Harry Hole Oslo Sequence 10 - Police

her home, for goodness’ sake!
    Music was coming from the first floor. He was playing one of Harry’s old CDs. One of them she liked as well. Talking Heads. Little Creatures .
    She looked down at the phone again, urging it to ring. Twice she had rung Harry, but still there was no answer. They had planned it as a nice surprise. The news had come from the clinic the day before. It was earlier than the date they’d set, but they had decided he was ready. Oleg had been so excited and it had been his idea not to say anything before they arrived. Just go home and then when Harry came home, jump out and say boo.
    That was the word he had used: ‘boo’.
    Rakel had had her doubts. Harry didn’t like surprises. But Oleg had insisted. Harry would bloody well have to put up with suddenly being happy. And so she had gone along with it.
    But now she regretted having done so.
    She went from the window, put the phone down on the worktop beside his coffee cup. Usually he was painfully scrupulous about clearing everything away before leaving the house. He must have been stressed by these police murders. He hadn’t mentioned Beate Lønn in their nightly conversations recently, a sure sign that he was thinking about her.
    Rakel spun round. It wasn’t her imagination this time, she had heard something. Shoes crunching on the gravel. She went back to the window. Stared into the darkness, which seemed to her to be deepening by the second.
    Froze.
    Someone was there. A figure had just moved from the tree it had been standing by. And it was coming this way. A person dressed in black. How long had it been there?
    ‘Oleg!’ Rakel shouted, her heart racing. ‘Oleg!’
    The music upstairs was turned down. ‘Yes?’
    ‘Come down here! Now!’
    ‘Is he coming?’
    Yes, she thought. He’s coming.
    The figure that approached was smaller than she’d thought at first. It was moving towards the front door, and as it came closer in the light from the outside lamps, she saw to her surprise and relief that it was a woman. No, a girl. In a tracksuit, it appeared. Three seconds later, the bell rang.
    Rakel hesitated. Glanced at Oleg, who had stopped halfway down the stairs and was looking at her with a quizzical expression.
    ‘It’s not Harry,’ Rakel said with a quick smile. ‘I’ll get it. Just go back up, Oleg.’
    The girl standing on the step calmed Rakel’s heart rate even further. She looked frightened.
    ‘You’re Rakel,’ she said. ‘Harry’s girlfriend.’
    It struck Rakel that this introduction ought to have unsettled her. A beautiful young girl with a trembling voice addressing her with a reference to her husband-to-be. Probably she ought to check the tight-fitting tracksuit top for an incipient stomach bulge.
    But she wasn’t unsettled, and she didn’t check. Just nodded by way of a response.
    ‘That’s me.’
    ‘And I’m Silje Gravseng.’
    The girl looked at Rakel expectantly, as though waiting for a reaction, thinking the name should mean something to her. Rakel noticed the girl had her hands behind her back. A psychologist had once told her people who hid their hands had something to hide. Yes, she’d thought. Their hands.
    Rakel smiled. ‘So how can I help you, Silje?’
    ‘Harry is . . . was my lecturer.’
    ‘Oh yes?’
    ‘There’s something I have to tell you about him. And about me.’
    Rakel frowned. ‘Really?’
    ‘May I come in?’
    Rakel hesitated. She didn’t want anyone else in the house. She wanted only Oleg, herself and Harry, when he came. The three of them. No one else. And definitely not someone who had to tell her something about Harry. And about herself. And then it happened anyway. Her eyes involuntarily scanned the young girl’s stomach.
    ‘It won’t take long, fru Fauke.’
    Fru. What had Harry told her? She considered the situation. Heard Oleg had turned his music up again. Then she opened the door.
    The girl stepped inside, bent down and started untying her trainers.
    ‘Don’t bother with that,’ Rakel said. ‘We’ll wrap this up quickly, OK. I’m a bit busy.’
    ‘Right,’ the girl said. It was only now, in the brighter light in the hall, that Rakel saw the glistening layer of sweat on the girl’s face. She followed Rakel into the kitchen. ‘The music,’ she said. ‘Is Harry at home?’
    Rakel sensed it now. The anxiety. The girl had automatically connected the music with Harry. Was that because she knew this was the kind of music Harry listened to? And the