With a couple of rapid beats of his tailfin Boss swiftly arrived. Prim switched on the torch and bent down so he could shine the light right into Boss’s mouth as he opened wide. And he could see it in there. It looked like a little cockroach or a shrimp. He shuddered at the same time as he took delight. Boss and Lisa. It was probably how men — and women too perhaps — often felt when faced with the ultimate marriage. A certain... ambivalence. But he knew that once you found your intended, there was no way back. Because to the extent humans and animals had a moral duty, it was to follow their nature, the role appointed to them in order to maintain harmony, uphold the delicate balance. That was why everything in nature — even what at first glance seemed grotesque, hideous and cruel — was beautiful in all its perfect functionality. Sin entered the world on the day mankind partook of the tree of knowledge and achieved a level of reflection that enabled him
Prim switched off the stereo and the lights.
Harry walked towards the entrance of the large building in Montebello on Oslo’s fashionable west side. It was nine in the morning and the sun was shining defiantly. All the same, Harry had a knot in his stomach. He had been here before. The Radium Hospital. Over a century ago, when the plans to build a dedicated hospital for cancer treatment became known, the neighbours had protested. They feared having this sinister, mysterious disease so close to them — some believed it was infectious — and that their properties would fall in value. While others gave support and made donations — over thirty million kroner in today’s money — to buy the four grams of radium needed to irradiate and kill cancer cells before they killed their hosts.
Harry walked inside and stood in front of the lift.
Not because he intended on taking it, but in order to try to remember.
He had been fifteen years old when he and his little sister Sis had visited their mother here at the Radium, as they began calling it after a while. She had lain here for four months, growing thinner and more pale each time they came, like a photograph fading in the sunlight, her mild, always smiling face seeming to disappear into the pillowcase. On the particular day he now called to mind, he’d had a fit of rage which in turn left him in tears.
‘Things are how they are, and it’s not your responsibility to take care of me, Harry,’ his mother had said while holding on to him and stroking his hair. ‘Your job is to look after your little sister, that’s what you’ll do.’
On their way down after the visit, Sis had stood leaning against the wall, and when the lift began to move, her long hair had caught between the open back of the lift and the brick wall. Harry had stood rooted to the spot as Sis was lifted up from the floor, screaming for help. She’d had a clump of hair and a big patch of skin from her scalp ripped off, but had survived and quickly forgotten about it. Quicker than Harry, who could still feel the pang of horror and shame when he thought about how soon after his mother’s earnest request he had seized on the first opportunity to let her down.
The lift doors slid open, and two nurses wheeled a bed out past him.
Harry stood motionless as the lift doors slid shut again.
Then he turned and began walking up the stairs to the sixth floor.
There was a smell of hospital; that had not changed since his mother had been here. He located the door with 618 on it and knocked gently. Heard a voice and opened. There were two beds inside, one was empty.
‘I’m looking for Ståle Aune,’ Harry said.
‘He’s gone for a little stroll,’ the man in the occupied bed said. He was bald, looked to be of Pakistani or Indian extraction and around the same age as Aune, somewhere in his sixties. But Harry knew from experience that judging the age of cancer patients could be difficult.
Harry turned, saw Ståle Aune approaching him on shuffling feet, dressed in a Radium Hospital dressing gown, and realised he had just passed him on his way down the corridor.
The once pot-bellied psychologist now had folds of skin to spare. Aune waved with one hand at chest height and gave a pained smile without showing any teeth.
‘Been on a diet?’ Harry asked, after they’d had a proper hug.
‘You won’t believe it, but even my head has shrunk.’ Ståle demonstrated by poking his small, round Freud glasses back up his nose. ‘This is Jibran Sethi. Dr Sethi, this is Inspector Hole.’
The man in the other bed smiled and nodded then put on his headphones.
‘He’s a vet,’ Aune said in a lower voice. ‘Nice fellow, but the adage about us becoming like our patients may be true. He hardly says a word and I can barely keep my mouth shut.’ Aune kicked off his slippers and eased himself onto the bed.
‘Didn’t know you had such an athletic physique underneath the padding,’ Harry said, sitting down on a chair.
