by Jo Nesbo
Bertelsen smiled: ‘Contrary to what people say, the air in Skien is cleaner than in any other Norwegian town.’
Harry cupped his hands round a match and lit his cigarette. ‘Is that right? I’ll have to remember that. Have you found anything?’
‘Over there.’
The other three put on their skis, and with Folldal in the lead they trudged along a track to a clearing in the forest. Folldal pointed with his pole to a black rock protruding twenty centimetres above the snow.
‘The boy found the shells in the snow by that rock. I reckon it was a hunter out practising. You can see the ski tracks nearby. It hasn’t snowed for over a week, so they could well be his. Looks like he was wearing those broad Telemark skis.’
Harry crouched down. He ran a finger along the rock where it met the broad ski track.
‘Or old wooden skis.’
‘Oh yes?’
He held up a tiny splinter of wood.
‘Well, I never,’ Folldal said, looking across at Bertelsen.
Harry turned to the boy. He was wearing a pair of baggy hunting trousers with pockets everywhere and a woollen cap pulled down well over his head.
‘Which side of the rock did you find the cartridges?’
The boy pointed. Harry took off his skis, walked round the rock and lay on his back in the snow. The sky was light blue now, as it is on clear winter days just before the sun goes down. Then he rolled on to his side and peered over the rock. He followed the clearing in the forest where they had come in. There were four tree stumps in the clearing.
‘Did you find any bullets or signs of shooting?’
Folldal scratched the back of his neck. ‘Do you mean, have we examined every tree trunk within a half-kilometre radius?’
Bertelsen discreetly placed a gloved hand over Folldal’s mouth. Harry flicked his ash and studied the glowing end of his cigarette.
‘No, I mean, did you check the tree stumps over there?’
‘And why should we have examined those particular stumps?’ Folldal asked.
‘Because Märklin make the world’s heaviest rifle. A gun weighing fifteen kilos is not an attractive option for a standing shot, so it would be natural to assume that he rested it on this rock to take aim. Märklin rifles eject bullet casings to the right. Since the spent shells were found on the right of the stone, he must have been shooting in the direction we have come from. So it would not be unreasonable to assume that he positioned something on one of the tree stumps to aim at, would it?’
Bertelsen and Folldal looked at each other. ‘Well, we’d better check that out.’
‘Unless this is a bloody big bark beetle . . .’ Bertelsen said three minutes later, ‘. . . then this is a bloody big bullet hole.’
He kneeled down in the snow and poked his finger into one of the tree stumps. ‘Shit, the bullet’s gone in a long way. I can’t feel it.’
‘Take a look inside,’ Harry said. ‘Why?’
‘To see if it’s gone right through,’ Harry answered.
‘Right through that enormous spruce?’
‘Just take a look and see if you can see daylight.’
Harry heard Folldal snort behind him. Bertelsen put his eye to the hole.
‘Mother of Jesus . . .’
‘Can you see anything?’ Folldal shouted.
‘Only half the course of the bloody Siljan river.’
Harry turned towards Folldal, who had turned his back to him to spit.
Bertelsen got to his feet. ‘A bulletproof vest won’t help much if you’re shot with one of those bastards, will it,’ he groaned.
‘Not at all,’ Harry said. ‘The only thing that would help would be armour-plating.’ He stubbed his cigarette against the tree stump and corrected himself: ‘Thick armour-plating.’
He stood on his skis, sliding them back and forth in the snow.
‘We’ll have to have a chat with the people in the neighbouring chalets,’ Bertelsen said. ‘They may have seen or heard something. Or they may feel like admitting they own this rifle from hell.’
‘After we had the arms amnesty last year . . .’ Folldal began, but changed his mind when Bertelsen eyeballed him.
‘Anything else we can do to help?’ Bertelsen asked Harry. ‘Well,’ Harry said, scowling in the direction of the forest path, ‘you couldn’t help me bump-start the car, could you?’
29
Rudolf II Hospital, Vienna. 23 June 1944.
IT WAS LIKE DÉJÀ VU FOR HELENA. THE WINDOWS WERE open and the warm summer morning filled the corridor with the perfume of newly mown grass. For two weeks there had been air raids every night, but she didn’t even notice the smell of smoke. She was holding a letter in her hand. A wonderful letter! Even the grumpy matron had to smile when Helena sang out her Guten Morgen.
Dr Brockhard looked up from his papers in surprise when Helena burst into his office.
‘Well?’ he said.
He took off his glasses and directed his stiff gaze at her. She caught a glimpse of the wet tongue sucking the ends of his glasses. She took a seat.
‘Christopher,’ she began. She hadn’t used his Christian name since they were small. ‘I have something to tell you.’
‘Good,’ he said. ‘That’s exactly what I have been waiting for.’
She knew what he had been waiting for: an explanation for why she still hadn’t complied with his wishes and gone to his flat in the main building despite the fact that he had extended Uriah’s medical certificate twice. Helena had blamed the bombing, saying that she didn’t dare go out. Then he had offered to visit her in her mother’s summer house, which she flatly rejected.
‘I’ll tell you everything,’ she said.
‘Everything?’ he queried with a little smile.
Well, she thought, almost everything. ‘The morning Uriah —’
‘His name is not Uriah, Helena.’
‘The morning he disappeared and you raised the alarm, do you remember that?’
‘Naturally.’
Brockhard set down his glasses, parallel with the paper in front of him. ‘I considered reporting his disappearance to the military police. However, he miraculously reappeared with some story about wandering in the forest for half the night.’
‘He wasn’t in the forest. He was on the night train from Salzburg.’
‘Really?’ Brockhard leaned back in his chair with a fixed expression on his face, indicating that he was not a man who liked to express surprise.
‘He caught the night train from Vienna before midnight, got off in Salzburg where he waited for an hour and a half for the night train back again. He arrived at the Hauptbahnhof at nine that morning.’
‘Hm.’ Brockhard focused on the pen he held between his fingertips. ‘And what did he give as his reason for this idiotic excursion?’
‘Umm,’ Helena said, unaware that she was smiling, ‘you may remember that I was also late that morning.’
‘Yeess . . .’
‘I was also returning from Salzburg.’
‘Is that so?’
‘That is so.’
‘I think you will have to explain, Helena.’
She explained while staring at Brockhard’s fingertips. A drop of blood had formed under the pen nib.
‘I see,’ said Brockhard when she had finished.‘You thought you would go to Paris. And how long did you think you could hide there?’
‘It’s probably obvious that we didn’t think much at all. Uriah thought we should go to America. To New York.’
Brockhard laughed drily. ‘You’re a very sensible girl, Helena. I can see that this turncoat must have blinded you with his beguiling lies about America. But do you know what?’
‘What?’
‘I forgive you.’
On seeing her gawp he continued,‘Yes, I forgive you. Perhaps you ought to be punished, but I know how restless young girls’ hearts can be.’
‘It’s not forgiveness I —’
‘How’s your mother? It must
be hard for her now that you are alone. Was it three years’ imprisonment your father was given?’
‘Four. Would you please listen, Christopher?’
‘I beg of you, do not do or say anything you might come to regret, Helena. What you have told me changes nothing. The deal remains the same.’
‘No!’ Helena stood up so quickly that her chair toppled over and now she smacked the letter she had been kneading in her hand on to the desk.
‘See for yourself! You no longer have any power over me. Or Uriah.’ Brockhard glanced at the letter. The opened brown envelope didn’t mean a thing to him. He took out the letter, put on his glasses and began to read.
Waffen-SS
Berlin, 22 June
We have received a request from the Chief of Norwegian Police, Jonas Lie, to hand you over with immediate effect to the police in Oslo for further service. Since you are a Norwegian citizen, we see no reason not to comply. This order therefore countermands your previous orders to join the Wehrmacht. You will be advised of details regarding the meeting point and timing by the Norwegian police authorities.
Heinrich Himmler
Oberkommandierender der Schutzstaffel (SS)
Brockhard had to look at the signature twice. Heinrich Himmler in person! Then he held up the letter to the light.
‘You can check it if you like, but I assure you it is genuine,’ Helena said.
Through the open window she could hear birds singing in the garden. Brockhard cleared his throat twice before speaking.
‘So you wrote a letter to the Chief of Police in Norway?’
‘Uriah wrote to him. I simply posted it.’
‘You posted it?’
‘Yes. Or no, actually. I telegraphed it.’
‘A whole application? That must have cost —’
‘It was urgent.’
‘Heinrich Himmler . . .’ he said, more to himself than to her. ‘I’m sorry, Christopher.’
Again the dry laugh. ‘Are you? Haven’t you accomplished exactly what you wanted, Helena?’
She forced a friendly smile.
‘I have a favour to ask of you, Christopher.’
‘Oh?’
‘Uriah wants me to go with him to Norway. I need a recommendation from the hospital to be able to apply for a travel permit.’
‘And now you’re afraid I’ll put a spoke in your wheel?’
‘Your father is on the governing board.’
‘Yes, I could create problems for you.’ He rubbed his chin. The intense stare had fixed itself on to a point on her forehead.
‘Whatever happens, Christopher, you can’t stop us. Uriah and I love each other. Do you understand?’
‘Why should I do a favour for a soldier’s whore?’
Helena’s mouth hung open. Even from someone she despised, someone who was clearly acting in passion, the word stung like a slap. But before she managed to answer, Brockhard’s face had crumpled as if he were the one to have been hit.
‘Forgive me, Helena. I . . . damn!’ He abruptly turned his back on her. Helena wanted to get up and leave, but she couldn’t find the words to liberate herself. His voice was strained as he added: ‘I didn’t mean to hurt you, Helena.’
‘Christopher . . .’
‘You don’t understand. I’m not saying this out of arrogance, but I have qualities which in time I know you would grow to appreciate. I may have gone too far, but remember that I always acted with your best interests at heart.’
She stared at his back. The doctor’s coat was a size too big for his narrow, sloping shoulders. She was reminded of the Christopher she had known as a child. He’d had delicate black curls and a real suit even though he was only twelve. One summer she had even been in love with him. Hadn’t she?
He released a long, trembling breath. She took a pace towards him, then changed her mind. Why should she feel sympathy for this man? Yes, she knew why. Because her own heart was overflowing with happiness although she had done little to come by it. Yet Christopher Brockhard, who tried every day of his life to gain happiness, would always be a lonely man.
‘Christopher, I have to go now.’
‘Yes, of course. You have to do what you have to do, Helena.’
She stood up and walked to the door.
‘And I have to do what I have to do,’ he said.
30
Police HQ. 24 February 2000.
WRIGHT SWORE. HE HAD TRIED ALL THE KNOBS ON THE overhead projector to focus the picture, without any luck.
Someone coughed.
‘I think perhaps the picture itself is unclear, Lieutenant. It’s not the projector, I mean.’
‘Well, at any rate, this is Andreas Hochner,’ Wright said, shielding his eyes with his hand so that he could see those present. The room had no windows, so when, as now, the lights were switched off it was pitch black. According to what Wright had been told, it was bug-proof too, whatever that meant.
Besides himself, Andreas Wright, a lieutenant in the Military Intelligence Service, there were only three others present: Major Bård Ovesen from Military Intelligence, Harry Hole, the new man from POT, and Kurt Meirik, the head of POT. It was Hole who had faxed him the name of the arms dealer in Johannesburg. And had nagged him for information every day since. There was no doubt that a great number of people in POT seemed to think that Military Intelligence was merely a subsection of POT, but they obviously hadn’t read the regulations, where it stated that they were equally ranked organisations working in partnership. But Wright had. So, in the end he had explained to the new man that low priority cases had to wait. Half an hour later Meirik had rung to say that this case was top priority. Why couldn’t they have said that at the outset?
The blurred black and white image on the screen showed a man leaving a restaurant; it seemed to have been taken from a car window. The man had a broad, coarse face with dark eyes and a large, ill-defined nose with a thick, black, droopy moustache beneath.
‘Andreas Hochner, born in 1954 in Zimbabwe, German parents,’ Wright read from the print-outs he had brought with him. ‘Ex-mercenary in the Congo and South Africa, probably involved with arms smuggling since the mid-eighties. At nineteen he was one of seven men accused of murdering a black boy in Kinshasa, but was acquitted for lack of evidence. Married and divorced twice. His employer in Johannesburg is suspected of being behind the smuggling of anti-air missiles to Syria and the purchase of chemical weapons from Iraq. Alleged to have supplied special rifles to Karadzic during the Bosnian war and to have trained snipers during the siege of Sarajevo. The last has not as yet been confirmed.’
‘Please skip the details,’ Meirik said, glancing at his watch. It was always slow, but there was a wonderful inscription from the Military High Command on the back.
‘Alright,’ Wright said, flicking through the rest of the papers. ‘Yes, here. Andreas Hochner was one of four held during a raid on an arms dealer in Johannesburg in December. On that occasion a coded order list was found. One of the ordered items was a Märklin rifle, bound for Oslo. And a date: 21 December. That’s all.’
There was silence, only the whirring of the overhead-projector fan could be heard. Someone in the dark coughed. It sounded like Bård Ovesen. Wright shaded his eyes.
‘How can we be sure that Hochner is the key person in our case?’ Ovesen asked.
Harry Hole’s voice came out of the dark.
‘I talked to an Inspector Isaiah Burne in Hillbrow, Johannesburg. He was able to tell me that after the arrests they searched the flats of those involved and found an interesting passport in Hochner’s. The photo was of himself, but the name was completely different.’
‘An arms dealer with a false name is not exactly ...dynamite,’ Ovesen said.
‘I was thinking more of one of the stamps they found in it. Oslo, Norway, 10 December.’
‘So he’s been to Oslo,’ Meirik said. ‘There’s a Norwegian on the company’s list of customers, and we’ve found spent cartridges from this super-rifle. So And
reas Hochner came to Norway and we can assume a deal went ahead. But who is the Norwegian on the list?’
‘The list does not, unfortunately, give a full name and address.’ Harry’s voice. ‘The customer in Oslo is listed as Uriah. Bound to be a code name. And, according to Burne in Johannesburg, Hochner is not that interested in talking.’
‘I thought the police in Johannesburg had effective methods of interrogation,’ Ovesen said.
‘Possibly, but Hochner probably risks more by talking than by keeping his mouth shut. It’s a long list of customers . . .’
‘I’ve heard they use electricity in South Africa,’ Wright said. ‘Under the feet, on nipples and . . . well. Bloody painful. Could someone switch on the light please?’
Harry: ‘In a case which involves the purchase of chemical weapons from Saddam, a business trip to Oslo with a rifle is fairly trivial. I think, unfortunately, the South Africans are saving their electricity for more important issues, let’s put it that way. Apart from that, it’s not certain that Hochner knows who this Uriah is. And in the absence of any information about Uriah, we have to wonder: what are his plans? Assassination? Terrorism?’
‘Or robbery,’ Meirik said.
‘With a Märklin rifle?’ Ovesen said. ‘That would be like shooting sparrows with a cannon.’
‘A drugs killing maybe?’ Wright suggested.
‘Well,’ Harry said. ‘A handgun was all that was needed to kill the most protected person in Sweden. And the Olaf Palme assassin was never caught. So why a gun costing over half a million kroner to shoot someone here?’
‘What do you suggest, Harry?’
‘Perhaps the target isn’t a Norwegian, but someone from outside. Someone who is a constant target for terrorists, but is too strongly protected in their home country for an assassination to succeed there. Someone they think they can kill more easily in a small, peaceful country where they reckon the security measures will be proportionate.’