Free Blood on Snow by Jo Nesbø Page A

misunderstand. All the same, it was odd that my heart started to beat faster because of a little thing like that. The sheets of paper were under the cutlery tray in the kitchen drawer, and there was no reason for anyone to move that. But I made up my mind to get rid of them at the earliest opportunity.
    “That’s it, Olav, like that.”
    Something loosened inside me when I came, something that had been lying there shut away. I don’t know what it was, but the pressure from my ejaculation shook it out and revealed it. I layback, gasping for breath. I was a changed man, I just didn’t know in what way.
    She leaned over me and tickled my forehead.
    “How do you feel, my king?”
    I answered, but my throat was full of saliva.
    “What?” she laughed.
    I cleared my throat and repeated: “Starving.”
    She laughed even louder.
    “And happy,” I said.
    —
    Corina couldn’t stand fish. She was allergic to it, always had been, something in her family.
    The supermarkets were all shut now, but I said I could order a CP Special from Chinese Pizza.
    “Chinese Pizza?”
    “Chinese food and pizzas. Separately, I mean. I have dinner there almost every day.”
    I got dressed again and went down to the phone box on the corner. I had never had a telephone installed in the flat, didn’t want one. I didn’t want people to have a way to hear me, find me, talk to me.
    From the phone box I could see up to my window on the fourth floor. And I could see Corina standing there, her head circled in light like some fucking halo. She was looking down at me. I waved. She waved back.
    Then the coin fell with a metallic gulp.
    “Chinese Pizza, how can I help you?”
    “Hi, Lin, it’s Olav. One CP Special, takeaway.”
    “No eat here, Mistel Olav?”
    “Not today.”
    “Fifteen minute.”
    “Thanks. One more thing. Has anyone been in asking about me?”
    “Ask about you? No.”
    “Great. Is there anyone sitting there that you’ve seen me eating with before? Anyone with a funny thin moustache that looks like it has been drawn on? Or in a brown leather jacket with a cigarette tucked behind his ear?”
    “Let’s see. Nooo…”
    There were only about ten tables, so I believed him. Neither Brynhildsen nor Pine was waiting for me. They’d been there with me on more than one occasion, but presumably theydidn’t know just how much of a regular I was. Good.
    I shoved open the heavy metal door of the phone box and peered up at the window. She was still standing there.
    —
    It took a quarter of an hour to walk to Chinese Pizza. The pizza was waiting in a red cardboard box the size of a camping table. CP Special. The best in Oslo. I was looking forward to seeing Corina’s face when she tasted her first bite.
    “See you latel, all-a-gatol,” Lin called as usual as I headed out of the door, which swung shut behind me before I had time to reply with the crocodile rhyme.
    I hurried away along the pavement and swung round the corner. I was thinking about Corina. I must have been thinking about Corina
very
hard. At least that’s the only excuse I have for the fact that I didn’t see them, hear them, or even think the obvious thought: that if they had worked out that it was my regular haunt, then they’d also have worked out that it might have occurred tome that they might have worked it out, and that I therefore wouldn’t go anywhere near it without a degree of caution. So they weren’t waiting inside in the warmth and light, but outside in the frozen darkness of space, where I could have sworn that even molecules were having trouble moving.
    I heard two steps crunch on the snow, but the bastard pizza slowed me down and I didn’t have time to draw my pistol before I felt cold hard metal pressing against my ear.
    “Where is she?”
    It was Brynhildsen. His pencil-thin moustache moved when he spoke. He had a young guy with him who looked more scared than dangerous, and who might as well have had a “trainee” badge on his jacket, but he