Harry Hole Oslo Sequence 10 - Police

and arse categories and was totally unable to keep her mouth shut – could she be any good at all?
    He wasn’t sure. He only knew that he’d liked her.
    Or, to be more precise, he liked the fact that she had apparently liked him .
    Perhaps it had been his ravaged face and she’d felt sorry for him. Or perhaps Mikael had been right: his face had been so unattractive in the first place that a slight rearrangement wouldn’t make any difference.
    Or in some way or other things had changed inside him. What or how he didn’t know exactly, but some days he woke up and felt new. He thought in a different way. Could even talk to people around him in a new way. And it was as though they noticed. As though they treated him in a new way as well. A better way. And that had given him the courage to take another tiny step in this new direction, although he had no idea where it would lead. Not that he had found redemption or anything. The change was minimal. And on some days he didn’t feel new at all.
    Anyway, he thought he would ring her again.
    The police radio crackled. He could hear from the voice rather than the words that it was something important, different from the boring traffic jams, basement break-ins, domestics and rabid drunks. A body.
    ‘Does it look like murder?’ the unit leader asked.
    ‘I would imagine it is.’ The answer was an attempt to deliver the laconic, cool tone that especially the younger guard aspired to. Not that they didn’t have their own models in the older guard. Even though Hole was no longer among them his sayings were still alive and well. ‘Her tongue . . . I think it’s her tongue. It’s been cut off and stuffed up . . .’ The young officer couldn’t take the heat; his voice cracked.
    Truls could feel the exhilaration coming. The life-giving beats as his heart pumped a little faster.
    This sounded nasty. June. She’d had lovely eyes. And he guessed pretty big tits beneath all the clothes. Yes, it was going to be a great summer.
    ‘Got an address?’
    ‘Alexander Kiellands plass, number 22. Shit, loads of sharks here.’
    ‘Sharks?’
    ‘Yes, on those little surfboards. Place is full of them.’
    Truls put the Suzuki into gear. Straightened his sunglasses, pressed the accelerator and let go of the clutch. Some days were new. Others weren’t.
    The girls’ toilet was at the end of the corridor. As the door closed behind Aurora it struck her at first how quiet it was. The noise of all the people upstairs was gone, and there was just her.
    She quickly locked herself in one of the cubicles, pulled down her shorts, knickers and sat on the cold plastic seat.
    Thought about the wedding. Actually she would have preferred to be there. She had never seen anyone get married before, not properly. She wondered if she would get married one day. Tried to imagine it, standing outside a church, laughing and ducking under the shower of confetti, a white dress, a house and a job she liked. A boy she would have children with. She tried to imagine the boy.
    The door opened and someone came into the room.
    Aurora was sitting on a swing in the garden with the sun straight in her eyes and couldn’t see the boy. She hoped he was great. A boy who thought a bit like her. Bit like Dad, but not so scatty. No, as a matter of fact, just as scatty.
    The footsteps were too heavy for a woman.
    Aurora stretched out for some toilet paper, but held back. She had tried to take a breath, but there was nothing there. No air. She felt her throat tighten.
    Too heavy to be a woman’s footsteps.
    They had stopped now.
    She looked down. In the big gap between the door and floor she saw a shadow. And the tips of a pair of long, pointed shoes. Like cowboy boots.
    Aurora didn’t know if the ringing in her head was the wedding bells or the beating of her heart.
    Harry came out onto the steps. Squinted into the bright June sun. Stood with his eyes closed for a moment listening to the church bells pealing out over Oppsal. Feeling that everything was right with the world, at rest, in harmony. Knowing this was how things should end, like this.

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