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The buzz of conversation abruptly ceased. And in that brief pocket of silence, she said his name. And enjoyed it. Because she knew Bodil Melling — however much she wished to have her head on a plate — couldn’t come after her for telling it like it was, that Harry Hole had virtually solved the case for them.

‘What was Røed’s motive for killing Susanne Andersen and Bert—’

‘We don’t know,’ Sung-min said, interrupting the journalist.

Katrine glanced sideways at him. It was true they didn’t know, but they had had time to discuss it, and it was Sung-min who had mentioned the old murder case — also a Harry Hole case — where a jealous husband had, in addition to killing his wife, also murdered random women and men to make it appear as part of a serial killing and focus attention away from himself.

‘VG,’ Kedzierski said.

‘If Harry Hole has solved the case for you, why isn’t he here?’ Mona Daa asked.

‘This is a press conference with spokespeople from the police,’ Kedzierski said. ‘You can talk to Hole yourselves.’

‘We’ve tried getting in touch with him but he’s not answering.’

‘We can’t—’ Kedzierski began, but was interrupted by Katrine.

‘He probably has his hands full with other matters, then. As have we, so if there’re no more questions pertaining to the case...’

A furore of protests rang out around the hall.

It was six o’clock.

‘A beer,’ Harry said.

The waiter nodded.

Gert looked up from the cup of cocoa and let go of the straw. ‘Gwanny says people who dwink bee don’t go to heaven. And then they won’t meet my daddy, because he’s dead.’

Harry looked at the boy, and a thought struck him. That if one beer sent him to hell, then that was where he would meet Bjørn Holm. He looked around. They were sitting at several of the tables, the lonely men with their half-litres of beer as sole company and collocutor. They didn’t remember him and he didn’t remember them, even though they were as ingrained in Schrøder’s as the tobacco smell he could still perceive in the walls and furniture, a generation after the introduction of the smoking ban. Back then they had been older than him, but it was as though the inscription above the skeletons in the Capuchin Crypt had been imprinted on their foreheads: What you are now we used to be; what we are now you will be. For Harry had of course always been aware of a line of alcoholism stretching back through his lineage, like a little demonic bloodsucker sitting within, screaming for sugar and spirits, that had to be fed, a damn parasite transmitted through the genes.

The phone rang. It was Krohn. He sounded more resigned than angry.

‘Congratulations, Harry. I saw in the online newspapers that it was you who got Markus arrested.’

‘I gave both of you advance warning.’

‘With methods the police themselves couldn’t use.’

‘That was the reason you hired me.’

‘Fine. The contract states that three police lawyers must consider it highly likely that Røed is convicted.’

‘We’ll have that by tomorrow. And then the amount needs to be transferred too.’

‘Speaking of which. That account in the Cayman Islands that I’ve been provided with...’

‘Don’t ask me about it, Krohn.’

There was a pause.

‘I’m hanging up now, Harry. I hope you can sleep.’

Harry dropped the phone back into the inside pocket of Røed’s suit. Turned his attention to Gert, who at that moment was primarily occupied with his cocoa and the large paintings of old Oslo covering the walls. When the waiter returned with the half-litre, Harry asked him to take it back and paid him. It obviously wasn’t the waiter’s first experience of an alcoholic who checked himself at the last moment, and he disappeared with the beer without a word or a raised eyebrow. Harry looked at Gert. Thought about the lineage.

‘Granny is right,’ he said. ‘Beer isn’t good for anyone. Remember that.’

‘OK.’

Harry smiled. The boy had picked up this ‘OK’ from Harry. He only hoped he wouldn’t pick up much else. He had no desire for a descendant created in his own image, on the contrary. The almost automatic tenderness and love he felt for the boy on the other side of the table was just about his being happy, more than he himself had been. A scratching sound came from the straw, and at that moment Harry’s phone vibrated.

A text from Katrine.

Home now. Where are you two?

‘Time to go home to Mummy,’ Harry said, tapping a message to say they were on the way.

‘Whew aw you going?’ Gert asked, kicking the table leg.

‘I’m going to the hotel,’ Harry said.

‘Nooo.’ The boy lay a small, warm hand upon his. ‘You aw going to sing dat song when I go to bed. About the dwink.’

‘The drink?’

‘Coke-cane...’ Gert sang.