Jo Nesbo - Nemesis

'Hello!' he yelled.

'Hello,' said the familiar woman's voice at the other end, somewhat taken aback.

'Oh, it's you.'

'Yes, who did you think it was?'

Harry squeezed his eyes shut. 'Work. There's been another robbery.' The words tasted like bile and chilli. The numb ache behind his eyes was back.

'I tried to catch you on your mobile,' Rakel said.

'I've lost it.'

'Lost it?'

'Left it somewhere, or it's been stolen. I don't know, Rakel.'

'Is something wrong, Harry?'

'Wrong?'

'You sound so…stressed.'

'I…'

'Mm?'

Harry breathed in. 'How's the court case going?'

Harry was listening, but was unable to order the words into sentences which made sense. He picked up 'financial status', 'the best for the child' and 'arbitration' and gathered that there wasn't much news. The next meeting with the lawyers had been postponed until Friday; Oleg was fine, but was sick of living in a hotel.

'Tell him I'm looking forward to having you back,' he said.

When they had rung off, Harry stood wondering if he should ring back. But what for? To tell her he had been invited to dinner by an old flame and he had no idea what had taken place? Harry rested his hand on the telephone, but then the smoke alarm in the kitchen went off. And when he had taken the frying pan off the hob and opened the window, the telephone rang again. Later Harry was to reflect that a lot would have been different, if Bjarne Mшller had not chosen to ring him that evening.

'I know you've just gone off duty,' Mшller said, 'but we're a bit short-staffed and a woman has been found dead in her flat. Appears she shot herself. Could you take a look?'

'Of course, boss. I owe you one for today. By the way, Ivarsson presented the parallel-investigation approach as his idea.'

'What would you have done, if you were boss and had received such an order from above?'

'The idea of me as a boss is mind-boggling, boss. How do I get to this flat?'

'Stay where you are. You'll be picked up.'

Twenty minutes later there was a harsh buzzing sound that Harry heard so seldom it made him jump. The voice, metallic and distorted by the intercom, said the taxi had arrived, but Harry could feel the hairs on his neck rising. When he got downstairs and saw the low-slung, red sports car, a Toyota MR2, his suspicions were confirmed.

'Good evening, Hole.' The voice came from the open car window, but it was so close to the tarmac that Harry couldn't see who was speaking. Harry opened the car door and was welcomed by a funky bass, an organ as synthetic as a blue boiled sweet and a familiar falsetto: 'You sexy motherfucka!'

With difficulty, Harry heaped himself into a narrow bucket seat.

'It's us two tonight then,' Inspector Tom Waaler said, opening a Teutonic jaw and revealing an impressive row of impeccable teeth in the centre of his suntanned face. But the arctic-blue eyes remained cold. There were many at Police HQ who disliked Harry, but as far as he knew there was only one person who actually nourished a hatred of him. In Waaler's eyes, Harry knew he was an unworthy representative of the police force and therefore a personal affront. On several occasions, Harry had made it clear he didn't share Waaler's and some other colleagues' crypto-fascist views on homos, commies, dole cheats, Pakis, chinks, niggers, gyppos and dagos, while Waaler, for his part, had called Harry a 'pissed-up rock journo'. However, Harry suspected that the real reason for his hatred was that Harry drank. Tom Waaler could not tolerate weakness. Harry assumed that was why he spent so many hours in the fitness studio practising high kicks and punches against sacks of sand and a stream of new sparring partners. In the canteen, Harry had overheard one of the younger officers, with admiration in his voice, describing how Waaler had broken both arms of a karate kid in a Vietnamese gang by Oslo Central station. Given Waaler's view on skin colour, it was a paradox for Harry that his colleague spent so much time in the solarium, but perhaps it was true what one wag had said: Waaler wasn't actually a racist. He was just as happy beating up neo-Nazis as blacks.

Over and above what was common knowledge, there were some matters no one knew as such, but a few had a gut feeling about nevertheless. It was more than a year ago now since Sverre Olsen-the only person who could have told them why Ellen Gjelten was murdered-was found lying on his bed with a warm gun in his hand and a bullet from Waaler's Smith amp; Wesson between his eyes.

'Be careful, Waaler.'

'I beg your pardon?'

Harry reached out and turned down the love-making groans. 'It's icy tonight.'

The engine purred like a sewing machine, but the sound was deceptive; as the car accelerated Harry experienced for himself how hard the back of the seat was. They raced up the hill by Stenspark along Suhms gate.

'Where are we going?' Harry asked.

'Here,' Waaler said, swinging abruptly to the left in front of an oncoming car. The window was still open and Harry could hear the sound of wet leaves sucking at the tyres.

'Welcome back to Crime Squad,' Harry said. 'Didn't they want you in POT?'

'Restructuring,' Waaler said. 'Besides, the Chief Super and Mшller wanted me back. I achieved some pretty useful results in Crime Squad, if you remember.'

'How could I forget.'

'Well, one hears so much about the long-term effects of drinking.'

Harry had just managed to put his arm against the dashboard before the sudden braking sent him into the windscreen. The glove compartment sprang open and something heavy hit Harry on the knee on its way to the floor.

'What the fuck was that?' he groaned.

'A Jericho 941, Israeli police issue,' Waaler said, switching off the engine. 'Not loaded. Leave it where it is. We've arrived.'

'Here?' Harry asked in amazement and bent down to look up at the yellow block of flats in front of him.

'Why not?' Waaler said, already halfway out of the car.

Harry felt his heart beginning to pound. As he searched for the door handle, out of all the thoughts racing through his mind one took hold: he should have made the call to Rakel.

The fog was back. It seeped in through the streets, from the cracks around the closed windows behind the trees in the avenue, out of the blue door which opened after they had heard Weber's abrupt bark over the intercom, and out through the keyholes in the doors they passed on the way upstairs. It lay like a duvet of cotton wool around Harry, and as they entered the flat, Harry had the sensation of walking on clouds. Everything around him-the people, the voices, the crackle of the walkie-talkies, the light from the camera flashes-had taken on a dreamlike sheen, a coating of detachment because this was not, could not be, real. But, standing in front of the bed where the deceased lay with a pistol in her right hand and a black hole in her temple, he found himself unable to look at the blood on the pillow or meet her vacant, accusatory gaze. Instead he focused on the bedhead, on the horse with the bitten-off head, hoping the fog would soon lift and he would wake up.

Sorgenfrigata

Voices came and went around him.

'I'm Inspector Waaler. Can anyone give me a quick recap?'

'We got here three quarters of an hour ago. The electrician here found her.'

'When?'

'At five. He immediately rang the police. His name is…let me see…Renй Jensen. I've got his National Insurance number here and his address too.'

'Good. Ring in and check his record.'

'OK.'

'Renй Jensen?'

'That's me.'

'Can you come over here? My name's Waaler. How did you get in?'

'As I said to the other officer, with this spare key. She popped it down to my shop on Tuesday because she wasn't going to be at home when I came.'