The Devil's Star

by Jo Nesbo

  It had begun to dawn on Karl that this was more important than Liz from Tønsberg.

  ‘I can’t remember everyone who’s been in here, can I,’ he stammered, meaning he couldn’t remember anyone.

  That was just how it was. Faces didn’t mean a thing to him. Even Liz’s face was already forgotten.

  ‘I don’t need to know about all of them,’ the policeman said. ‘Just this one. Things seem to be a bit quiet here today.’

  Resigned, Karl shook his head.

  ‘What about looking at a few pictures?’ the policeman asked. ‘Would you recognise him?’

  ‘Dunno. I didn’t recognise you . . .’

  ‘Harry . . .’ the boy said.

  ‘But did you see anyone drawing on the TV?’

  ‘Harry . . .’

  Karl had seen someone in the shop that day. It had occurred to him the time the police came in and asked him if he had seen anything suspicious. The problem was that this person had not done anything in particular, apart from stand and stare at TV screens. So what should he have said? That someone whose face he couldn’t remember had been in his shop and behaved suspiciously? And got a whole load of hassle and unwanted attention into the bargain?

  ‘No,’ Karl said. ‘I didn’t see anyone drawing on the TV.’

  The policeman mumbled something or other.

  ‘Harry . . .’ The boy caught hold of the policeman’s T-shirt. ‘It’s five o’clock.’

  The policeman straightened up and consulted his wristwatch.

  ‘Beate,’ he said. ‘Can you see anything?’

  ‘Too early to say,’ she said. ‘There are marks right enough, but he’s dragged his finger along, so it is difficult to find a complete fingerprint.’

  ‘Call me.’

  The bell over the door clanged again, and Karl and the woman with the metal case were alone in the shop.

  He picked up Liz from Tønsberg again, but changed his mind. He left her face down and went over to the policewoman. With a tiny brush she was delicately brushing away a kind of powder she had sprinkled over the screen. He could see it now, the drawing in the dust. He had been on an economy drive, with cleaning too, so it was no surprise that the drawing was still there after a few days. The drawing was a surprise though.

  ‘What’s that supposed to be?’ he asked.

  ‘Don’t know,’ she said. ‘I’ve only just been told what it’s called.’

  ‘And that is?’

  ‘A devil’s star.’

  20

  Wednesday. Cathedral Builders.

  Harry and Oleg met Rakel on her way out of the Frogner open-air pool. She ran over to Oleg and flung her arms round him while looking daggers at Harry.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she whispered.

  Harry stood there with his arms down by his sides, shifting weight from one foot to the other. He knew he could give her an answer. He could have said that what he was ‘doing’ was trying to save lives in the city, but even that would have been a lie. The truth was he was ‘doing’ his own thing and letting everyone around him pay the price. It had always been like that, and it always would be, and if it happened to save lives, then that was a bonus.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said instead. At any rate, that was the truth.

  ‘We went somewhere where the serial killer’s been,’ Oleg said overjoyed, but stopped in his tracks when he saw his mother’s look of disbelief.

  ‘Well –’ Harry began.

  ‘Don’t,’ Rakel interrupted. ‘Don’t even try.’

  Harry shrugged, and smiled sadly at Oleg.

  ‘Let me drive you home anyway.’

  He knew what the response would be before it came. He stood and watched them go. Rakel strode ahead briskly. Oleg turned and waved. Harry waved back.

  The sun was pumping behind his eyelids.

  The canteen was on the top floor of Police HQ. Harry stood inside the door and his eyes swept around the room. Apart from a person sitting with his back to one of the tables, the large area was totally empty. Harry had driven from Frogner Park straight to Police HQ. On his way through the corridors on the sixth floor he established that Tom Waaler’s office was unoccupied, but the light was on.

  Harry went to the counter where the steel shutters were down. On the TV suspended in the corner the draw was being made for the lottery. Harry watched the ball roll down the funnel. The volume was down low, but Harry could hear a woman’s voice say ‘Five, the number is five’. Someone had been lucky. A chair scraped by the table.

  ‘Hi, Harry. The counter’s closed.’

  It was Tom.

  ‘I know,’ Harry said.

  Harry thought about what Rakel had asked, about what he was actually doing.

  ‘Thought I would just have a smoke.’

  Harry nodded towards the door to the roof terrace, which in practice functioned as a year-round smoking room.

  The view from the roof terrace was wonderful, but the air was just as hot and still as it was down on the street. The afternoon sun angled across the town and came to rest in Bjørvika, an area of Oslo containing a motorway, a deposit for shipping containers and a refuge for junkies, but it was soon to have an opera house, hotels and millionaires’ apartments. Wealth was beginning to take the whole city by storm. It made Harry think of the catfish in the rivers in Africa, the large, black fish that didn’t have the sense to swim into deeper waters when the drought came and in the end were trapped in one of the muddy pools that slowly dried up. All the building works had started; the cranes stood out like the silhouettes of giraffes against the afternoon sun.

  ‘It’s going to be really great.’

  He hadn’t even heard Tom approach.

  ‘We’ll see.’

  Harry pulled on his cigarette. He wasn’t sure what he had responded to.

  ‘You’ll like it,’ Waaler said. ‘It’s just a question of getting used to it.’

  Harry could see the catfish lying in front of him in the mud after the last water had gone, their tails beating, their mouths wide open as they tried to get used to breathing air.

  ‘But I need an answer, Harry. I have to know if you’re in or out.’

  Drowning in air. The death of the catfish was perhaps no worse than the death of anything else. Death by drowning was supposed to be relatively pleasant.

  ‘Beate rang,’ Harry said. ‘She’s checked the fingerprints from the TV shop.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Just partial prints. And the owner doesn’t remember a thing.’

  ‘Shame. Aune says that they get good results from hypnosis with forgetful witnesses in Sweden. Perhaps we should try that.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘And there was an interesting bit of information from Forensics this afternoon. About Camilla Loen.’

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘Turns out she was pregnant. Second month. But no-one we’ve talked to in her circle had a clue about who the father could have been. I don’t suppose it has much to do with her death, but it would be interesting to know.’

  ‘Mm.’

  They stood in silence. Waaler went over to the railing and leaned over the edge.

  ‘I know that you don’t like me, Harry. And I’m not asking you to begin liking me over night.’

  He paused.

  ‘But if we’re going to work together we have to begin somewhere, be a little more open with each other perhaps.’

  ‘Open?’

  ‘Yes. Does that sound dodgy?’

  ‘A bit.’

  Tom Waaler smiled. ‘Agreed, but you can start. Ask me anything you’d like to know about me.’

  ‘Know?’

  ‘Yes. Anything at all.’

  ‘Was it you who shot . . . ?’ Harry stopped. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘I want to know what it is that makes you tick.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What it is that makes you get up in the morning and do what you do. What you’re after and why.’

  ‘I understand.�
�

  Tom thought it over. For quite a while. Then he pointed at the cranes.

  ‘Do you see those? My great-grandfather emigrated from Scotland with six Sutherland sheep and a letter from the bricklayers’ guild in Aberdeen. He helped to build the houses you can see along the Akerselva and to the east along the railway line. Later his sons followed in his footsteps, and their sons too, right down to my father. My grandfather took a Norwegian surname, but when we moved to the west of Oslo, my father changed it back. Waaler. Wall. There was a little pride involved, but he also thought that Andersen was too common a name for a future judge.’

  Harry watched Waaler. He tried to locate the scar on his chin.

  ‘You were training to become a judge then?’

  ‘That was the plan when I started law. And I would probably have continued if it hadn’t been for what happened.’

  ‘What was that?’

  Waaler shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘My father died in an accident at work. It’s strange, but when your father has gone you suddenly discover that the choices you have made were as much for him as for yourself. I was immediately aware that I had nothing in common with the other law students. I suppose I was a kind of naive idealist. I thought it was all about raising the banner for justice and driving the modern democratic state forward. However, I discovered that for most people it was about getting a title and a job and creaming enough to be able to impress the girl next door in Ullern. Well, you did law yourself . . .’

  Harry nodded.

  ‘Perhaps it’s in the genes,’ Waaler said. ‘At any rate, I’ve always liked building things. Big things. Right from when I was small. I built huge palaces with Lego bricks, much bigger than the things all the other kids built. On the law course I realised I was wired differently from all these tiny-minded people with their tiny-minded thoughts. Two months after my father’s funeral I applied to go to Police College.’

  ‘Mm. And left as top cadet, according to the rumours.’

  ‘Second.’

  ‘And here at Police HQ you had to build your palace?’

  ‘I didn’t have to. There’s no had to, Harry. When I was small I took Lego bricks off the other children to make my buildings large enough. It’s a question of what you want. Do you want a small, poky house for people with small, poky lives or do you want to have opera houses and cathedrals, majestic buildings that point the way towards something greater than you yourself, something you can strive for.’

  Waaler ran his hand along the steel railing.

  ‘Building cathedrals is a calling, Harry. In Italy they gave masons who died during the construction of a church the status of a martyr. Even though cathedral builders built for humanity there isn’t a single cathedral in human history that was not founded on human bones and human blood. My grandfather used to say that. And that’s the way it will always be. The blood of my family has been used as the mortar of many of the buildings you can see from here. I simply want more justice. For everyone. And I’ll use the building materials that are necessary.’

  Harry studied the glow of his cigarette.

  ‘And I’m a building material?’

  Waaler smiled.

  ‘That’s one way of putting it. But the answer is yes. If you want it. I have alternatives . . .’

  He didn’t complete the sentence, but Harry knew how it ended: ‘. . . but you don’t.’

  Harry took a long drag on his cigarette and asked in a low voice: ‘What if I agree to come on board?’

  Waaler raised an eyebrow and fixed Harry with an intent look before answering.

  ‘You’ll receive your first assignment, which you will carry out on your own and without asking any questions. Everyone before you has done this. As a mark of loyalty.’

  ‘And it is?’

  ‘You’ll find that out in good time. But it means burning bridges.’

  ‘Does it mean breaking Norwegian law?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Aha,’ Harry said. ‘So that you’ve got something on me, so that I won’t be tempted to rat on you.’

  ‘I would perhaps have expressed that in a different way, but you’ve got the idea.’

  ‘What are we talking about here? Smuggling?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that yet.’

  ‘How can you be sure that I’m not a mole from POT or SEFO?’

  Waaler leaned further over the railing and pointed down.

  ‘Do you see her, Harry?’

  Harry went to the edge and peered down at the park. People were still lying on the green grass catching the last rays of the sun.

  ‘Her in the yellow bikini,’ Waaler said. ‘Nice colour for a bikini, isn’t it.’

  Harry’s stomach churned, and he stood up straight again.

  ‘We’re not stupid,’ Waaler said, without taking his eyes off the lawn. ‘We follow the ones we want to join us. She wears well. Smart and independent, from what I can see. But of course she wants what all women want in her position. A man who can provide for her. It’s pure biology. And you don’t have a lot of time. Women like her are not on their own for long.’

  Harry’s cigarette fell over the edge. It left behind a stream of sparks.

  ‘There was a warning about forest fires for all Østland yesterday,’ Waaler said.

  Harry didn’t answer. He just shuddered when he felt Waaler’s hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Strictly speaking, the deadline has already passed, Harry. But to show how kind we are, I’ll give you two more days. If I don’t hear anything in that time, the offer is rescinded.’

  Harry swallowed hard and tried to get out the one word, but his tongue refused to obey and his salivary glands felt like the dry river beds in Africa.

  Finally, he managed it.

  ‘Thanks.’

  Beate Lønn enjoyed her work. She like the routines, the security, the knowledge that she was competent, and she knew that the others at the Forensics Institute at Kjølberggata 21A knew that too. Since work was the only thing in her life she considered important, it was reason enough to get up in the morning. Everything else was a musical interlude. She lived in her mother’s house in Oppsal and had the whole of the top floor to herself. They got on extremely well. She had always been Daddy’s girl when he was alive; she assumed that was why she joined the police force, like him. She had no hobbies. Even though she and Halvorsen, the officer Harry shared his office with, had become a sort of couple, she was not convinced about it. She had read in a women’s magazine that this kind of doubt was natural and that you should take risks. Beate didn’t like taking risks. Or being in doubt. That was why she enjoyed her work.

  As she was growing up she blushed at the thought that anyone could be thinking about her and she spent most of her time devising different ways to hide. She still blushed, but she had found good places to hide. She could sit for hours inside the worn redbrick walls of Forensics studying fingerprints, ballistics reports, video recordings, comparisons of voices, the analyses of DNA or textile fibres, footprints, blood and an endless number of technical leads which might resolve important, complicated, controversial cases in total peace and quiet. She had also discovered that working was not nearly as dangerous as it seemed. So long as she spoke loudly and clearly and managed to repress her panic about blushing, losing face, her clothes, standing there exposed and full of shame, for what reason she didn’t know. The office in Kjølberggata was her castle; the uniform and her professional duties her mental armour.

  The clock showed 12.30 a.m. when the telephone on her office desk rang, interrupting her reading of the laboratory report on Lisbeth Barli’s finger. Her heart began to quicken with fear when she saw on the display that the caller was ringing from an ‘unknown number’. It could only mean that it was him.

  ‘Beate Lønn.’

  It was him. His words came out in a flurry of blows.

  ‘Why didn’t you ring me about the fingerprints?’

  She held her breath for a second before she repl
ied.

  ‘Harry said he would pass on the message.’

  ‘Thank you. I received it. Next time, you ring me first. Is that understood?’

  Beate gulped. She didn’t know whether out of fear or anger.

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Anything else you told him that you didn’t tell me?’

  ‘No. Except that I’ve got the results from the lab on what was under the finger we were sent through the post.’

  ‘Lisbeth Barli’s? And it was?’

  ‘Excrement.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Pooh.’

  ‘Thank you very much. I know what it is. Any idea where it came from?’

  ‘Er, yes.’

  ‘Correction. Who it came from.’

  ‘I don’t know for certain, but I can guess.’

  ‘Would you be so kind . . .’

  ‘The excrement contains blood, perhaps from a haemorrhoid. In this particular case, blood group B. Only seven per cent of the country has this blood group. Wilhelm Barli is a registered blood donor. He has –’

  ‘Right. And what do you conclude from this?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Beate said quickly.

  ‘But you know that the anus is an erogenous zone, Beate? In men and women. Or had you forgotten?’

  Beate squeezed her eyes shut. Please don’t let him start again. Not again. It was a long time ago, she had begun to forget, to get it out of her system. But his voice was there, smooth and tough, like snakeskin.

  ‘You’re good at playing the very ordinary girl, Beate. I like that. I liked it when you pretended you didn’t want to.’

  You know something, I know something, no-one else knows anything, she thought.

  ‘Does Halvorsen do it to you as well as I did?’

  ‘I’m putting the phone down now,’ Beate said.

  His laughter crackled in her ears. She knew it then. There was nowhere to hide. They could find you anywhere, just as they had found the three women where they felt safest. There was no castle. And no armour.

  Øystein was sitting in his cab at the taxi rank in Thereses gate and listening to a Rolling Stones tape when the telephone rang.

  ‘Oslo Ta –’

  ‘Hi, Øystein. Harry here. Have you got anyone in the car?’