains moved and the shaft of moonlight trembled. It shone onto the wall over the bedhead and the black marks of a knife. It must have been done with a great deal of force because the cut went deep into the wood behind the white wallpaper. The continuous groove formed a large, five-pointed star.

She lay listening to the traffic outside the window in Trojska, and to his deep, regular breathing beside her. Now and then she thought she could hear screams from the zoological garden, but it might just have been the night trains on the other side of the river braking before they entered the main station. He said he liked the sound of trains when they moved out to Troja, which was located at the top of the brown question mark that the River Vltava formed on its way through Prague.

It was raining.

He had been away all day. In Brno, he had said. When she finally heard him unlocking the front door of their flat, she calmed down. She heard the scrape of his suitcase on the hall floor before he came into the bedroom. She pretended to be asleep, but she observed him in secret as he slowly and calmly hung his clothes up and occasionally cast a glance in the mirror beside the cupboard to look at her. Then he crept into bed; his hands were cold and his skin sticky with dried sweat. They made love to the sound of rain on the tiled roof and he tasted of salt and slept like a baby afterwards. Usually she was also sleepy after making love, but now she lay awake as his juices ran out of her and soaked into the sheet.

She pretended that she didn’t know what was keeping her awake, even though her mind always returned to the same thing. That she had found a longish blonde hair on the sleeve of his suit jacket when she was brushing it the day after he had returned home from Oslo. That he was going back to Oslo on Saturday. That it was the fourth time in four weeks. That he still wouldn’t tell her what he did there. Of course, the hair could have come from anything, from a man or maybe even a dog.

He began to snore.

She thought back to the time they met. To his open face and his openhearted confidences which she had misinterpreted as meaning that he was an open person. He had melted her like the spring snows in Vaclav Square, but when you fell so easily for a man there would always be a suspicion gnawing at you that you were not the only one to have fallen in the same way.

He treated her with respect, though, almost like an equal, although he could have bought her as he could any of the prostitutes in Perlova. He was a windfall, the only one she had ever had, the only one she could lose. It was the certainty of this that made her cautious, that kept her from asking where he had been, with whom he had been, what he actually did.

However, something had happened which made it necessary for her to know that she could trust him. She had something even more precious to lose. She hadn’t said anything to him yet; she hadn’t been sure herself before she went to the doctor three days ago.

She slipped out of bed and tiptoed across the floor. Carefully, she pressed down the door handle while watching his face in the mirror over the dressing table. Then she was in the hallway and, carefully, she closed the door behind her.

The suitcase was a leaden grey colour, modern and bore the Samsonite trademark. It was almost new, yet the sides were scratched and covered with torn stickers from security checks and the names of destinations she had never heard of.

In the dim light she could see that the combination dial showed 0-0-0. It always did. And she didn’t need to feel; she knew the case wouldn’t open. She had never seen the case open, except for when she was lying in bed as he was taking clothes from drawers and putting them in the case. It was pure chance that she had seen it the last time he was packing. Lucky that the number of the combination lock was on the inside. It wasn’t particularly difficult to remember three numbers. Not when you have to. Wasn’t difficult to forget everything else and remember the three numbers of a room in a hotel when they rang and told her that her services were required, told her what she was to wear and about any other special requests.

She listened. His snoring was like the low sound of sawing from behind the door. There were things he didn’t know. Things he didn’t need to know, things she had been forced to do, but it was in the past now. She placed the tips of her fingers on the serrated cogs above the numbers and turned. The future was the only thing that mattered from now on.