Free Harry Hole Mysteries 3-Book Bundle by Jo Nesbø Page B

love.
    She thought about how thin Harry had become, how he had shrunk. Just like her memory of him. It was almost frightening how someone you have been intimate with can fade and vanish. Or perhaps that was why; you had been so close to each other that afterwards, when you no longer were, it seemed unreal, like a dream you soon forget because it had happened only in your head. Perhaps that was why it had been a shock to see him again. To embrace him, to smell his aroma, to hear his voice, not on the telephone, but from a mouth with those strangely soft lips in that hard and ever more lined face of his. To look into those blue eyes with the gleam that varied in intensity as he talked. Just like before.
    Yet she was glad it was over, that she had put it behind her. That this man had become a person with whom she would not share her future, a person who would not bring his grubby reality into their lives.
    She was better now. Much better. She looked at her watch. He would be here soon. For, unlike Harry, he tended to be on time.
    Mathias had suddenly stood there one day. At a garden party under the auspices of the Holmenkollen Residents’ Association. He didn’t even live in the neighbourhood, he had been invited by friends, and he and Rakel had sat talking all evening. Mostly about her in fact. And he had listened attentively, a bit like doctors do, she had thought. But then he had rung her two days later and asked her whether she would like to see an exhibition at the Henie-Onstad Art Centre in Høvikodden. Oleg was welcome to join them, because there was a children’s exhibition, too. The weather had been terrible, the art mediocre and Oleg fractious. But Mathias had managed to lift the mood with his good humour and acid comments about the artist’s talent. And afterwards he had driven them home, apologised for his idea and promisedwith a smile never to take them anywhere ever again. Unless they asked him, of course. After that Mathias had gone to Botswana for a week. And had rung her the evening he came home, to ask if he could meet her again.
    She heard the sound of a car changing down to tackle the steep drive. He drove a Honda Accord of older vintage. She didn’t know why, but she liked the idea of that. He parked in front of the garage, never inside. And she liked that, too. She liked the fact that he brought a change of underwear and a toilet bag in a holdall he then took away with him the next morning. She liked him asking her when she wanted to see him again and taking nothing for granted. That might change now, of course, but she was ready for it.
    He stepped out of the car. He was tall, almost as tall as Harry, and smiled to the kitchen window with his open, boyish face, even though he must have been dead on his feet after the inhumanly long shift. Yes, she was ready for it. For a man who was present, who loved her and prioritised their little trio above everything else. She heard a key being turned in the front door. The key she had given him the previous week. Mathias had looked like one big question mark at first, like a child who had just received a ticket to a chocolate factory.
    The door opened, he was inside and she was in his arms. She thought even his woollen coat smelt good. The material was soft and autumn-cold against her cheek, but the secure warmth inside was already radiating out to her body.
    ‘What is it?’ he laughed in her hair.
    ‘I’ve been waiting for this for so long,’ she whispered.
    She closed her eyes, and they stood like that for a while.
    She released him and looked up into his smiling face. He was a good-looking man. Better looking than Harry.
    He freed himself, unbuttoned his coat, hung it up and walked over to the slops sink where he washed his hands. He always did that when he came from the Anatomy Department where they handled real bodies during the lectures. As indeed Harry always had done when he came straight from murder cases. Mathias opened the cupboard under thesink,