Read Harry Hole Oslo Sequence 10 - Police for Free Online Page B

trembled in the freezing gusts of wind. It had stopped snowing, and under the leaden grey sky the town was bathed in a bluish-white light. Like the colour of a dead body, Bellman thought. Isabelle’s voice echoed off the bare walls. ‘Well, my dear, what do you think of the view?’
    ‘Impressive. If I remember rightly the previous councillor had an office that was both smaller and lower down.’
    ‘Not that view,’ she said. ‘This one.’
    He turned to her. Oslo’s latest Councillor for Social Affairs had spread her legs. Her panties were on the windowsill beside her. Isabelle had repeatedly said she didn’t understand the attractions of a shaven pussy, but Mikael reckoned there had to be a halfway house as he stared into the thick bush and mumbled a repeat of his comment about the view. Truly impressive.
    Her heels hit the parquet floor hard and she walked over to him. Brushed an invisible speck of dust off his lapel. Even without stilettos she would have been a centimetre taller than him, but now she towered over him. He didn’t find this intimidating. On the contrary, her physical size and domineering personality were an interesting challenge. It required more of him as a man than Ulla’s slender figure and gentle compliance. ‘I think it’s only right and proper that you’re the person to inaugurate my office. Without your . . . willing cooperation I wouldn’t have got this job.’
    ‘Ditto,’ Mikael Bellman said. He breathed in the fragrance of her perfume. It was familiar. It was . . . Ulla’s. The Tom Ford perfume – what was it called? Black Orchid. Which he’d bought for her when he was in Paris or London because it was impossible to get hold of in Norway. The coincidence seemed highly improbable.
    He saw the laughter in her eyes as she saw the astonishment in his. She interlaced her fingers behind his neck and leaned back laughing. ‘Sorry, I couldn’t stop myself.’
    What the hell. After the house-warming Ulla had complained that the bottle of perfume had disappeared and that one of the celeb guests he’d invited must have stolen it. He’d been pretty sure it had been one of the local Mangleruders, namely Truls Berntsen. He wasn’t exactly unaware that Truls had been head over heels in love with Ulla ever since their boyhood days. Which of course he had never mentioned to her or Truls. Nor the business with the bottle of perfume. After all, it was better that Truls pinched Ulla’s perfume than her panties.
    ‘Have you ever wondered if that might be your problem?’ Mikael said. ‘Stopping yourself?’
    She laughed softly. Closed her eyes. Her long, broad fingers opened behind his neck, moved down his back and stole inside his belt. She looked at him with mild disappointment in her gaze.
    ‘What’s up, my stallion?’
    ‘The doctors say he’s not going to die,’ Mikael said. ‘And recently he’s been showing signs of coming out of the coma.’
    ‘In what way? Is he moving?’
    ‘No, but they can see changes in his EEG, so they’ve started doing neurophysiological examinations.’
    ‘So what?’ Her lips were close to his. ‘Are you frightened of him?’
    ‘I’m not frightened of him but of what he could say. About us.’
    ‘Why would he do anything so stupid? He’s alone and he has nothing to gain by it.’
    ‘Let me put it this way, my love,’ Mikael said, shoving her hand away. ‘The thought that there’s someone out there who can testify that you and I have been working with a dope dealer to further our careers—’
    ‘Listen,’ Isabelle said. ‘All we did was make a careful intervention to prevent market forces ruling. It’s good, tried and tested Socialist Party politics, my dear. We let Asayev have a monopoly on dope, and we arrested all the other drug barons because Asayev’s goods caused fewer ODs. Anything else would have been an unsatisfactory drugs policy.’
    That made Mikael smile. ‘I can hear you’ve been honing your rhetoric on the debating