Harry Hole Oslo Sequence 10 - Police

beaker.
    ‘Give it your best shot, Hole. If there’s enough room. Toilet’s down the corridor. Think about something nice, OK?’
    ‘Mm.’
    Harry had sensed rather than heard the suppressed laughter as he left them.
    Think about something nice.
    Harry fingered the copy of the report lying on the kitchen worktop. He had asked Hagen to send it. Privately. Discreetly. It consisted largely of medical terms in Latin. He understood some of them though. Enough to know that Rudolf Asayev had died in the same mysterious, inexplicable way that he had lived. And, lacking anything to suggest criminal activity, they had been obliged to conclude that it had been a cerebral infarction. A stroke. The kind of thing that happens.
    As a detective, Harry could have told them that this kind of thing doesn’t happen. A Crown witness doesn’t ‘happen to’ die. What was it that Arnold had said? In ninety-four per cent of cases it was murder if someone had enough to lose as a result of the witness’s testimony.
    The paradox was of course that Harry himself would have had something to lose if Asayev had testified. A lot to lose. So why bother? Why not just show gratitude, bow and move on with his life? There was a simple answer to that. His system had a malfunction.
    Harry slung the report down to the end of the long oak table. And decided he would shred it in the morning. Now he needed to get some sleep.
    Think about something nice.
    Harry got up and undressed on his way to the bathroom. Stood under the shower, turned the dial to burning hot. Felt his skin tingle and smart, punishing him.
    Think about something nice.
    He dried himself, lay down under the clean white bedlinen in their double bed, closed his eyes and tried to hurry the process. But the thoughts reached him before sleep did.
    He had thought about her.
    When he had been standing in the toilet cubicle with his eyes closed, concentrating, trying to think of something nice, he had thought about Silje Gravseng. Thought of her soft, suntanned skin, her lips, her burning breath on his face, the wild fury in her eyes, the muscular body, the curves, the firm flesh, all the unjust beauty of the young.
    Shit!
    Her hand over his belt, on his stomach. Her body on its way down to meet his. The half-nelson. Her head almost on the ground, the protesting groans, the arched back with her bottom raised towards him, as slender as a doe.
    Shit, shit!
    He sat up in bed. Rakel was smiling warmly at him from the photo on the bedside table. Warm, clever and knowing. But did she actually know? If she had been allowed to spend five seconds in his head, to see who he actually was, would she have run off screaming? Or are we all equally sick? Is the difference only who lets the monster loose and who doesn’t?
    He had thought about her. Thought that he had done exactly what she’d wanted, there, on the desk, knocked the pile of students’ work flying, sending the sheets fluttering around the room like faded butterflies, which stuck to their skin, rough paper with small, black letters that became categories of murder: sex, alcohol, crimes of passion, family feuds, honour killings and greed. He had thought about her as he stood there in the toilet. And he had filled the beaker to the brim.

21
    BEATE LØNN YAWNED, blinked and stared out of the tram window. The morning sun had started its work burning away the mist over Frogner Park. The dewy tennis courts were empty. There was just one emaciated, elderly man standing lost in thought on a shale court where they still hadn’t put up the nets for the new season. Staring at the tram. Thin thighs protruding from antiquated shorts, blue office shirt buttoned up wrongly, racket dragging on the ground. Waiting for a partner who wasn’t coming, Beate thought. Perhaps because the arrangement was for this time last year, and he was no longer alive. She knew how he felt.
    She glimpsed the Monolith as they glided past the main park gate to where the tram stopped.
    In fact, she had a partner, she had visited him last night, after Katrine had collected the key for the Evidence Room. That was why she was on this tram on this side of town. He was an ordinary man. That was how she classified him. Not the kind of man you dreamt about. Just the kind of man you needed once in a while. His children were at the ex’s, and now that her little one was staying with her mother-in-law in Steinkjer they had the time and opportunity to meet a little more. Nevertheless,