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looked like a man on his last legs. But now his ex-subordinate looked healthy; he had put on a few sorely needed pounds, and his shoulders filled out the suit. Suit. Hagen remembered the murder investigatorin jeans and boots, never anything else. The other difference was the sticker on his lapel saying he was not staff but a visitor: HARRY HOLE .
    But the posture in the chair was the same, more horizontal than vertical.
    “You look better,” Hagen said.
    “Your town does, too,” Harry said with an unlit cigarette bobbing between his teeth.
    “You think so?”
    “Wonderful opera house. Fewer junkies in the streets.”
    Hagen got up and went to the window. From the sixth floor of Police HQ he could see Oslo’s new district, Bjørvika, bathed in sunshine. The cleanup was in full flow, the demolition work over.
    “There’s been a marked fall in the number of fatal ODs in the last year,” Harry remarked.
    “Prices have gone up, consumption down. And the City Council got what it craved. Oslo no longer tops OD stats in Europe.”
    “Happy days are here again.” Harry put his hands behind his head and looked as if he were going to slide out of the chair.
    Hagen sighed. “You didn’t say what brings you to Oslo, Harry.”
    “Didn’t I?”
    “No. Or, more specifically, to Crime Squad.”
    “Isn’t it normal to visit former colleagues?”
    “Yes, for other, normal, sociable people, it is.”
    “Well.” Harry bit into the filter of the Camel cigarette. “My occupation is murder.”
    “
Was
murder, don’t you mean?”
    “Let me reformulate that: My profession, my area of expertise, is murder. And it’s still the only field I know something about.”
    “So what do you want?”
    “To practice my occupation. To investigate murders.”
    Hagen arched an eyebrow. “You’d like to work for me again?”
    “Why not? Unless I’m very much mistaken, I was one of the best.”
    “Correction,” Hagen said, turning back to the window. “You were
the
best.” And added in a lower tone: “The best and the worst.”
    “I would prefer one of the drug murders.”
    Hagen gave a dry smile. “Which one? We’ve had four in the last six months. We haven’t made an ounce of headway with any of them.”
    “Gusto Hanssen.”
    Hagen didn’t answer, continued to study the people outside, sprawled over the grass. And the thoughts came unforced. Welfare cheats. Thieves. Terrorists. Why did he see that instead of hardworkingemployees enjoying a few well-earned hours in the September sunshine? The police look. The police blindness. He half-listened to Harry’s voice behind him.
    “Gusto Hanssen, nineteen years old. Known to police, pushers and users. Found dead in a flat on Hausmanns Gate on July 12. Bled to death after a shot to the chest.”
    Hagen burst out laughing. “Why do you want the only one that’s cleared up?”
    “I think you know.”
    “Yes, I do.” Hagen sighed. “But if I were to employ you again I would put you on one of the others. On the undercover-cop case.”
    “I want this one.”
    “There are about a hundred reasons why you will never be put on that case, Harry.”
    “Which are?”
    Hagen turned to Harry. “Perhaps it’s enough to mention the first. The case has already been solved.”
    “And beyond that?”
    “We don’t have the case. Kripos does. I don’t have any vacancies. Quite the opposite—I’m trying to make cuts. You’re not eligible. Should I go on?”
    “Mm. Where is he?”
    Hagen pointed out the window. Across the lawn to the gray-stone building behind the yellow leaves of the linden trees.
    “Botsen,” Harry said. “On remand.”
    “For the moment.”
    “Visits out of bounds?”
    “Who traced you in Hong Kong and told you about the case? Was it—”
    “No,” Harry interrupted.
    “So?”
    “So.”
    “Who?”
    “I might have read about it online.”
    “Hardly,” Hagen said with a thin smile and lifeless eyes. “The case was in the papers for one day before it