Harry Hole Oslo Sequence 10 - Police

about to dispatch Harry.
    An unbeatable team of champions, that’s what it was.
    Harry sniffed quickly and wondered if the damned mega-tears would have the sense to stay where they were or if he would simply have to wipe them away before they slid down his cheeks.
    He took a risk with the latter.
    She had asked him why he’d insisted that they get married in a church. To the best of her knowledge he was about as Christian as a chemical formula. And she was the same, despite her Catholic upbringing. But Harry answered that, outside their house, he had made a promise to a fictional God that if this went well, in recompense he would succumb to this one stupid ritual act: getting married in the sight of this alleged God. And then Rakel had burst out laughing, said that this didn’t show much faith in God, it was an advanced version of bloody knuckles, boys’ stuff, that she loved him and of course they would get married in a church.
    After they had freed Oleg, they had embraced one another in a kind of group hug. For one long, silent minute they had just stood there, hugging one another, stroking one another, to make sure they really were unhurt. It was as if the sound and the smell of the shot still hung in the walls, and they had to wait until it was gone before they could do anything. Afterwards Harry had told them to sit round the kitchen table, and he’d poured them a cup of coffee from the machine that was still on. And involuntarily he’d wondered: if Arnold Folkestad had succeeded in killing them all, would he have switched off the machine before he left the house?
    He had sat down, taken a swig from his cup, cast a glance at the body lying on the floor in the room a few metres from them, and when he had turned back he had met the questioning look in Rakel’s eyes: why hadn’t he already rung the police?
    Harry had taken another swig from his cup, nodded at the Odessa lying on the table and looked at her. She was an intelligent woman. So it was just a question of giving her a bit of time. She would reason her way through to the same conclusion. That if he picked up the phone he would be sending Oleg to prison.
    And then Rakel had nodded slowly. She had understood. When the forensics people examined the gun to check if it matched the bullet that the pathologists would extract from Folkestad’s head, they would immediately link it to the murder of Gusto Hanssen, where the murder weapon was never found. After all, it wasn’t every day – or every year – that someone was killed with a 9x18mm Makarov bullet. And if they discovered it matched a weapon they could link to Oleg, he would be rearrested. And this time charged and sentenced on the basis of what to everyone in court would seem like irrefutable, damning evidence.
    ‘You two will have to do what you have to do,’ Oleg had said. He had long grasped the gravity of the situation.
    Harry had nodded, but hadn’t taken his eyes off Rakel. There had to be total unanimity. It had to be their joint decision. As now.
    The priest finished reading from the Bible, the congregation sat down again and the priest cleared his throat. Harry had asked him to keep the sermon short. He saw the priest’s lips moving, saw the composure on his face and remembered the same composure on Rakel’s that night. The composure after first shutting her eyes tight and then opening them. As though wanting to make sure this was not a nightmare you could wake up from. Then she had sighed.
    ‘What can we do?’ she’d asked.
    ‘Burn,’ Harry had answered.
    ‘Burn?’
    Harry had nodded. Burn. What Truls Berntsen did. The difference was that burners like Berntsen did it for money. That was all.
    And so they had sprung into action.
    He had done what had to be done. They had done what had to be done. Oleg had driven Harry’s car from the road up to the garage while Rakel packed and tied up the body in bin bags, and Harry had made a makeshift stretcher out of a tarpaulin, rope and two aluminium pipes. After putting the body in the boot Harry had gone down to the road with the keys for the Fiat, and Harry and Oleg each drove a car to Maridalen while Rakel set about cleaning up and removing all the traces.
    As they had predicted, there was no one around the Grefsenkollen mountain in the rain and darkness. Nevertheless they had taken one of the narrow paths to be sure they didn’t meet anyone.
    The rain had made carrying the body a wearing, slippery business; on the other hand,