Harry Hole Oslo Sequence 10 - Police

looked attractive. Had taken more care than usual. Attractive and turned to stone in her chair.
    ‘Hello, darling,’ he exclaimed, hearing at once how shrill and false it sounded. Saw in her face how it sounded.
    Her eyes were fixed on him, with the remnants of a confusion that was quickly giving way to something else. Mikael Bellman’s brain was churning. Absorbing and processing data, looking for connections, drawing a conclusion. He knew the wet tips of his hair could not be explained satisfactorily. She had seen Isabelle. Her brain, like his, was processing at lightning speed. That is how the human brain is. Mercilessly logical as it assembles all the tiny bits of information, which suddenly fit. And he saw that the something else had already ousted the confusion. The certainty. She lowered her gaze, so that when he was standing in front of her, she was looking straight at his midriff.
    He hardly recognised her voice as she whispered: ‘You got her text a little too late then.’
    Katrine turned the key in the lock and pulled the door, but it was jammed.
    Gunnar Hagen stepped forward and shook it open.
    A stale, heated damp atmosphere met them.
    ‘Here,’ Gunnar Hagen said. ‘We’ve left it untouched since the last time it was used.’
    Katrine went in first and pressed the light switch. ‘Welcome to Bergen’s Oslo branch office,’ she drawled.
    Beate Lønn crossed the threshold. ‘So this is where we’re to be hidden.’
    Cold, blue light from the neon tube fell on a square concrete room with greyish-blue lino on the floor and nothing on the walls. The windowless room boasted three desks with a computer on each and a chair. On one desk there was a brown-stained coffee machine and a large jug of water.
    ‘We’ve been allocated an office in the basement of Police HQ?’ Ståle Aune exclaimed, stupefied.
    ‘Officially speaking, you are in fact on Oslo Prison property,’ Gunnar Hagen said. ‘The corridor outside goes under the car park. If you go up the iron stairs outside the door you’ll end up in the reception area of the prison.’
    By way of response, the first notes of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue sounded. Hagen took out his mobile phone. Katrine glanced over his shoulder. And saw the name Anton Mittet light up on the display. Hagen pressed Reject and put the mobile back in his pocket.
    ‘The investigative unit has a meeting now, so I’ll leave you to it,’ he said.
    The others stood looking at one another after Hagen had left.
    ‘It’s bloody hot in here,’ Katrine said, unbuttoning her jacket. ‘But I can’t see any radiators.’
    ‘That’s because the prison boilers are in the room next door,’ Bjørn Holm laughed, hanging his suede jacket over a chair back. ‘We called it “The Boiler Room”.’
    ‘So you’ve been here before, have you?’ Aune loosened his bow tie.
    ‘Yes, we have. We had an even smaller group then.’ He nodded towards the desks. ‘Three, as you can see. Solved the case anyway. But then Harry was in charge . . .’ He shot Katrine a quick glance. ‘I didn’t mean to—’
    ‘It’s OK, Bjørn,’ Katrine said. ‘I’m not Harry, and I’m not in charge either. It would be fine with me if you reported to me formally, so that Hagen could wash his hands of the whole business, but I’ve got more than enough to do just managing myself. Beate’s the boss. She has the seniority and management experience.’
    The others looked at Beate. Who shrugged her shoulders. ‘If that’s what you’d all like I can be boss, if there’s any need for it.’
    ‘There is a need for it,’ Katrine said.
    Aune and Bjørn nodded.
    ‘Good,’ Beate said. ‘Let’s get started. We’ve got mobile phone coverage. An Internet connection. And we’ve got . . . coffee cups.’ She took a white one from behind the coffee machine. Read the writing in felt pen. ‘Hank Williams?’
    ‘Mine,’ said Bjørn.
    She lifted another. ‘John Fante?’
    ‘Harry’s.’
    ‘OK, so let’s detail the jobs,’ Beate said, putting down the cup. ‘Katrine?’
    ‘I’ll keep watch online. Still no sign of life from either Valentin Gjertsen or Judas Johansen. You need to be smart to hide from the electronic eye for so long, and that reinforces the theory that it wasn’t Judas Johansen who escaped. Judas is not exactly top priority for the police, and it seems unlikely he would restrict his freedom by going into total blackout just to escape a couple of months in prison. Valentin has