‘Yes, they do actually.’
Alexandra looked at him without saying anything, just pulled away a black corkscrew of hair which had blown across her face.
‘Anyway,’ Harry said. ‘She knows what’s in the boy’s and in her own best interests.’
‘And that is?’
‘That I’m not worth having around.’
‘Who else knows you’re the father?’
‘Just you,’ Harry said. ‘And Katrine doesn’t want anyone else to know Bjørn wasn’t.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Alexandra said. ‘I only know because I did the DNA analysis, and I have an oath of confidentiality. Got a cig we can share?’
‘I quit.’
‘You? Really?’
Harry nodded and looked up at the sky. Clouds had appeared. Leaden grey on the underside, white where they grew upward and the sunlight hit them.
‘So you’re single,’ Harry said. ‘Happy with that?’
‘No,’ Alexandra said. ‘But I probably wouldn’t be happy if I was with someone either.’ She laughed that husky laugh of hers. And Harry could feel that it had the same effect now as then. So perhaps it was true. Perhaps those kinds of feelings never quite died, no matter how fleeting they had seemed.
Harry cleared his throat.
‘Here it comes,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘The reason you wanted to have a coffee.’
‘Maybe,’ Harry said, pulling out the plastic box with the square of kitchen roll inside. ‘Could you analyse this for me?’
‘I
‘Mm. And yet you still agreed to meet me for coffee?’
‘I suppose I was hoping to be wrong. That you’d been thinking about me.’
‘I can see that telling you now that I have thought about you isn’t going to look good, but actually I have.’
‘Say it anyway.’
Harry gave a crooked smile. ‘I’ve thought about you.’
She took the box from him. ‘What is it?’
‘Mucus and saliva. I just want to know if it originates from the same person as the samples you lifted from Susanne’s breast.’
‘How do you know about that? No, I don’t want to know. What you’re asking for might be within the law, but you know I’ll still be in trouble if anyone finds out?’
‘Yes.’
‘So why should I do it?’
‘You tell me.’
‘OK, I will. Because you’re going to take me to the spa at that snooty hotel you’re staying at. And after that you’re going to treat me to a bloody nice dinner. And you’re going to dress up.’
Harry pinched the lapels of his suit jacket. ‘You don’t think I’m presentable?’
‘A tie. You’re going to wear a tie as well.’
Harry laughed. ‘Deal.’
‘A
‘A millionaire like Røed setting up his own investigation is contrary to our democratic traditions and idea of equality,’ Chief Superintendent Bodil Melling said.
‘Aside from the purely practical inconvenience of having an outside party treading on our toes,’ said Ole Winter, Kripos’s senior inspector. ‘It simply makes our job more difficult. Now, I’m aware you can’t prohibit Røed’s investigation based on paragraphs in the penal code, but the department must have some way of stopping this.’
Mikael Bellman stood looking out the window. He had a nice office. Large, new and modern. Impressive. But it was located in Nydalen. Far from the other departments in government buildings downtown. Nydalen was a sort of business park on the outskirts of the city; continue further north and you wound up in dense forest after just a few minutes. He hoped the new government quarter would soon be finished, that his Labour Party would still be in power and that he would still hold the post of Minister of Justice. There was nothing to suggest otherwise. Mikael Bellman was popular. Some had even hinted that he should already begin to position himself, because the day the Prime Minister suddenly decided to step down could be upon us. And at one morning meeting, the day after one political journalist had written that someone in government, Bellman for example, should seize the highest office in the land in a coup, the Prime Minister had, to everyone’s laughter, asked if someone could check Mikael’s briefcase, a reference to Bellman’s eyepatch and resemblance to Claus von Stauffenberg, the Wehrmacht colonel who attempted to assassinate Hitler with a bomb. But the Prime Minister had nothing to fear. Mikael simply didn’t want the job. Of course, being Minister of Justice meant you were exposed, but being Prime Minister — numero uno — was something else entirely. The pressure was one thing, but it was the light he feared. Too many stones being turned and too much of the past being uncovered, even he didn’t know what they might find.
He turned to face Melling and Winter. Many levels of hierarchy separated him from them, but the two must have believed they could go straight to Bellman on account of him being a former police detective in Oslo, meaning he was one of them.
