Harry Hole Oslo Sequence 10 - Police

yourself into thinking the worst is over, not letting yourself slip into an agreeable doze, but keeping your concentration, doing the chores, systematically like a robot, while continuing to monitor the situation. Monitoring the situation all the time. What’s the weather doing? What signals are you getting from your body? Where are we? How long have we been here? How are the others in the team coping?’
    He took a step back from the lectern.
    ‘K2 is an uphill climb in all senses. Even when going downhill. And that was why we wanted to have a go.’
    The room was silent. Utterly silent. No demonstrative yawning or shuffling of feet under chairs. My God, Hagen thought, he’s got them.
    ‘Two words,’ Bellman said. ‘Stamina and solidarity. I had considered including ambition, but the word isn’t important enough, not big enough in comparison with the other two. So you may ask what’s the point of stamina and solidarity if there’s no goal, no ambition. Fighting for fighting’s sake? Honour without reward? Yes, I say, fighting for fighting’s sake. Honour without reward. When the Vennesla case is still being talked about years from now it’s because it was an uphill climb. Because it looked impossible. The mountain was too high, the weather too treacherous, the air too thin. Everything went wrong. And it’s the story of the uphill climb which will turn the case into mythology, which will make it one of the tales around the campfire that will survive. Just as most climbers in the world have never got as far as the foothills of K2, you can work all your life without ever being on a case like this one. If this case had been cracked in the first weeks it would soon have been forgotten. For what is it that all legendary criminal cases in history have in common?’
    Bellman waited. Nodded as if they had given him the answer.
    ‘They took time . They were an uphill climb .’
    A voice beside Hagen whispered: ‘Churchill, eat your heart out.’
    He turned and saw Beate Lønn standing beside him with a mischievous smile on her face.
    He nodded and watched the assembled officers. Old tricks maybe, but they still worked. Where, a few minutes ago, he had seen only a dead, blackened fire, Bellman had managed to blow life into the embers. But Hagen knew it wouldn’t burn for long if results were not forthcoming.
    Three minutes later Bellman had finished the pep talk and left the podium with a broad grin and to great applause. Hagen clapped along dutifully, dreading his return to the lectern. For the certain showstopper, telling them the unit would be cut to thirty-five. Bellman’s orders, but which they had agreed he would not have to pass on. Hagen stepped forward, put down his folder, coughed, pretended to flick through it. Looked up. Coughed again and said with a wry smile: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Elvis has left the building.’
    Silence, no laughter.
    ‘Well, we have a few matters to deal with. Some of you are going to be transferred to other duties.’
    Stone dead. Fire extinguished.
    As Mikael Bellman left the lift in the atrium at Police HQ he caught a glimpse of a figure disappearing into the adjacent lift. Was it Truls? Hardly likely, he was still suspended after the Asayev business. Bellman walked out of the building and struggled through the snow to the waiting car. When he took over the Chief of Police post he had been told that in theory he had the services of a chauffeur, but his three predecessors had all refrained from using them because they thought it would send the wrong signals, as they were the ones who had to deliver all the cuts in other areas. Bellman had reversed this practice and said in no uncertain terms that he wouldn’t let that kind of social-democratic pettiness threaten his productivity, and it was more important to signal to those further down the food chain that hard work and promotion brought certain benefits. The head of PR had subsequently taken him aside and suggested that if the press were to ask him he should limit his answer to productivity and lose the bit about benefits.
    ‘City Hall,’ Bellman said as he settled in the back seat.
    The car glided away from the kerb, rounded Grønland Church and headed towards the Plaza Hotel and the Post Office building, which despite the excavations around the Opera House still dominated Oslo’s small skyline. But today there was no skyline, only snow, and Bellman thought three mutually independent thoughts. Bloody December.