Harry Hole Oslo Sequence 10 - Police

went to the sink. Saw in the mirror that Berntsen still hadn’t got the tap flowing again. Harry washed his hands and dried them. Went to the door. Heard Berntsen hiss:
    ‘Don’t you try anything, I’m telling you. If you take me down, I’ll take you with me.’
    Harry went back into the bar. Bobby Fuller had almost finished. And it made Harry think of something. How full of coincidences our lives were. Bobby Fuller was found dead in his car in 1966, soaked in petrol, and some thought he had been killed by the police. He had been twenty-three years old. The same as René Kalsnes.
    A new song started. Supergrass and ‘Caught by the Fuzz’. Harry smiled. Gaz Coombes singing about being caught by the fuzz, who want him to spill the beans, and twenty years later the police are playing the song as a tribute to themselves. Sorry, Gaz.
    Harry looked around the room. Thought about the long conversation he and Rakel had had yesterday. About all the things you could evade, avoid, elude in life. And what you couldn’t escape. Because this was life, the meaning of existence. All the rest – love, peace, happiness – was what followed, for which this was a prerequisite. By and large, she had done the talking, had explained that he had to. The shadows of Beate’s death were already so long that they covered the June day, however hysterically the sun might shine. He had to. For them both. For them all.
    Harry ploughed his way to the table of coffin-bearers.
    Hagen got up and pulled out the chair that they had reserved for him. ‘Well?’ he said.
    ‘Count me in,’ Harry said.
    Truls stood by the urinal, still semi-paralysed by what Harry had said. This must be the season for police haters. Did he know anything? Rubbish! Harry knew nothing. How could he? If he did, he wouldn’t have blurted it out like that, like a provocation. But he knew about the homo in Kripos, the one they had beaten up. And how could he know about that?
    The guy had tried it on with Mikael, had tried to kiss him in the toilets. Mikael thought someone might have seen. They had pulled a hood over his head in the boiler room. Truls had hit him. Mikael had just watched. As usual. Had only intervened when it was on the point of going too far and told him to stop. No. It had already gone too far. The guy was still lying on the ground when they left.
    Mikael had been afraid. The guy was badly hurt, he might get it into his head to report them. So that had been Truls’s first job as a burner. They had used the blue light to race down to Justisen where they had pushed their way through the queue at the bar and demanded to pay for the two Munkholms they’d had half an hour before. The bartender had nodded, said it was good there were honest folk about and Truls had given him such a hefty tip he was sure the guy would remember. Took the receipt displaying the time and date of purchase, drove with Mikael up to Krimteknisk where there was a newcomer Truls knew really wanted a job as a detective. Explained to him it was possible that someone would try to pin an assault on them and he would have to check they were clean. The newcomer had performed a quick, superficial examination of their clothes and hadn’t found any DNA or blood, he said. Then Truls had driven Mikael home and afterwards returned to the boiler room at Kripos. The fudge-packer wasn’t there any more, but the trail of blood indicated he had managed to crawl out under his own steam. So perhaps there wasn’t a problem. But Truls had removed any potential evidence and afterwards driven down to the Havnelager building and dropped the baton in the sea.
    The next day a colleague rang Mikael and said the fudge-packer had contacted him from hospital and talked about reporting them for GBH. So Truls had gone up to the hospital, waited until the doctor had done his rounds and then told the guy there was no evidence and no career if he ever so much as breathed a word or turned up for work again.
    They never saw or heard anything again from the guy at Kripos. Thanks to him, Truls Berntsen. So fuck Mikael Bellman. Truls had saved the bastard’s skin. At least until now. For now Harry knew about the little matter. And he was a loose cannon. He could be dangerous, Hole could. Too dangerous.
    Truls Berntsen observed himself in the mirror. The terrorist. Dead right. He was.
    And he had only just started.
    He went out to join the others. In time to catch the last part of Mikael Bellman’s speech.
    ‘. .