Read Online Harry Hole Oslo Sequence 10 - Police by Jo Nesbø - Free Book Online

his ear and speak softly. Put it back down. ‘The Golf in the car park is registered in the name of a Mira Nilsen. Same address as Bertil Nilsen. Must be his wife.’
    Hagen released his breath with a groan, and it hung out of his mouth like a white flag. ‘I’ll have to report this to the Chief,’ he said. ‘Don’t mention the murdered girl for now.’
    ‘The press’ll find out.’
    ‘I know. But I’m going to advise the Chief to let the press speculate for the time being.’
    ‘Wise move,’ Beate said.
    Hagen sent her a quick smile, as thanks for very much needed encouragement. Glanced up the mountainside to the car park and the march ahead of him. Looked up at the body. Shivered again. ‘Do you know who I think of when I see a tall, thin man like that?’
    ‘Yes,’ Beate Lønn said.
    ‘I wish he was here now.’
    ‘He wasn’t tall and thin,’ said Bjørn Holm.
    The two others turned to him. ‘Harry wasn’t . . .?’
    ‘I mean this guy,’ Holm said, nodding towards the body on the wire. ‘Nilsen. He got tall overnight. If you feel his body it’s like jelly. I’ve seen the same happen to people who’ve fallen a long way and crushed all the bones in their body. With the skeleton broken the body hasn’t got a frame, and the flesh says follow gravity until rigor mortis sets in. Funny, isn’t it?’
    They regarded the body in silence. Until Hagen turned on his heel and left.
    ‘Too much information?’ Bjørn Holm asked.
    ‘A trifle superfluous perhaps,’ Beate said. ‘And I also wish he was here.’
    ‘Do you think he’ll ever come back?’ Bjørn Holm asked.
    Beate shook her head. Bjørn Holm didn’t know if it was in response to his question or the whole situation. He turned and his eye caught a spruce branch swaying on the edge of the forest. A chilling bird cry filled the silence.



6
    THE BELL OVER the door rang furiously as Truls Berntsen stepped in from the freezing cold street and into the damp warmth. There was a smell of rotten hair and hair lotion.
    ‘Trim?’ said the young man with the glistening black hairstyle Truls was fairly confident he had acquired in a different salon.
    ‘Two hundred?’ Truls asked, brushing snow off his shoulders. March, the month of broken promises. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder to make sure the board outside was still accurate. Gentlemen 200. Children 85. Pensioners 75. Truls had seen people bring their dogs in here.
    ‘Same as always, pal,’ the hairdresser said in a Pakistani accent, ushering him into one of the salon’s two free chairs. In the third sat a man Truls immediately categorised as an Arab. Dark terrorist eyes beneath a fringe plastered to his forehead. Eyes that darted away in fear after meeting Truls’s in the mirror. Perhaps the man could smell bacon, or recognised the police look. In which case perhaps he was one of those selling drugs down by Brugata. Just hash. The Arabs were cautious with harder drugs. Maybe the Koran equated speed and heroin with a pork chop? Pimp maybe – the gold chain suggested as much. Small-time one, if so. Truls knew the faces of all the big-timers.
    On with the babies’ bib.
    ‘Hair’s got long, pal.’
    Truls didn’t like being called ‘pal’ by Pakis, especially not Paki poofs and extra-especially not Paki poofs who would soon be touching you. But the advantage of these powder-puffs was that at least they didn’t rest their hips against your shoulder, tilt their heads, run a hand through your hair, look into your eyes in the mirror and ask whether you want it like this or like that. They just got down to it. They didn’t ask if you wanted your greasy hair washed, they just sprayed it with water, ignored any instructions you might have and went for it with scissors and comb as if it were the Australian sheep-shearing championships.
    Truls looked at the front page of the newspaper lying on the shelf below the mirror. It was the same refrain: what was the so-called cop killer’s