Harry Hole Oslo Sequence 10 - Police

.’
    ‘Aurora.’
    The wall of faces gawped up at Ståle Aune. Her name had crossed his lips like a sob. Like a prayer.
    ‘Aurora,’ he repeated.
    At the margins of his field of vision he saw the teacher move towards him.
    ‘What isn’t possible?’ Harry asked.
    ‘His daughter,’ Bjørn said. ‘It . . . just can’t be possible.’
    Ståle’s eyes were swimming with tears. He felt a hand on his shoulder. Then a figure rose, came towards him, the contours blurred like in a fairground mirror. Yet he thought the figure resembled her. Resembled Aurora. As a psychologist he of course knew that this was the brain’s escape, our way of tackling the intolerable, of lying. Of seeing what we want to see. Nevertheless he whispered her name.
    ‘Aurora.’
    And he could even swear the voice was hers.
    ‘Is something the matter . . .?’
    He also heard the last word at the end of the sentence, but wasn’t sure if it was her or his brain that had added it.
    ‘. . . Dad?’
    ‘Why isn’t it possible?’
    ‘Because . . .’ Bjørn said, staring at Harry as though he wasn’t there.
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘Because she’s already dead.’

41
    IT WAS A quiet morning in Vestre Cemetery. All that could be heard was the distant hum of traffic in Sørkedalsveien and the clatter of the trams conveying people to the city centre.
    ‘Roar Midtstuen, yes,’ Harry said, striding between the gravestones. ‘How many years has he actually been with you?’
    ‘No one knows,’ Bjørn said, struggling to keep up. ‘Since the dawn of time.’
    ‘And his daughter died in a car accident?’
    ‘Last summer. It’s sick. It just can’t be right. They’ve only got the first part of the DNA code. There’s still a ten, fifteen per cent chance it’s someone else’s DNA, perhaps someone—’ He almost walked into Harry, who had come to a sudden halt.
    ‘Well,’ Harry said, sinking to his knees and sticking his fingers into the earth by the gravestone bearing Fia Midtstuen’s name, ‘that chance just plummeted to zero.’ He raised his hand and sprinkled freshly dug soil between his fingers. ‘He dug up the body, transported it to Come As You Are. And set fire to it.’
    ‘F . . .’
    Harry heard the tears in his colleague’s voice. Avoided looking at him. Left him in peace. Waited. Closed his eyes, listened. A bird sang a – to human ears – meaningless song. The carefree, whistling wind nudged the clouds along. A metro train rattled westwards. Time went, but did it have anywhere to go any more? Harry opened his eyes again. Coughed.
    ‘We’d better ask them to dig up the coffin and have this confirmed before we contact the father.’
    ‘I’ll do that.’
    ‘Bjørn,’ Harry said, ‘this is better. This wasn’t a young girl burned alive. OK?’
    ‘Sorry, I’m just exhausted. And Roar was in a bad enough state before, so I . . .’ He threw up his arms in desperation.
    ‘That’s fine,’ Harry said, getting up.
    ‘Where are you going?’
    Harry looked to the north, to the road and the metro. The clouds were drifting towards him. A northerly. And there it was again. The sensation that he knew something he didn’t know yet, something down there in the murky depths inside him, but it would not float to the surface.
    ‘I have to take care of something.’
    ‘Where?’
    ‘Just something I’ve put off for too long.’
    ‘Right. By the way, there was something I was wondering about.’
    Harry glanced at his watch and nodded.
    ‘When you spoke to Bellman yesterday what did he think could have happened to the bullet?’
    ‘He had no idea.’
    ‘What about you? You usually have at least one hypothesis.’
    ‘Mm. I’ve got to be off.’
    ‘Harry?’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘Don’t . . .’ Bjørn gave a sheepish smile. ‘Don’t do anything stupid.’
    Katrine Bratt leaned back in her chair and looked at the screen. Bjørn Holm had just rung to say they had found the father, a Midtstuen who had investigated the murder of Kalsnes, but the reason they hadn’t found him among the police officers with young daughters was that his daughter was already dead. And as that meant Katrine was temporarily unemployed she had looked at her search history from the day before. They hadn’t had any hits for Mikael Bellman and René Kalsnes. When she had looked for a list of the people most frequently connected with Mikael Bellman, three names stood out. First was Ulla Bellman. Then came Truls Berntsen. And in third place, Isabelle