Harry Hole Oslo Sequence 10 - Police

. . . I saw you at PHS.’
    ‘I’m not there any more.’ Silje’s voice sounded completely unruffled, almost as though she was bored.
    ‘Oh? So what are you doing . . .?’
    ‘Moving furniture,’ Harry said, with a quick sniff, pointing to the gap in the ceiling. ‘Trying to find something more robust to stand on.’
    ‘There’s a stepladder outside,’ Katrine said.
    ‘Is there? I’ll go and fetch it.’ Harry dashed past Katrine and through the sitting room. Shit, shit, shit and bugger.
    The stepladder was leaning against the wall between the paint pots.
    There was total silence when he returned, pushed away the armchair and positioned the aluminium ladder beneath the opening. No suggestion that they had spoken either. Women with arms crossed and faces devoid of expression.
    ‘What’s the stink?’ Katrine asked.
    ‘Pass me the torch,’ Harry said, climbing up the ladder. Tore off a chunk of plasterboard, poked the torch inside, then his head. Reached for the green jigsaw. The blade was broken. He held it between two fingers and passed it to Katrine. ‘Careful. There may be fingerprints.’
    He shone the torch inside again. Stared. The dead body lay on its side, squeezed between the old and the new ceiling. Harry was thinking he bloody deserved to be here inhaling the stench of death and rotting flesh, no, he deserved to be the rotting flesh. He was a sick man, a very sick man. And if he wasn’t shot on the spot, he needed help. He had been about to do it, hadn’t he? Or had he stopped? Or was the idea that he might have stopped something he invented to sow doubt?
    ‘Can you see anything?’ Katrine asked.
    ‘I can indeed,’ Harry said.
    ‘Do we need a forensics team?’
    ‘That depends.’
    ‘On what?’
    ‘Whether Crime Squad wants to investigate this death.’

30
    ‘ THIS IS A bit tricky to talk about,’ Harry said, stubbing out the cigarette on the windowsill, leaving the window overlooking Sporveisgata open and going back to his chair. Ståle Aune had said he could come before the first patient at eight when Harry had rung him at six and said he was in a mess again.
    ‘You’ve been here before to talk about tricky matters,’ Ståle said. For as long as Harry could remember he had been the psychologist the officers in Crime Squad went to when things got tough. Not just because they had his phone number, but because Ståle Aune was one of the few psychologists who knew what their everyday working life was like. And they knew they could rely on him keeping his mouth shut.
    ‘Yes, but that was about drinking,’ Harry said. ‘This is . . . quite different.’
    ‘Is it?’
    ‘Don’t you think it is?’
    ‘I think that since the first thing you did was to ring me, you think it may be more of the same.’
    Harry sighed, leaned forward in the chair and rested his forehead against his folded hands. ‘Maybe it is. I always had the feeling I chose the worst possible times to drink. I always succumbed when it was important to be at my most alert. As though there was a demon inside me who wanted everything to go down the Swanee. Wanted me to go down the Swanee.’
    ‘That’s what demons do, Harry.’ Ståle concealed a yawn.
    ‘In that case, this one has done a good job. I was about to rape a girl.’
    Ståle was no longer yawning. ‘What did you say? When was this?’
    ‘Last night. The girl’s an ex-student of mine at PHS. She turned up while I was searching a flat where Valentin had lived.’
    ‘Oh?’ Ståle removed his glasses. ‘Did you find anything?’
    ‘A jigsaw with a broken blade. Must have been there for years. Of course, the builders may have left it there when they were lowering the ceiling, but they’re checking the serrated edge against what they found in Bergslia.’
    ‘Anything else?’
    ‘No. Yes. A dead badger.’
    ‘Badger?’
    ‘Yes. Looked as if it had been hibernating there.’
    ‘Heh heh. We had a badger once, but fortunately it stayed in the garden. It has a fearsome bite on it. Did it die during its hibernation then?’
    Harry smirked. ‘If you’re interested I can get forensics on the case.’
    ‘Sorry, I . . .’ Ståle shook his head and put his glasses back on. ‘The girl arrived and you felt tempted to rape her, is that how it was?’
    Harry raised his arms over his head. ‘I’ve just proposed to the woman I love more than anything else in the world. I want nothing more than for us to have a good life together. And just as I’ve