Jo Nesbo - Nemesis

'You'd been married for a long time, hadn't you?'

'Ten years,' Grette said. 'If they hadn't played tennis, I wouldn't have minded. You can't force children to like the same things as parents, can you. Perhaps they would have preferred horse riding. Horse riding is wonderful.'

'What sort of person was she?'

'Ten years,' Grette repeated, facing the window again. 'We met in 1988. I had started at Management School in Oslo and she was in her last year at Nissen High School. She was the best-looking girl I'd ever seen. I know everyone says the good-looking one is the one you never got and have perhaps forgotten, but with Stine it was true. And I never stopped thinking she was the best-looking. We moved in together after a month and were together for every single day and night for three years. Yet I still couldn't believe that she had said yes to becoming Stine Grette. Isn't it strange? When you love someone enough, you find it incomprehensible that they can love you. It should be the opposite, shouldn't it?'

A tear fell on the arm of the chair.

'She was kind. There are not so many people who value that quality any more. She was reliable, loyal and always gentle. And brave. If she thought she heard noises downstairs and I was asleep, she got up herself and went down. I said she should wake me because what if one day burglars really were downstairs? But she just laughed and said: Then I'll offer them waffles and the waffle smell will wake you up, because it always does. The smell of waffles was supposed to wake me up when…yes.'

He snorted air through his nose. The bare branches of the birch trees outside waved to them in the gusting wind. 'You should have made waffles,' he whispered. Then he tried to laugh, but it sounded like crying.

'What were her friends like?' Beate asked.

Grette hadn't finished laughing and she had to repeat the question.

'She liked being on her own,' he said. 'Perhaps because she was an only child. She had a lot of contact with her parents. And then we had each other. We didn't need anyone else.'

'She could have had contact with others you didn't know about, couldn't she?' Beate said.

Grette looked at her. 'What do you mean?'

Beate's cheeks went a flustered red and she gave a quick smile. 'I mean that your wife may not necessarily have passed on the conversations she had with all the people she met.'

'Why not? What are you trying to say?'

Beate swallowed and exchanged glances with Harry. He took over. 'In our investigations we always have to examine all the possibilities, however unlikely they may seem. And one of them is that some of the bank employees may be in league with the robber. Sometimes there is inside help with both the planning and the execution of the job. There is little doubt, for example, that the robber knew when the ATM would be refilled.' Harry studied Grette's face for signs of how he took that. But his eyes told him that he had left them again. 'We've been through the same questions with all the other employees,' he lied.

A magpie shrieked from the tree outside. Plaintive, lonely. Grette nodded. At first slowly, then faster.

'Aha,' he said. 'I understand. You think that's why Stine was shot. You think she knew the robber. And when he had finished using her, he shot her to remove any possible leads. Isn't that right?'

'Well, at least it's a theoretical possibility,' Harry said.

Grette shook his head and laughed again: sad, hollow laughter. 'It's clear you didn't know my Stine. She could never do anything like that. And why should she? If she'd lived a little longer, she would have been a millionaire.'

'Oh?'

'Walle Bшdtker, her grandfather. Eighty-five years old and owner of three blocks of flats in the city centre. He was diagnosed with lung cancer this summer and since then there has been only one way it was going to go. His grandchildren would have received a block each.'

Harry's question was purely a reflex action: 'Who will get Stine's block now?'

'The other grandchildren,' Grette answered with revulsion in his voice. 'And now you're going to check their alibis, aren't you?'

'Do you think we should?' Harry asked.

Grette was about to answer, but paused when his eyes met Harry's. He bit his lower lip.

'I apologise,' he said, running a hand across his unshaven face. 'Of course I ought to be glad that you're examining every possibility. It all just seems so hopeless. And meaningless. Even if you catch him, I'll never get back what he's taken from me. Not even the death penalty would do that. Losing your life is not the worst thing that can happen.' Harry already knew how he would continue. 'The worst thing is to lose your reason for living.'

'Yes,' Harry said, standing up. 'This is my card. Ring me if anything occurs to you. You can also ask to speak to Beate Lшnn.'

Grette had turned to face the window again and didn't see Harry holding out his card, so he left it on the table. Outside, it was becoming darker and they were seeing semi-transparent reflections in the window, like ghosts.

'I have a feeling I've seen him,' Grette said. 'On Fridays I usually go straight from work to play squash at the Focus centre in Sporveisgata. I didn't have a partner and so I went into the fitness room instead. Lifted weights, cycled, that sort of thing. There are so many people at that time you often have to queue.'

'That's right,' Harry said.

'When Stine was killed, I was in there. Three hundred metres down from the bank. Looking forward to a shower and going home and starting to cook. I always cooked the meal on Fridays. I liked waiting for her. Liked…waiting. Not all men do.'

'What do you mean you saw him?' Beate asked.

'I saw someone walk past me into the changing room. He was wearing baggy, black clothes. Like overalls.'

'Balaclava?'

Grette shook his head.

'Cap with a peak maybe?' Harry asked.

'He was holding some headgear in his hand. It might have been a balaclava. Or a peaked cap.'

'Did you see his fa-?' Harry began, but was interrupted by Beate.

'Height?'

'Don't know,' Grette said. 'Average height. What's average though?

1.80?'

'Why didn't you tell us this before?' Harry asked.

'Because,' Grette said, pressing his fingers against the glass, 'it's just a feeling. I know it wasn't him.'

'How can you be so sure?' Harry asked.

'Because two of your colleagues were here a few days ago. They were both called Li.' He swivelled round and looked at Harry. 'Are they related?'

'No. What did they want?'

Grette took his hand away. The window had misted up around the greasy marks.

'They wanted to check if Stine might have been involved in some way with the bank robber. And they showed me photos of the robbery.'

'And?'

'The overalls were black without any markings. Those I saw at the Focus centre had large white letters on the back.'

'What letters?' Beate asked.

'P-O-L-I-T-I,' Grette said, rubbing the greasy marks off. 'When I was in the street afterwards, I could hear police sirens in Majorstuen. The first thing I thought was how strange it was that thieves could escape with such a large police presence.'

'Yes, indeed. What made you think that?'

'I don't know. Perhaps because someone had just stolen my squash racquet from the changing room while I was training. My next thought was that Stine's bank was being robbed. That's how your mind works when your imagination runs wild, isn't it. Then I went home and made lasagne. Stine loved lasagne.' Grette made an attempt at a smile. Then the tears began to flow.

Harry fixed his eyes on the piece of paper Grette had written on so as not to see the grown man crying.

'I saw from your six-monthly bank statement there had been a large withdrawal.' Beate's voice sounded harsh and metallic. 'Thirty thousand kroner in Sгo Paulo. What did you spend it on?'