Harry Hole Oslo Sequence 10 - Police

Beate noticed that she limited it. Basically it was more important for her to know he was there as an option rather than for them to spend time together. He hadn’t been able to replace Jack, but that didn’t matter. She didn’t want a replacement, she wanted this. Something else, something non-committal, something that wouldn’t cost her much if it was taken from her.
    Beate stared through the window, at the tram going the opposite way sliding in beside them. In the silence she could hear low music coming from the headphones of the girl sitting next to her and recognised an irritating pop hit from the nineties. From the time when she had been the quietest girl at Police College. Pale with an embarrassing tendency to blush as soon as anyone looked in her direction. Though fortunately not many did. And those who did forgot her at once. Beate Lønn had the type of face and charisma that made her a non-event, an aquarium fish, visual Teflon.
    But she remembered them.
    Every single one of them.
    And that was why she could look at the faces on the tram alongside her and remember where she had seen them and when. Perhaps on the same tram the day before, perhaps in a school playground twenty years ago, perhaps on CCTV footage of a bank robbery, perhaps on an escalator at Steen & Strøm where she went to buy a pair of tights. And it didn’t make any difference if they had grown older, put on make-up, grown a beard, had a haircut, Botox or silicone implants, it was as though the face, their real face, shone through, as though it was a constant, something unique, an eleven-figure number in a DNA code. And this was her blessing and curse, which some psychiatrists wanted to label Asperger’s syndrome, others minor brain damage, for which her fusiform gyrus – the brain’s centre for facial recognition – tried to compensate. And which others, wiser counsels, didn’t call anything at all. They just stated that her brain stored the uniqueness of every face like a computer stores the numbers of a DNA code for later identification.
    And that was why it was not unusual for Beate Lønn’s brain to be whirring already, trying to place the face of the man in the other tram.
    What was unusual was that she couldn’t place it straight away.
    Only a metre and a half separated them, and her attention had been drawn to him because he was writing in the condensation on the window and therefore had his face turned to her. She had seen him before, but the name, the numbers of the DNA code markers that linked the face to the name, was concealed.
    Perhaps it was the reflection on the glass, perhaps a shadow covering his eyes. She was about to give up when her tram lurched into motion, the light fell differently and he raised his gaze and met hers.
    An electric shock went through Beate Lønn.
    His gaze was that of a reptile.
    The cold gaze of a murderer who knew who she was.
    Valentin Gjertsen.
    And she also knew why she hadn’t recognised him at once. How he had managed to stay hidden.
    Beate Lønn got up from her seat. Tried to get out, but the girl beside her had her eyes closed and was nodding her head. Beate nudged her and the girl looked up with annoyance.
    ‘Out,’ Beate mouthed.
    The girl raised a pencilled eyebrow, but didn’t stir.
    Beate grabbed her headphones.
    ‘Police. I’m getting off.’
    ‘We’re moving,’ the girl said.
    ‘Shift your fat arse now!’
    The other passengers turned towards Beate Lønn. But she didn’t blush. She wasn’t that quiet girl any longer. Her figure was as petite, her skin pale to the point of transparency, her hair colourless and dry like uncooked spaghetti. But that Beate Lønn no longer existed.
    ‘Stop the tram! Police! Stop!’
    She ploughed her way through to the driver and the exit. Heard the thin scream of brakes. She was there, had flashed her ID at the driver, waited impatiently. They came to a halt with a final jerk, the standing passengers lunged forward and hung onto the straps as the doors banged open. Beate was outside in one leap, and running up the tramway that divided the road. Felt the dew on the grass through the thin fabric of her shoes. The other tram was moving, she heard the low, rising song of the rails, and she ran as fast as she could. There was no reason to assume that Valentin was armed, and he would never escape from a packed tram with her waving police ID, shouting that he was under arrest. If she could only catch the tram. Running wasn’t her strong