Harry Hole Oslo Sequence 10 - Police

overdose. Made it look like suicide. So he did something about it.’
    ‘He could have just escaped?’
    ‘They would have found him. He had to make it seem as if he was dead.’
    ‘And his pal Judas was . . .’
    ‘Useful. Valentin isn’t like the rest of us, Katrine.’
    Katrine ignored his inclusive ‘us’. ‘Why did you want to tell me this? You were an accessory.’
    ‘I only tattooed a dead man. Besides, you have to catch Valentin.’
    ‘Why?’
    Red Scalp closed his eyes. ‘I’ve been dreaming so much recently, Katrine. He’s coming. Coming back to join the living. But, first of all, he has to get rid of the past. Everyone in his way. Everyone who knows. And I’m one of them. I’m being released next week. You have to catch him . . .’
    ‘. . . before he catches you,’ Katrine completed, staring without seeing at the man in front of her. For it was as if it was being played out, the scene Rico had set, where he tattooed the three-day-old body. And it was so unsettling that she was unaware of anything; she neither heard nor saw. Not until she felt a tiny droplet on her neck. Heard his low rattle and looked down. And jumped up from the chair. Stumbled towards the door, her nausea rising.
    Anton Mittet woke up.
    His heart was pounding wildly, and he was gulping down air.
    Blinked for one confused moment before managing to focus.
    Looked into the white wall in front of him. He was still sitting on the chair with his head lolling against the wall behind him. He had fallen asleep. Slept on the job.
    It had never happened before. He lifted his left hand. It felt as if it weighed twenty kilos. And why was his heart beating as though he had run a half-marathon?
    He looked at his watch. A quarter past eleven. He had been asleep for more than an hour! How could it have happened? He felt his heart gradually slowing down. It must have been all the stress over the past few weeks. The shifts, the daily rhythm out of sync. Laura and Mona.
    What had woken him? Another noise?
    He listened.
    Nothing, just a quivering silence. And this vague dreamlike memory that the brain had registered something it found unsettling. It was like when he slept in their house in Drammen down by the river. He knew snarling boat engines raced past outside their open window, but his brain didn’t register anything. A tiny creak of the bedroom door, on the other hand, and he jumped up. Laura claimed this was something he had started doing after the Drammen case, when they had found the young man, René Kalsnes, by the river.
    He closed his eyes. Opened them wide again. Jesus, he had fallen asleep again! He got up. Felt so dizzy he had to sit down. Blinked. One hell of a mist, coating his senses.
    He looked down at the empty coffee cup beside the chair. He would have to go and make himself a double espresso. Oh no, shit, it had run out of capsules. He would have to ring Mona and ask her to bring a cup for him; it wasn’t long before her next visit. He picked up the phone. Her name was under GAMLEM CONTACT RIKSHOSPITAL . Which was no more than a safety precaution in case Laura checked the call log on his mobile phone and saw the frequent calls to this number. Of course he deleted the texts as he went. Anton Mittet was going to call when his brain identified it.
    The wrong sound. The creak of the bedroom door.
    It was the silence.
    It was the sound that wasn’t there that was wrong.
    The sonar beep. The heart monitor.
    Anton struggled to his feet. Staggered to the door, burst in. Tried to blink away the fuzziness. Stared at the machine’s green shimmering screen. At the dead, flat line extending across it.
    He ran to the bed. Looked down at the pallid face lying there.
    He heard the sound of running footsteps approaching in the corridor. An alarm must have gone off in the duty office when the machine stopped registering heartbeats. Anton instinctively placed a hand on the man’s forehead. Still warm. However, Anton had seen enough bodies to leave no room for doubt. The patient was dead.



11
    THE FUNERAL OF the patient was a brief, efficient affair with an extremely meagre turnout. The priest didn’t even try to suggest the man in the coffin was much-loved, had lived an exemplary life or was eligible to enter paradise. He therefore just went straight to Jesus, who, he maintained, had let all sinners off the hook.
    There weren’t even enough volunteers to carry the coffin, so it had to be left standing in front of the altar while