by Jo Nesbo
Off the tourists’ beaten track it was quiet, and what little life there was moved in slow motion. Roadworkers, their torsos bared, leaned over their machines, bricklayers on scaffolding at the building site around the Rikshospital peered down over deserted streets and taxi drivers found places to park in the shade, where they stood in groups discussing the murder in Ullevålsveien. Only in Akersgata were there signs of increased activity. The sensation-seeking rags had released the silly-season news and were greedily milking the latest killing. With many of their colleagues on holiday, the editors were putting everyone to work on the story, from journalism students doing summer jobs to unemployed political commentators. Only the cultural correspondents escaped.
It was still quieter than usual. It may have been because Aftenposten had moved from its position in Akersgata, the street the press traditionally occupied, down towards the centre, to the Post House, Aftenposten House or Post Giro Building. Whatever you called it, it was an unlovely small-town version of a skyscraper pointing up into a blue, cloudless sky. The golden-brown colossus at the top edge of the building site in Bjørvika had been smartened up, but for the time being crime reporter Roger Gjendem had only a view of Plata, the junkies’ market square, and their outdoor shooting gallery behind the sheds where they hoped to meet their brave new world. He occasionally caught himself looking to see if Thomas was down there. But Thomas was in Ullersmo prison serving a sentence for attempting to break into a policeman’s flat last winter. How crazy can you get? Or how desperate? At any rate, Roger would not have to worry that he would suddenly be looking down on his little brother shooting an overdose into his arm.
Aftenposten had not formally appointed a new crime editor. The last one had been offered a financial pay-off as part of downsizing and had accepted it with alacrity and left. Crime was then simply placed under the news coverage umbrella and, in practice, that meant that Roger Gjendem had to step in as the crime editor, but was paid the basic journalist’s salary. He sat behind his desk with his fingers on the keyboard, his eyes on the smiling face of the woman he had scanned in as his screensaver and his mind on the woman who had packed her bags for the third time and left him and his flat in Seilduksgata. He knew that Devi would not come back this time and that it was time to move on. He went into the control panel on his computer and deleted the screensaver. That was a start. He had been working on a heroin case, but he had put it aside. Good, he hated writing about drugs. Devi insisted that it was because of Thomas. Roger tried to shut out both Devi and his little brother so that he could concentrate on the case he was supposed to be writing about.
He was summarising the details of the murder story in Ullevålsveien, enjoying some respite while they were waiting for developments, new evidence or a suspect or two. This would be an easy job. It was a sexy case in every way, with most of the ingredients that any crime reporter could wish for. A young woman of 23, single, shot in the shower room of her own flat, in broad daylight one Friday. The handgun found in the rubbish bin in the flat turns out to be the murder weapon. None of the neighbours has seen anything, no strangers have been observed roaming the area and just one of the neighbours claims to have heard something that could have been a shot. Since there are no signs of a break-in, the police are working on the theory that Camilla Loen let the killer in herself, but there is no-one in her circle of friends and acquaintances who stands out as suspicious and they all have more or less watertight alibis. The fact that Camilla Loen left her work as a graphic designer at Leo Burnett’s at 4.15 to meet two friends in front of Kunstnernes Hus at 6.00 makes it highly unlikely that she would have invited anyone home. It is equally unlikely that anyone would have rung Camilla Loen’s doorbell and sneaked into the apartment block using a false identity as she would have seen them on the video camera at the intercom panel at the entrance.
It was bad enough that the news desk could publish headlines like ‘Psycho Murder’ and ‘Neighbour Tasted Blood’, but two further details leaked out which gave the front pages two more splashes: ‘Camilla Loen’s Finger Severed’ and ‘Red Diamond Star Found Under Eyelid’.
Roger Gjendem began his summary in the present historic in order to give it dramatic emphasis, but he discovered that the material didn’t need it and he deleted everything he had written. He sat for a while with his head in his hands. Then he double-clicked the recycle bin icon on the screen, placed the cursor over ‘Empty the recycle bin’ and hesitated. It was the only picture he had of her. In his flat all vestiges of her had been removed. He had even washed the woollen jumper she used to borrow and which he liked wearing because it smelled of her.
‘Bye-bye,’ he whispered and clicked.
He reread his introduction and decided to change ‘Ullevålsveien’ to ‘Our Saviour’s Cemetery’ – it sounded better. Then he began to write, and this time it flowed.
At 7.00 people were reluctantly making a move homewards from the beaches although the sun was still beating down from a cloudless sky. It turned 8.00 and then 9.00. People wearing sunglasses were still drinking beer outside while the waiters in restaurants without terraces were twiddling their thumbs. It was 9.30, the sun was red over Ullernåsen and then it plunged. Unlike the temperature. It was a tropical night and people were returning home from restaurants and bars to lie awake and sweat in their beds.
In Akersgata the deadline was approaching and the editorial staff sat down to discuss the front page for the last time. The police had not made any new announcements. Not that they were holding back information, it was just that four days after the murder it seemed as if they didn’t have anything else to say. On the other hand, silence allowed Gjendem and his colleagues even greater scope for speculation. It was time to be creative.
At roughly the same time in Oppsal the telephone rang in a house with yellow timber cladding and an apple orchard. Beate Lønn stretched out an arm from under the sheet and wondered if her mother, who lived on the floor below, had been woken up by the telephone ringing. Probably.
‘Were you asleep?’ asked a hoarse voice.
‘No,’ Beate said. ‘Is anyone?’
‘Right. I’ve only just woken up.’
Beate sat up in bed.
‘How’s it going?’
‘What can I say? Well, yes, badly, I suppose I can say that.’
Silence. It wasn’t the telephone connection that made Harry’s voice seem distant to Beate.
‘Anything new from Forensics?’
‘Just what you’ve read in the newspapers,’ she said.
‘What newspapers?’
She sighed. ‘Just what you already know. We’ve taken fingerprints and DNA from the flat, but for the moment there doesn’t seem to be a clear link to the murderer.’
‘We don’t know if there was malice aforethought,’ Harry said. ‘Killer.’
‘Killer,’ Beate yawned.
‘Have you found out where the diamond came from?’
‘We’re working on it. The jewellers we’ve talked to say that red diamonds are not unusual, but there’s very little demand for them in Norway. They doubt that the diamond came via Norwegian jewellers. If it came from abroad then that increases the likelihood that the perpetrator is a foreigner.’
‘Mm.’
‘What is it, Harry?’
Harry coughed loudly. ‘Just trying to keep myself up to date.’
‘The last thing I heard was that it wasn’t your case.’
‘It isn’t.’
‘So what do you want?’
‘Well, I woke up because I was having a nightmare.’
‘Do you want me to come and tuck you in?’
‘No.’
New silence.
‘I was dreaming about Camilla Loen. And the diamond you found.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘Yes. I think there’s something in that.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m not quite sure, but did you know that in the past they used to place a coin on the eyes of a cor
pse before it was buried?’
‘No.’
‘It was payment for the ferryman to deliver the soul into the kingdom of the dead. If the soul wasn’t delivered, it would never find peace. Think about it.’
‘Thank you for the wisdom, but I don’t believe in ghosts, Harry.’
Harry didn’t answer.
‘Anything else?’
‘Just one small question. Do you know if the Chief Super starts his holidays this week?’
‘Yes, he does.’
‘You wouldn’t by any chance happen to know . . . when he comes back?’
‘Three weeks’ time. What about you?’
‘What about me?’
Beate heard the click of a lighter. She sighed: ‘When are you coming back?’
She heard Harry inhale, hold his breath and slowly let it out again before he answered:
‘I thought you said you didn’t believe in ghosts.’
As Beate was putting down the phone, Bjarne Møller woke up with abdominal pains. He lay in bed twisting and turning until 6.00 when he gave up and got out of bed. He had a long breakfast without any coffee and immediately felt better. When he arrived at Police HQ just after eight, to his surprise, the pains had completely gone. He took the lift up to his office and celebrated by swinging his feet onto the desk, taking his first mouthful of coffee and grappling with the day’s newspapers.
Dagbladet ran a picture of a smiling Camilla Loen on the front page under the headline ‘Secret Lover?’. Verdens Gang ran the same picture but with a different headline: ‘Clairvoyant Sees Jealousy’. Only the article in Aftenposten seemed to be interested in reality.
Møller shook his head, cast a glance at his watch and dialled Tom Waaler’s number. Timed to perfection. He would just have finished his morning meeting with the detectives on the case.
‘No breakthrough yet,’ Waaler said. ‘We’ve been conducting door-to-door inquiries with all the neighbours and we’ve talked to all the shops nearby. Checked the taxis who were in the area at the relevant time, had a chat with informers and gone through the alibis of old friends with tarnished records. No-one stands out as a suspect, let’s put it that way. And, to be frank, in this case I don’t think the man is someone we know. No evidence of a sexual assault. No money or valuables touched. No familiar features here and no bells ringing. This finger and the diamond for example . . .’
Møller could feel his guts grumbling. He hoped it was hunger.
‘So no good news for me then.’
‘Majorstua police station has sent us three men, so now we have ten men working on the strategic side of the investigation. And the technicians at Kripos are giving Beate a hand to go through what they found in the flat. We’re pretty well staffed, considering it’s the holiday period. Does that sound good?’
‘Thanks, Waaler, let’s hope it stays that way. As regards the staffing, I mean.’
Møller put the phone down and turned his head to look out of the window before going back to the papers. However, he remained in this position, with his head twisted round very uncomfortably and his eyes rooted to the lawn outside Police HQ. He had caught sight of a figure wandering up Grønlandsleiret. The person in question was not walking quickly, but he appeared at any rate to be walking in a moderately straight line and there was no doubt where he was headed: he was coming towards the police station.
Møller got up, went out into the corridor and called for Jenny to come in right away with more coffee and an extra cup. Then he went back, sat down and hastily pulled out some old documents from one of his drawers.
Three minutes later there was a knock at the door.
‘Come in!’ Møller shouted without looking up from his papers, a twelve-page letter of complaint written by a dog owner accusing the dog clinic in Skippergata of administering the wrong medicine and thus killing his two chow chows. The door opened and Møller casually waved him in as he perused a page about the dogs’ breeding, their awards from dog shows and the remarkable intelligence with which both dogs had been blessed.
‘My God,’ Møller said when he finally looked up. ‘I thought we’d given you the boot.’
‘Well. Since my dismissal papers are still lying unsigned on the Chief Superintendent’s desk, and will be doing so for at least the next three weeks, I thought I might as well turn up for work in the meantime. Eh, boss?’
Harry poured himself a cup of coffee from Jenny’s coffee pot and carried the cup with him round Møller’s desk and over to the window.
‘But that doesn’t mean I’ll work on the Camilla Loen case.’
Bjarne Møller turned round and contemplated Harry. He had seen it all several times before, how Harry could have a near-death experience one day and the very next be strolling around like some red-eyed Lazarus. For all that, it was still a surprise every time.
‘If you think your dismissal is a bluff, Harry, you’re wrong. This is not a shot across the bows this time. It’s definitive. All the times you’ve disobeyed instructions it was me who ensured that you were dealt with leniently. For that reason I can’t run away from my responsibilities now, either.’
Bjarne Møller searched for hints of an appeal in Harry’s eyes. He found none. Fortunately.
‘That’s how it is, Harry. It’s over.’
Harry didn’t answer.
‘And while I remember, your gun licence is withdrawn with immediate effect. Standard procedure. You’ll have to nip down to the armoury and return whatever hardware you have on you today.’
Harry nodded. The department head scrutinised him. Did he detect a faint touch of the bewildered schoolboy who had received an unexpected box around the ears? Møller placed his hand against the lowest buttonhole on his shirt. It wasn’t easy to work Harry out.
‘If you think you can make yourself useful in your last weeks, and you feel like turning up for work, that’s absolutely fine by me. You are not suspended and we have to pay your salary to the end of the month anyway. And we know what your alternative is to sitting here, don’t we.’
‘Fine,’ Harry grunted and stood up. ‘I’ll just go and see if my office still exists. You’ll have to tell me if there’s anything you need any help with, boss.’
Bjarne Møller flashed an indulgent smile.
‘Yes, I’ll take you up on that, Harry.’
‘On the chow chow case, for example,’ Harry said, closing the door quietly behind him.
Harry stood in the doorway contemplating his shared office. Halvorsen’s desk, cleared for his holiday and empty, was set against his. On the wall over the filing cabinet hung a picture of Officer Ellen Gjelten, taken at the time when she used to sit in Halvorsen’s seat. The other wall was almost completely covered with a street map of Oslo. The map was decorated with pins, lines and times indicating where Ellen, Sverre Olsen and Roy Kvinsvik were at the time of the murder. Harry went over to the wall and stood in front of the map. Then, in one swift movement, he tore it down and stuffed it into one of the drawers of the filing cabinet. He took a silver hip flask out of his jacket pocket, took a quick swig and rested his forehead against the metal cabinet’s cooling surface.
He had worked for more than ten years in this office. Room 605. The smallest office in the red zone on the sixth floor. Even when they hit on the weird idea of promoting him to detective inspector he had insisted on remaining here. Room 605 didn’t have any windows, but he observed the world from here. In these ten square metres he had learned his trade, celebrated his victories and suffered his defeats and acquired the little insight he had into the human mind. He tried to remember what else he had done over those ten years. There must have been something. You only work eight to ten hours every day. Not more than twelve, anyway. Plus the weekends.
Harry slumped down into his battered office chair, and the damaged springs screamed joyously. He could happily sit here for another two weeks.
At 5.25 p.m. Bjarne Møller would normally have been at home with his wife and child. However, since they were visi
ting Grandma he decided to use these days of holiday tranquillity to catch up on neglected paperwork. The shooting in Ullevålsveien had to some extent spoiled these plans, but he determined to make up for lost time.
When he received a call from the control room, Møller answered in an irritated tone that they would have to ring uniformed police as Crime Squad could not start taking responsibility for missing persons.
‘Apologies, Møller. Patrol officers were busy dealing with a field fire in Grefsen. The caller is convinced that the missing person has been the victim of a crime.’
‘All the staff still here are working on the shooting in Ullevålsveien. That would be . . .’ Møller stopped in his tracks. ‘Or, just a minute. Wait a sec, let me just check . . .’
9
Wednesday. Missing Person.
The police officer reluctantly put his foot on the brake and the police car came to a halt in front of the red traffic lights by Alexander Kiellands plass.
‘Or shall we stick the siren on and go for it?’ asked the officer, turning towards the passenger seat.
Harry absentmindedly shook his head. He gazed across to the park which used to be a grass area with two benches occupied by boozers trying to drown out the sound of traffic with their songs and streams of abuse. A couple of years ago, though, they had decided to spend a few million on cleaning up the square bearing the writer’s name, and the park was cleared, some planting was done, asphalt and paths were laid and an impressive fountain shaped like a salmon ladder was installed. It was without question a much more scenic background for singing songs and hurling abuse.
The police car swung to the right across Sannergata, crossed the bridge over the Akerselva and stopped in front of the address Harry had been given by Møller.
Harry told the officer he’d make his own way back, stepped out onto the pavement and straightened his back. On the other side of the road was a newly erected office building which still stood empty and according to the newspapers would continue to do so for a while. The windows reflected the apartment building whose address he had been given. It was a white building from the ’40s or thereabouts, not completely functional, but an indeterminate close relative. The façade was richly appointed with graffiti tags marking territories. At the bus stop there was a darkskinned girl with her arms folded, chewing gum as she studied a large hoarding for Diesel clothing on the other side of the street. Harry found the name by the top doorbell.