Harry Hole Oslo Sequence 10 - Police

she walked. Or she was walking like that for him. Then she was there, automatically looking behind her to make sure no one was coming. Running her hand through his hair. Without getting up, he wrapped his arms around her thighs and looked up at her.
    ‘Well?’ he said. ‘You’re on this shift too?’
    ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘We let Altman go. He was ordered back to the cancer ward.’
    ‘Then we’ll see all the more of you,’ Anton smiled.
    ‘I wouldn’t bet on it,’ she said. ‘The tests suggest he’s coming round fast.’
    ‘But we’ll meet anyway.’
    He said this in a joking tone. But it wasn’t a joke. And she knew that. Was that why she seemed to stiffen, that her smile became a grimace, that she shoved him away while looking behind her as if to show she did this because someone might see them? Anton let go.
    ‘The head of Crime Squad’s in there now.’
    ‘What’s he doing in there?’
    ‘Talking to him.’
    ‘What about?’
    ‘I can’t say,’ he said. Instead of I don’t know. God, he was so pathetic.
    At that moment the door opened and Gunnar Hagen came out. He stopped, looked from Mona to Anton and back to Mona again. As though they had coded messages painted on their faces. Mona had, if nothing else, a tinge of red on hers as she darted through the door behind Hagen.
    ‘Well?’ Anton said, trying to appear unmoved. And realised that Hagen’s look had not been of someone who understood, but of someone who didn’t understand. He stared at Anton as if he were a Martian; it was the mystified look of a man who had just had all his beliefs turned upside down.
    ‘The man in there . . .’ Hagen said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. ‘You keep a damn good eye on him, Anton. D’you hear me? You keep a damn good eye on him.’
    Anton heard him excitedly repeating the last words to himself as he launched into rapid strides down the corridor.

10
    WHEN KATRINE SAW the face in the door opening she thought at first they had come to the wrong place and that the old woman with grey hair and a drawn face could not possibly be Irja Jacobsen.
    ‘What do you want?’ she asked, glaring at them with suspicion.
    ‘I rang you earlier,’ Beate said. ‘We’d like to talk about Valentin.’
    The woman slammed the door.
    Beate waited until the sound of shuffling feet inside had faded. Then she pressed the handle and opened the door.
    Clothes and plastic bags hung from the hooks along the corridor. Always plastic bags. Why was it that junkies always surrounded themselves with plastic bags? Katrine wondered. Why did they insist on everything they owned being stored, protected, transported in the flimsiest, most unreliable packaging there was? Why did they steal mopeds, hatstands and tea services, anything, and never suitcases and bags?
    The flat was filthy, but still not as bad as most crack dens she had seen. Perhaps the woman of the house, Irja, had some standards and decided to do the cleaning herself. Katrine automatically assumed she she would be on her own in this endeavour. She followed Beate into the sitting room. A man was lying on an old divan, sleeping. Undoubtedly drugged. The room reeked of sweat, smoke, wood marinated in beer, and a sweet smell Katrine couldn’t, or didn’t want to, place. Along the wall were the obligatory stolen goods, pile upon pile of children’s surfboards, all packed in transparent plastic, picturing the same snapping jaws of a great white shark and black bite marks on the tip, to suggest the shark had bitten off a chunk. God knows how they were going to convert these into cash.
    Beate and Katrine continued into the kitchen, where Irja had taken a seat at the tiny table and was rolling herself a cigarette. The table was covered with a little cloth, and there was a sugar bowl with plastic flowers on the windowsill.
    Katrine and Beate sat down opposite her.
    ‘They never stop,’ Irja said, nodding to the traffic in Uelands gate. Her voice had the rasping huskiness that Katrine expected, having seen the flat and the face of the ancient woman in her thirties. ‘Always on the move. Where do they all go?’
    ‘Home,’ Beate suggested. ‘Or they’re leaving home.’
    Irja shrugged her shoulders.
    ‘You’ve left home as well,’ Katrine said. ‘The address on the register . . .’
    ‘I sold my house,’ Irja said. ‘I inherited it. It was too big. It was too . . .’ She stuck out a dry, white tongue, ran it along a cigarette paper while Katrine