Offline E-Book

Anne Holt

• Herausgeber: Corvus
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

THE NINTH INSTALMENT IN THE HANNE WILHELMSEN SERIES. Long-awaited sequel to Anne Holt's massive bestseller 1222. It has been eleven years since Hanne Wilhelmsen's life was forever changed by an assault that left her wheelchair bound. Now, Hanne's self-imposed exile is nearing its end. When Oslo comes under attack from Islamic extremists in a series of explosions, the city is left reeling. A militant group claim responsibility, but the Norwegian police force doubt on the authenticity of the declaration, and the group's very existence. The unfolding drama is brought to Hanne's door by her former partner Billy T., who is convinced that his son, Linus, is involved in the recent events. He begs Hanne for help. But Hanne soon learns that she cannot protect Linus, Billy T. or the people of Oslo. Those bent of destruction are one step ahead, and many lives will be lost before the truth is revealed... Don't miss this unforgettable sequel to Anne Holt's biggest bestseller 1222 - and penultimate novel in the Hanne Wilhelmsen series.

Leseprobe

PRAISE FOR

‘Step aside, Stieg Larsson, Holt is the queen of Scandinavian crime thrillers’ Red

‘Holt writes with the command we have come to expect from the top Scandinavian writers’ The Times

‘If you haven’t heard of Anne Holt, you soon will’ Daily Mail

‘It’s easy to see why Anne Holt, the former Minister of Justice in Norway and currently its bestselling female crime writer, is rapturously received in the rest of Europe’ Guardian

‘Holt deftly marshals her perplexing narrative … clichés are resolutely seen off by the sheer energy and vitality of her writing’ Independent

‘Her peculiar blend of off-beat police procedural and social commentary makes her stories particularly Norwegian, yet also entertaining and enlightening … reads a bit like a mash-up of Stieg Larsson, Jeffery Deaver and Agatha Christie’ Daily Mirror

Offline

ANNE HOLT is Norway’s bestselling female crime writer. She spent two years working for the Oslo Police Department before founding her own law firm and serving as Norway’s Minister for Justice between 1996 and 1997. She is published in 30 languages with over 7 million copies of her books sold.

Also by Anne Holt

THE HANNE WILHELMSEN SERIES:

Blind Goddess

Blessed Are Those Who Thirst

Death of the Demon

The Lion’s Mouth

Dead Joker No Echo

Beyond the Truth

1222

THE VIK/STUBO SERIES:

Punishment

The Final Murder

Death in Oslo

Fear Not

What Dark Clouds Hide

First published in trade paperback in Great Britain in 2017 by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright © Anne Holt, 2015

English translation copyright © Anne Bruce, 2017

Originally published in Norwegian as Offline. Published by agreement with the Salomonsson Agency.

The moral right of Anne Holt to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

The moral right of Anne Bruce to be identified as the translator has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

This translation has been published with the financial support of NORLA.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978 1 78239 879 0

Paperback ISBN: 978 1 78239 880 6

E-book ISBN: 978 1 78239 881 3

Printed in Great Britain.

Corvus

An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd

Ormond House

26–27 Boswell Street

London

WC1N 3JZ

www.corvus-books.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

A racing pigeon flew over Oslo.

His owner called him the Colonel because of the three star-shaped marks on his chest. He was a small squat bird, almost twelve years old. Age and experience had made him confident, but also extremely cautious. He flew low to avoid birds of prey. Watchful, he darted through the air, swooping in from the fjord between the City Hall towers, before veering slightly to the east.

A high-rise block was covered in scaffolding and tarpaulins. The Colonel prepared to land.

He had flown a great distance.

Homesickness gnawed within his broad gray chest, with its insignia so distinct and beautiful that he had cost his owner more than his pedigree alone would merit, at the time he had been bought as a little fledgling. His parents were ordinary working stock. Tender care and great expectations had nevertheless made a racer of the Colonel, and this was one of Northern Europe’s most prize-winning racing pigeons, now perched on top of the tower block that had been destroyed one July day less than three years earlier.

The Colonel wanted to go home. He was keen to reach Ingelill, his mate of more than ten years. He longed to hear his owner’s whistle at feeding time and the soothing cooing of the other pigeons. The old, sharp-eyed gray bird felt drawn to the pigeon loft in the orchard and the nesting box where Ingelill was waiting. He knew exactly where he was headed. It was not far now – only a few minutes, if he took to his wings and soared.

High above, between the Colonel and the cold April sun, a bird of prey was hovering. It was still so young that now and again it migrated from the forests north of the city to feast upon lethargic collared doves in city-center parks. It caught sight of the Colonel at the very moment the gray veteran softly shook its wings and plucked its plumage in preparation for takeoff.

The hawk pounced.

An emaciated man was standing below, outside the cordon around the half-dead building, using his hand to shade his eyes. A hawk, he noticed. A sparrow hawk, he felt certain, even though this was a rare sight down here in the city center. The man lingered. The sparrow hawk, with its shorter, powerful wings, did not normally hunt like this. It depended on hilly terrain to conceal itself: the sparrow hawk was a stealthy killer rather than a fighter pilot.

Now the bird swooped quickly and suddenly, homing in on something the man could not see. As he stood there, still with his hand held level above his eyes, he was aware of his own rank body odor stinging his nostrils. He had not washed in more than a week. It still embarrassed him to be so unclean, even after all these years scuttling between drunkenness and night shelters and the Church City Mission.

It must be a pigeon the hawk had caught, he decided as a little cloud of gray feathers descended from the edge of the roof high above him. Skoa liked pigeons. They were sociable birds, especially in summer when he chose to sleep outdoors in the main.

He dropped his arm and began to walk.

A good way to die, he thought, as he shuffled off in the direction of Karl Johans gate with his hands deep inside his pockets. One minute you’re enjoying the view, the next you’re somebody’s lunch.

When all was said and done, Lars Johan Austad wished he had suffered the same fate. Shivering in the April chill as he reached the shadow cast by the Ministry of Finance building, he realized it was time to find something to eat. It was midday and he could hear the clock strike at City Hall.

A brass bell tinkled.

“Come on, Colonel! Peeep!”

His whistling made the other pigeons coo restlessly. It was now approaching evening, and feeding time had finished some time ago.

“Colonel! Peeeeep!”

“I think you’ll have to give that up for today.”

A slender woman arrived along the flagstones, picking her way between the patchy remnants of snow that still lay in dirty brown heaps across the lawn that led down to the pigeon loft.

“Colonel!” the man repeated, whistling once more, before ringing the little bell.

The woman slid her arm carefully around his shoulders.

“Come on now, Gunnar. The Colonel will find his way without you having to attract him, as you well know.”

“He should have been here by now,” the man complained, rocking stiffly from one foot to the other. “The Colonel should have been here hours ago.”

“He’s just been delayed,” the middle-aged woman comforted him. “You’ll see, he’ll be back here in his box when you wake tomorrow. With Ingelill. The Colonel would never let his little Ingelill down, you know that. Come on now. I’ve made some tea. And scones. The nice ones that you like best.”

“Don’t want to, Mum. Don’t want to.”

Smiling, she pretended not to hear him. Grasping his hand discreetly, she drew him up toward the house. He accompanied her with some reluctance.

“It’s your birthday tomorrow,” the woman said. “Thirty-five years old. Where has the time gone, Gunnar?”

“The Colonel,” the man whimpered. “Something must have happened to him.”

“Not at all. Come on now. I’ve baked a sponge cake. Tomorrow you can help me to decorate the cake. With cream and strawberries and candles.”

“The Colonel—”

“Where has the time gone?” she repeated, mostly to herself, as she opened the back door and pushed her son into the warmth.

CHAPTER TWO

Time went by in a loop.

He had changed so much. Maybe it was the extra weight that, paradoxically enough, made him look shorter than the six foot seven she knew he measured on a good day. The broad shoulders were stooped and his trouser belt strained below his potbelly. His face was smooth-shaven, just like his head.

“Hanne,” he said.

“Billy T.,” she answered after a few seconds’ pause, without making any move to push her wheelchair back from the doorway to allow him access. “It’s been a long time.”

Billy T. rested his arm on the door frame, leaning against it and burying his face in his huge hand.

“Eleven years,” he mumbled.

A door slammed outside in the corridor. Decisive footsteps could be heard heading from the neighboring apartment in the direction of the elevator. They slowed as they approached Hanne Wilhelmsen’s front door and the big man, who was standing in what could easily be interpreted as a threatening pose.

“Everything okay here?” a deep male voice enquired.

“How did you get in downstairs?” Hanne asked, without replying to her neighbor. “We have an entry phone—”

“My God,” Billy T. groaned, tearing his hand away from his face. “I’ve been in the police longer than you. A fucking miserable door security system! You wouldn’t have let me in if I’d rung the bell, just as you’ve rejected every damned attempt I’ve ever made to contact you.”

“Hello,” the neighbor said gruffly, trying to insinuate himself between Billy T. and the wheelchair. He was almost as tall as Hanne’s old colleague. “It looks as though Ms. Wilhelmsen here isn’t particularly keen to see you.”

He looked quizzically at her, but she did not respond.

Eleven years.

And three months.

Plus a few days.

“Or what?” the neighbor said, irritated, placing a hand on Billy T.’s chest to push him farther out into the corridor.

“That’s right,” she said at last. “I’m not interested. I’d be grateful if you’d see him out.”

“Hanne …”

Billy T. shoved the man’s hand away and dropped to his knees. The neighbor took a step back. His surprise at seeing this enormous body kneel and fold his hands in prayer made him stare open-mouthed.

“Hanne. Please. I need help.”

She did not answer. She tried to look away, but his eyes had locked on hers. He had husky eyes, absolutely unforgettable, one blue and one brown. It was his eyes she feared most. So little else about this figure reminded her of the man Billy T. had once been. The fleece-lined denim jacket was too small for him and a big stain of something, possibly ketchup, disfigured one of the breast pockets. Black outlines of snuff were etched at both corners of his mouth, and his complexion was bloated and winter-pale.

His blue-brown gaze was still the same. In front of her wheelchair, only a few centimeters from those useless legs of hers, all the forgotten years stared her in the face. Jostling at her. As she resisted, she noticed she had stopped breathing.

“Come here,” the neighbor eventually said, so loudly that Hanne flinched. “You’re not wanted, didn’t you hear that? If you don’t come with me, I’ll have to call the police.”

Billy T. did not stir. His hands were still folded. His face was still turned toward her. Hanne said nothing. Outside in Kruses gate, an ambulance approached and, through the window at the end of the corridor, a blue flashing light swept across one wall before it faded and the noise subsided.

It grew quiet again.

Finally Billy T. got to his feet. Stiff and groaning slightly. He brushed the knees of his trousers with a light touch and tried to straighten his tight jacket. Without a word, he began to walk toward the elevator. Giving Hanne a self-assured smile, the neighbor followed him.

She sat watching them. Watching Billy T. He was the only one she saw. She let the wheels of her chair roll soundlessly out into the corridor.

“Billy T.,” she said as he pressed the button to summon the elevator.

He turned around.

“Yes?”

“You’ve never met Ida.”

“No.”

He ran his hand over his scalp, smiling warily.

“But I had heard you … that you both had a child. How old is she now?”

“Ten. She’ll turn eleven this summer.”

The elevator door opened with a ding.

Billy T. did not budge as the neighbor waved him in.

“She’ll be at school now, then,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Shall we?” the neighbor insisted, thrusting his foot forward to prevent the door from closing.

“I need help, Hanne. I need help with something that …”

Billy T. gasped for breath, as if on the brink of tears.

“It’s about Linus. Do you remember Linus, Hanne? My boy? Do you remember …?”

He checked himself and shook his head. Shrugging, he took one step into the elevator.

“Come in,” he heard, pulling him up short.

“What?”

He stepped back and stared along the corridor. Hanne was no longer there. But her door was open, he noticed; the front door invited him in and he was certain he had not misheard.

“Have a nice day,” he muttered to the neighbor as he walked hesitantly, almost anxiously, toward Hanne’s apartment.

Symbolically enough, the National Council for Islam in Norway, NCIN, was situated virtually next door to the American Lutheran Church in Frogner. In one of the best districts in Oslo, the increasingly large and influential organization had bought two apartments in Gimle terrasse and knocked them together into an impressive office. The protests of neighbors and political fanfare had made the process tortuous and prolonged, but some time after the inauguration, most of the neighbors were appeased. A woman who lived two floors above the office was interviewed by NRK, the national broadcaster, in connection with NCIN’s fifth anniversary. She was evidently pleased that they did not cook any food on the premises, as she had feared beforehand. Moreover, the organization had spent a lot of money on much-needed upgrading of the common areas. The eighty-year-old lady had also pointed out that her Muslims were beautifully dressed. None of them looked like that jihadist Mullah Krekar, and neither turbans nor tunics had gained admission to the respectable apartment block.

The American Church, which from a bird’s eye view looked like a bushy potted plant, was located diagonally opposite. It was mostly built of concrete. One of the advantages of which was that damage caused by the violent explosion would be limited.

The apartment block where NCIN was located sustained greater devastation.

As well as the old lady.

It was early in the day. Until then it had been like all others. The morning had brought freezing rain that had not been forecast, and traffic chaos. In some of the flowerbeds, overconfident daffodils had shown their faces to check the temperature the previous day; now they were hanging their heads in remorse. Afterward, when the entire area was combed and several hundred witnesses were required to relate what they had seen and where they had been, it turned out that one detail had, however, been unusual in that fashionable locality.

A young man in what they all called “traditional Islamic clothes” had approached the NCIN office, carrying a bag. The bag grew in size in the days following the blast. His clothing became increasingly eccentric. Some thought he had been wearing a turban, others were sure they had made out something that might have been a machine gun underneath his loose robes. Some individuals were convinced it was a question of two such figures, and three witnesses insisted they had spotted a whole gang of these odd birds in the minutes prior to the explosion.

It was difficult to know. The bomb was so powerful that the work of establishing the identities of the dead was far from simple.

Nevertheless, and on the basis of all the information quickly garnered from the relatives of the apartment block’s residents and NCIN’s numerous members who had not been present when the blast occurred, the police were able to issue an estimated total of fatalities that same evening. Or the missing, as they more correctly called most of them.

Sixteen people who could no longer be accounted for had been present in the NCIN offices. An unfortunate mailman had also disappeared. Of the neighbors in the apartments above NCIN’s office, only the old woman had been at home. She was found with all her body parts still attached to her torso, but her chest riddled with countless glass splinters and a door handle embedded four centimeters deep in her temple. Three pedestrians in Gimle terrasse and two in nearby Fritzners gate were also killed, but were sufficiently recognizable to receive a dignified funeral a few days later. One of them was a local employee in the embassy of the Czech Republic farther down the street, who had been on her way, far too early, to a lunch appointment.

In addition to the estimated twenty-three victims, the provisional statistics included eight more or less seriously wounded casualties. Among them the American pastor from the church directly across the street, who had been out walking his wife’s little Jack Russell puppy. The dog had died instantly, and the pastor had received a facial injury that would cost him repeated plastic-surgery operations. Very few concerned themselves to any great extent with the material damage in the days that followed, but it would later become apparent that this had been substantial.

The bomb went off at 10.57 on Tuesday April 8, 2014.

Hanne Wilhelmsen glanced at her wristwatch, which showed three minutes to eleven.

“What on—”

“What the hell was that?” Billy T. exclaimed.

He placed his hands on the massive, opaque glass coffee table. It was still vibrating. A large living-room window facing Kruses gate had cracked from corner to corner in a distinct diagonal line.

“Not again,” Hanne whispered as she rolled across to the outside wall, where she positioned herself at the window in order to peer out cautiously. “It can’t be …”

“A bomb? No …”

Standing up from the cushioned settee, Billy T. fiddled with his cellphone.

“There’s nothing on VG online,” he mumbled as he crossed tentatively to the window.

“The Internet is fast,” Hanne said tartly, “but maybe not at such lightning speed.”

“A gas explosion? An accident?”

Hanne trundled back to the glass table and grabbed a remote control. A gigantic, slightly curved, flatscreen TV appeared from behind a panel that slid silently up and into the wall. After a few seconds’ delay, Twitter’s easily recognizable Internet page appeared.

“Twitter? Are … are you on Twitter, Hanne?”

“Just an anonymous egghead. No followers. I follow three thousand. Never tweet myself. But it’s the fastest medium in the world, and at times like this … look!”

She pointed with the remote control.

The three last tweets in the feed were about the explosion. Hanne pressed the refresh button. Seven reports. Another keystroke. Eleven reports now. She began to scroll down. A hashtag quickly popped up, and she guided the cursor toward #osloexpl to find out more.

“There,” she said, dropping the hand that held the remote control to her thigh. “Bloody hell.”

Billy T. ran both hands over his head.

“Fuck!” he said softly. “The NCIN office. The intersection of Fritzners gate and Gimle terrasse. Some damned Knight Templar again?”

Hanne did not answer: she was engrossed in reading the ever-accumulating reports. Many of them seemed quite confused. Some claimed this related to a failed attack on the American Church. When some of the reports were in a language she thought must be Czech, she understood that country’s embassy was in the vicinity of the NCIN premises.

“Anyway, NCIN really shouldn’t scare anyone,” Billy T. continued. “Aren’t they the most Norwegian of all our Muslims, eh? The ones who don’t seem particularly Muslim at all, if you ask me? Keen to cooperate with everyone and everything, and speaking Norwegian better than me – at least that’s my impression. Female deputy leader. No hijab.”

“In the old days you’d be sprinting over there,” Hanne said, disregarding his comments and switching over to NRK.

“Sprinting?”

“It’s only a few hundred meters from here to Gimle terrasse. You’d reach there before the police. Before the ambulances.”

“I no longer work for the police. I thought you’d have kept track of that much at least.”

“Billy T.”

Her voice sounded despondent, and she turned her wheelchair to face him. NRK had nothing to offer at present: they were broadcasting a repeat of the Norge Rundt magazine program.

“That blast was ferocious. People may be injured. If I wasn’t stuck in this chair I’d already be halfway there. People over there must need help.”

He stared at her, his eyes narrowing as he bit a sliver of dry skin on his bottom lip.

“Come back here later,” she said calmly. “Then we can have a chat. I promise to let you in.”

Billy T. was already at the door.

Taking the stairs, he was breathless before he reached the street.

*

As Billy T. crossed Bygdøy allé at Gabels gate, zigzagging between cars scarcely able to make any progress in the chaos that had followed the explosion, he was completely out of breath. Reluctantly, he slowed down. His tongue felt dry and metallic and his lungs were burning. What’s more, he had a terrible stitch and clutched his side. Anyway, it would have been difficult to run any farther on the wide sidewalk. Even though Tuesday was not the busiest of shopping days, both customers and shop assistants had poured out of the stores and crowded the pedestrian areas. Drivers hesitantly left their stationary vehicles. Two taxi drivers were arguing loudly in the middle of the road, but apart from that everyone seemed totally confused. There was no one who really knew where to go. Most of them looked heavenward, through the still fairly bare horse-chestnut trees lining the sidewalk, as if they thought this had something to do with an aircraft bomb. A sobbing elderly woman was given clumsy consolation by a middle-aged man in a suit who kept looking at his watch every five seconds. The sound of sirens intensified.

Billy T. was already regretting this.

He had no business at the crime scene. It would only be a matter of minutes until the police, paramedics, and fire engines would arrive at the NCIN office premises, despite the traffic chaos. They would have more than enough to do trying to keep people away from the place, without him forcing his way through as well. He had come too late. He was useless, just as he had been for many years.

Almost imperceptibly, he slackened his pace.

A young man hurried toward him on the sidewalk, skirting the brown brick buildings.

His complexion was darker than that of most Norwegians, and below the worn, open anorak he was wearing a rifle-green tunic and wide trousers above grubby trainers. One of the laces had loosened. His beard was short and untrimmed at the edges: it had grown too far up on his cheekbones and down over his neck.

The only person in the whole of Bygdøy allé walking away from the explosion.

Five years had elapsed since Billy T. had left the police force. Probably he had not had any choice. Instead of waiting for a decision to be made, in the three disciplinary cases brought against him in just the last four months of his career, he had handed in his resignation in June 2009 and quit. After all, it looked better to prospective employers that he had stepped down of his own volition.

The problem was that he had never really stopped.

He rapidly estimated his distance from the young man, letting his eyes scan 180 degrees from side to side, and before the youth had taken another step, Billy T. was aware of exactly how many people were standing on the broad sidewalk. Which cars had illegally cut across to park on the pavement and which were stuck in traffic. He had calculated the speed and imminent positions of all potentially moving objects for a hundred meters ahead. Without needing to think about it, he took a long step forward and across to the left.

“Hey, you!”

Billy T. strode single-mindedly toward the boy, preparing to block him if he broke into a run.

“Me?”

The young guy stopped and tapped his chest.

“Do you mean me?”

“Yes. Where are you going? What are … but … Shazad? Is it you?”

The man’s eyes flickered. Billy T. was immediately in front of him now. Increasingly, passers-by were paying attention to their conversation.

“I thought I should get away from here,” Shazad said, sounding tense.

“Where are you going?”

“Home. Don’t really think this is any place for me, you see.”

“To be honest,” Billy T. began, in a low voice, “I think you should keep close to me right now. Come on.”

He laid his arm on the boy’s narrow shoulders, probably a quarter of a meter below his own. Decisively he turned his back on the group of women that had gathered, and started to walk back toward Gabels gate. The traffic lights had changed to blinking amber, as if they had capitulated to the unmanageable gridlock.

“The police ought to see to that guy there,” shouted a man in designer jeans and a tight leather jacket. “Hey! You over there! Those fuckers have blown up half of Frogner!”

Out of the corner of his right eye, Billy T. noticed three men coming at him from one side at full tilt. They had emerged from the photographic store on the corner, one of them holding a camera tripod in his right hand.

“Stop!” yelled the guy in the leather jacket, picking up speed.

The din from the sirens grew deafening. On the opposite side of the street, Billy T. caught sight of two patrol motorbikes, and all at once was uncertain whether he felt relieved or scared. Shazad, who until now had drawn increasingly close to him, tore himself free by stopping, twisting around, and ducking underneath Billy T.’s arm. As the first of the motorbikes reached the pedestrian area, accelerating when a fifty-meter gap opened up in the line of vehicles, Shazad had already bolted.

The police officer struggled to turn the bike away. The heavy two-wheeler skidded and toppled, still continuing its trajectory on its side. Billy T. stood absolutely still. Said nothing. Did not shout. No one did. In the cacophony of sirens constantly closing in, the motorbike’s front wheel caught Shazad’s legs just above the ankle. They both snapped like twigs, before his body was thrown up in a somersault to land four meters away on the hood of a BMW X5.

The three men from the photographic store retreated along the sidewalk. The policeman on the wrecked motorbike was assisted by his colleague who, after parking his own in short order, had plunged in.

Billy T. walked slowly toward the BMW.

Shazad’s body lay on its stomach, arms outstretched as if he wanted to embrace the hood. However, his eyes were fixed on something high above in the sky. His feet were dangling from his legs, sprawled at grotesque angles. An extremely overweight woman with steel-gray hair came running with short steps, already wheezing.

“I’m a doctor,” she screamed, shoving aside everyone in her path. “I’m a doctor!”

Three meters from the car, she came to a sudden halt.

Billy T. wanted more than anything to turn the corpse’s head back into place. Opening his mouth, he took a deep breath and ran his thumb and index finger over the corners of his mouth, muttering something no one heard.

“Billy T.,” somebody said. “What are you doing here?”

The last policeman to arrive on the scene had lifted the visor of his helmet. His colleague sat on the ground a short distance away with his knees raised, using his helmet for support at the small of his back. Although grimacing, he appeared to have emerged unscathed from the accident.

“Gundersen,” Billy T. replied, nodding in recognition, though he did not offer his hand.

“What happened? Who the hell is … what have we here?”

The police officer pointed at a bulge underneath the boy’s tunic.

“This is Shazad Beheshdi.”

“What? I was more meaning this here.”

Sergeant Gundersen grabbed a corner of the tunic. It was caught in the zip of the boy’s anorak, and he had to remove his gloves and use both hands to free it.

“Shouldn’t really interfere with it too much,” Billy T. said softly. “Maybe best to take some photographs first, eh?”

“What’s this?”

Gundersen pulled a plastic toy from the loose-fitting garment.

“Darth Vader,” he answered himself and studied the figure more closely. “That’s something, eh? A fucking toy!”’

It was perhaps thirty-five centimeters tall and seemed carefully constructed. The control panel on its chest was precise, down to each tiniest detail, and when Billy T. leaned forward to take a better look, he thought he could ascertain that the knobs could be switched off and on. Darth Vader was holding a broken light saber on his right arm.

“What is it that’s happened?” Billy T. asked, without taking his eyes off the figure.

“You know that better than me. Do you know this guy, then? Why did he take off …?”

“I mean over there. Gimle terrasse.”

“An explosion. Major incident. In the NCIN office, it says. It’s pretty chaotic, all of it. Can you—?”

He broke off, before suddenly handing Billy T. the Darth Vader model.

“Krogvold over there is probably in a bit of a state.”

He nodded to his colleague who, having risen from the asphalt, seemed to be carefully checking to see if all his bones were intact.

“But he can take care of this case here. Could you help him? I really ought to move on. It looks as if it’s on fire down there – in both meanings of the word.”

He nodded in a westerly direction. Hesitantly, Billy T. accepted the figure.

“There’s not really much I can do. I don’t have a radio, and it should really be called in …”

Sergeant Gundersen, already astride his motorbike, was no longer listening to him. He barked a brief order to Krogvold before starting the engine.

Billy T. was still staring at the dark figure.

This was no toy, he realized. It was a collector’s item and would have been valuable, if the red light saber had not been damaged. In his time, many years earlier, he had bought one exactly the same as this. In the same pose. The same knobs on the breastplate. Precisely the same kind of cap, made of stiff metallic material that hung in folds.

As Krogvold approached, Billy T. momentarily turned his back on him. His denim jacket was too tight – he would have to buy himself a new one – but he managed all the same to push the model up into his armpit underneath the fleece lining.

Without leave-taking, without waiting, without saying anything to anyone, he calmly began to walk off. Behind him he could hear the policeman ordering people to move farther back. His police radio crackled as he called an ambulance and other assistance, and Billy T. picked up speed. Not until he had reached Frognerveien, just where Kruses gate began, did he stop. He carefully drew out the figure. He had been walking with his arm akimbo all the way to avoid damaging it any more than necessary, and apart from the broken light saber, it was all in one piece.

The helmet could be removed, Billy T. discovered.

Just like the Darth Vader figure he himself had purchased, once upon a time.

His tongue tingled uncomfortably when, unable to delay any longer, he turned the figure upside-down. Billy T. made an effort to swallow, but suddenly felt sick.

A name was carved underneath the plinth.

In childish letters drawn with nail scissors: Billy T. could remember how angry he had been that the valuable collector’s item had been taken out of the original packaging and spoiled, by a little boy who had been told in no uncertain terms that this far-too-precious gift should sit on a shelf to be looked at.

Linus Bakken, it said, in shaky handwriting. His own son.

Billy T. shoved Darth Vader back under his arm. Looking up, he turned his eyes to the west, where a fat, black pillar stretched up to the sky to merge into the steadily lowering clouds.

The tea light had burned down, and the sooty wisp of smoke that swirled up to the ceiling made Hanne lean forward and use two fingers to pinch the reeking wick.

“You’re very late,” she said to Billy T.

“Yes.”

“Tea? A beer?”

“Nothing, thanks. I have this.”

Lethargically waving a bottle of Cola Light, he plumped down into an armchair.

The TV was muted. Hanne’s gaze did not waver from the screen. The images from Gimle terrasse were shocking. Although the press had obviously been chased farther away, once the police had succeeded in marshaling themselves around the explosion site, there was a continual flow of pictures snapped on smartphones in the dragging minutes when everything had been in disarray. Many passers-by had come so close to the NCIN premises that corpses and body parts had to be censored before the shots were transmitted.

“Did you manage to do anything?” she asked.

“What?”

“There.”

She nodded at the screen.

“No. I never got that far.”

Shaking his head, he looked around the enormous living room, so recently decorated that a scent of new timber rose from the floor.

“Quite a place,” he mumbled. “I remembered it was nice, but now it’s even more impressive. I know Nefis has money, but what on earth did all this actually cost?”

Hanne grabbed the remote control. All of a sudden, sound poured out of the panel that ran the entire length of the TV set. The broadcast had transferred to the studio, where hastily summoned experts on everything from bombs to extremism were arrayed, with serious expressions, around a half-moon-shaped counter. Hanne smacked her lips in consternation when she noticed that Kari Thue had also been invited, as the only woman in the group.

“That harridan’s paranoid,” Billy T. said, opening his bottle to an eruption of fizz. “Off her bloody head. People like that will give grist to the mill, if it actually turns out that it’s Muslims who’ve attacked their own kind. At least that’s the theory, as far as I understand. Poor fuckers. They always get the blame. Last time, when the government and youth wing of the Labor Party were the targets, everyone thought it was them until that pathetic slimeball from the west end was identified. Now, when the attack hits the Muslims, they’re damn well getting the blame again.”

Hanne did not reply. She had experienced the doubtful pleasure of spending a few dramatic days at Finse, in Kari Thue’s fanatically anti-Islamic company, seven years earlier. The train on which they had both been traveling had derailed near the tunnel through Finsenut. Two people were murdered while they all remained stormbound in isolation at the hotel, Finse 1222, and Hanne’s antipathy to the little shrew had been so strong that she had initially and quite mistakenly suspected her of being behind the killings.

“Nobody knows anything as yet,” she said. “They’re only speculating. They did that first time around as well, in the first few hours, and it’s always a foolish thing to do. You know that fine well. Keep all possibilities open, as you know. Never get locked into any specific theories. That’s why we were so … invincible, you and I.”

She smiled at him, for the first time in more than eleven years. Not a broad smile, and not even a particularly friendly one. But she smiled. He grinned in return.

“Those were the days.”

She nodded curtly and the smile vanished.

“You needed help, you said. Something about Linus. I can’t fathom how I might be able to help you with anything whatsoever, unless you need money. Not that I have so very much, but I can speak to Nefis. She – as you already made a song and dance about – has plenty.”

His eyes narrowed and his movements were ill-tempered as he returned the lid to the bottle.

“What the hell do you take me for? I certainly wouldn’t drag myself along here and humiliate myself in front of every Tom, Dick, and Harry …”

The bottle pointed in the direction of the apartment next door.

“… just to ask you for money! Or, even worse, to ask your wife for money!”

Hanne shrugged indifferently. Once again she reduced the volume on the TV, but without switching it off entirely. Billy T. stared at her as if searching for something, but instead of looking at him she appeared to be watching the broadcast.

He was not the only one who had changed over the years. Hanne’s hair was graying, especially at the temples. Shoulder-length, it had a lopsided fringe that kept falling over one eye. Before that fateful day between Christmas and New Year in 2002, when she had stormed into a cottage in Nordmarka and been shot by a perfidious policeman, she had begun to struggle with her weight. Now she was slim, almost skinny. Her nose seemed sharper than before and her cheekbones higher. Her narrow hands were sinewy, with dark-blue veins clearly delineated below the fine skin. Her lifeless legs looked like sticks.

Even her eyes had changed, he thought. They were still ice-blue, with the same distinctive black ring around the iris. The whites of her eyes were still just as bright, despite her age. Billy T. could not quite grasp what was different. Not until she suddenly gazed directly at him and asked: “Okay. If you’re not begging for money, then what’s this about?”

He froze.

They had been pals in their student days and close colleagues, Hanne Wilhelmsen and Billy T. They had been friends – more than friends, and at one time almost a couple. One night she had come closer to him than any other person had ever managed to do. She had often rejected him. Hurt him. Withdrawn into herself, gone off, and driven him to distraction with her silences and undue secretiveness.

But she had never met him with coldness. She had never mocked him like this.

He lowered his eyes.

“What actually happened to you?” he asked, once he was sure his voice would carry.

“Me? I was shot. My spine was damaged. Left the police. Water under the bridge.”

“I just don’t understand it. After all these years. All we had. And then just …”

He tried to click his fingers, but couldn’t manage to produce a sound.

“Hey presto,” he said instead. “Hey presto, and I was just out of your life. With no explanation. Without so much as a reproach about something or other, something that might have made it a bit easier to—”

“Billy T.!”

Her voice was so sharp that his mouth snapped shut.

“You mentioned that you had a problem with Linus,” she said without taking her eyes from the TV screen. “I suggest you tell me what it is. Then I can draw the obvious conclusion: I can’t help. Then you can leave again. Really, I’d like to watch this program.”

“They’re going to be broadcasting it twenty-four hours a day. Loads of repeats.”

“Yes, of course.”

“There’s something wrong with Linus.”

Picking up a pair of glasses, Hanne perched them on her nose and continued to watch the TV for a few seconds before turning to face him, gazing at him over the frames.

“Is he ill?” she asked.

“No.”

“How old is he now? Twenty … one?”

“Two. Twenty-two.”

“And he’s not in such good shape?”

“No. Yes … that’s maybe what the problem is. He’d probably answer that he’s in better shape than he’s ever been. If he answered you at all. As far as I’m concerned, well, he’s hardly spoken a word to me in six months.”

“What does he do?”

“He’s repeating his high-school certificate. As a private student. He didn’t graduate from high school at the time he should have done. Just messed about.”

“Did Iris put up with that sort of thing?”

“Grete. It’s Grete who’s Linus’s mother.”

“Five children with five different women, Billy T. You can hardly reproach me for not managing to tell them apart, after all these years.”

“Six,” he muttered.

“Six? Children? Have you and Tone-Marit had another one?”

“No. Jenny’s the only one I had with her. Tone-Marit and I separated the summer after you were …”

He nodded at the wheelchair.

“I had Niclas with … someone else.”

Yet again he thought he discerned the suggestion of a smile. In any case, she shook her head gently.

“I remember Linus,” she said after a pause, without asking him who was the mother of his sixth child. “He was a lovely little boy. I don’t quite see what the problem is, if he’s behaving well. Going back to school again to make up for—”

“He’s become a different person, Hanne.”

“People change. Especially at that age.”

“Not the way that—”

“It’s already half past ten, Billy T. When the bomb went off, I said you could come back later. Not at night. For me, it’s night time now. From what you’ve told me, it’s not just the case that there’s little I can do for Linus. It seems as if he doesn’t need any help at all. What does the boy himself say about it?”

“As I said, he’s not at all talkative. Linus, Hanne! Do you remember how he used to chatter away? Unstoppable, he—”

“Hammo!”

A slim young girl, tall for her ten years, stood in the doorway.

“I can’t sleep. Do you think there’ll be another explosion?”

“Ida,” Hanne said. “Come here.”

The child ran across the floor in her bare feet. Lithe and quick, she crept on to Hanne’s knee.

“Hi,” she said solemnly, staring at Billy T. with the biggest brown eyes he had ever seen. “My name is Ida Wilhelmsen.”

“Hi. My name is Billy T. I’m a friend of—”

“Billy T. and I worked together in the police a very long time ago,” Hanne said placidly. “But he was just about to leave now.”

Kissing Ida lightly on the hair, she stroked the girl’s cheek.

“I think you really have to try to get to sleep, sweetheart. It’s a school day tomorrow. There won’t be another explosion. Go back to bed, and I’ll come soon and tuck you in again. Okay?”

The girl picked her way back across the living-room floor and disappeared into the deeper recesses of the apartment just as swiftly as she had appeared. Billy T. thought he could detect a fragrance lingering behind her, of child and bedclothes and maybe shampoo.

“Sweet girl,” he said.

“Yes. She’s like Nefis. Lucky, that way.”

“What was it she called you? Hammo? Why that? And why does she have only your surname?”

Hanne demonstratively pulled back the sleeve of her sweater to reveal her wristwatch.

“You’ll be able to find your own way out, I expect?”

He did not budge.

She turned the wheelchair to the flatscreen TV.

“Why did you come here?” she asked in such a soft voice that he doubted whether he could believe his ears.

“As I said, I’m worried about Linus, that he’s mixed up in something—”

“No,” she interrupted him, raising her voice. “Why did you come here? To me, of all people? After all these years, why on earth did you come specifically to me for help?”

Billy T. stood up slowly and pushed the half-empty cola bottle down into his jacket pocket.

“I think Linus is involved in some criminal activity,” he said quickly, and loudly, as if afraid of being interrupted again. “I don’t want to go to the police. I’ve nothing to go to them with, for that matter. At the same time I need some help to sort my thoughts, to work it out. I need help from someone with police experience. But someone who doesn’t work in the police. Who doesn’t have anything to do with the police. You don’t have anything to do with anyone at all, as far as I understand. What’s more, you knew Linus once upon a time. That time when everything was …”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Whatever. I’m pretty desperate. It seemed like a good idea. I see I was wrong.”

“Yes. You were wrong.”

Shrugging again, he began to head for the hallway.

“You were wrong,” she repeated, slightly louder, and he stopped and wheeled around.

“Yes,” he answered, sounding annoyed. “So you say.”

“Not only about me being able to help you.”

“I see. Okay then. Listen, I realize this was a waste of time.”

He held out his arms in despair and looked around the spacious living room.

“Bloody hell, Hanne. It’s been your own choice to sit here in this swanky prison. You’ve broken off with all your old friends. You hardly leave this apartment, from the little I’ve heard about you in eleven years. You don’t work. You—”

“Wrong.”

“Wrong?”

“Yes. I’ve started to work.”

“What?” His expression changed from skepticism to disbelief.

“Yes,” she repeated. “I’ve started to work again.”

“You? But you were at home this morning and … where … where on earth do you work?”

“For the police,” Hanne Wilhelmsen answered. “I’m back with the Oslo Police Force, Billy T., and I can’t help you.”

Oslo’s Chief of Police, Silje Sørensen, tossed an empty can of sugar-free Red Bull in the wastepaper basket, before crossing to the window and leaning her forehead on the glass. Her breath formed patches of condensation on the pane. It was dark outside and the weather had changed for the even worse. It grew more difficult with the passing of the years, she felt, having to wait like this for spring. April was worst of all. Dense flurries of huge wet snowflakes blanketed the gray grass below Oslo Prison.

“It’s past midnight,” the Deputy Police Chief said as he entered her office without knocking. “One of us at least should go home.”

“You go. I’m not at all tired, in fact.”

“Thanks for the offer. I thought I should give you a run-through first, though.”

Silje Sørensen turned around. One of her three deputies and Head of CID, Håkon Sand, gave a protracted yawn, making no attempt to hide it.

“Quite a case to land in your lap so quickly,” he said, opening his eyes wide as he shook his head energetically. “It’s been only four weeks since you took up the post, hasn’t it?”

“Five,” she said tersely and returned to sit behind her desk. “And yes. Quite a case.”

“Provisional number of confirmed deaths,” he began with a slightly overplayed, chanting tone to his voice. “Ten. In addition there are thirteen missing, presumed dead. A figure that may continue to rise, but that’s unlikely. Besides—”

“I learned that several hours ago, Håkon. If you’ve no more than that to report, then it’s fine for you to go home.”

“Mohammad Awad.”

“What?”

“There are indications that a young man by the name of Mohammad Awad was behind the bombing.”

Lifting his backside, he fished a box of snuff from his right front pocket. Regular use had left a permanent ring on the denim of his jeans.

“Though we’re not very much the wiser as to who he is.”

Silje Sørensen leaned forward, resting her arms on the desk, and clasped her hands. She fixed her eyes on him though she did no more than raise her eyebrows.

“Mohammad Awad,” Håkon reiterated as he used his tongue to tuck a plug of snuff into place. “Twenty-three years old. Born here, of parents from Sudan. Refugees. They came to Norway in 1988. When Mohammad came into the world, his parents had just been allocated a house in Groruddalen, where the boy grew up with two older and three younger siblings. All of them girls.”

Once again he yawned so emphatically that tears welled up in his eyes. Grabbing a coffee cup from the desk, he peered fleetingly into it, before pouring the remains of the room-temperature coffee down his throat without so much as a grimace.

“Clever girls. The two eldest are at university. The younger ones are also well adjusted. The father runs a gas station in Furuset; the mother stays at home.”

The Chief of Police still said nothing.

“Mohammad was a good boy as well,” Håkon Sand went on, while slowly massaging his neck with his right hand. “For a long time. Graduated from high school with relatively good grades. That was four years ago now, and we don’t have a complete picture of what he’s been doing since then. Other than that, there’s reason to believe he’s undergone some kind of radicalization.”

“Sudanese – aren’t they often Christians? Or adhere to some tribal religion or other?”

“Well, Silje. Nearly eighty percent are Muslims. It’s an Islamic republic.”

“What does the Security Service have to say?”

“They’re saying exactly what I’m telling you now. We were lucky.”

“Lucky?”

“The Security Service have had him in their sights. Only just. They have a slim file on the guy, just as they’re starting to keep files of varying thickness on quite a few of Mohammad’s type.”

“Which is …?” The Police Chief opened out her arms to reinforce her question.

“What do you mean?” Håkon Sand asked.

“Mohammad’s type. What’s that, exactly?”

He gave a slight shrug.

“Immigrant boy. Gets every opportunity in this country. Becomes radicalized all the same. Bites the hand that feeds him, in a manner of speaking.”

“From what you’re telling me, it’s almost certainly his parents who have fed this boy. But do continue.”

“As you know, the identification work at the crime scene is going to take time.”

He spat tiny flakes of snuff out on to the back of his hand, before straightening his back and continuing: “But they’ve found something to go on, in the meantime. The American Church diagonally across the street has CCTV cameras outside. Two of them don’t work, unfortunately. But they have one just here …”

Without asking, he rotated the open MacBook Pro on the Police Chief’s desk. After a few seconds’ typing, he turned it back and leaned toward her. The screen showed an aerial photo of Frogner.

“There,” he said, pointing at a dot on the church’s northern flank. “And, in addition, by some miracle it was not knocked out of commission by the explosion. It points slightly to the west, and picks up the traffic on Gimle terrasse coming from the west, and some distance along Fritzners gate.”

“Odd building, that church. Looks like a Christmas tree.”

“And there’s a Seven-Eleven store there,” Håkon Sand plowed on, unmoved, and indicated an address on Bygdøy allé. “As you know, they have cameras, too. The preliminary cross-check between the footage from both locations shows only one reappearance.”

“Mohammad Awad, I assume.”

“Spot-on. He’s observed at the Seven-Eleven at twenty to eleven. Fifteen minutes later, only minutes prior to the explosion, he’s strolling along here …”

His finger ran eastward along Gimle terrasse and up Fritzners gate.

“… and here. Presumably he’s walked along Thomas Heftyes gate from Bygdøy allé.”

“That walk doesn’t take quarter of an hour. Four or five minutes, max.”

“Yes. Agreed. But in any case he was in the vicinity minutes before the blast, and has been nowhere to be found since.”

“When did we start looking for him?”

“About five o’clock this afternoon. In the meantime we’ve managed to keep his name – and, for that matter, our suspicions – to ourselves. Of course, it’s just a matter of time before it leaks out: sooner or later his family will tell someone that we’re searching exhaustively for the boy.”

“So he’s assumed to be some kind of … suicide bomber, is that what you’re saying? Ambling about in Frogner with a bomb under his arm, dropping into the Seven-Eleven for a can of soft drink first, before blowing NCIN and himself sky-high?”

“He bought a bottle of water.”

“Very well, then.”

Silje Sørensen puffed out her cheeks and released the air slowly through her lips. Then she opened her eyes wide and drew her forefinger under each, to remove the mascara she was convinced had started to run.

“That’s what we have, Silje. So far.”

“It is at least something.”

“It’s early in the investigation.”

“It’s fucking late, that’s what it is.”

Now she was the one to yawn, with a mouth she struggled to keep closed and also concealed, with a slim hand where a large diamond glittered in the light from the desk lamp. She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes.

“Does he belong to any group?” she mumbled.

“Not as far as the Security Service is aware. He has some kind of loose connection to The Prophet’s Ummah, through a childhood pal from Furuset, but he isn’t registered as any sort of … fully signed-up member, or however they organize themselves these days.”

“The Prophet’s Ummah,” she said despondently.

“That lot are crazy.”

“Who do you mean by ‘that lot’?”

“Stop it, Silje.”

Håkon Sand rose from his seat and, placing his hands on the small of his back, swayed slightly.

“You’re really being a bit too touchy. You ought to know me well enough, after all these years, to know I’m not a racist. On the contrary – in all modesty, I’ve worked my socks off to recruit other ethnic groups than us paleskins to the police force, for example. My children have lots of Muslim friends. Lovely children, smart at school and football and I don’t bloody know what. They go in and out of our house. Get a grip.”

“I don’t like expressions such as ‘that lot.’”

“I mean the reprobates, Silje! Exactly the way I don’t like the fucking drug pushers, child molesters, thieves, and violent louts, no matter where on earth they come from. In the same way, I let myself get enraged about young men who, in an international context, have won the lottery by having their parents get them into Norway and give them opportunities they’ve never had themselves, so that they can just throw it back in our faces with their religious claptrap, shenanigans, and hatred.”

“That way of speaking isn’t appropriate for a Deputy Police Chief.”

“Go to hell. I couldn’t care less.”

He headed for the door, narrowly avoiding tripping on the edge of a thick rug that had cost far more than any public-sector budget allowed. He stopped short and gazed around the room in annoyance, as if only now, several weeks after Oslo’s new Police Chief had moved into the second-from-top floor at Grønlandsleiret 44, he had noticed its transformation into a showroom for good taste.

“Have you bought all this yourself, or what?”

“Yes.”

Håkon shook his head slowly.

“Some people have all the luck, you know. Inherited wealth and a job as a Police Chief. Despite taking your Masters in law only three years ago. I’m going home, if it’s okay with you. Be back in a few hours.”

He did not look at her.

“How long have we known each other?” she asked his retreating back.

“What?”

“You and I. How long have we known each other?”

“Er … fifteen years?”

“Eighteen. We’ve known each other since I began here as a civil servant and you were a police officer studying law on the side. And we’ve been friends for more than eleven. Since the time when Hanne Wilhelmsen was shot, and you and Karen and Billy T. tried to drum up some sort of collective voluntary effort to knock a hole in that wall she built up around herself.”

“That’s right.”

“Do you know how many times you’ve made a point of the fact that I happen to be rich?”

“No. See you at …” he peered up at an elegant wall clock with hands of polished red oak, “… seven o’clock.”

“Once a week. At least. Once a week for more than eleven years. A sarcastic dig here, a putdown there. And it’s grown worse, Håkon. You’ve grown worse since I got a job you thought you deserved more than me. Because you have a law degree, and I’ve only got a ‘Master of Jurisprudence’ qualification?” Her fingers outlined little quote marks in the air. “Because you’re older than me? Or because you’re a man?”

Håkon Sand shrugged as he opened the door. “I’m the wrong gender. I knew that already when I applied. And if you’re now …” he ran his right hand slowly over his face, “… going to make out I’m an anti-feminist as well as a racist, then I’d remind you that I’ll soon have been married for quarter of a century to a woman who would have been a Supreme Court judge, if it hadn’t been for my position disqualifying her. Doesn’t exactly demonstrate that I’ve anything against women having careers.”

“But was it out of the question for you to change your job so that Karen could be appointed?”

“Christ, Silje, you’re being pigheaded now. My point stands. Bye.”

Håkon Sand suddenly halted, as he was about to leave. A man in his thirties, dressed in a pinstripe suit, snowy white shirt, and a tie so tight you would think it had been knotted half an hour ago, almost collided with him.

“Switch on the TV,” he said, sweeping back his thick head of hair with a nervous, almost feminine gesture. “They’ve sent a video to TV2.”

“Who are ‘they’?”

Grabbing a remote control, Silje turned on the TV set in the corner, a forty-six-inch Bang & Olufsen on a black-lacquered stand, before repeating, “Who are ‘they’?”

Her secretary did not respond. Instead, he snatched the remote control from her hands, unbidden, and pressed one of the buttons.

“… name, The Merciful, The Beneficent.”

A serious-looking man, with a kufi on his head and a scarf over his face, blinked.

“Norwegian,” Håkon Sand said softly. “He’s speaking Norwegian.”

“Allahu akbar,” the man onscreen intoned.

The image went black for a moment, before a solemn news presenter took over in the studio.

“This video was sent to us twenty minutes ago. Naturally, it has been relayed immediately to the police, but at TV2 we regard it as our duty to communicate everything we know, in such a serious case as the one we are now faced with.”

“Bloody hell,” the Deputy Chief of Police whispered.

“Shit!” the Police Chief said. “Are they accepting responsibility?”

“Yes,” her secretary replied. “At present, no one has any idea who he is. But the Head of the Security Service is requesting a meeting. Shall I insist on it taking place here at headquarters?”

“Yes. What did he say, actually?” She pointed at the screen.

“As far as I understand, they assume responsibility for the explosion: The Prophet’s True Ummah. An organization I’ve never heard of. To be honest, I’ve a bit of a problem comprehending all these conflicts between the Muslims.”

Brushing an invisible speck of dust from his left shoulder, he tensed his spine.

“I don’t mean that negatively, not by any manner of means, but it’s almost incomprehensible – all of what these people get up to, you know.”

His eyes widened as if he were shocked by his own admission.

“But of course I don’t have an opinion on that. The meeting will be convened here, then. I’ll pass on that message right away.”

“The Prophet’s True Ummah,” Håkon Sand mumbled with his hands covering his face. “What the hell is that? I’ve never heard of them.”

He slid the wet snuff into a better position under his lip.

“Throw them out, that’s what I say now. On their asses. Out.”

But he said it so quietly that no one heard him.