Jo Nesbo - Nemesis

Harry sighed, switched off the torch and walked back to the chalet. He made himself a cup of coffee in the kitchen and listened to the distant barking. After rinsing his cup, he walked back down to the beach and found a gap between rocks to settle down and shelter from the wind. He lit a cigarette and tried to think. Then he pulled his coat tighter around him and closed his eyes.

One night they had been in her bed and Anna had said something. It must have been towards the end of the six weeks-and he must have been more sober than usual because he could remember it. She had said that her bed was a ship, and that she and Harry were two castaways, lonely people drifting on the sea, terrified they would sight land. Was that what had happened next? Had they sighted land? He didn't remember it like that. He felt as if he had jumped ship, jumped overboard. Perhaps his memory was playing tricks on him.

He closed his eyes and tried to conjure up an image of her. Not from the time they were castaways, but from the last time he had seen her. They had eaten together. Apparently. She had filled his glass-had it been wine? Had he tasted it? Apparently. She had given him a refill. He had lost his grip on things. Topped up his glass. She had laughed at him. Kissed him. Danced for him. Whispered her usual sweet nothings in his ear. They had piled into bed and cast off. Had that really been so easy for her? Or for him?

No, it can't have been.

But Harry didn't know for sure. He couldn't have said with any confidence that he hadn't been lying in a bed in Sorgenfrigata with a rapturous smile on his lips. He had been reunited with an ex-lover while Rakel lay staring up at a hotel ceiling in Moscow, unable to sleep for fear of losing her child.

Harry huddled up. The cold, raw wind blew right through him as if he were a ghost. These were thoughts he had managed to keep at bay, but now they crowded in on him: if he couldn't know whether he was capable of cheating on the woman he treasured most in his life, how could he know what else he had done? Aune maintained that drink and drugs merely strengthened or weakened qualities latent within us. But who knew for sure what was inside them? Humans are not robots and the chemistry of the brain changes over time. Who had a full inventory of all the things-given the right circumstances and the wrong medication-we are capable of doing?

Harry shivered and cursed. He knew now. Knew now why he had to find Arne Albu and get a confession before others silenced him. It wasn't because his profession had got into his bloodstream or law had become a personal matter; it was because he had to know. And Arne Albu was the only person who could tell him.

Harry closed his eyes again. The low whistle of the wind against the granite could be heard above the persistent, hypnotic rhythm of the waves.

When he opened his eyes, it was no longer dark. The wind had swept away the clouds and the matt stars twinkled above him. The moon had moved. Harry glanced at his watch. He had been sitting there for almost an hour. Gregor was barking madly at the sea. Stiff, he got to his feet and stumbled over to the dog. The gravitational pull of the moon had shifted, the water level had sunk and Harry plodded down what had become a broad sandy beach.

'Come on, Gregor. We won't find anything here.'

The dog snapped at him when he went to take his collar, and Harry automatically jumped back a step. He peered across the water. The moonlight glittered on the black surface, but now he could make out something he hadn't seen when the water was at its highest ebb. It looked like the tips of two mooring poles just above sea level. Harry went to the water's edge and shone the torch.

'Jesus Christ,' he whispered.

Gregor leapt out into the water and he waded after the dog. It was ten metres into the water, but it didn't even come up to his knees. He stared down at a pair of shoes. Hand-sewn, Italian. Harry shone the torch into the water where the light was reflected back from bare, bluish-white legs, sticking up like two pale tombstones.

Harry's shouts were carried on the wind and drowned instantly in the crashing of the waves. But the torch he dropped, to be swallowed up by the water, remained on the sandy bottom and shone for almost twenty-four hours. When the little boy who found it the following summer ran with it to his father, the salt water had corroded the black casing and neither of them connected a Maglite with the grotesque discovery of a corpse. The previous year it had been in all the papers, but in the summer sun that seemed an eternity away.

David Hasselhoff

The morning light stood like a white pillar through a tear in the sky and cast what Tom Waaler called 'Jesus Light' onto the fjord. A number of similar pictures had hung on the walls at home. He strode over the plastic ribbon cordoning off the crime scene. Those who thought they knew him would have said it was his nature to jump over, rather than duck under. They were right about the latter, but not the former. Tom Waaler doubted that anyone knew him. And he intended it to stay that way.

He raised a digital camera to the steel-blue lenses of his Police sunglasses, of which he had a dozen pairs at home. A return favour from an appreciative customer. As indeed the camera was, too. The frame captured the hole in the ground and the body beside it. It was wearing black trousers and a shirt which had once been white, but was now brown from the clay and sand.

'Another photo for your private collection?' It was Weber.

'This was new,' Waaler said without looking up. 'I like creative murderers. Have you identified the man?'

'Arne Albu. Forty-two years old. Married, three children. Seems to have a fair bit of money. He owns a chalet just behind here.'

'Did anyone see or hear anything?'

'They're making door-to-door inquiries now. But you can see for yourself how deserted it is here.'

'Someone at the hotel over there perhaps?' Waaler pointed towards a large yellow wooden building at the end of the beach.

'Doubt it,' Weber said. 'There won't be anyone staying at this time of the year.'

'Who found the body?'

'Anonymous call from a telephone box in Moss. To the Moss police.'

'The murderer?'

'Don't think so. He said he saw a pair of legs sticking up when he was taking his dog for a walk.'

'Have they got the conversation on tape?'

Weber shook his head. 'He didn't ring the emergency number.'

'What do you make of this?' Waaler motioned towards the corpse.

'The doctors still have to send in their report, but to me it looks like he was buried alive. No external signs of violence, but blood in the nose and mouth and burst blood vessels in the eyes suggest a large accumulation of blood in the head. In addition, we found sand deep in his throat, which means he must have been breathing when he was buried.'

'I see. Anything else?'

'The dog was tied to the railing outside his chalet up there. Great big, ugly Rottweiler. In surprisingly good shape. The door wasn't locked. No signs of a struggle inside the chalet, either.'

'In other words, they marched in, threatened him with guns, tied up the dog, dug a hole for him and asked him if he would mind jumping in.'

'If there were several of them.'

'Big Rottweiler, one-and-a-half-metre-deep hole. I think we can take that as read, Weber.'

Weber didn't react. He had never had a problem working with Waaler. The man was a talented investigator, one of the few; his results spoke for themselves. But that didn't mean Weber had to like him. Although dislike wasn't perhaps the right word. It was something else, something which made you think of Spot the Difference pictures. You couldn't quite put your finger on what it was, but there was something that disquieted you. Disquieted, that was the word.