by Jo Nesbo
“I’m trying to give the story a bit of color. OK?”
Liz pursed her lips and placed a finger over them.
“Then he inserted the gun barrel, ordered Klipra to bite and fired, cold-blooded, ruthless. The bullet went through the back of Klipra’s head and into the wall. The murderer wiped up the blood and … well, you know what a mess that makes.”
Liz nodded and waved him on.
“In short: the mystery person removed all the traces. At the end, he fetched the screwdriver from the boot and used it to lever the bullet out of the wall.”
“How do you know that?”
“I found plaster on the floor in the hall and a hole left by the bullet. Forensics has proved it’s the same limewash solution we found on the screwdriver in the boot.”
“And then?”
“Then the murderer left again in the car and moved the ambassador’s body so that he could put the screwdriver back in its place.”
“So he’d already killed the ambassador?”
“I’ll come back to that later. The murderer changed into the ambassador’s suit, then he entered Klipra’s office, took one of the two Shan knives and the keys to the hideaway. He also made a quick call from Klipra’s office and took along the tape of the conversation. Then he dumped Klipra’s body in the boot and drove off at around eight.”
“This is pretty hard to follow, Harry.”
“At half past eight he checked into Wang Lee’s.”
“Come on, Harry. Wang Lee identified the ambassador as the person who’d checked in.”
“Wang Lee had no grounds to suspect that the dead man on the bed was not the same person who had checked in. All he saw was a farang in a yellow suit hidden behind a pair of sunglasses. And remember the ambassador had a very distracting knife sticking out of his back when Wang Lee had to identify him.”
“Yes, what about the knife?”
“The ambassador was killed with a knife, yes, but long before they came to the motel. A Sami knife, I imagine, since it was greased with reindeer fat. You can buy that kind of knife anywhere in Finnmark, in Norway.”
“But the doctor said the stab wound matched the Shan knife.”
“Well, it would. The Shan knife is longer and broader than the Sami knife, so it’s impossible to see that another knife was used first. Keep up with me now. The murderer came to the hotel with two dead bodies in the boot, asked for a room as far away from reception as possible so that he could reverse the car and carry Molnes the few meters into the room. He also asked not to be disturbed until he said he was ready. In the room he changed again and put the ambassador in the suit. But he was under pressure and messed up. Do you remember I commented that the ambassador was obviously going to meet a woman because his belt was a notch tighter than usual?”
Liz clicked her tongue against her palate. “The murderer didn’t notice the worn notch when he was tightening the belt.”
“An insignificant mistake, nothing that would give him away, but one of the many trivial points that mean this murder does not add up. While Molnes was on the bed he carefully pushed the Shan knife in the old wound before wiping the handle and removing any traces.”
“That also explains why there wasn’t much blood in the motel room. He was killed somewhere else. Why didn’t the doctor notice that?”
“It’s always difficult to say how much a knife wound is going to bleed. It depends on which arteries are severed and how far the blade stops the flow. Nothing is obviously out of the ordinary. At around nine he left the motel with Klipra in the boot and drove to Klipra’s hideaway.”
“He knew where that house was? Then he must have known Klipra.”
“He knew him well.”
A shadow fell over the table, and a man sat down opposite Løken. The balcony was open to the deafening traffic noise outside and the whole room reeked of exhaust fumes.
“Are you ready?” Løken asked.
The giant with the plait looked at him, clearly surprised that he spoke Thai.
“I’m ready,” he answered.
Løken, pallid, smiled. He felt very weary. “So what are you waiting for? Get on with it.”
“When he got to Klipra’s hideaway, he unlocked the door and dumped Klipra in the freezer. Then he washed and hoovered the boot so that we wouldn’t be able to find any traces of the bodies.”
“OK, but how do you know this?”
“Forensics found Ove Klipra’s blood in the freezer and fibers from the boot and from the two dead men’s clothing in the vacuum cleaner.”
“Jesus. So the ambassador wasn’t a neat freak, as you claimed when we examined the car?”
Harry smiled. “I knew the ambassador wasn’t a neat and tidy type when I saw his office.”
“Did I hear you correctly? Did you say you made a mistake?”
“Yes, you did.” Harry raised an index finger. “But Klipra was neat and tidy. Everything in the cabin seemed so clean, so organized, do you remember? There was even a hook in the cupboard to keep the vacuum cleaner in place. But when I opened the cupboard door, it rolled out. As if the person who had used it last didn’t know their way around. That was what made me send the vacuum cleaner bag to Forensics.”
Liz slowly shook her head as Harry carried on.
“When I saw all the meat in the freezer I realized you could easily keep a dead man there for weeks without the body …” Harry puffed out his cheeks and demonstrated with his hands.
“There’s something wrong with you,” Liz said. “You should see a doctor.”
“Do you want to hear the rest or not?”
She did.
“Afterward he drove to the motel, parked the car and entered the room where he put the car key in Molnes’s pocket. Then he vanished into the night without a trace. Literally.”
“Hang on! When we drove to the cabin it took us ninety minutes one way, right? It’s about the same distance from here. Our friend Dim found him at half past eleven, so two and a half hours after you’re saying the murderer left the motel. He couldn’t have possibly made it back to the motel before Molnes’s body was found. Or have you forgotten that?”
“Not at all. I’ve even driven the stretch. I started at nine o’clock, waited at the cabin for half an hour and drove back.”
“And?”
“I was back at a quarter past twelve.”
“See. It doesn’t add up.”
“Do you remember what Dim said about the car when we questioned her?”
Liz bit her top lip.
“She didn’t remember any car,” Harry said. “Because it wasn’t there. At a quarter past twelve they were in reception waiting for the police and didn’t notice the ambassador’s car sneak in.”
“Christ, I thought we were dealing with a careful murderer. The police might have been waiting for him when he got back.”
“He was careful, but he couldn’t anticipate that the murder would have been discovered before his return. The agreement was that Dim wouldn’t go to the room until he rang her, wasn’t it. But Wang Lee became impatient and almost ruined the whole plan. The murderer can’t have suspected anything when he was replacing the car keys.”
“So blind luck then?”
“This man doesn’t base anything on luck.”
He must be a Manchurian, Løken thought. From Jilin province perhaps. During the Korean War he had been told that the Red Army recruited many of its soldiers from there because they were so tall. Whatever the logic of that was, they sank deeper into the mud and were bigger targets. The other person in the room stood behind him humming a song. Løken couldn’t swear to it, but it sounded like “I Wanna Hold Your Hand.”
The Chinese man had picked up a knife from the table, if you can call a seventy-centimeter curved saber a knife. He weighed it in his hands, like a baseball player choosing a bat, then raised it above his head without a word. Løken clenched his teeth. At the same time the pleasant drowsiness of his barbiturate sedation wore off, the blood froze in his veins and he lo
st his self-control. As he screamed and tugged at the leather straps binding his hands to the table, the humming approached from behind. A hand grabbed his hair, yanked his head back, and a tennis ball was stuffed into his mouth. He could feel the hairy surface on his tongue and palate; it attracted saliva to it like blotting paper and his screams became feeble groans.
The tourniquet around his forearm had been pulled so tight that he had long lost any feeling in his hand, and when the saber came down with a dull thud and he didn’t feel anything he thought for a moment it had missed him. Then he saw his right hand on the other side of the blade. It had been clenched and now it was slowly opening. The cut was clean. He could see two severed white bones protruding. The radius and the ulna. He had seen them in other people, but never his own. Because of the tourniquet, there wasn’t a lot of blood. It wasn’t true what people say, that sudden amputations don’t hurt. The pain was unbearable. He waited for the shock, the paralyzing state of nothingness, but that avenue was closed at once. The man who had been humming stuck a syringe in his upper arm, through his shirt, not even attempting to find a vein. That was what was so great about morphine. It worked wherever you put it. He was aware that he could survive this. For quite a long time. As long as they wanted.
“What about Runa Molnes?” Liz was cleaning her teeth with a matchstick.
“He could have picked her up whenever he wanted,” Harry said.
“And then he took her up to Klipra’s hideaway. What happened after that?”
“The blood and bullet hole in the window suggest that she was shot inside the cabin. Probably as soon as they arrived.”
It was almost easy when he talked about her like this, as a murder victim.
“I don’t understand that,” Liz said. “Why would he kidnap her and kill her right away? I thought the whole point was to use her to stop your investigation. He could only do that if Runa Molnes was alive. You might have wanted proof that she was safe before submitting to his demands.”
“And how would I submit to his demands?” Harry asked. “Go back to Norway—and then Runa would run home smiling? And the kidnapper could breathe a sigh of relief just because I had promised he would be left in peace, even though he had no other means of applying pressure? Was that how you saw events unfolding? Did you think he would just let her …?”
Harry noticed Liz’s eyes and realized he had raised his voice. He shut up.
“I didn’t, no. I’m talking about what the murderer was thinking,” Liz said, still with her gaze fixed on him. The worried frown between her eyebrows was back again.
“Sorry, Liz.” He pressed his fingertips against his jawbone. “I must be tired.”
He got up and walked to the window again. The cold on the inside and the hot, humid air on the outside of the pane had combined to produce a fine, gray layer of condensation on the glass.
“He didn’t kidnap her because he was frightened I was finding out more than I should. He had no reason to believe that; I couldn’t see further than the end of my own nose.”
“So what was the motive for the kidnap? To confirm our theory: that it was Klipra who was behind the murder of the ambassador and Jim Love?”
“That was the secondary motive,” he said into his glass. “The primary one was that he had to kill her as well. When I …”
They could hear the faint sounds of a bass in the next-door room.
“Yes, Harry?”
“When I saw her she was already doomed.”
Liz breathed in. “It’s almost nine, Harry. Perhaps you should tell me who the murderer is before Løken comes?”
Løken had locked the door to his flat at seven and walked down the street to catch a taxi to Millie’s Karaoke. He had seen the car at once. It was a Toyota Corolla, and the man behind the wheel seemed to fill the whole vehicle. In the passenger seat he saw the outline of another person. He wondered whether he should go over to the car and find out what they wanted, but decided to test them first. He thought he knew what they were after and who had sent them.
Løken hailed a taxi, and after it had gone a few blocks he could see that the Corolla was indeed following them.
The taxi driver noticed that the farang at the back wasn’t a tourist and dropped the offer of massage. But when Løken asked him to take a few detours the driver apparently revised his opinion. Løken met his eyes in the mirror.
“Sightseeing, sir?”
“Yes, some sightseeing.”
After ten minutes there was no longer any doubt. The plan was clearly that Løken should lead the two policemen to the secret meeting place. Løken wondered how the Police Chief had caught wind of their meetings. And why he took it so amiss that one of his inspectors should be involved in a bit of irregular cooperation with foreigners. It might not have been totally by the book, but it had produced results in the end.
On Sua Pa Road the traffic came to a standstill. The driver squeezed into a gap between two buses and pointed to the pillars being built. A steel girder had fallen and killed a motorist last week. He had read about it. They had published the photos as well. The driver shook his head, took out a cloth and wiped the dashboard, the windows, the Buddha figure and the photo of the royal family before spreading out a copy of Thai Rath over the wheel with a sigh and opening it at the sports section.
Løken looked through the rear window. There were just two cars between them and the Toyota Corolla. He looked at his watch. Half past seven. He was going to be late, even if he couldn’t shake off these two idiots. Løken made up his mind and tapped on the driver’s shoulder.
“I can see someone I know,” he said in English and gesticulated behind him.
The driver was skeptical, suspicious that the farang was going to run off without paying.
“Back in a minute,” Løken said, squeezing out of the door.
One day less to live, he thought as he breathed in enough CO2 to knock out a family of rats, and walked calmly through the traffic toward the Toyota. One headlamp must have hit something because the light shone straight into his face. He prepared his speech, already looking forward to seeing their surprised faces. Løken was only a couple of meters away and could make out the two people in the car. Suddenly he was unsure of himself. There was something about their appearance that wasn’t right. Even taking into account that policemen were not generally the smartest, they did at least know that discretion was the first commandment when you were tailing someone. The man in the passenger seat was wearing sunglasses despite the fact that the sun had set some time ago, and the giant in the driver’s seat was very conspicuous. Løken was about to turn back when the car door opened.
“Hey, mister,” a soft voice said. This was a mess. Løken tried to get back to the taxi, but a car had squeezed in and blocked the way. He looked back at the Corolla. The Chinese man was coming toward him. “Hey, mister,” he repeated as cars in the opposite lane began to move. It sounded like whispering in a hurricane.
Løken had once killed a man with his bare hands. He had smashed his larynx with a rabbit chop, the precise way they had been taught at the training camp in Wisconsin. But that was a long time ago, he had been young. And terrified. Now he wasn’t, he was only angry.
It probably wouldn’t make any difference.
When he felt the two arms around him and his feet were off the ground he knew it wouldn’t make any difference. He tried to shout, but the air his vocal cords needed to vibrate had been squeezed out of him. He saw the starry sky rotating slowly before it was hidden by an upholstered car ceiling.
He felt hot, tingling breath on his neck and looked through the Corolla windscreen. The man with the sunglasses was standing by the taxi and passing some notes through the driver’s window. The grip on Løken loosened and in one long, trembling breath he inhaled the filthy air as if it were springwater.
The taxi driver rolled up the window and the man with the sunglasses was on his way back toward them. He had just removed his sunglasses, and as he stepped into the ligh
t from the damaged headlamp, Løken recognized him.
“Jens Brekke?” he whispered in astonishment.
48
Friday, January 24
“Jens Brekke?” Liz burst out.
Harry nodded.
“Impossible! What about his alibi, the goddamn foolproof tape showing he called his sister at eight?”
“Yes, he did call her, but not from his office. I asked why on earth he would ring his workaholic sister at home during work hours. He said he’d forgotten what time it was in Norway.”
“And?”
“Have you ever heard of a currency broker who forgets what time it is in another country?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Everything became clear when I saw that Klipra had a similar machine to Brekke’s. After shooting Klipra he called his sister’s answerphone, knowing there was no one there, from Klipra’s office and took the tape with him. It shows when he rang, but not where from. We never considered the possibility that the tape may be from another recorder. But I can prove a tape was removed from Klipra’s office.”
“How?”
“Do you remember that early on the afternoon of the seventh of January a call was made to Klipra on the ambassador’s mobile phone? It’s not on any of the tapes in his office.”
Liz laughed. “That asshole fabricated a watertight alibi and sat in prison waiting to play the trump card so it would look as convincing as possible?”
“I think I can hear admiration in your voice, Inspector.”
“It’s purely professional. Do you think he planned it all from the beginning?”
Harry looked at his watch. His brain had begun to Morse through a message that something was wrong.
“If there’s one thing I’m confident of it’s that everything Brekke has done was planned. He hasn’t left a single detail to chance.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Well,” he said, placing an empty glass against his face, “he told me. He hates risks. He won’t play unless he knows he’s going to win.”
“I guess you’ve worked out how he killed the ambassador too, then?”