Harry Hole Oslo Sequence 10 - Police

imposed from above. Traffic jam on the way home. Mobile off because the battery was dead.
    There were two of them. A man and a woman, both in uniforms without a wrinkle or a stain. As though they had just taken them out of the wardrobe and put them on. Serious, almost frightened eyes. Called her ‘fru Mittet’. No one else did. And she wouldn’t have appreciated it, either. It was his name and she had regretted taking it many times.
    They coughed. They had something to tell her. So what were they waiting for? She already knew. They had already told her with those idiotic, hammed-up tragic faces of theirs. She was furious. So furious that she could feel her face writhing, distorting into someone she didn’t want to be, who had also been forced into a role in this comic tragedy. They had said something. What was it? Was it Norwegian? The words made no sense.
    She had never wanted to have Mr Right. And she had never wanted his name.
    Until now.

15
    THE BLACK VW Sharan slowly rose in circles towards the blue sky. Like a rocket in super slow motion, Katrine thought, watching the trail, which was not fire and smoke but water running from the doors and boot of the crushed car, dissolving into drops and glistening in the sun on its way down to the river.
    ‘We hauled the car up here last time,’ the local police officer said.
    They were standing by the disused sawmill with the peeling red paint and smashed panes in the small windows. The withered grass lay on the ground like a Hitler fringe, combed in the direction the rain had fallen the previous night. In the shadows lay grey flecks of slushy snow. Doomed, a prematurely returning migratory bird sang optimistically, and the river gurgled with contentment.
    ‘But this one was stuck between two rocks, so it was easier to raise it straight up.’
    Katrine’s gaze followed the river downstream. Above the sawmill, there was a dam, where the water trickled between the enormous grey rocks that had embraced the vehicle. She saw the sun glinting on the scattered fragments of glass. Then her eyes were drawn up the vertical rock face. Drammen granite. It was a concept apparently. She glimpsed the tail of the truck and the yellow crane protruding over the edge of the precipice high up. Hoped someone had worked out the weight versus jib ratio correctly.
    ‘But if you’re detectives, why aren’t you up there with the others?’ said the policeman who let them through the cordon after carefully examining their ID cards.
    Katrine shrugged. She couldn’t exactly say they were apple scrumping, four people with no real authorisation, on the kind of mission that meant they should keep their distance from the official investigation unit.
    ‘We can see what we need to see from here,’ Beate Lønn said. ‘Thanks for letting us look.’
    ‘No problem.’
    Katrine Bratt switched off her iPad, which was still logged into the Norwegian Prisons site, then hurried after Beate Lønn and Ståle Aune, who had already crossed the cordon and were on their way back to Bjørn Holm’s forty-year-old-plus Volvo Amazon. Its owner came sauntering down the steep gravel road from the top and caught them up at the old-timer with no air conditioning, airbag or central locking, but with two chequered speed stripes over the bonnet, roof and tail. Katrine concluded from Holm’s heaving chest that he would hardly satisfy the current PHS entrance requirements.
    ‘Well?’ Beate said.
    ‘The face is partly smashed, but they reckon the body’s probably one Anton Mittet,’ Holm said, removing his Rasta hat and using it to wipe the sweat from his round face.
    ‘Mittet,’ Beate said. ‘Of course.’
    The others turned to her.
    ‘A local officer. He took over from Simon in Maridalen. Do you remember, Bjørn?’
    ‘No,’ Holm said, without any visible shame. Katrine assumed he had got used to the idea that his boss was from Mars.
    ‘He used to be in the Drammen force. And he was tangentially involved in the investigation of the previous murder here.’
    Katrine shook her head in astonishment. It was one thing for Beate to react as soon as the message about a car in the river had appeared on the police log and she had ordered them all to Drammen because she remembered that it was the exact spot where René Kalsnes had been murdered several years ago. And quite another for her to remember the name of a Drammen man who had been tangentially involved in the investigation.
    ‘He was easy to remember