Free Harry Hole 02 - Cockroaches by Jo Nesbø Page B

she told him how they had met when Atle Molnes was a newly qualified political science graduate, a bachelor home for Christmas in Ørsta. The Molnes family was very wealthy, owned two furniture factories, and the young heir would have been a good catch for any young girl in the region, so there was no shortage of competition.
    ‘I was just Hilde Melle from Melle Farm, but I was the most attractive,’ she said with the same dry chuckle. A pained expression crossed her face and she put the glass to her lips.
    Harry had no problem visualising the widow as a pure, young beauty.
    Especially as that very image had just materialised at the open patio door.
    ‘Runa, my love, there you are! This young man is Harry Hole. He’s a Norwegian police officer and is going to help us find out what happened to Dad.’
    The daughter barely dignified them with a glance and headed for the opposite side of the pool without answering. She had her mother’s dark complexion and hair, and Harry estimated the long-limbed, slim body in the bathing costume to be about seventeen years old. He should have known her age; it had been in the report he was given before leaving.
    She would have been a perfect beauty, like her mother, had it not been for one detail the report had not included. By the time she had rounded the pool and taken three slow, elegant steps along the diving board, bringing her legs together and soaring into the air, Harry already had a lump in his stomach. From her right shoulder protruded a thin stump of an arm that lent her body a strangely asymmetrical form, like a plane with a wing shot off, as it whirled around in a somersault with a twist. A splash was all that was heard as she broke the green surface and was lost from view.
    ‘Runa’s a diver,’ Hilde Molnes said quite unnecessarily.
    He still had his gaze fixed on where she had disappeared when a figure appeared by the pool ladder on the other side. She climbed up the rungs and he saw her rippling back, the sun glittering in the droplets on her skin and making her wet black hair gleam. The withered arm hung down like a chicken wing. Her exit was as soundless as her entrance and dive; she vanished through the patio door without a word.
    ‘She probably didn’t know you were here,’ Hilde Molnes said apologetically. ‘She doesn’t like strangers seeing her without her prosthesis, you see.’
    ‘I understand. How has she taken the news?’
    ‘Who knows.’ Hilde Molnes looked pensively towards where Runa had gone. ‘She’s at that age where she tells me nothing. Nor anyone else for that matter.’ She raised her glass. ‘I’m afraid Runa is a bit of a special girl.’
    Harry got up, thanked her for the information and said she would be hearing from him. Hilde Molnes pointed out that he hadn’t drunk any water; he bowed and asked her to keep it for him until the next time. It struck him that this was perhaps a little inappropriate, but she laughed anyway and drained her glass as he left.
    As he walked towards the gate, a red open-top Porsche rolled up the drive. He just caught a blond fringe above a pair of Ray-Bans and a grey Armani suit before the car passed him and parked in the shade by the house.

10
    Saturday 11 January
    INSPECTOR CRUMLEY WAS out when Harry returned to the police station, but Nho gave him a thumbs up and said ‘Roger’ when Harry politely asked him to contact the telecommunications company and check all the conversations to and from the ambassador’s mobile phone on the day of the murder.
    It was almost five o’clock when Harry finally got hold of the inspector. As it was late she suggested they head to a riverboat to see the canals, ‘so as to get the sightseeing over and done with’.
    At the River Pier they were offered one of the long boats for six hundred baht, but the price soon fell to three hundred after Crumley had tongue-lashed him in Thai.
    They headed down the Chao Phraya before turning into one of the narrow canals. Wooden