Harry Hole Oslo Sequence 10 - Police

recognise himself in Isabelle Skøyen, he did, but she was an extreme version of himself. And the strange thing was that instead of dragging him along, she made him more cautious.
    ‘The patient hasn’t come out of the coma yet, so for the time being we do nothing,’ Isabelle said. ‘I know an anaesthetist from Enebakk. Very shady type. He supplies me with pills that as a politician I can’t get on the street. He – like Beavis – does most things for money. And anything at all for sex. Apropos of which . . .’
    She had perched herself on the edge of the table, raised and spread her legs and unbuttoned his flies in one go. Mikael grabbed her wrists. ‘Let’s wait until Wednesday at the Grand.’
    ‘Let’s not wait until Wednesday at the Grand.’
    ‘Well, actually, I vote that we do.’
    ‘Oh yes?’ she said, freeing her hands and opening his trousers. She looked down. Her voice was throaty. ‘The noes have it by one, darling.’

5
    DARKNESS AND THE temperature had fallen, and a pale moon was shining in through the window of Stian Barelli’s room when he heard his mother’s voice from the living room downstairs.
    ‘It’s for you, Stian!’
    He had heard their landline ringing and hoped it wasn’t for him. He put down the Wii controller. He was twelve under par with three holes left to play and thus very well on the way to qualifying for the Masters. He was playing Rick Fowler, as he was the only golfer in the Tiger Woods Masters who was cool and anywhere close to his own age, twenty-one. And they both liked Eminem and Rise Against and wearing orange. Of course Rick Fowler could afford his own flat whereas Stian still lived at home. But it was only temporary, until he got a scholarship to go to university in Alaska. All semi-decent downhill skiers went there if they got good results in the Nordic Junior Ski Championship and so on. Of course, no one became a better skier from going there, but so what? Women, wine and skis. What could be better. Perhaps the odd exam if there was time. The qualification could lead to an OK job. Money for his own flat. A life that was better than this, sleeping in the slightly too short bed under posters of Bode Miller and Aksel Lund Svindal, eating Mum’s rissoles and obeying Dad’s rules, training mouthy brats who according to their snow-blind parents had the talent to be a Kjetil André Aamodt or a Lasse Kjus. Operating the ski lifts in Tryvannskleiva for a wage they wouldn’t bloody dare give child workers in India. And that was how Stian knew it was the chairman of the Ski Club on the phone now. He was the only person Stian knew who avoided ringing people on their mobiles because it was a bit more expensive, and who preferred to force them to run downstairs in prehistoric houses that still had landlines.
    Stian took the receiver his mother held out for him.
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘Hi, Stian, Bakken here.’ Bakken meant slope, and it really was his name. ‘I’ve been told the Kleiva lift’s running.’
    ‘Now?’ Stian said, looking at his watch. 11.15 at night. Closing time was at nine.
    ‘Could you nip up and see what’s going on?’
    ‘ Now? ’
    ‘Unless you’re extremely busy, of course.’
    Stian ignored the sarcasm in the chairman’s intonation. He knew he’d had two disappointing seasons and that the chairman didn’t think it was down to lack of talent but to the large amounts of time Stian did his best to fill with general idleness.
    ‘I haven’t got a car,’ Stian said.
    ‘You can use mine,’ his mother chipped in. She hadn’t gone away; she was standing next to him with her arms crossed.
    ‘Sorry, Stian, but I heard that,’ the chairman commented laconically. ‘The Heming skateboarders must have broken in. I suppose they think it’s funny.’
    It took Stian ten minutes to drive the winding road up to Tryvann Tower. The TV mast was a 118-metre-long javelin drilled into the ground at the top of Oslo’s north-western mountains.
    He came to a halt in the snow-covered car park and noted that the only other vehicle there was a red Golf. He took his skis from the roof box, put them on and skated past the main building and up to where the main chairlift, Tryvann Ekspress, marked the top of the skiing facilities. From there he could see down to the lake and the smaller Kleiva lift with T-bars. Even though there was light from the moon it was too dark to check whether the bars were moving, but he could hear it. The hum of the machinery down