Jo Nesbo - The Devil's star

‘What’s this…?’ Bjorn Holm began, stepping quickly to the side as Tom Waaler shot past him through the door.

Monday. Rain.

It was 7.30. The sun was moving towards Ullern Ridge and from her veranda in Thomas Heftyes gate, widowed fru Danielsen saw that several white clouds had floated in over Oslo fjord. Beneath her, in the street, Andre Clausen and Truls passed by. She didn’t know either the man or his golden retriever by name, but she had often seen them coming down Gimle terrasse. They stopped at the lights by the crossroads near the taxi rank in Bygdoy alle. Fru Danielsen assumed that they were intending to go up to Frogner Park.

They both looked a bit the worse for wear, she thought. What’s more, the dog was in need of a good wash.

She wrinkled her nose when she saw the dog, half a step behind its owner, raise its backside and do its business on the pavement. And when the owner made no attempt to pick up the dog dirt – in fact, he just dragged the dog over the crossing as soon as the lights went green – Fru Danielsen became indignant and a little elated at the same time. She was indignant because she had always been concerned for the good of the town – well, at least for the good of this part of the town – and she was elated because now she had some material for another reader’s letter in Aftenposten, and she had not had a letter accepted of late.

She stood glaring at the scene of the crime while dog and dog owner, clearly guilt-ridden, scurried up Frognerveien. And so she became an unwilling witness to a woman rushing from the opposite direction to cross the lights before they turned red and falling victim to another person’s total disregard of their civic responsibilities. The woman was obviously trying to hail a taxi and was not looking where she was treading.

Fru Danielsen emitted a loud sniff, cast a final glance at the armada of clouds and went in to begin her reader’s letter.

A train passed like a long, gentle breath of air. Olaug opened her eyes and discovered that she was standing in the garden.

Odd. She couldn’t remember leaving the house. But there she was, standing between the railway lines with the smell of roses and lilacs in her nostrils. The pressure on her temples had not eased, quite the contrary. She looked up. It had clouded over – that was why it was so dark. Olaug looked down at her bare feet. White skin, blue veins, the feet of an old lady. She knew why she was standing on this exact spot. They had stood here. Ernst and Randi. She had been standing by the window in the maid’s room, watching them in the twilight by the rhododendron bushes, which were no longer there. The sun had been going down and he had been murmuring something in German and had plucked a rose which he put behind his wife’s ear. She had laughed and nuzzled his neck. Then they turned to face west, they put their arms round each other and stood still. She rested her head on her husband’s shoulder while they watched the sun setting, all three of them. Olaug did not know what they were thinking, but for her part she had been thinking that the sun would be up again another day. So young.

Olaug instinctively peered up at the window of the maid’s room. No Ina, no young Olaug, merely a black surface reflecting the popcorn-shaped clouds.

She would weep until the summer was over. Perhaps a little longer. And then the rest of life would begin again as it always did. It was a plan. You needed a plan.

There was a movement behind her. Olaug turned round cautiously. She could feel the cool grass being torn away as she twisted round on the balls of her feet. Then – in the middle of the movement – she froze.

It was a dog.

It gazed up at her with eyes that seemed to be begging forgiveness for something that as yet had not happened. At that moment something slid soundlessly from out under the fruit trees and towards the side of the dog. It was a man. His eyes were large and black, just like the dog’s. She felt as if someone had thrust a little animal down her throat and she couldn’t breathe.

‘We were inside, but you weren’t there,’ the man said, tilting his head and looking at her the way you would study an interesting insect.

‘You don’t know who I am, fru Sivertsen, but I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.’

Olaug opened her mouth and then closed it again. The man came closer. Olaug was looking over his shoulder, beyond him.

‘My God,’ she whispered, stretching out her arms.

She came down the steps, ran over the gravel laughing and into Olaug’s embrace.

‘I was so worried about you,’ Olaug said.

‘Oh?’ Ina said with surprise in her voice. ‘We just stayed in the log cabin a little longer than we’d planned. It is a holiday, you know.’

‘Yes, yes, of course,’ Olaug said, squeezing her tight.

The dog, an English setter, let itself get carried away by the pleasure of being reunited and it jumped up and put its paws on Olaug’s back.

‘Thea!’ the man said. ‘Sit!’

Thea sat.

‘And who’s this?’ Olaug asked, finally releasing Ina.

‘This is Terje Rye.’ Ina’s cheeks glowed in the dusk. ‘My fiance.’

‘Goodness me,’ Olaug said, clapping her hands together.

The man put his hand forward with a broad smile. He was no picture. Snub nose, wispy hair and closeset eyes. But he had an open, direct look that Olaug liked.

‘Nice to meet you,’ he said.

‘Nice to meet you, too,’ Olaug said, hoping the darkness would conceal her tears.

Toya Harang didn’t notice the smell until they were well up Josefines gate.

She examined the taxi driver suspiciously. He was dark-skinned, but he certainly wasn’t an African or she wouldn’t have dared enter the taxi. It wasn’t that she was a racist; it was just all the talk about statistics.

What was the smell though?

She caught the driver’s glance in the mirror. Had she dressed too provocatively? Was the red blouse cut too low? The skirt with the slit up the side over her cowboy boots too short? She pursued another, more pleasant, thought. He had recognised her from the splash in today’s papers with all the big pictures of her. ‘ TOYA HARANG: NEW QUEEN OF MUSICALS,’ the headline read. True, the reviewer in Dagbladet had called her ‘gauche but charming’ and said that she was more convincing as Eliza the flowerseller than as the society lady that Professor Higgins had turned her into, but the reviewers were all agreed that she could sing and dance the braids off anyone around. There. What would Lisbeth have said to that?

‘Party?’ the driver asked.

‘Sort of,’ Toya said.

A party for two, she thought. A party to Venus and… What was it again, what was the other name he had said? Well, Venus was her, anyway. He had come up to her during the celebrations after opening night was over and whispered in her ear that he was one of her secret admirers. Then he invited her back to his place tonight. He had not bothered to disguise his intentions and she ought to have said no. For decency’s sake she ought to have said no.

‘That’ll be nice,’ the driver said.

Decency and no. She could still smell the silo and the dust from the straw, and see her father’s belt cutting through the stripes of light which fell through cracks between the slats in the barn as he tried to beat it into her. Decency and no. And she could still feel her mother’s hand stroking her hair in the kitchen afterwards as she asked her why she could not be like Lisbeth. Quiet and clever. One day Toya had torn herself away and said that she was the way she was and she must have inherited it from her father and hadn’t she seen him mounting Lisbeth like a sow in the sty, or didn’t Mother know about that? Toya had watched her mother’s face change, not because her mother didn’t know that it was lies, but because she knew now that Toya would not shy away from using any weapon at her disposal to harm them. Then Toya had screamed as loudly as she could that she hated them all and her father had come in from the sitting room with the newspaper in his hand and she could see on their faces that they knew that she was not lying now. Did she still hate them now that they had gone? She didn’t know. No. Nowadays she didn’t hate anyone. That wasn’t why she was doing what she was doing. She was doing it for the fun of it. For indecency and yes. And because it was so irresistibly forbidden.