The Devil's Star Read Free Page A

Harry appeared in his office four weeks ago and presented his hair-raising conspiracy theories. Basically, without any proof he was making fanciful charges against Tom Waaler.
    Then Harry simply disappeared. Some days later Møller rang Restaurant Schrøder and learned what he had feared: that Harry had gone on another drinking binge. To cover his absence, Møller put Harry down as on leave. Once again. Harry generally put in an appearance after a week, but now four weeks had passed. His leave was over.
    Møller eyed the receiver, stood up and went to the window. It was 5.30 and yet the park in front of the police station was almost deserted. There was just the odd sun worshipper braving the heat. In Grønlandsleiret a couple of shop owners were sitting under an awning next to their vegetables. Even the cars – despite zilch rush-hour traffic – were moving more slowly. Møller brushed back his hair with his hands, a lifetime’s habit which his wife said he should give a rest now as people might suspect him of trying to cover his bald patch. Was there really no-one else except Harry? Møller watched a drunk staggering down Grønlandsleiret. He guessed he was heading for the Raven, but he wouldn’t get a drink there. He’d probably end up at the Boxer. The place where the Ellen Gjelten case was emphatically brought to a close. Perhaps Harry Hole’s career in the police force, too. Møller was being put under pressure; he would soon have to make up his mind what to do about the Harry problem. But that was long term; what was important now was this case.
    Møller lifted the receiver and considered for a moment what he was about to do: put Harry Hole and Tom Waaler on the same case. These holiday periods were such a pain. The electrical impulse started on its journey from Telje, Torp & Aasen’s monument to an ordered society and began to ring in a place where chaos reigned, a flat in Sofies gate.

3
    Friday. The Awakening.
    She screamed again and Harry Hole opened his eyes.
    The sun gleamed through the idly shifting curtains as the grating sound of the tram slowing down in Pilestredet faded away. Harry tried to find his bearings. He lay on the floor of his own sitting room. Dressed, though not well dressed. In the land of the living, though not really alive.
    Sweat lay like a clammy film of make-up on his face, and his heart felt light, but stressed, like a ping-pong ball on a concrete floor. His head felt worse.
    Harry hesitated for a moment before making up his mind to continue breathing. The ceiling and the walls were spinning around, and there was not a picture or a ceiling light in the flat his gaze could cling to. Whirling on the periphery of his vision was an IKEA bookcase, the back of a chair and a green coffee table from Elevator. At least he had escaped any more dreams.
    It had been the same old nightmare. Rooted to the spot, unable to move, in vain he had tried closing his eyes to avoid seeing her mouth, distorted and opened in a silent scream. The large, blankly staring eyes with the mute accusation. When he was young, it had been his little sister, Sis. Now it was Ellen Gjelten. At first the screams had been silent, now they sounded like squealing steel brakes. He didn’t know which was worse.
    Harry lay there quite still, staring out between the curtains, up at the shimmering sun over the streets and back yards of Bislett. Only the tram broke the summer stillness. He didn’t even blink. He stared at the sun until it became a leaping golden heart, beating against a thin, milky-blue membrane and pumping out heat. When he was young, his mother told him that if children looked straight into the sun it would burn away their eyesight and that they would have sunlight inside their heads all day long and for all their lives. Sunlight in their heads consuming everything else. Like the image of Ellen’s smashed skull in the snow by the Akerselva with the shadow hanging over it. For three years he had tried to catch