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wasn’t Rakel this time, either.
    ‘Hello, boss.’
    ‘Harry? Where are you?’ Bjarne Møller sounded concerned.
    ‘Underwater. What’s up?’
    ‘Water?’
    ‘Water. Fresh water. Salt water. Tonic water. You sound . . . What’s the word? Frazzled.’
    ‘Are you drunk?’
    ‘Not drunk enough.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Nothing. The battery keeps going, boss.’
    ‘One of the officers at the crime scene threatened to write a report on you. He says you were visibly intoxicated when you arrived.’
    ‘Why “threatened” and not “is threatening”?’
    ‘I persuaded him not to. Were you intoxicated, Harry?’
    ‘Of course I wasn’t, boss.’
    ‘Are you absolutely positive that you are telling me the truth now, Harry?’
    ‘Are you absolutely positive that you want to know?’
    Harry heard Møller’s groan at the other end.
    ‘This cannot go on, Harry. I’ll be forced to put a stop to it.’
    ‘OK. Begin by taking me off this case.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘You heard me. I don’t want to work with that bastard. Put someone else on the case.’
    ‘We haven’t got the personnel to . . .’
    ‘Then give me the boot. I don’t give a monkey’s.’
    Harry put his phone back in his inside pocket. He could hear Møller’s voice gently vibrating against his nipple. Actually it was quite a pleasant feeling. He drained the rest of his glass, stood up and staggered out into the warm summer evening. The third taxi he hailed in Ullevålsveien stopped and picked him up.
    ‘Holmenkollveien,’ he said, settling his sweaty neck back against the cool leather of the back seat. As they went along he gazed out of the window at the swallows as they dissected the pale blue sky in their search for food. The insects had come out now. This was the swallows’ window of opportunity, their chance to live. From now until the sun went down.
    The taxi pulled up below a large, dark timber-clad house.
    ‘Shall I drive up?’ the taxi driver asked.
    ‘No, we’ll just wait here for a bit,’ Harry said.
    He stared up at the house. He thought he caught a glimpse of Rakel in the window. Oleg would probably be going to bed soon. He was probably making a fuss right now to stay up longer because it was . . .
    ‘It is Friday today, isn’t it?’
    The taxi driver took a cautious look in his mirror and gave a slight nod.
    The days. The weeks. My God, how quickly young lads grew up. Harry rubbed his face, tried to massage a bit of life into the wan death mask he walked around with. Last winter hadn’t been so bad. He had solved a couple of biggish cases, he had appeared as a witness in the Ellen Gjelten case, he was on the wagon, and he and Rakel had gone from being just a couple of new loves to doing family things together. And he had liked it; he liked the weekend trips and the company of children. Harry did the barbecuing. He liked having his father and Sis over for a Sunday meal, and seeing his sister, who had Down’s syndrome, and nine-year-old Oleg playing together. And best of all: they were very much in love. Rakel had even begun to throw out hints that it might be an idea if Harry moved in. She had used the argument that the house was too big for her and Oleg. Harry had not gone to any great pains to find counter-arguments.
    ‘We’ll see when I’ve done with the Ellen Gjelten case,’ he had said. The trip to Normandy that they had booked – three weeks on an old farm and a week on a riverboat – would be a kind of test to see if they were ready for it.
    Then things started happening.
    He had spent the whole winter working on the Ellen Gjelten case. It was intensive, too intensive, but that was the only way Harry knew how to work. Ellen Gjelten was not just a colleague; she was his closest friend and kindred spirit. Two years had gone by since the two of them had been on the heels of an arms smuggler going by the code name of Prince and since the day a baseball bat had knocked the living daylights out of her. The evidence at