Free Nemesis by Jo Nesbø Page B

pre-programming. There is less mystification. It is a matter of opening and closing routes for impulses. If you’re clever, you can easily pre-programme yourself, so-called self-hypnosis. If Raskol had pre-programmed himself to kill me if I hadn’t capitulated, he would have prevented himself from changing his mind.’
    ‘But he didn’t kill you, did he.’
    ‘All programs have an escape button, a password which brings you out of the trance. In this case, it may have been knocking down the white king.’
    ‘Mm. Fascinating.’
    ‘And now I’ve come to my point . . .’
    ‘I think I know it,’ Harry said. ‘The bank robber in the photo may have pre-programmed himself to shoot if the branch manager didn’t keep to the time limit.’
    ‘The rules of pre-programming have to be simple,’ Aune said, dropping the cigarillo in the mug and putting the saucer on top. ‘In order for you to fall into a trance they have to form a small yet logical closed system which rejects other thoughts.’
    Harry put a fifty-kroner note beside the coffee mug and stood up. Aune watched in silence as Harry gathered up all the photographs before saying: ‘You don’t believe a word I’ve said, do you.’
    ‘No.’
    Aune stood up and buttoned up his jacket over his stomach. ‘So, what do you believe?’
    ‘I believe what experience has taught me,’ Harry said. ‘That villainsby and large are as stupid as I am, go for easy options and have uncomplicated motives. In a nutshell, that things are very much what they seem to be. I would bet this robber was either out of his skull or panic-stricken. What he did was senseless and from that I conclude he is stupid. Take the gypsy whom you clearly consider to be very smart. How much time did he get in the slammer for attacking you with a knife?’
    ‘Nothing,’ Aune said with a sardonic smile.
    ‘Eh?’
    ‘They never found a knife.’
    ‘I thought you said you were locked in his cell.’
    ‘Have you ever been lying on your stomach on the beach and your chums tell you to lie still because they are holding red hot coals over your back? And then you hear someone say whoops and the next second you can feel the coals burning your back?’
    Harry’s brain sorted through his holiday memories. It didn’t take long. ‘No.’
    ‘And it turned out it was a trick; it was just ice cubes?’
    ‘And?’
    Aune sighed. ‘Now and then I wonder how you’ve spent the thirty-five years you maintain you’ve been alive, Harry.’
    Harry ran a hand across his face. He was tired. ‘OK, Aune, what’s your point?’
    ‘My point is that a good manipulator can make you believe that the edge of a hundred-kroner note is the edge of a knife.’
    The blonde looked Harry straight in the eye and promised him sun although it would cloud over in the course of the day. Harry pressed the OFF button and the picture shrank into a small luminous dot in the centre of the 14-inch screen. When he closed his eyes, however, it was the image of Stine Grette which remained on his retina, and he heard the echo of the reporter’s ‘. . . the police have no suspects in the case so far’.
    He opened his eyes again and studied the reflection in the dead screen. Himself, the old green wing chair from Elevator and the bare coffee table, embellished with glass and bottle rings. Everything was the same. The portable TV had stood on the shelf between the Lonely Planet guide to Thailand and a Norwegian road atlas for as long as he had lived here, and it hadn’t travelled one metre for several years. He had read about the Seven Year Itch and how people typically began to long for somewhere new to live. Or a new job. Or a new partner. He hadn’t noticed anything, and he had had the same job for almost ten years. Harry looked at his watch. Eight o’clock, Anna had said.
    As far as partners were concerned, his relationships had never lasted long enough for him to test the theory. Apart from the two which might have lasted that long,