Harry Hole Oslo Sequence 10 - Police

successful with the independent group Harry Hole led, do you remember? The Ustaoset murders would never have been solved if—’
    ‘I think you heard me, Hagen. I’d prefer to consider changes to the management of the investigation. Management is responsible for the culture among its employees, and now it seems it’s not result-orientated enough. If there’s nothing else, I have a meeting in a few minutes.’
    Hagen couldn’t believe his ears. He staggered to his feet, as though the blood in his legs hadn’t circulated during the short time he had been sitting on the low, narrow chair. Stumbled towards the door.
    ‘By the way,’ Bellman said behind him and Hagen heard him stifle a yawn, ‘anything new in the Gusto Hanssen case?’
    ‘As you yourself said,’ Hagen answered, without turning so as not to show Bellman his face, where – in contrast to his legs – the blood vessels felt as if they were under immense pressure, his voice trembling with fury, ‘the case no longer has priority.’
    Mikael Bellman waited until the door closed and he heard Hagen say goodbye to the secretary in the anteroom. Then he slumped into the high-backed leather chair and crumpled. He hadn’t summoned Hagen to question him about the police murders, and he had a suspicion Hagen had realised that. The telephone call he had received from Isabelle Skøyen an hour ago had been the cause. She, of course, had rabbited on about how these unsolved murders were making them both look incompetent and impotent. And how, unlike him, she was dependent on the electorate’s approval. He had been interspersing the monologue with mm s and oh s, waiting for her to finish so that he could put the phone down, when she dropped the bombshell.
    ‘He’s coming out of the coma.’
    Bellman sat with his elbows on the table, his head in his hands. Staring down at the desk’s shiny varnish in which he could see the blurred contours of himself. Women thought he was good-looking. Isabelle had told him straight out that was why she had chosen him, she liked attractive men. That was why she’d had sex with Gusto. The Elvis lookalike. People often misunderstood when men were good-looking. Mikael thought of the Kripos officer, the one who had tried it on with him, who had wanted to kiss him. He thought of Isabelle. And Gusto. Imagined them together. The three of them together. He got up from the chair abruptly. Went back to the window.
    Everything had been set in motion. She had used the expression. Set in motion . All he had to do was wait. It should have made him feel calmer, better disposed to the world around him. So why had he plunged the knife into Hagen and turned it? To watch him wriggle? Just to see another tormented face, as tormented as the one reflected in the desk? But soon it would be over. Everything was in her hands now. And when what had to be done was done, they could carry on as before. They could forget Asayev, Gusto and definitely the man no one could stop talking about, Harry Hole. Sooner or later it would all be forgotten, even these police murders, in time.
    Mikael Bellman wanted to test if that was what he wanted. But decided against it. He knew it was what he wanted.

7
    STÅLE AUNE INHALED. this was one of the crossroads in the therapy, where he would have to take a decision. He decided.
    ‘There may be something unresolved about your sexuality.’
    The patient eyed him. Tight-lipped smile. Narrow eyes. The slender hands with the almost abnormally long fingers rose, appeared to be about to straighten the knot of his tie above the pinstriped jacket, but didn’t. Ståle had noticed this movement a few times before, and it reminded him of patients who have succeeded in breaking a specific compulsive habit but who can’t shake the initial gesture, the hand poised to do something, an uncompleted action, an involuntary though definitely interpretable action. Like a scar, a limp. An echo. A reminder that nothing disappears in its entirety, everything leaves a trace in some way, somewhere. Like childhood. People you have known. Something you ate and couldn’t tolerate. A passion you had. Cellular memory.
    The patient’s hand fell back into his lap. He cleared his throat, and his voice sounded tight and metallic. ‘What the hell do you mean? Are we starting on that Freud shit now?’
    Ståle looked at the man. He had caught a glimpse of a TV crime series recently in which the police interpreted people’s emotional lives: the