Harry Hole Oslo Sequence 10 - Police

between Bangkok and Pattaya? From the stinking hole in the ground they called a toilet? Or at the hotel? Wasn’t that how bacteria were often spread, through the air conditioning? But the doctor had said the initial symptoms were the same as with a cold, and he’d had those on the flight. But if these bacteria had been in the air on the plane, the other passengers would have been ill too. He heard the woman’s voice, lower and in Norwegian this time:
    ‘Anthrax. My God, I thought that only existed as a biological weapon.’
    ‘Not at all.’ Man’s voice. ‘I googled it on the way here. Bacillus anthracis . Can lie dormant for years. It’s a tough little bugger. Spreads by forming spores. Same spores as in the powder posted to the Americans, do you remember? Ten or so years ago.’
    ‘Do you think someone sent him a letter containing anthrax?’
    ‘He may have caught it anywhere, but the most common scenario is close contact with livestock. We’ll probably never find out.’
    But Rico knew. Knew with a sudden clarity. He put a hand to his oxygen mask.
    ‘Did you track down his next of kin?’
    ‘Yes, I did.’
    ‘And?’
    ‘They said he could rot.’
    ‘Right. Paedophile?’
    ‘No. But the list was long enough. Hey, he’s moving.’
    Rico had managed to remove the mask and was trying to speak. But all that came out was a hoarse whisper. He tried again. Saw that the woman had blonde curls and was staring down at him with a mixture of concern and disgust.
    ‘Doctor, is it . . .?’
    ‘No, it isn’t contagious between humans.’
    Not contagious, so it was just him.
    Her face came closer. And even dying – or perhaps precisely because he was – Rico Herrem greedily inhaled her perfume. Inhaled it the way he had inhaled that day in Fiskebutikken. From the woollen glove, smelling of wet wool and tasting of chalk. Powder. The man with a scarf in front of his nose and mouth. Not to hide his face. Tiny spores flying through the air. Might have been able to save you. But in the lungs . . . ’
    He strained to speak, and with great difficulty pronounced the words. Three words. It flashed through his mind that they were his last. Then – like the curtain falling after a pathetic, tormented performance lasting forty-two years – a great darkness descended over Rico Herrem.
    The intense, brutal rain hammered on the car roof, as if it were trying to get in, and Kari Farstad gave an involuntary shudder. Her skin was perpetually covered with a layer of sweat, but they said it would be better when the rainy season was over, sometime in November. She longed to be home in the embassy flat, she hated these trips to Pattaya, and this was not the first. She hadn’t chosen this career path to work with human detritus. The opposite, in fact. She had envisaged cocktail parties with interesting, intelligent people, lofty conversation about politics and culture; she had expected personal development and greater understanding of the big issues. Instead of this confusion surrounding the small issues. Like how to get a Norwegian sexual predator a good lawyer, possibly have him deported and sent to a Norwegian prison with the standards of a three-star hotel.
    As suddenly as it had started, the rain stopped and they raced through the clouds of steam hovering above the hot tarmac.
    ‘What was it you said Herrem said again?’ the embassy secretary asked.
    ‘Valentin,’ Kari replied.
    ‘No, the rest.’
    ‘It was very unclear. A long word. May have been two. Sounded like something to do with a commode.’
    ‘Commode?’
    ‘Something like that.’
    Kari stared at the rows of rubber trees planted alongside the motorway. She wanted to go home. Home as in home home.

23
    HARRY RAN DOWN the corridor of PHS past the Frans Widerberg painting.
    She was standing in the doorway of the gym. Ready for battle in tight-fitting sports gear. Her arms crossed, leaning against the door frame, she followed him with her eyes. Harry was about to nod, but someone shouted ‘Silje!’ and she went inside.
    On the first floor Harry popped his head round the door to see Arnold.
    ‘How did the lecture go?’
    ‘Not bad, but they probably missed your gruesome, if irrelevant, examples from the so-called real world,’ Arnold said, continuing to massage his bad foot.
    ‘Anyway, thanks for covering my slot,’ Harry smiled.
    ‘No problem. What was so important?’
    ‘Had to go up to the Pathology Unit. The pathologist has agreed to exhume the