Harry Hole Oslo Sequence 10 - Police

what he was: on his way up. Despite this murder case. He straightened the silk tie Ulla had bought him in Barcelona. Double Windsor knot. He had taught Truls how to tie a knot at school. But only the thin, easy one. The door at the end of the corridor was ajar. Mikael pushed it open.
    The office was bare. The desk cleared, the shelves empty and the wallpaper had light patches where pictures had hung. She was sitting on a windowsill. Her face had the conventional good looks that women often call ‘nice’, but it had no sweetness or charm despite the blonde doll’s hair arranged in comic ringlets. She was tall and athletic with broad shoulders and broad hips which had been negotiated into a tight leather skirt for the occasion. Her thighs were crossed. The masculinity in her face – emphasised by an aquiline nose and a pair of cold, blue lupine eyes – combined with a self-confident, provocative, playful gaze had caused Bellman to make a couple of quick assumptions the first time he saw her. Isabelle Skøyen was an initiative-taker and a risk-loving cougar.
    ‘Lock,’ she said.
    He hadn’t been mistaken.
    Mikael closed the door behind him and turned the key. Walked over to one of the other windows. City Hall towered above Oslo’s modest development of four- and five-storey buildings. Overlooking Rådhusplassen, the City Hall square, was the 700-year-old Akershus Fortress, on high ramparts with ancient, war-damaged cannons pointing at the fjord, which seemed to have goose pimples as it trembled in the freezing gusts of wind. It had stopped snowing, and under the leaden grey sky the town was bathed in a bluish-white light. Like the colour of a dead body, Bellman thought. Isabelle’s voice echoed off the bare walls. ‘Well, my dear, what do you think of the view?’
    ‘Impressive. If I remember rightly the previous councillor had an office that was both smaller and lower down.’
    ‘Not that view,’ she said. ‘This one.’
    He turned to her. Oslo’s latest Councillor for Social Affairs had spread her legs. Her panties were on the windowsill beside her. Isabelle had repeatedly said she didn’t understand the attractions of a shaven pussy, but Mikael reckoned there had to be a halfway house as he stared into the thick bush and mumbled a repeat of his comment about the view. Truly impressive.
    Her heels hit the parquet floor hard and she walked over to him. Brushed an invisible speck of dust off his lapel. Even without stilettos she would have been a centimetre taller than him, but now she towered over him. He didn’t find this intimidating. On the contrary, her physical size and domineering personality were an interesting challenge. It required more of him as a man than Ulla’s slender figure and gentle compliance. ‘I think it’s only right and proper that you’re the person to inaugurate my office. Without your . . . willing cooperation I wouldn’t have got this job.’
    ‘Ditto,’ Mikael Bellman said. He breathed in the fragrance of her perfume. It was familiar. It was . . . Ulla’s. The Tom Ford perfume – what was it called? Black Orchid. Which he’d bought for her when he was in Paris or London because it was impossible to get hold of in Norway. The coincidence seemed highly improbable.
    He saw the laughter in her eyes as she saw the astonishment in his. She interlaced her fingers behind his neck and leaned back laughing. ‘Sorry, I couldn’t stop myself.’
    What the hell. After the house-warming Ulla had complained that the bottle of perfume had disappeared and that one of the celeb guests he’d invited must have stolen it. He’d been pretty sure it had been one of the local Mangleruders, namely Truls Berntsen. He wasn’t exactly unaware that Truls had been head over heels in love with Ulla ever since their boyhood days. Which of course he had never mentioned to her or Truls. Nor the business with the bottle of perfume. After all, it was better that Truls pinched Ulla’s perfume than her panties.
    ‘Have you ever wondered if that might be your problem?’ Mikael said. ‘Stopping yourself?’
    She laughed softly. Closed her eyes. Her long, broad fingers opened behind his neck, moved down his back and stole inside his belt. She looked at him with mild disappointment in her gaze.
    ‘What’s up, my stallion?’
    ‘The doctors say he’s not going to die,’ Mikael said. ‘And recently he’s been showing signs of coming out of the coma.’
    ‘In what way? Is he