Gert stretched his arms out towards Harry, and before he’d had time to think had pulled the boy close. Patting him on the head while he felt Gert’s chin against his shoulder and his warm tears through his shirt.

‘A little shoco-ha, brush our teeth and a lullaby?’

‘Yeah-eh!’ Gert sobbed.

Following a toothbrushing session Harry suspected Katrine would not have given her full approval, he got Gert into his pyjamas and under the duvet.

‘Bueman,’ Gert commanded.

‘I don’t know it,’ Harry said. His phone vibrated and he saw he’d received an MMS from Alexandra.

Gert regarded him with ill-concealed disapproval.

‘But I know some other good songs.’

‘Sing,’ Gert said.

Harry understood it would have to be something slow and swaying and tried the Rolling Stones’s ‘Wild Horses’. He was stopped after one verse.

‘A diffwant song.’

Hank Williams’s ‘Your Cheatin’ Heart’ got the thumbs down after two verses.

Harry thought for a long time.

‘OK. Close your eyes.’

He began to sing. If it could be called singing. It was more a low, slow chanting in a rough voice that now and then hit the notes of an old blues song about the perils of cocaine. When he had finished, Gert’s breathing had become deeper and more regular.

Harry opened the MMS, which was accompanied by some text. The picture had been taken in the hall mirror in her apartment. Alexandra was posing in a creamy-yellow dress which managed the feat expensive clothes often did; display the body in such a good light that you don’t for a moment think it has anything to do with the dress. At the same time he could see that Alexandra hadn’t needed the dress. And that she knew it.

This cost half a month’s salary. Looking forward to tomorrow!

Harry closed the message and looked up. Into Gert’s wide-open eyes.

‘Mow.’

‘More... of the last one?’

‘Yeah-eh.’

26

Friday

Cement

It was nine o’clock when Mikael Bellman unlocked the door to his house in Høyenhall. It was a nice house; he had built it on the edge of a hill so that he, Ulla and their three children had a view over the city all the way to Bjørvika and the fjord.

‘Hi!’ Ulla called from the living room. Mikael hung up his new coat and walked into the living room where his petite, beautiful wife, his sweetheart since childhood, was sitting with their youngest boy watching TV.

‘Sorry, that meeting dragged on.’ He hadn’t heard any suspicion in her voice, neither was there any in her eyes, as far as he could see. Nor was there any reason to be; right now Ulla was actually the only woman in his life. If you disregarded that young TV2 reporter, but that was something he had more or less discontinued. He wasn’t ruling out future indiscretions, but if so they needed to be something he was guaranteed to get away with. A married woman with power. Someone with as much to lose as himself. They say power corrupts, but it had only made him more cautious.

‘Truls is here.’

‘What?’

‘He came by to talk to you. He’s out on the terrace.’

Mikael closed his eyes and sighed. As he had risen through the ranks, from head of Orgkrim to Chief of Police and on to Minister of Justice, he had gradually ensured there was more and more distance between him and his friend and former co-conspirator. He was, again, more cautious.

Mikael went out to the large terrace and closed the sliding door behind him.

‘Quite a view you’ve got from here,’ Truls said. His face was red in the light from the heat lamps. He raised a bottle of beer to his mouth.

Mikael sat down next to him and accepted the bottle Truls opened and handed to him.

‘How’s the investigation going?’

‘The one into me?’ Truls asked. ‘Or the one I’m on?’

‘You’re working on an investigation?’

‘You didn’t know? Good, means we don’t have a leak at least. I’m working with Harry Hole.’

Mikael let it sink in. ‘You are aware that if it comes out you’re taking advantage of your position as a police officer to assist—’

‘Yeah, yeah. But that’s not going to matter much if someone does close us down. Which would be a shame, by the way. Hole is good. You know the chances of this nutcase getting caught are greater if Hole is allowed to continue.’ Truls stamped his shoes on the concrete floor of the terrace.

Mikael didn’t know if his friend’s feet were cold or if it was an unintentional reminder of their shared past and shared secrets.

‘Did Hole send you?’

‘No, he has no idea I’m here.’

Mikael nodded. It was unusual for Truls to take the initiative himself; Mikael had always been the one who decided what they would do, but he could hear by Truls’s voice he was telling the truth.

‘This is about something bigger than apprehending one individual criminal, Truls. This has to do with politics. With the big picture. Principles, you know?’