by Jo Nesbo
Borroughs rubbed and polished a glass. ‘I’d tread carefully if I were you.’
Harry nodded to Borroughs, and walked slowly towards the corner table so they would have time to see him. One of them got up before he came too close. He folded his arms and revealed a tattooed dagger on a bulging forearm.
‘This corner’s taken, blondie,’ he said in a voice so gruff that it seemed to be only air.
‘I have a question—’ Harry started, but the gruff man was already shaking his head. ‘Just one. Does anyone here know this man, Evans White?’ Harry held up the photo.
Until now the two who were facing him had just been staring at him, more bored than outright hostile. At the mention of White’s name, they examined him with renewed interest, and Harry noted that the necks of the two men facing the other way were twitching.
‘Never heard of him,’ the gruff man said. ‘We’re in the middle of a personal . . . conversation here, mate. See you.’
‘That conversation wouldn’t involve the turnover of substances that are illegal according to Australian law, would it?’ Harry asked.
Long silence. He had adopted a perilous strategy. Undisguised provocation was a tactic you could resort to if you had decent backup or good escape routes. Harry had neither. He just thought it was time things started happening.
One neck stood up. And up. It had almost reached the ceiling when it turned and showed its ugly, pockmarked front. A silky moustache underlined the oriental features of the man.
‘Genghis Khan! Good to see you. I thought you were dead!’ Harry exclaimed, putting out his hand.
Khan opened his mouth. ‘Who are you?’
It sounded like a death rattle. Any death-metal band would have killed for a vocalist with that kind of a bass gurgle.
‘I’m a policeman and I don’t believe—’
‘Ayy-dii.’ Khan peered down at Harry from the ceiling.
‘Pardon?’
‘The badge.’
Harry was aware the situation demanded more than his plastic card with a passport photo issued by Oslo Police Force.
‘Has anyone told you that you have the same voice as the singer in Sepultura . . . what’s his name now?’
Harry put a finger under his chin and looked as if he was racking his brains. The gruff man was on his way round the table. Harry pointed to him.
‘And you’re Rod Stewart, aren’t you? Aha, you’re sitting here and planning Live Aid 2 and s—’
The punch hit Harry in the teeth. He stood swaying with a hand to his mouth.
‘May I take it that you don’t think I have a future as a stand-up?’ Harry enquired. He studied his fingers. There was blood, spit and something soft which he could only assume was pulp from the inside of his tooth.
‘Shouldn’t pulp be red?’ he asked Rod, holding up his fingers.
Rod scrutinised Harry sceptically before leaning over and looking closer at the white bits.
‘That’s the bone, from under the enamel,’ he opined. ‘Old man’s a dentist,’ he explained to the others. Then he took a step back and struck again. For a moment everything went black for Harry, but he still found himself standing when daylight returned.
‘See if you can find some pulp now,’ Rod said with curiosity.
Harry knew it was stupid, the summation of all his experience and common sense told him it was stupid, his aching jaw said it was stupid, but unfortunately his right hand thought it was a brilliant idea and at that moment it was in charge. It hit Rod on the tip of the chin and Harry heard the crunch of Rod’s jaw closing before he staggered back two paces, which is the inevitable consequence of a perfectly placed uppercut.
A blow of this kind is transferred along the jawbone to the cerebellum, or small brain, an apt term in this case, Harry thought, where an undulating movement accounts for a number of minor short circuits, but also, if you’re lucky, instant loss of consciousness and/or long-term brain damage. In Rod’s case, the brain seemed to be unsure what it would be, a loss of consciousness or just concussion.
Genghis Khan didn’t intend to wait for the outcome. He grabbed Harry by the collar, lifted him up to shoulder height and tossed him away like a bag of flour. The couple who had just had today’s special for seven dollars got more meat than they had bargained for and jumped back when Harry landed with a crash on their table. Christ, hope I faint soon, Harry thought as he felt the pain and saw Khan advancing towards him.
The clavicle is a fragile bone and very exposed. Harry took aim and lashed out with his foot, but the treatment he had been given by Rod must have affected his vision because he kicked thin air.
‘Pain!’ Khan promised, raising his arms above his head. He didn’t need a sledgehammer. The blow hit Harry in the chest and immediately paralysed all coronary and respiratory functions. Accordingly he neither saw nor heard the dark-skinned man coming in and grabbing the ball Australia had used against Pakistan in 1979, a rock-hard Kookaburra weighing 160 grams and measuring 7.6 centimetres in diameter. His arm whipped through the air with phenomenal power and the ball whirred straight towards its target.
Unlike Rod’s cerebellum, Khan’s didn’t entertain any doubt, as the missile hit him in the forehead just below his hairline. It was instant g’night. Khan started to topple, then he fell like a skyscraper rocked by an explosion.
Now, however, the other three round the table had stood up and they looked incensed. The new arrival stepped forward with his arms raised in a low, nonchalant guard. One of the men rushed at him, and Harry, who, through the haze, appeared to recognise the newcomer, guessed right: the dark man swayed back, stepped in and executed two well-aimed left jabs, as if to test the distance, then the right powered up from below in a crunching uppercut. Fortunately it was so cramped at the end of the room that they couldn’t all go for him at once. With the first man down for the count, the second launched his attack, a touch more cautious, holding his arms in a way that suggested he had a belt of some hue in a martial art hanging on the wall at home. The first tentative attack was met by the newcomer’s guard, and as he whirled round to complete the obligatory karate kick, the man had moved. The kick met open space.
However, the swift left-right-left combination sent the karate exponent crashing against the wall. The dark-skinned man danced after him and hit him with a straight left, knocking his head back with a sickening crunch. He trickled floorwards like food leftovers thrown against the wall. The cricketer hit him one more time on his way down, though it was hardly necessary.
Rod was sitting on a chair following the events through glazed eyes.
There was a click as the third man’s flick knife snapped into position. As he advanced on the dark man with hunched back and arms out to the sides, Rod puked over his shoes – a sure sign he had concussion, Harry observed with pleasure. He felt a bit nauseous himself, especially when he saw Andrew’s first opponent had taken the cricket bat off the wall and was closing in on the boxer from behind. The knifeman was standing next to Harry now, but was unaware of him.
‘Behind you, Andrew!’ Harry yelled, hurling himself at the man’s knife arm. He heard the dry thud of the bat as it made contact and tables and chairs were knocked over, but he had to concentrate on the knifeman, who had slipped out of his grasp and was now circling, him, sweeping his arms theatrically, an insane grin on his lips.
With his eyes fixed on the knifeman, Harry fumbled on the table behind him for something he could use. He could still hear the sound of the cricket bat in action from the bar area.
The knifeman laughed as he approached, tossing the knife from one hand to the other.
Harry lunged forward, stabbed and withdrew. The knifeman’s right arm fell down by his side and the knife clattered to the floor. He gazed at his shoulder in amazement, at a protruding kebab skewer with a piece of mushroom on it. The right arm seemed paralysed, and he pulled cautiously at the skewer with his left hand to check it really was there, still with the same dazed expression on his face. I must have
hit a bundle of muscles or nerves, Harry thought as he let loose a punch.
All he felt was that he hit something hard, and a flash of pain ran up his arm. The knifeman stumbled backwards, looking up at Harry with wounded eyes. A thick line of dark blood oozed from one nostril. Harry was clutching his right hand. He raised his fist to strike again, but changed his mind.
‘Punching is so bloody painful. Couldn’t you just give in?’ he asked.
The knifeman nodded and slumped down beside Rod, who still had his head between his legs.
When Harry turned, he saw Borroughs standing in the middle of the floor with a gun pointing at Andrew’s first opponent, and Andrew himself lying between overturned tables, lifeless. Some of the customers had left, some stood rubbernecking, but most were still in the bar watching TV. There was a Test match on.
As the ambulances arrived to deal with the injured, Harry ensured they dealt with Andrew first. They carried him out with Harry at his side. Andrew was bleeding from one ear and there was a wheeze to his breathing, but at least he had come round.
‘I didn’t know you played cricket, Andrew. Great throwing arm, but was it necessary to go at it so hard?’
‘You’re right. I totally misjudged the situation. You had everything under control.’
‘Well,’ Harry said, ‘I have to be quite honest and admit I didn’t.’
‘OK,’ Andrew said, ‘I’ll be quite honest and say I’ve got a terrible headache and I regret I turned up at all. It would’ve been fairer if you’d been lying here. And I do mean that.’
The ambulances came and went, and only Harry and Borroughs were left in the bar.
‘I hope we didn’t destroy too much of the furniture and fittings,’ Harry said.
‘No, it’s not so bad. Anyway, my customers appreciate a bit of live entertainment once in a while. But you’d better look over your shoulder from now on. The boss of those boys won’t be pleased when he gets to hear about this,’ Borroughs said.
‘Really?’ Harry said. He had an inkling that Borroughs was trying to tell him something. ‘And who’s the boss?’
‘I didn’t say a word, but the bloke in the photo is not a million miles off.’
Harry nodded slowly. ‘Then I’d better be on my guard. And armed. Mind if I take an extra skewer with me?’
21
A Drunk
HARRY FOUND A dentist in King’s Cross, who took one look at him and decided quite a bit of preparatory work would have to be done to build up a front tooth that had broken off in the middle. He carried out a temporary repair and accepted a fee Harry hoped Oslo’s Chief of Police would be charitable enough to reimburse.
At the police station he was informed the cricket bat had broken three of Andrew’s ribs and given him concussion. He was unlikely to be leaving his sickbed this week.
After lunch Harry asked Lebie if he would join him on a couple of hospital visits. They drove to St Etienne Hospital, where they had to register their names in the visitors’ book – a thick, weighty tome that lay open in front of an even weightier nun presiding behind the glass window with crossed arms, but she just directed them in, shaking her head.
‘She doesn’t speak English,’ Lebie explained.
They entered a reception area where a smiling young man immediately logged their names on the computer and allocated them room numbers and explained where they were to go.
‘From the Middle Ages to the Computer Age in ten seconds,’ Harry whispered.
They exchanged a few words with a yellow-and-blue Andrew, but he was in a bad mood and told them to clear off after five minutes. On the floor above they found the knifeman in a single room. He was lying in bed with his arm in a sling and a swollen face, and regarded Harry with the wounded look from the night before.
‘What do you want, you bastard cop?’ he said.
Harry sat down on a chair beside the bed. ‘I want to know whether Evans White ordered someone to murder Inger Holter, who was given the order and why.’
The knifeman tried to laugh, but instead began to cough. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about, cop, and I don’t think you do, either.’
‘How’s the shoulder?’ Harry asked.
The knifeman’s eyeballs seemed to grow in his skull. ‘You just try . . .’
Harry pulled the skewer from his pocket. A thick, blue blood vessel appeared on the man’s forehead.
‘You’re kidding.’
Harry said nothing.
‘You’re out of your bloody minds! Surely you can’t imagine you can get away with this! If they so much as find a mark on my body after you’ve left, your fuckin’ crap job will be down the pan, you bastard!’
The knifeman had worked himself up into a falsetto.
Harry placed a finger on his lips. ‘Do yourself a favour. Shh. Do you see that burly, bald-headed guy by the door? It’s not so easy to see the likeness, but in fact he’s the cousin of the man whose skull you boys smashed with the bat yesterday. He asked for special permission to join me today. His job is to tape up your gob and hold you down while I loosen the bandage and stick this beauty the one place where there’ll be no mark. Because there’s already a hole, isn’t there.’
He gently squeezed the knifeman’s right shoulder. Tears appeared in the man’s eyes and his chest heaved violently. His eyes jumped from Harry to Lebie and back again. Human nature is a wild, impenetrable forest, but Harry thought he saw a firebreak in the forest when the knifeman opened his mouth. He was undoubtedly telling the truth.
‘You can’t do anything to me that Evans White can’t do ten times worse if he finds out I’ve grassed him up. But let me just say this: you’re barking up the wrong tree. You’ve got things seriously wrong.’
Harry looked at Lebie. He shook his head. Harry considered for a moment, then he got up and put the skewer on the bedside table.
‘Get well soon.’
‘Hasta la vista,’ the knifeman said, aiming an imaginary gun with his index finger.
At the hotel there was a message for Harry in reception. He recognised the main Sydney Police Station number and rang straight away from his room. Yong Sue answered.
‘We’ve been through all the records again,’ he said. ‘And carried out closer checks. Some misdemeanours are removed from official records after three years. That’s the law. We’re not allowed to register limitation misdemeanours. However, if it’s a sexual offence then . . . well, let me put it this way, we keep them noted in a highly unofficial backup file. I’ve dug up something interesting.’
‘Uh-huh?’
‘The official record of Inger Holter’s landlord, Hunter Robertson, was unblemished. But when we burrowed deeper we discovered he’d been fined twice for flashing. Indecent exposure.’
Harry tried to imagine indecent exposure.
‘How indecent?’
‘Playing with his sexual organs in a public place. Doesn’t have to mean anything, of course, but there’s more. Lebie drove past, but no one was at home, just an ill-tempered cur barking inside the door. However, a neighbour came out. Seems he had an arrangement with Robertson to let the dog out and feed it every Wednesday night, and he has the key. So, of course, Lebie asked if he’d unlocked the door and let the dog out the Wednesday night before they found Inger. He had.’
‘So?’
‘Robertson said in his statement that he’d been at home all night before Inger was found. I thought you’d want to know.’
Harry could feel his pulse beginning to race.
‘What are you going to do now?’
‘A police car will pick him up early, before he goes to work tomorrow.’
‘Hm. When and where did these awful misdeeds take place?’
‘Let me see. I think it was in a park. Here it is. Green Park, it says here. It’s a small—’
‘I know it.’ He thought quickly. ‘I reckon I might go for a walk. Seems like there’s a regular clientele hanging round there. Perhaps they know something.’
Harry was given the dates for the indecent exposure offences, which he noted down in a little black Sparebanken Nor almanac his father gave him every year for Christmas.
‘Just out of interest, Yong. What’s decent exposure?’
‘Being eighteen years old, drunk and mooning at a passing police patrol on Independence Day in Norway.’
He was so gobsmacked he couldn’t utter a word.
Yong was sniggering at the other end.
‘How . . .?’ Harry began.
‘It’s unbelievable what you can do with a couple of passwords and a Danish colleague in the adjacent office.’ Yong was laughing fit to burst.
Harry could feel a gasket beginning to blow.
‘I hope you don’t mind.’ Yong suddenly sounded concerned that he had gone too far. ‘I haven’t told anyone else.’
He seemed so contrite that Harry couldn’t be angry.
‘One of the police officers was a woman,’ Harry said. ‘She complimented me on my tight buttocks afterwards.’
Yong laughed with relief.
The photocells in the park considered it was dark enough and the lamps switched themselves on as Harry walked towards the bench. He recognised the grey man sitting there at once.
‘Evening.’
The head lying with its chin on the chest was slowly raised, and two brown eyes looked at Harry – or, to be more precise, through Harry – and fixed themselves on a very distant point.
‘Fig?’ he asked in a croaky voice.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Fig, fig,’ he repeated, waving two fingers in the air.
‘Oh, fag. You want a cigarette?’
Harry flicked two cigarettes from the packet and took one himself. They sat in silence for a moment, enjoying the smoke. They were sitting in a green lung in the middle of a large city, yet Harry had the feeling he was in a deserted remote area. Perhaps it was because night had fallen, accompanied by the electric sound of invisible grasshopper legs being rubbed against one another. Or perhaps it was the feeling of something ritualistic and timeless, this smoking together, the white policeman and the black man with the broad, outlandish face descended from this vast continent’s Indigenous population.