Harry Hole Oslo Sequence 10 - Police

box for a burgeoning middle class who thought apple orchards were no longer an upper-class preserve.
    Apart from the rumble of a dustcart working its way up the road from bin to bin, all was quiet. Everyone was at work, school, kindergarten. Harry parked the car, went through the gate, passed a child’s bike locked to the fence, a dustbin bulging with black bags, a swing, leapt up the steps to a pair of Nike trainers he recognised. Rang the bell under the ceramic sign bearing Beate’s name and her son’s.
    Waited.
    Rang again.
    On the first floor there was an open window to what he assumed had to be one of the bedrooms. He called her name. Perhaps she couldn’t hear because of the lorry’s steel piston loudly crushing and compacting rubbish as it came ever closer.
    He tried the door. Open. He entered. Called up to the first floor. No answer. And could no longer ignore the unease he knew had been there the whole time.
    From when the news didn’t come.
    From when she didn’t answer her mobile phone.
    He strode upstairs, went from room to room.
    Empty. Undisturbed.
    He ran back down the stairs and headed for the sitting room. Stood in the doorway and let his gaze wander. He knew exactly why he didn’t go right in, but didn’t want to think the thought aloud.
    Didn’t want to tell himself he was looking at a possible crime scene.
    He had been here before, but it struck him that the room seemed barer now. Perhaps it was the morning light, perhaps it was just that Beate wasn’t here. His gaze stopped at the table. A mobile phone.
    He heard himself breathe out and realised how much relief he felt. She had nipped down to the shop, left the phone, not even bothering to lock up. To the chemist for some aspirin or something. Yes, that’s what must have happened. Harry thought of the Nike trainers on the doorstep. So? A woman would have more than one pair of shoes. If he waited for a couple of minutes she would be back.
    Harry shifted his weight from one foot to the other. The sofa looked tempting, but still he didn’t go in. His gaze had fallen on the floor. There was a darker patch around the coffee table by the TV.
    She had obviously got rid of the rug.
    Recently.
    Harry felt his skin itch inside his shirt, as if he had just been rolling, naked and sweaty, in the grass. He crouched down. Smelt a faint aroma of ammonia from the parquet floor. Unless he was mistaken, wooden floors didn’t like ammonia. Harry stood up, straightened his back. Strode through the hall into the kitchen.
    Empty, tidy.
    Opened the tall cupboard beside the fridge. It was as though houses built in the 1950s had these unwritten rules about where to keep everything: food, tools, important documents and, in this case, cleaning equipment. At the bottom of the cupboard there was a bucket with a cloth neatly folded over the edge; on the first shelf were three dusting cloths, one sealed and one opened roll of white bin bags. A bottle of Krystal green soap. And a tin of Bona polish. He bent down and read the label.
    For parquet floors. Did not contain ammonia.
    Harry got up slowly. Stood quite still listening. Scenting the air.
    He was rusty, but he tried to absorb it and memorise everything he had seen. The first impression. He had emphasised it in his lectures again and again, how the first impressions at a crime scene were often the most important and correct, the collection of data while your senses were still on high alert, before they were blunted and counteracted by the forensics team’s dry facts.
    Harry closed his eyes, tried to hear what the house was telling him, which details he had overlooked, the one that would tell him what he wanted to know.
    But if the house was talking it was drowned by the noise of the dustcart outside the open front door. He heard the voices of the men on the lorry, the gate opening, the happy laughter. Carefree. As though nothing had happened. Perhaps nothing had happened. Perhaps Beate would soon be back, sniffling as she tightened her scarf around her neck, would brighten up, surprised but happy to see him. And even more surprised and happy when he asked her if she wanted to be a witness at his wedding to Rakel. Then she would laugh and blush to the roots as she did if anyone looked her way. The woman who used to immure herself in the House of Pain, the video room at Police HQ, where she would sit for twelve hours at a stretch and with infallible accuracy identify masked robbers caught on bank CCTV. Who