Harry Hole Oslo Sequence 10 - Police

hand on the gearstick, tried to put it in reverse. But it wouldn’t go. Everything was moving in slow motion. Wanted to slip the clutch, accelerate, but that would only send them forwards. Towards the edge. To the precipice. Straight down into the river. Forty metres. This was . . . This was . . . He shook the gear lever and pulled at it. Heard the rain more clearly and felt the chilly night air down the whole of the left side of his body now. Someone had opened the door. The clutch. Where was his foot? This was a carbon copy. Reverse gear. There we are.
    Mikael Bellman stared up at the ceiling. Listened to the reassuring patter of rain on the roof. Dutch tiles. Guaranteed to last forty years. Mikael wondered how many tiles they sold just as a result of this guarantee. More than enough to pay for the ones that didn’t last that long. If there was one thing people wanted it was a guarantee that things would last.
    Ulla lay with her head on his chest.
    They had spoken. Spoken at length. For the first time he could remember. She had cried. Not the painful tears he hated but the others, the gentle tears that denoted less pain, more loss, the loss of something that had been and could never return. The tears that told him something in their relationship had been so precious it was worth the loss. He didn’t feel the loss until she cried. It was as though he needed her tears to show him. They removed the curtain that was normally there; the curtain between what Mikael Bellman thought and what Mikael Bellman felt. She was crying for them both, she always had done. She had laughed for them both as well.
    He had wanted to comfort her. Had stroked her hair. Allowed her tears to wet the light blue shirt she had ironed for him the day before. Then he had, almost inadvertently, kissed her. Or had it been consciously? Had it been out of curiosity? The curiosity to know how she would react, the same kind of curiosity he had felt when he, as a young detective, had questioned suspects according to the Inbau, Reid and Buckley nine-step model, the step where they press the emotional button just to see what reaction they get.
    At first Ulla had not reacted to the kiss, she had just stiffened. Then she had responded gently. He knew her kisses but not this one. The tentative, hesitant one. Then he had kissed her with more hunger. And she had taken off. Dragged him into bed. Torn off his clothes. And in the darkness he’d had the thought again. That she wasn’t him. Gusto. And his erection had subsided even before they were under the duvet.
    He had explained that he was too tired. He’d had too much to think about. The situation was too confusing, the shame of what he had done too great. Hastening to add that she , the other woman, had nothing to do with it. And he was able to tell himself that this was actually true.
    He closed his eyes again. But it was impossible to sleep. There was the unrest, the same unrest he had woken to over recent months, a vague feeling that something terrible had happened or was about to happen, and for some time he hoped it was just the lingering effect of a dream until he remembered it.
    Something made him open his eyes again. A light. A white light on the ceiling. From the floor beside his bed. He turned and looked down at the display on his phone. On silent, but always on. He had agreed with Isabelle that they should never send messages at night. What her reason was, he had never asked. And she had appeared to take it well when he explained that they wouldn’t be able to see each other for a while. Even though he thought she had understood what he meant. That the bit about ‘a while’ should be deleted.
    Mikael was relieved when he saw the text was from Truls. Then taken aback. Drunk probably. Or maybe the wrong number, maybe it was meant for a woman he hadn’t mentioned. The text consisted of two words:
    Sleep well .
    Anton Mittet woke up.
    The first thing he registered was the sound of rain, which was now no more than a light mumble on the windscreen. Then that the engine was switched off, his head ached and he couldn’t move his hands.
    He opened his eyes.
    The headlamps were still on. They shone down along the ground, through the rain and into the darkness where the land suddenly vanished. The wet windscreen prevented him from seeing the spruce forest on the other side of the gorge, but he knew it was there. Uninhabited. Silent. Blind. They hadn’t been able to find witnesses that time. Not