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woman introduced herself as Oda, said she was calling from
Bosse
and it was nice to talk to him again. Harry couldn’t remember her, but he did remember the TV programme. They had wanted him to talk about serial killers, because he was the only Norwegian police officer to have studied with the FBI, and furthermore he had hunted down a genuine serial killer. Harry had been stupid enough to agree. He had told himself he was doing it to say something important and moderately qualified about people who kill, not so that he could be seen on the nation’s most popular talk show. In retrospect, he was not so sure about that. But that wasn’t the worst aspect. The worst was that he’d had a drink before going on air. Harry was convinced that it had only been one. But on the programme it looked as if it had been five. He had spoken with clear diction; he always did. But his eyes had been glazed, his analysis sluggish and he hadn’t managed to draw any conclusions, so the show host had been forced to introduce a guest who was the new European flower-arranging champion. Harry had not said anything, but his body language had clearly shown what he thought about the flower debate. When the host, with a surreptitious smile, had asked how a murder investigator related to flower arranging, Harry had said that wreaths at Norwegian burials certainly maintained high internationalstandards. Perhaps it had been Harry’s slightly befuddled, nonchalant style that had drawn laughter from the studio audience and contented pats on the back from the TV people after the programme. He had ‘delivered the goods’, they said. And he had joined a small group of them at Kunstnernes Hus, had been indulged and had woken up the next day with a body from which every fibre of his being screamed, demanded, had to have more. It was a Friday and he had continued to drink all weekend. He had sat at Schrøder’s and shouted for beer as they were flashing the lights to encourage customers to leave, and Rita, the waitress, had gone over to Harry and told him that he would be refused admission in the future unless he went now, preferably to bed. On Monday morning Harry had turned up for work at eight on the dot. He had contributed nothing useful to the department, thrown up in the sink after the morning meeting, clung to his office chair, drunk coffee, smoked and thrown up again, but this time in the toilet. And that was the last time he had succumbed; he hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol since.
    And now they wanted him back on the screen.
    The woman explained that the topic was terrorism in Arab countries and what turned well-educated middle-class people into killing machines. Harry interrupted her before she was finished.
    ‘No.’
    ‘But we would so much like to have you. You are so … so … rock ‘n’ roll!’ She laughed, with an enthusiasm whose sincerity he could not be sure of, but he recognised her voice now. She had been with them at Kunstnernes Hus that night. She had been good-looking in a boring, young way, had talked in a boring, young way and had eyed Harry hungrily, as though he were an exotic meal she was considering; was he
too
exotic?
    ‘Try someone else,’ Harry said and rang off. Then he closed his eyes and heard Ryan Adams wondering ‘Oh, baby, why do I miss you like I do?’
    *   *   *
    The boy looked up at the man standing beside him at the kitchen worktop. The light from the snow-covered garden shone on the hairless skin drawn tightly around his father’s massive skull. Mummy had said that Dad had such a big head because he was such a brain. He had asked her why she said he
was
a brain and not that he
had
a brain, and when she had laughed, she had stroked his forehead and said that was the way it was with physics professors. Right now the brain was rinsing potatoes under the tap and putting them straight into a pan.
    ‘Aren’t you going to peel the potatoes, Dad? Mummy usually –’
    ‘Your mother isn’t here, Jonas.