Jo Nesbo - Nemesis

Raskol ran a finger along his top lip. 'Why should that be my problem, Harry? We made an agreement and I kept my part.'

'I'll keep my part, but it will take longer without money.'

Raskol shook his head, threw out his arms and mumbled something in what Harry supposed was Romany. Шystein had been desperate on the telephone. There was no doubt they had found the correct server, he had said. But he had imagined a rusty antique in a shed, wheezing but functional, and a horse trader with a turban who wanted three camels and a pack of American cigarettes. Instead he went to an air-conditioned office where the young besuited Egyptian behind a desk had gazed at him through silver-framed glasses and told him the price was 'non-negotiable', payment was to be in untraceable notes and the offer would stand for three days.

'I assume you've considered the consequences if it leaks out that you've been receiving money from someone like me while on duty?'

'I'm not on duty,' Harry said.

Raskol stroked his ears with the palms of his hands. 'Sun Tzu says if you do not control events, they will control you. You don't have any control over events, Spiuni. It means you've blundered. I don't like people who make blunders. Hence, I have a suggestion. We'll make this simple for both parties. You give me the name of this man and I'll sort out the rest.'

'No!' Harry slammed his hand down hard on the table. 'I don't want him roughed up by one of your gorillas. I want him behind lock and key.'

'You surprise me, Spiuni. If I've understood you correctly, you're already in a sensitive position. Why not let justice be meted out to the hilt as painlessly as possible?'

'No vendetta. That was our agreement.'

Raskol smiled. 'You're a tough nut, Hole. I like that. And I respect agreements. But now you're beginning to screw up. How can I be sure this is the right man?'

'You were given the opportunity to check the key I found at the chalet was identical with Anna's.'

'And now you come to me for help again. So you'll have to give me a bit more.'

Harry swallowed. 'When I found Anna, she had a photo in her shoe.'

'Go on.'

'My thinking is she managed to put it there before the murderer shot her. It's a picture of the murderer's family.'

'Is that all?'

'Yes.'

Raskol shook his head, looked at Harry and then shook his head again.

'I don't know who's the most stupid here. You, for letting your friend pull the wool over your eyes. Your friend, who thinks he can hide after stealing money from me.' He heaved a deep sigh. 'Or me, for giving you money.'

Harry thought he would feel happiness or at least relief. Instead he only felt the knot in his stomach tightening. 'So what do you need to know?'

'Just the name of your friend and the bank in Egypt where he wants to pick up the money.'

'You'll have them in an hour.' Harry got to his feet.

Raskol rubbed his wrists as if he had taken off handcuffs. 'I hope you don't think you understand me, Spiuni.' He said it in a low voice without looking up.

Harry came to a halt. 'What do you mean?'

'I'm a gypsy. My world can be an inverted world. Do you know what God is in Romany?'

'No.'

'Devel. Devil. Strange, isn't it? When you sell your soul, it's good to know who you're selling it to, Spiuni.'

Halvorsen thought Harry looked drained.

'Define "drained",' Harry said, leaning back in his office chair. 'Or, in fact, don't.'

When Halvorsen asked Harry how things were going and Harry asked him to define 'going', Halvorsen sighed and left the office to try his luck with Elmer.

Harry dialled the number he had received from Rakel, but again got the Russian voice he assumed was telling him he was generally barking up the wrong tree. So he rang Bjarne Mшller and tried to give his boss the impression he wasn't barking up the wrong tree. Mшller didn't sound convinced.

'I want good news, Harry. Not reports on how you've been spending your time.'

Beate came in to say she had watched the video ten more times and she no longer had any doubt that the Expeditor and Stine Grette knew each other. 'I think the last thing he tells her is that she is going to die. You can see it in her eyes. Defiant and frightened at the same time, just like in the war films where you see resistance fighters lined up ready to be shot.'

Pause.

'Hello?' She waved a hand in front of his eyes. 'You look drained.'

He rang Aune.

'Harry here. How do people react when they know they're going to be executed?'

Aune chuckled. 'They're focused,' he said. 'On time.'

'And frightened? Panic-stricken?'

'That depends. What sort of execution are we talking about?'

'A public execution. In a bank.'

'I see. I'll ring you back in two minutes.'

Harry studied his watch as he waited. It took 120 seconds.

'The process of dying, much like the process of being born, is a very intimate affair,' Aune said. 'The reason people in such situations instinctively have a desire to hide is not just because they feel physically vulnerable. Dying in the sight of others, as in a public execution, is a double punishment as it is an affront to the victim's modesty in the most brutal way conceivable. It was one of the reasons public executions were considered to have a more criminally preventative effect on the population than execution in the solitude of the cell. Some allowances were made, however, such as obliging the executioner to wear a mask. That wasn't, as many think, to conceal the executioner's identity-everyone knew it was the local butcher or rope-maker. The mask was out of consideration for the condemned man, so that he didn't feel a stranger was close to him at the moment of death.'

'Mm. The bank robber was also wearing a mask.'

'The use of masks is a whole field of psychological research. For example, the modern notion that wearing a mask deprives us of freedom can be turned on its head. Masks can depersonalise in a way which allows freedom. To what do you otherwise attribute the popularity of masked balls in Victorian times? Or the use of masks in sexual games? A bank robber, on the other hand, has more prosaic reasons for wearing a mask, of course.'

'Maybe.'

'Maybe?'

'I don't know,' Harry sighed.

'You seem…'

'Tired. See you.'

Harry's position on earth slowly moved away from the sun and the afternoons became dark earlier and earlier. The lemons outside Ali's shop shone like small yellow stars and a silent spray of fine rain fell as Harry walked up Sofies gate. The afternoon had been spent arranging the transfer of funds to El Tor. It hadn't been such a major job. He had chatted to Шystein, got his passport number plus the address of the bank beside the hotel where he was staying and phoned the information through to the prison inmates' newspaper the Returning Phantom, where Raskol was working on an article about Sun Tzu. Then it was simply a question of waiting.

Harry had arrived at the front door and was about to search for keys when he heard a padding of feet on the pavement behind him. He didn't turn.

Not until he heard the low growl.

In fact, he was not surprised. If you heat up a pressure cooker, you know that sooner or later something has to happen.

The dog's face was as black as the night and contrasted with the whiteness of the bared teeth. The feeble light from the lamp over the front door caught a trickle of saliva hanging off a large canine tooth and it sparkled.

'Sit!' said a familiar voice from the shadows beneath the garage entrance on the other side of the quiet, narrow street. The Rottweiler reluctantly lowered its broad, muscular hindquarters onto the wet tarmac, but its shiny brown eyes, the furthest thing from 'puppy-dog eyes' you could imagine, never left Harry.