Harry Hole Oslo Sequence 10 - Police

expression he used to wear when the big boys in Manglerud reckoned it was time to shut the poncy upstart’s gob, and Mikael needed help. Truls’s help. And of course Truls stepped up. And he was the one who went home with black eyes and thick lips, not Mikael. No, his good looks were spared. For Ulla.
    ‘Don’t cut off too much,’ Truls said. He watched his hair falling from his pale, slightly protruding forehead in the mirror. The forehead and the sturdy underbite often led people to assume he was stupid. Which on occasion was an advantage. On occasion. He closed his eyes. Trying to decide whether Mikael’s desperate expression was there in the press conference photos or if he saw it only because he wanted to see it.
    Suspension. Expulsion. Rejection.
    He was still getting his salary. Mikael had been apologetic. Placed a hand on his shoulder and said it was in everyone’s best interest, Truls’s too. Until it was decided what the consequences would be for a policeman who had received money he couldn’t or wouldn’t account for. Mikael had even made sure that Truls was entitled to keep some allowances. So it wasn’t as if he had to go to cheap hairdressers. He had always come here. But he liked it even better now. He liked having exactly the same haircut as the Arab in the next chair. The terrorist cut.
    ‘What are you laughing at, pal?’
    Truls stopped abruptly when he heard his own grunted guffaws. Those which had given him the sobriquet Beavis. No, Mikael had given it to him. During the school party, to the amusement of everyone else, as they discovered, holy shit, that Truls Berntsen did indeed look and sound like the MTV cartoon character! Had Ulla been there? Or was Mikael sitting with his arm round another girl? Ulla with the gentle eyes, with the white sweater, with the slender hand she had once placed on his neck and drawn his head closer, shouted in his ear to drown the roars of the Kawasakis one Sunday in Bryn. She only wanted to ask where Mikael was. But he could still remember the warmth of her hand, it had felt as if it would melt him, make his knees buckle under him on the bridge over the motorway, then and there in the morning sun. And with her breath in his ear and on his cheek, his senses had been working overtime. Even surrounded by the stench of petrol, exhaust and burnt rubber from motorbikes below he could identify her toothpaste, tell her lip gloss was strawberry flavour and that her sweater had been washed in Milo. That Mikael had kissed her. Had had her. Or had he been imagining it? He definitely remembered he had answered he didn’t know. Even though he did. Even though part of him had wanted to tell her. Had wanted to crush the gentleness, the purity, the innocence and the naivety in her eyes. To crush him, Mikael.
    But of course he hadn’t.
    Why would he? Mikael was his best friend. His only friend. And what would he have achieved by telling her Mikael was up at Angelica’s house. Ulla could get anyone she wanted, and she didn’t want him, Truls. As long as she was with Mikael he would at least have a chance to be in her presence. He’d had the opportunity, but not the motive.
    Not then.
    ‘That do you, pal?’
    Truls looked at the back of his head in the round plastic mirror the poof was holding.
    Terrorist cut. Suicide bomber cut. He grunted. Got up, chucked a 200-krone note on the newspaper to avoid hand-to-hand contact. Went out into the March day that was still no more than a rumour that spring was on its way. Glanced up at Police HQ. Started walking towards the metro in Grønland. The haircut had taken nine and a half minutes. He lifted his head, walked faster. He had no deadlines. Nothing to do. Oh, yes, he did have something. But it didn’t require much work, and he had his usual resources: time to plan, hatred, the determination to lose everything. He glanced at the shop window in one of the district’s Asian food outlets. And confirmed he finally looked like what he was.
    Gunnar Hagen sat gazing at the wallpaper above the Chief of Police’s desk and empty chair. Focused on the darker patches from the photos that had hung there for as long as anyone could remember. There had been pictures of former police chiefs, probably meant as sources of inspiration, but Mikael Bellman was clearly able to do without them. Without the inquisitorial stares at their successor.
    Hagen wanted to drum his fingers on the arm of the chair, but there weren’t any arms. Bellman