Harry Hole Oslo Sequence 10 - Police

time. She was deep in the FBI’s website, but this statistic had to be either very bloody secret or he’d misunderstood. Chucked the phone onto the desk. She felt like calling Leif Rødbekk. No, not him. Some other idiot who could be bothered to fuck her tonight. The first person to pop into her head produced a frown. Where did he come from? Sweet, but . . . but what? Had she been unconsciously nurturing this thought for a while?
    She dismissed the notion and concentrated on the screen again.
    Perhaps it wasn’t the FBI, perhaps it was the CIA?
    She tried new search terms. Central Intelligence Agency, witness, trial and death. Return. The computer whirred. The first hits came in.
    The door behind her opened, and she felt the draught from the culvert outside.
    ‘Bjørn?’ she said, without looking up from the screen.
    Harry parked his car outside Jakob Church in Hausmanns gate and walked up to number 92.
    He stopped outside and looked up at the facade.
    There was a dim light on the second floor, and he noticed there were bars on the windows now. The new owner was probably sick of the burglaries via the rear fire escape.
    Harry had imagined he would feel more. After all, this was where Gusto had been killed. Where he had almost had to pay with his own life.
    He felt the door. It was just like before. He opened up, went straight in. At the bottom of the stairs he took out the Odessa, released the safety catch, peered up the steps and listened as he breathed in the smell of urine- and vomit-marinated woodwork. Total silence.
    He started up the stairs. Moving as noiselessly as he could over wet newspaper, milk cartons and used syringes. On the second floor he stopped by the door. This was new as well. A metal door. Multiple locks. Only extremely motivated burglars would bother with this.
    Harry saw no reason to knock. No reason to surrender any possible element of surprise. So when he pressed the handle, felt the door react with taut springs, but found it unlocked, he gripped the Odessa with both hands and kicked the heavy door with his right foot.
    He dashed inside and to the left, so as not to stand like a silhouette in the doorway. The springs slammed the door shut behind him.
    Then all was still, there was only a low ticking sound.
    Harry blinked in astonishment.
    Apart from a small portable TV on standby, with white digits showing the wrong time, nothing had changed. It was the same cluttered junkie pit with mattresses and rubbish all over the floor. And one item of rubbish was sitting on a chair staring at him.
    It was Truls Berntsen.
    At least he thought it was Truls Berntsen.
    Had been Truls Berntsen.

45
    THE CHAIR HAD been placed in the centre of the room, beneath the only light, a torn ricepaper lampshade hanging from the ceiling.
    Harry thought that the light, the chair and the TV with the stuttering ticking sound of a dying electrical appliance had to be from the seventies, but he wasn’t sure.
    The same was true of the body on the chair.
    Because it wasn’t easy to say if it was Truls Berntsen, born sometime in the seventies, dead this year, who was taped to the chair. The man had no face. What had once been there was a mush of relatively fresh red blood, black dried blood and white bone fragments. This mush would have run if it hadn’t been held in place by a transparent membrane of plastic wrapped tightly round the head. One of the bones stuck through the plastic. Cling film, Harry thought. Freshly packed mincemeat the way you see it in shops.
    Harry forced himself to look away and tried holding his breath to hear better as he hugged the wall. With his gun half raised, he scanned the room from left to right.
    Stared at the corner leading to the kitchen, saw the side of the old fridge and the work surface, but someone could have been there in the semi-darkness.
    Not a sound. Not a movement.
    Harry waited. Reasoned. If this was a trap someone had set for him, he should already be dead.
    He drew a deep breath. He had the advantage of having been here before, so he knew there was nowhere else to hide other than in the kitchen and the toilet. The disadvantage was that he would have to turn his back on one to check the other.
    He took a decision, strode towards the kitchen, poked his head round the corner, pulled it back fast and waited for his brain to process the information it had received. Stove, piles of pizza boxes and the fridge. No one there.
    He went towards the toilet. He stood in the doorway