‘We need to get up to Tryvann right away. Truls, will you contact Emergency Control and get them to send a patrol car there? Blues and twos.’
‘I’ll try,’ Truls said, whipping out his own phone.
‘Ready, Øystein?’
‘Oh, may Mercedes be with us.’
‘Good luck,’ Aune said.
The three of them were on their way out the door when Harry took out his phone, looked at the display and stopped with one foot either side of the threshold. The door swung back and knocked the phone from his hand. He bent down and picked it up from the floor.
‘What’s going on?’ Øystein called from outside.
Harry took a deep breath. ‘It’s a call from Katrine’s number.’ He noticed he had automatically jumped to the possibility that it wasn’t her ringing.
‘Aren’t you going to take it?’ Aune asked from the bed.
Harry looked grimly at him. Nodded. Tapped Accept and put the phone to his ear.
‘You sure?’ Commander Briseid asked.
The older firefighter nodded.
Briseid sighed, glanced at the burning villa his crew were busy hosing. Looked up at the moon. It looked strange tonight, as though something wasn’t right with it. He sighed again, tipped the fire helmet back a little on his head and began making his way towards the solitary patrol car. It was from the Police Traffic and Sea Division and had pulled in shortly after their own fire engines were in place. From the time the station had been alerted of the villa on fire in Gaustad at 20.50, it had taken ten minutes and thirty-five seconds until Briseid and his colleagues arrived at the scene. Not that the situation would have been critical had it taken them a few minutes longer. The house was fire-damaged from before and had been unoccupied for years, so there was little chance of lives being at risk. Nor was there any danger of the blaze spreading to the surrounding villas. Badly raised youths setting fire to houses like this wasn’t that uncommon, but whether it was arson or not was something they could look at later; right now putting it out was the main concern. In that sense it could almost be deemed an exercise. The problem was the house was situated right next to Ring 3 and thick black smoke was drifting across the motorway, hence the presence of the Traffic Division. Fortunately, the usually busy traffic from out of the city on Fridays had died down, but from the hill Briseid was on he could still see the headlights of cars — those not enveloped in smoke at least — standing stock-still on the motorway. According to the Traffic Division there was congestion in both directions from the Smestad junction to Ullevål. Briseid had told the female police officer that it would take time before they got the fire under control, at least until the smoke cleared, so it might be a while before people could get to where they were going. They had at any rate closed the access roads now, so no more vehicles were coming onto the motorway.
Briseid approached the police car. The female officer lowered the window.
‘You should probably get some of your colleagues up here after all,’ he said.
‘Oh?’
‘See him?’ Briseid pointed at the older firefighter standing over by one of the fire engines. ‘We call him Sniff. Because he’s able to pick up that smell out of all the other smells when something’s burning. Sniff is never wrong.’
‘That smell?’
‘
‘Which is?’
Was she slow? Briseid cleared his throat. ‘You have the smell of barbecue. Then you have the
He could tell by her face that the penny had dropped. She reached for the police radio.
‘So, what is it now?’
‘What is it?’ Harry’s slightly bewildered voice said on the other end.
‘Yes! What’s up? I just turned on my phone and there’s seven missed calls from you.’
‘Where are you and what are you doing?’
‘Why do you ask? Is something wrong?’
‘Just answer.’
Katrine sighed. ‘I’m on my way to Frognerseteren station. From there I was planning to go straight home and knock back a couple of stiff drinks.’
‘And Arne? Is he with you?’
‘No.’ Katrine strode downhill the same way they had come, although now at a faster pace. The moon was being slowly devoured up above, maybe that sight was what had made her decide to drop the slow torment and drive the knife right into his heart. ‘No, he’s not with me any more.’
‘As in not where you are now?’
‘As in both meanings.’
‘What happened?’
‘Yeah, what happened? The short version is that Arne lives in a different, and no doubt a better, world from me. He knows everything about the elements of the universe, and yet for him the world is a rose-tinted place where you see things how you want them to be and not how they actually are. My world and yours, Harry, it’s an uglier place. But it’s real. In that sense we should envy all the Arnes. I thought I could put up with him tonight but I’m a bad person. I snapped and had to tell him how it was and that I couldn’t stand another second.’
‘You... eh, broke up?’
‘I broke up.’
‘Where is he now?’
