Nemesis Read Free

makes up his mind. In one quick movement he is out of the chair. Six strides. He is there. And picks up the phone:
    ‘Speak!’
    In the pause which follows he can hear the sound of the police siren on the TV in the sitting room, a Pakistani pop song from the neighbours and heavy steps up the stairwell sounding like fru Madsen’s. Then there is a gentle laugh at the other end of the line. It is laughter from a long-distant encounter. Not in time, but just as distant. Like seventy per cent of Harry’s past, which returns to himnow and again in the form of vague rumours or total fabrications. But this was a story he could confirm.
    ‘Do you really still use that macho line, Harry?’
    ‘Anna?’
    ‘Gosh, well done, Harry.’
    Harry could feel the sweet warmth surging through his stomach, almost like whisky. Almost. In the mirror he saw a picture he had pinned up on the opposite wall. Of himself and Sis one summer holiday a long time ago in Hvitsten when they were small. They were smiling in the way that children do when they still believe nothing nasty can happen to them.
    ‘And what do you do of a Sunday evening then, Harry?’
    ‘Well.’ Harry could hear his voice automatically mimicking hers. Slightly too deep, slightly too lingering. He didn’t mean to do that. Not now. He coughed and found a more neutral pitch: ‘What people usually do.’
    ‘And that is?’
    ‘Watch videos.’

3
The House of Pain
    ‘S EEN THE VIDEO? ’
    The battered office chair screamed in protest as Police Officer Halvorsen leaned back and looked at his nine-years-senior colleague, Inspector Harry Hole, with an expression of disbelief on his innocent young face.
    ‘Absolutely,’ Harry said, running thumb and first finger down the bridge of his nose to show the bags under his bloodshot eyes.
    ‘The whole weekend?’
    ‘From Saturday morning to Sunday evening.’
    ‘Well, at least you had a good time on Friday night,’ Halvorsen said.
    ‘Yes.’ Harry took a blue folder out of his coat pocket and placed it on the desk facing Halvorsen’s. ‘I read the transcripts of the interviews.’
    From the other pocket Harry took a grey packet of French Colonial coffee. He and Halvorsen shared an office at almost the furthest end of the corridor in the red zone on the sixth floor of Police Headquarters in Grønland. Two months ago they had gone to buy a Rancilio Silvia espresso coffee machine, which had takenpride of place on the filing cabinet beneath a framed photograph of a girl sitting with her legs up on a desk. Her freckled face seemed to be grimacing, but in fact she was helpless with laughter. The background was the same office wall on which the picture was hanging.
    ‘Did you know that three out of four policemen can’t spell “uninteresting” properly?’ Harry said, hanging his coat on the stand. ‘They either leave out the “e” between the “t” and the “r”, or—’
    ‘Interesting.’
    ‘What did you do at the weekend?’
    ‘On Friday, thanks to some anonymous nutter’s phone call warning us about a car bomb, I sat in a car outside the American ambassador’s residence. False alarm, of course, but things are so sensitive right now that we had to sit there all evening. On Saturday, I made another attempt to find the woman of my life. On Sunday, I concluded that she doesn’t exist. What did you get on the robber from the interviews?’ Halvorsen measured the coffee into a double-cup filter.
    ‘ Nada ,’ Harry said, taking off his sweater. Underneath, he was wearing a charcoal-grey T-shirt – it had once been black and now bore the faded letters Violent Femmes . He collapsed into the office chair with a groan. ‘No one has reported seeing the wanted man near the bank before the robbery. Someone came out of a 7-Eleven on the other side of Bogstadveien and saw the man running up Industrigata. It was the balaclava that caught his attention. The surveillance camera outside the bank shows both of them as the robber