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lone wolf, the drunk, the department’s enfant terrible and, apart from Tom Waaler, the best detective on the sixth floor.
When people are frightened they lose their temper more easily. This was a lesson he had learned during his first year at Police College. As recruits they had been told not to excite frightened people unnecessarily, but Harry had discovered that the opposite was much more useful. Excite them. Angry people often said things they didn’t mean, or more to the point, things they didn’t mean to say.
The day had hardly begun and Harry already felt drained of energy, like an old, dying lion who hung back from the pack when once he could have challenged the leader.
It was a self-contradictory smile. Open and closed, friendly and cynical, laughing and pained. But
was as if the demise of the owner had lent the flat a physical void it hadn’t had before.
Bodies looked like the empty shells of insects in a spider’s web – the creature had gone, the light had gone, there was not the illusory afterglow that long-since burned-out stars have. The body was missing its soul and it was this absence of the soul that made Harry believe.
What’s the point of being brave if no-one sees you . . .?’
As a man especially. Letting yourself be penetrated touches on absolutely fundamental things. If you dare, you will discover that you have a much greater emotional range than you imagine.
Wilhelm’s smile reminded Harry of his father’s sad, resigned smile, the smile of a man looking backwards because that’s where the things that made him smile were.
‘I’ve come to realise that falling and living have certain things in common. For a start, both are very temporary states of being.’
An anticipation that was loosely based on Aune’s fundamental principle that man’s ability to think rationally when self-interest was at stake was inversely proportionate to intelligence.
They always cleared their throats before confessing, as if their sins were encapsulated in mucus and saliva.
The innocent white clouds from the afternoon had spread out to form a blue-grey wall-to-wall carpet in the sky.
The scratching of his nails made the same rasping noise as a scythe blade on a whetstone as he slid downwards.
She liked rain. It cleaned the air and washed away the past.
Not to be loved – isn’t that the essential definition of a failed life?’
