He went into the kitchen, drank a glass of water to relieve his headache and peered through the window in surprise. The roof of the block on the other side of Sofies gate was white and the bright reflected light made his eyes smart. The first snow had come in the night. He thought of the letter. He did occasionally get such letters, but this one had been special. It had mentioned Toowoomba.

On the radio a nature programme had started and an enthusiastic voice was waxing lyrical about seals. ‘Every summer Berhaus seals collect in the Bering Straits to mate. Since the males are in the majority, the competition for females is so fierce that those males which have managed to procure themselves a female will stick with her during the whole of the breeding period. The male will take care of his partner until the young have been born and can cope by themselves. Not out of love for the female, but out of love for his own genes and hereditary material. Darwinist theory would say that it is natural selection that makes the Berhaus seal monogamous, not morality.’

I wonder, thought Harry.

The voice on the radio was almost hitting falsetto with excitement. ‘But before the seals leave the Bering Straits to search for food in the open sea, the male will try to kill the female. Why? Because a female Berhaus seal will never mate twice with the same male! For her this is about spreading the biological risk of hereditary material, just like on the stock market. For her it makes biological sense to be promiscuous, and the male knows this. By taking her life he wants to stop the young of other seals competing with his own progeny for the same food.’

‘We’re entering Darwinian waters here, so why don’t humans think like the seal?’ another voice said.

‘But we do, don’t we! Our society is not as monogamous as it appears, and never has been. A Swedish study showed recently that between fifteen and twenty per cent of all children born have a different father from the one they – and for that matter the postulated fathers – think. Twenty per cent! That’s every fifth child! Living a lie. And ensuring biological diversity.’

Harry fiddled with the frequency dial to find some tolerable music. He stopped at an ageing Johnny Cash’s version of ‘Desperado’.

There was a firm knock on the door.

Harry went into the bedroom, put on his jeans, returned to the hall and opened up.

‘Harry Hole?’ The man outside was wearing a blue boiler suit and looking at Harry through thick lenses. His eyes were as clear as a child’s.

Harry nodded.

‘Have you got fungus?’ The man asked the question with a straight face. A long wisp of hair traversed his forehead and was stuck there. Under his arm he was holding a plastic clipboard with a densely printed sheet.

Harry waited for him to explain further, but nothing was forthcoming. Just this clear, open expression.

‘That,’ Harry said, ‘strictly speaking, is a private matter.’

The man gave the suggestion of a smile in response to a joke he was heartily sick of hearing. ‘Fungus in your flat. Mould.’

‘I have no reason to believe that I have,’ said Harry.

‘That’s the thing about mould. It seldom gives anyone any reason to believe that it’s there.’ The man sucked at his teeth and rocked on his heels.

‘But?’ Harry said at length.

‘But it is.’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘Your neighbour’s got it.’

‘Uh-huh? And you think it may have spread?’

‘Mould doesn’t spread. Dry rot does.’

‘So then . . . ?’

‘There’s a construction fault with the ventilation along the walls in this block. It allows dry rot to flourish. May I take a peep at your kitchen?’

Harry stepped to the side. The man powered into the kitchen where at once he pressed an orange hairdryer-like apparatus against the wall. It squeaked twice.

‘Damp detector,’ the man said, studying something that was obviously an indicator. ‘Just as I thought. Sure you haven’t seen or smelt anything suspicious?’

Harry didn’t have a clear perception of what that might be.

‘A coating like on stale bread,’ the man said. ‘Mouldy smell.’

Harry shook his head.

‘Have you had sore eyes?’ the man asked. ‘Felt tired? Had headaches?’

Harry shrugged. ‘Of course. For as long as I can remember.’

‘Do you mean for as long as you’ve lived here?’

‘Maybe. Listen . . .’

But the man wasn’t listening; he’d taken a knife from his belt. Harry stood back and watched the hand holding the knife being raised and thrust with great force. There was a sound like a groan as the knife went through the plasterboard behind the wallpaper. The man pulled out the knife, thrust it in again and bent back a powdery piece of plaster, leaving a large gap in the wall. Then he whipped out a small penlight and shone it into the cavity. A deep frown developed behind his oversized glasses. Then he stuck his nose deep into the cavity and sniffed.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Hello there, boys.’

‘Hello there who?’ Harry asked, edging closer.

‘Aspergillus,’ said the man. ‘A genus of mould. We have three or four hundred types to choose between and it’s difficult to say which one this is because the growth on these hard surfaces is so thin it’s invisible. But there’s no mistaking the smell.’

‘That means trouble, right?’ Harry asked, trying to remember how much he had left in his bank account after he and his father had sponsored a trip to Spain for Sis, his little sister who had what she referred to as ‘a touch of Down’s syndrome’.

‘It’s not like real dry rot. The block won’t collapse,’ the man said. ‘But you might.’

‘Me?’

‘If you’re prone to it. Some people get ill from breathing the same air as the mould. They’re ailing for years, and of course they get accused of being hypochondriacs since no one can find anything and the other residents are fine. And then the pest eats up the wallpaper and the plasterboard.’

‘Mm. What do you suggest?’

‘That I eradicate the infection, of course.’

‘And my personal finances while you’re at it?’

‘Covered by the building’s insurance, so it won’t cost you a krone. All I need is access to the flat for the next few days.’

Harry found the spare set of keys in the kitchen drawer and passed them to him.

‘It’ll just be me,’ the man said. ‘I should mention that in passing. Lots of strange things going on out there.’

‘Are there?’ Harry smiled sadly, staring out of the window.

‘Eh?’

‘Nothing,’ Harry said. ‘There’s nothing to steal here anyway. I’ll be off now.’

Harry walked up the black strip of tarmac to the main entrance and entered the central hall where Kari Christensen’s porcelain wall decoration with running water whispered its eternal secrets. He nodded to the security guard in reception and went up to Crime Squad on the sixth floor. Although it was almost six months since he had been given his new office in the red zone, he often went to the cramped, windowless one he had shared with Police Officer Jack Halvorsen. Now Magnus Skarre was in there. And Jack Halvorsen had been interred in the ground of Vestre Aker Cemetery. At first the parents had wanted their son to be buried in their home town, Steinkjer, as Jack and Beate Lønn, the head of Krimteknisk, the Forensics Unit, had not been married; they hadn’t even been living together. But when they found out that Beate was pregnant and Jack’s baby would be born in the summer, they agreed that Jack’s grave should be in Oslo.

Harry entered his new office. Which he knew would be known as that for ever, the way the fifty-year-old home ground of Barcelona football club was still called Camp Nou, Catalan for new stadium. He dropped onto his chair, switched on the radio, and nodded good morning to the photos perched on the bookcase and propped against the wall. One day in an uncertain future, if he remembered to buy picture pins, they would hang on the wall. Ellen Gjelten and Jack Halvorsen and Bjarne Møller. There they stood in chronological order. The Dead Policemen’s Society.

On the radio Norwegian politicians and social scientists were giving their views on the American presidential election. Harry recognised the voice of Arve Støp, the owner of the successful magazine Liberal and famous for being one of the most knowledgeable, arrogant and entertaining opinion-formers in the country. Harry turned up the volume until the voices bounced off the brick walls, and grabbed his Peerless handcuffs lying on the new desk. He practised speed-cuffing on the table leg, which was already splintered as a result of this bad habit he had picked up on the FBI course in Chicago and perfected during lonely evenings in a lousy bedsit in Cabrini Green, to the screams of rowing neighbours and in the company of Jim Beam. The aim was to bang the cuffs against the arrestee’s wrist in such a way that the spring-loaded arm closed around the wrist and the lock clicked on the other side. With the right amount of force and accuracy you could cuff yourself to an arrestee in one simple movement before he had a chance to react. Harry had never had any use for this on the job and only once for the other thing he had learned over there: how to catch a serial killer. The cuffs clicked around the table leg and the radio voices droned on.

‘Why do you think Norwegians are so sceptical about George Bush, Arve Støp?’

‘Because we’re an overprotected nation which has never fought in any wars. We’ve been happy to let others do it for us: England, the Soviet Union and America. Yes, ever since the Napoleonic Wars we’ve hidden behind the backs of our elder brothers. Norway has based its security on others taking the responsibility when things get tough. That’s been going on for so long that we’ve lost our sense of reality and we believe that the earth is basically populated by people who wish us – the world’s richest country – well. Norway, a gibbering, pea-brained blonde who gets lost in a backstreet in the Bronx and is now indignant that her bodyguard is so brutal with muggers.’

Harry dialled Rakel’s number. Aside from Sis’s, Rakel’s telephone number was the only one he knew off by heart. When he was young and inexperienced, he thought that a bad memory was a handicap for a detective. Now he knew better.

‘And the bodyguard is Bush and the USA?’ the host asked.

‘Yes, Lyndon B. Johnson once said that the US hadn’t chosen this role, but he had realised there was no one else, and he was right. Our bodyguard is a born-again Christian with a father complex, a drink problem, intellectual limitations and not enough backbone to do his military service with honour. In short, a guy we should be pleased is going to be re-elected President today.’

‘I assume you mean that ironically?’

‘Not at all. Such a weak president listens to his advisers, and the White House has the best, believe you me. Even though on that laughable TV series about the Oval Office one may have formed the impression that the Democrats have a monopoly on intelligence, it is on the extreme right wing of the Republicans, surprisingly enough, that you find the sharpest minds. Norway’s security is in the best possible hands.’

‘A girlfriend of a girlfriend has had sex with you.’

‘Really?’ said Harry.

‘Not you,’ Rakel said. ‘I’m talking to the other guy. Støp.’

‘Sorry,’ Harry said, turning down the radio.

‘After a lecture in Trondheim. He invited her up to his room. She was interested, but drew his attention to the fact that she’d had a mastectomy. He said he would give that some thought and went to the bar. And came back and took her with him.’

‘Mm. I hope expectations were fulfilled.’

‘Nothing fulfils expectations.’

‘No,’ Harry said, wondering what they were talking about.

‘What’s happening this evening?’ Rakel asked.

‘Palace Grill at eight is fine. But what’s all this rubbish about not being able to reserve tables in advance?’

‘It gives the whole place cachet, I suppose.’

They arranged to meet in the bar next door first. After they had rung off, Harry sat thinking. She had sounded pleased. Or bright. Bright and cheery. He tried to sense if he had succeeded in being pleased on her behalf, pleased that the woman he had loved so much was happy with another man. Rakel and he had had their time, and he had been given chances. Which he wasted. So why not be pleased that she was well, why not let the thought that things could have been different go, and move on with his life? He promised to try a bit harder.

Magnus Skarre passed on regards from Ståle Aune – Crime Squad’s resident psychologist – whom he had visited at Ullevål Hospital. Harry felt a pang of conscience. Ståle Aune was not just his adviser on criminal cases, he was his personal supporter in his fight against alcohol and the closest thing he had to a confidant. It was over a week since Aune had been admitted with some vague diagnosis, but Harry had still not overcome his reluctance to enter hospitals. Tomorrow, Harry thought. Or Thursday.

‘We have a new officer,’ Gunnar Hagen announced. ‘Katrine Bratt.’

A young woman in the first row stood up unbidden, but without offering a smile. She was very attractive. Attractive without trying, thought Harry. Thin, almost wispy hair hung lifelessly down both sides of her face, which was finely chiselled, pale and wore the same serious, weary features Harry had seen on other stunning women who had become so used to being observed that they had stopped liking or disliking it. Katrine Bratt was dressed in a blue suit that underlined her femininity, but the thick black tights under the edge of her skirt and her practical winter boots invalidated any possible suspicions that she was playing on it. She stood letting her eyes run over the gathering, as if she had risen to see them and not vice versa. Harry guessed that she had planned both the suit and this little first day appearance at Police HQ.

‘Katrine worked for four years at Bergen Police HQ dealing mainly with public decency offences, but she also did a stint at Crime Squad,’ Hagen continued, looking down at a sheet of paper Harry presumed was her CV. ‘Law degree from Bergen University 1999, Police College and now she’s an officer here. For the moment no children, but she’s married.’

One of Katrine Bratt’s thin eyebrows rose imperceptibly, and either Hagen saw this, or he thought this last scrap of information was superfluous, and added, ‘For those who may be interested . . .’

In the oppressive and telling pause that followed, Hagen seemed to think he had made matters worse, coughed twice, with force, and said that those who had not yet signed up for the Christmas party should do so before Wednesday.

Chairs scraped and Harry was already in the corridor when he heard a voice behind him.

‘Apparently I belong to you.’

Harry turned and looked into Katrine Bratt’s face. Wondering how attractive she would be if she made an effort.

‘Or you to me,’ she said, showing a line of even teeth but without letting the smile reach her eyes. ‘Whichever way you look at it.’ She spoke Bergen-flavoured standard Norwegian with moderately rolled ‘r’s, which suggested, Harry wagered, that she was from Fana or Kalfaret or some other solidly middle-class district.

He continued on his way, and she hurried to catch up with him. ‘Seems the Politioverbetjent forgot to inform you.’

She pronounced the word with a slightly exaggerated stress on all the syllables of Gunnar Hagen’s rank.

‘But you should show me round and take care of me for the next few days. Until I’m up and running. Can you do that, do you think?’

Harry eased off a smile. So far he liked her, but of course he was open to changing his opinion. Harry was always willing to give people another chance to wind up on his black list.

‘I don’t know,’ he said, stopping by the coffee dispenser. ‘Let’s start with this.’

‘I don’t drink coffee.’

‘Nevertheless. It’s self-explanatory. Like most things here. What are your thoughts on the case of the missing woman?’

Harry pressed the button for Americano which, in this machine, was as American as Norwegian ferry coffee.

‘What about it?’ Bratt asked.

‘Do you think she’s alive?’ Harry tried to ask in a casual manner so that she wouldn’t realise it was a test.

‘Do you think I’m stupid?’ she said and watched with undisguised revulsion as the machine coughed and spluttered something black into a white plastic cup. ‘Didn’t you hear the Politioverbetjent say that I worked at the Sexual Offences Unit for four years?’

‘Mm,’ Harry said. ‘Dead then?’

‘As a dodo,’ said Katrine Bratt.

Harry lifted the white cup. He pondered the possibility that he had just been allocated a colleague he might come to appreciate.

As he unlocked his flat he noticed that something was different. Something about the sound. Or perhaps it was the smell. He pulled up sharp at the threshold to the kitchen. The whole of one wall was gone. That is, where early this morning there had been bright, flowery wallpaper and plasterboard, he now saw rust-red bricks, grey mortar and greyish-yellow studwork dotted with nail holes. On the floor was the mould man’s toolbox and on the worktop a note saying he would be back the following day.

He went into the sitting room, slipped in the Neil Young CD, glumly took it out again after a quarter of an hour and put on Ryan Adams. The thought of a drink came from nowhere. Harry closed his eyes and stared at the dancing pattern of blood and total blindness. He was reminded of the letter again. The first snow. Toowoomba.

The ringing of the telephone interrupted Ryan Adams’s ‘Shakedown on 9th Street’.

A woman introduced herself as Oda, said she was calling from Bosse and it was nice to talk to him again. Harry couldn’t remember her, but he did remember the TV programme. They had wanted him to talk about serial killers, because he was the only Norwegian police officer to have studied with the FBI, and furthermore he had hunted down a genuine serial killer. Harry had been stupid enough to agree. He had told himself he was doing it to say something important and moderately qualified about people who kill, not so that he could be seen on the nation’s most popular talk show. In retrospect, he was not so sure about that. But that wasn’t the worst aspect. The worst was that he’d had a drink before going on air. Harry was convinced that it had only been one. But on the programme it looked as if it had been five. He had spoken with clear diction; he always did. But his eyes had been glazed, his analysis sluggish and he hadn’t managed to draw any conclusions, so the show host had been forced to introduce a guest who was the new European flower-arranging champion. Harry had not said anything, but his body language had clearly shown what he thought about the flower debate. When the host, with a surreptitious smile, had asked how a murder investigator related to flower arranging, Harry had said that wreaths at Norwegian burials certainly maintained high international standards. Perhaps it had been Harry’s slightly befuddled, nonchalant style that had drawn laughter from the studio audience and contented pats on the back from the TV people after the programme. He had ‘delivered the goods’, they said. And he had joined a small group of them at Kunstnernes Hus, had been indulged and had woken up the next day with a body from which every fibre of his being screamed, demanded, had to have more. It was a Friday and he had continued to drink all weekend. He had sat at Schrøder’s and shouted for beer as they were flashing the lights to encourage customers to leave, and Rita, the waitress, had gone over to Harry and told him that he would be refused admission in the future unless he went now, preferably to bed. On Monday morning Harry had turned up for work at eight on the dot. He had contributed nothing useful to the department, thrown up in the sink after the morning meeting, clung to his office chair, drunk coffee, smoked and thrown up again, but this time in the toilet. And that was the last time he had succumbed; he hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol since.

And now they wanted him back on the screen.

The woman explained that the topic was terrorism in Arab countries and what turned well-educated middle-class people into killing machines. Harry interrupted her before she was finished.

‘No.’

‘But we would so much like to have you. You are so . . . so . . . rock ’n’ roll!’ She laughed, with an enthusiasm whose sincerity he could not be sure of, but he recognised her voice now. She had been with them at Kunstnernes Hus that night. She had been good-looking in a boring, young way, had talked in a boring, young way and had eyed Harry hungrily, as though he were an exotic meal she was considering; was he too exotic?

‘Try someone else,’ Harry said and rang off. Then he closed his eyes and heard Ryan Adams wondering why he missed her so much.

‘Aren’t you going to peel the potatoes, Dad? Mummy usually –’

‘Your mother isn’t here, Jonas. So we’ll have to do it my way.’

He hadn’t raised his voice, yet there was an irritation that made Jonas cringe. He never quite knew what made his father so angry. Or, now and then, even whether he was angry. Until he saw his mother’s face with the anxious droop round the corners of her mouth, which seemed to make Dad even more irritable. He hoped she would soon be there.

‘We don’t use them plates, Dad!’

His father slammed the cupboard door and Jonas bit his bottom lip. His father’s face came down to his. The square, paper-thin glasses sparkled.

‘It’s those plates, not them plates,’ his father said. ‘How many times do I have to tell you, Jonas?’

‘But Mummy says –’

‘Mummy doesn’t speak properly. Do you understand? Mummy comes from a place and a family where they’re not bothered about language.’ His father’s breath smelt salty, of rotten seaweed.

The front door banged.

‘Hello,’ she sang out from the hall.

Jonas was about to run to her, but his father held him by the shoulder and pointed to the unlaid table.

‘How good you are!’

Jonas could hear the smile in her breathless voice as she stood in the kitchen doorway behind him while he set out glasses and cutlery as quickly as he could.

‘And what a big snowman you’ve made!’

Jonas turned in surprise to his mother, who was unbuttoning her coat. She was so attractive. Dark skin, dark hair, just like him, and those gentle, gentle eyes she almost always had. Almost. She wasn’t quite as slim as in the photos from the time she and Dad got married, but he had noticed that men looked at her whenever the two of them took a stroll in town.

‘We haven’t made a snowman,’ Jonas said.

‘Haven’t you?’ His Mummy frowned as she unfurled the big pink scarf he had given her for Christmas.

Dad went over to the window. ‘Must be the neighbours’ boys,’ he said.

Jonas stood up on one of the kitchen chairs and peered out. And, sure enough, there on the lawn in front of the house was a snowman. It was, as his mother had said, big. Its eyes and mouth were made with pebbles and the nose was a carrot. The snowman had no hat, cap or scarf, and only one arm, a thin twig Jonas guessed had been taken from the hedge. However, there was something odd about the snowman. It was facing the wrong way. He didn’t know why, but it ought to have been looking out onto the road, towards the open space.

‘Why—?’ Jonas began, but was interrupted by his father.

‘I’ll talk to them.’

‘Why’s that?’ Mummy said from the hall where Jonas could hear her unzipping her high black leather boots. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘I don’t want that sort roaming around our property. I’ll do it when I’m back.’

‘Why isn’t it looking out?’ Jonas asked.

In the hall, his mother sighed. ‘When will you be back, love?’

‘Tomorrow sometime.’

‘What time?’

‘Why? Have you got a date?’ There was a lightness of tone in his father’s voice that made him shiver.

‘I was thinking I would have dinner ready,’ Mummy said, coming into the kitchen, going over to the stove, checking the pans and turning up the temperature on two of the hotplates.

‘Just have it ready,’ his father said, turning to the pile of newspapers on the worktop. ‘And I’ll be home at some point.’

‘OK.’ Mummy went over to Dad’s back and put her arms around him. ‘But do you really have to go to Bergen tonight already?’

‘My lecture’s at eight tomorrow,’ Dad said. ‘It takes an hour to get to the university from the time the plane lands, so I wouldn’t make it if I caught the first flight tomorrow.’

Jonas could see from the muscles in his father’s neck that he was relaxing, that once again Mummy had managed to find the right words.

‘Why is the snowman looking at our house?’ Jonas asked.

‘Go and wash your hands,’ Mummy said.

They ate in silence, broken only by Mummy’s tiny questions about how school had been and Jonas’s brief, vague answers. Jonas knew that detailed answers could evoke unpleasant questions from Dad about what they were learning – or not learning – at the ‘excuse of a school’. Or quick-fire interrogation about someone Jonas mentioned he had been playing with, about what their parents did and where they were from. Questions which Jonas could never answer to his father’s satisfaction.

When Jonas was in bed, on the floor below he heard his father say goodbye to his mother, a door close and the car start up outside and fade into the distance. They were alone again. His mother switched on the TV. He thought about something she had asked. Why Jonas hardly ever brought his friends home to play any more. He hadn’t known what to answer; he hadn’t wanted her to be sad. But now he became sad instead. He chewed the inside of his cheek, feeling the bitter-sweet pain extend into his ears, and stared at the metal tubes of the wind chime hanging from the ceiling. He got out of bed and shuffled over to the window.

The snow in the garden reflected enough light for him to make out the snowman down below. It looked alone. Someone should have given it a cap and scarf. And maybe a broomstick to hold. At that moment the moon slid from behind a cloud. The black row of teeth came into view. And the eyes. Jonas automatically sucked in his breath and recoiled two steps. The pebble-eyes were gleaming. And they were not staring into the house. They were looking up. Up here. Jonas drew the curtains and crept back into bed.