Knife

by Jo Nesbo

“Probably,” Bjørn laughed, and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “So what are you going to do now? About Ringdal, I mean.”

  “You said you didn’t want to get involved.”

  “Right. I don’t want to know.”

  “So I’d better get out before there are two people crying here.” Harry looked at his watch. “The two of you, obviously.”

  On his way to the car, Harry called Kaja.

  “Peter Ringdal. See what you can find out.”

  * * *

  —

  At seven o’clock that evening it was already dark, and the invisible, silent twilight rain draped itself like a cold spider’s web on Harry’s face as he walked up the gravel path to Kaja’s house.

  “We’ve got a lead,” he said into his phone. “I’m not entirely sure it deserves to be called that, though.”

  “Who is ‘we’?” Oleg asked.

  “Haven’t I said?”

  Oleg didn’t answer.

  “Kaja Solness,” Harry said. “A former colleague.”

  “Are you two—”

  “No. Nothing like that. Nothing…”

  “Nothing I need to know?” Oleg filled in.

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “OK.”

  A pause.

  “Do you think you’re going to find him?”

  “I don’t know, Oleg.”

  “But you know what I need to hear.”

  “Mm. We’re probably going to find him.”

  “OK.” Oleg sighed deeply. “Speak soon.”

  Harry found Kaja on the sofa in the living room, where she was sitting with her laptop on her knees and her phone on the coffee table. She had found out the following: Peter Ringdal was forty-six years old, had been divorced twice, had no children, his relationship status was unclear, but he lived alone in a house in Kjelsås. His career had been mixed. He had studied economics at the Norwegian Business School, and had once launched a new transportation concept.

  “I found two interviews with him, both in Finansavisen,” Kaja said. “In the first, from 2004, he was looking for investors for what he claimed was going to revolutionise the way we think about individual transport. The headline was Killer of the Private Car.” She tapped her laptop. “Here it is. A quote from Ringdal: ‘Today we convey one or two people in vehicles weighing a ton on roads that demand huge amounts of space and a lot of maintenance to handle the traffic they have to carry. The amount of energy required to get these machines rolling with their wide tires on rough pavement is laughable when you consider the alternatives available to us. In addition there’s also the resources that go into making these outsized driving machines. But that isn’t the biggest cost to humanity of today’s private transport. It’s time. The loss of time when a potential contributor to society has to spend four hours each day focusing solely on steering his own private machine through the Los Angeles traffic. That isn’t just a pointless use of a quarter of a person’s waking life, it also means a loss in GDP that in this city alone would be enough to finance another trip to the moon—every year!’ ”

  “Mm.” Harry ran his forefinger over the worn varnish on the armrest of the wingback chair he had sat down on. “What’s the alternative?”

  “According to Ringdal, masts with small carriages hanging off them, containing one or two people, not unlike cable cars. The carriages are parked at platforms on every street corner, like bicycles. You get inside, tap in your personal code and where you want to go. Your debit card is charged a small amount per kilometre, and a computerised system sends the carriages off, gradually accelerating to up to two hundred kilometres an hour, even in the centre of Los Angeles. While you carry on working, reading, watching television, barely noticing the corners. Or the corner, because on most journeys there would only be one. No traffic lights, no concertina effect, the carriages are like electrons drifting through a computer system without ever colliding. And beneath the carriages, all the roads are freed up for the use of pedestrians, cyclists, skateboarders.”

  “What about heavy transport?”

  “Anything that’s too heavy for the masts is carried in trucks that would have to drive at a snail’s pace in cities, in allocated time slots at night or early in the morning.”

  “Sounds expensive, having to build both masts and roads.”

  “According to Ringdal, the new masts and rails would cost between 5 and 10 percent of what a new road costs. The same with maintenance. In fact a transition to masts and rails would be paid for within ten years simply from the reduction in road maintenance. In addition to that, there would be the human and financial saving of fewer accidents. The target is no accidents at all, not a single one.”

  “Mm. Sounds sensible in the city, but out in the sticks…”

  “The cost of building masts to your cabin would be a fifth of an ordinary gritted road.”

  Harry gave her a wry smile. “Sounds as if you like the idea.”

  Kaja laughed. “If I’d had the money in 2004, I’d have invested in it.”

  “And?”

  “And would have lost it. The second interview with Ringdal is from 2009, and has the headline Black belt bankrupt. The investors lost everything and are furious with Ringdal. He for his part claims that he’s the victim, and that people with no vision for the future have ruined things for him by cutting off the money. Did you know he used to be Norwegian judo champion?”

  “Mm.”

  “He says something funny, actually…” Kaja scrolled down and read out loud with laughter in her voice: “ ‘The so-called financial elite are a gang of parasites who think it takes intelligence to get rich in a country with fifty successive years of growth. Whereas in fact the only thing you need is an inferiority complex, a willingness to risk other people’s money, and being born after 1960. Our so-called financial elite are a gaggle of blind hens in a corn silo, and Norway is the paradise of mediocrity.’ ”

  “Strong words.”

  “It doesn’t stop there, he’s got a conspiracy theory as well.”

  Harry watched steam rise from the cup on the table in front of her. That meant fresh coffee in the kitchen. “Let’s hear it.”

  “ ‘This development is inescapable, and who has most to lose from it?’ ”

  “Are you asking me?”

  “I’m reading from the interview!”

  “You’d better use your funny voice, then.”

  Kaja shot him a warning glance.

  “Car manufacturers?” Harry sighed. “Road builders? Oil companies?”

  Kaja cleared her throat and looked back at the screen: “ ‘Just like the big arms manufacturers, the car companies are extremely powerful players, and they live or die with private motoring. So they’re fighting desperately against development by pretending to be trailblazers. But when they try to convince people that driverless cars are the solution, of course it isn’t because they want better transport solutions, but because they want to slow things down as long as possible and carry on producing one-ton monsters even if they know that this is of no benefit to the world, and actually uses up its limited resources. And they’re trying to smother any other initiatives with everything they’ve got. They’ve been out to get me from day one. They haven’t managed to put me off, but they’ve obviously managed to frighten my investors.’ ” She looked up.

  “And after that?” Harry asked.

  “Not much. A short piece in 2016, also in Finansavisen, about the Norwegian Musk-wannabe Peter Ringdal, who is currently running a small tobacconist’s in Hellerud, but who once ruled a castle in the air that didn’t last long despite the fact that experts at the Institute of Transport Economics praised it as the most sensible proposal for the future of personal transportation, especially in cities.”

  “Criminal record?”

  “One report
for beating up a guy when he was working as a bouncer while he was a student, and one for careless driving, also when he was a student. He wasn’t convicted in either instance. But I’ve found something else. An abandoned missing person case.”

  “Oh?”

  “His second ex-wife, Andrea Klitchkova, was reported missing last year. Because the case was dropped, the files have been deleted, but I found a copy of an email from the Norwegian friend who reported Andrea missing. She wrote that Andrea had told her that before she left Ringdal, he had threatened her several times with a knife when she criticised him about the bankruptcy. I found the friend’s number and had a chat with her. She says the police spoke to Ringdal, but then she got an email from Russia, from Andrea, in which she apologised for not telling her she was going leave so suddenly. Because Andrea was a Russian citizen, the matter was passed on to the Russian police.”

  “And?”

  “Presumably Andrea was found, because there’s nothing more about the case in the police’s files.”

  Harry stood up and walked towards the kitchen. “How come you’ve got access to police files?” Harry asked. “Did IT forget to cancel your access?”

  “No, but I’ve still got my access chip, and you told me your friend’s user ID and password.”

  “Did I?”

  “BH100 and HW1953. Have you forgotten?”

  It’s gone, Harry thought as he got a cup out of the kitchen cupboard and poured himself some coffee from the cafetière. Ståle Aune had warned him about Wernicke–Korsakoff syndrome, which was when alcoholics slowly but surely drank away their ability to remember things. Well, at least he could remember the names Wernicke and Korsakoff. And he hardly ever forgot things he’d done when he was sober. And there were rarely such long, totally blank gaps as there were for the night of the murder. Passwords.

  He looked at the pictures hanging on the wall between the cupboards and worktop.

  A faded photograph of a boy and a girl in the back seat of a car. Kaja’s sharp teeth were smiling for the photographer, the boy had his arm round her, he must be her older brother, Even. Another picture showed Kaja with a dark-haired woman who was a head shorter than her. Kaja was wearing a T-shirt and khaki trousers, the other woman in Western dress with a hijab over her head, with a desert landscape behind them. The shadow of a camera tripod was etched on the ground in front of them, but no photographer. Taken using a timer. It was just a photograph, but something about the way they were standing, so close together, put Harry in mind of the same sense he got from the picture taken in the car. An intimacy.

  Harry moved on to a photograph of a tall fair man in a linen jacket, sitting at a restaurant table with a whisky glass in front of him and a cigarette dangling from one hand. A playful, self-assured look in his eyes, not focused on the camera but slightly above it. Harry thought about the Swiss guy, the one in the hardcore version of the Red Cross.

  The fourth picture was of him, Rakel and Oleg. The same one Harry had in his own flat. He didn’t know how Kaja had got hold of it. This version wasn’t as sharp as his, the dark bits were darker and there was a reflection on one side, as if it was a photograph of a photograph. Obviously she could have taken the picture during the short time they had been together, if that could actually be called being “together.” They were two people who had huddled up next to each other for a bit of warmth during the winter night, seeking shelter from the storm. And when the storm had eased, he had got up and gone off to warmer climes.

  Why did anyone stick photographs from their life on the kitchen wall? Because they didn’t want to forget, or because drink or the passage of time had drained colour and definition from the memories? Photographs were a better record, more accurate. Was that why he—apart from this single one—didn’t have any pictures? Because he preferred to forget?

  Harry took a sip from the cup.

  No, photographs weren’t more accurate. The pictures you chose to hang on the wall were fragments torn from life the way you wished it had been. Photographs revealed more about the person who had hung them up than the images in them. And if you read them right, they could tell you more than any interview. The newspaper cuttings on the wall of Bohr’s cabin. The guns. The picture of the boy with the Rickenbacker guitar on the wall of the girl’s bedroom on Borggata. The trainers. The father’s single wardrobe.

  He needed to get into Peter Ringdal’s home. Read his walls. Read about the man who was furious with his investors for not holding out for longer. The man who had threatened his wife with a knife because she criticised him.

  “Category three,” he called as he studied Rakel, Oleg and himself. They had been happy. That was true, wasn’t it?

  “Category three?” Kaja called back.

  “Categories of killer.”

  “Which one was number three again?”

  Harry carried his cup of coffee to the doorway and leaned against the frame. “The resentful. The ones who can’t handle criticism and direct their rage at people they bear grudges against.”

  She was sitting there with her legs tucked beneath her, her cup in one hand as she brushed the hair from her face with the other. And it struck him once again how beautiful she was.

  “What are you thinking about?” she asked.

  Rakel, he thought.

  “A break-in,” he said.

  * * *

  —

  Øystein Eikeland lived a simple life. He got up. Or not. If he got up, he walked from his flat in Tøyen down to Ali Stian’s kiosk. If it was shut, that meant it was Sunday, and he would automatically check the first thing that stuck in his long-term memory: Vålerenga football club’s fixture list, because he had arranged to have every Sunday when they played a home match off work from the Jealousy. If Vålerenga weren’t playing in their new stadium at Valle-Hovin that day, he went home and lay down again for another half hour before the Jealousy opened. But if it was a weekday, he would get a cup of coffee from Ali Stian, who had a Pakistani father, a Norwegian mother, and—as his name suggested—one foot firmly planted in each culture. One year, Norwegian National Day, 17 May, had fallen on a Friday, and he was seen kneeling on his prayer mat in the local mosque dressed in full national costume.

  After leafing through Ali Stian’s newspapers and discussing the most important stories with him, then sticking the papers back in the stand, Øystein would walk to a café where he would meet Eli—an older, overweight woman who was only too pleased to buy him breakfast in return for him talking with her. Or at her, because she didn’t have much to say, she just smiled and nodded no matter what he was running on about. And Øystein didn’t feel remotely guilty. She valued his company, and that value was equivalent to a roll and a glass of milk.

  After that, Øystein would walk from Tøyen to the Jealousy Bar in Grünerløkka, and that was his exercise for the day. Even if it took no more than twenty minutes, sometimes he decided it merited a glass of beer. Not a large glass, but he was happy to make do. And that was fine, because that hadn’t always been the case. But having a secure job did him good. Even if he didn’t like Ringdal, his new boss, he liked the job and wanted to keep it. The way he wanted to keep his life simple. As a result, he was deeply unhappy with the phone conversation he was having with Harry.

  “No, Harry,” he said. He was standing in the back room of the Jealousy with his phone pressed to one ear and a finger stuck in the other to block out Peter Gabriel, who was singing “The Carpet Crawlers” out in the bar, where Ringdal and the new girl were serving the early evening rush. “I’m not going to steal Ringdal’s keys.”

  “Not steal,” Harry said. “Borrow.”

  “OK, borrow. That’s what you said when we were seventeen and stole that car in Oppsal.”

  “You were the one who said that, Øystein. And it was Tresko’s father’s car. And that was all fine, if you remember?”

  “Fine? We
got away with it, but Tresko was grounded for two months.”

  “Like I said, fine.”

  “Idiot.”

  “He keeps them in his jacket pocket, you hear them rattle when he hangs it up.”

  Øystein stared at the old Catalina jacket hanging on the hook right in front of him. In the eighties those short, overpriced cotton jackets had been the uniform of young Social Democrats in Oslo. In other parts of the world they had been adopted by graffiti artists. But Øystein mostly found himself thinking of Paul Newman. How some people could make even the blandest item of clothing look so cool that you simply had to have one. Even if you already had an idea of the disappointment that would come when you looked at yourself in the mirror. “What do you want his keys for?”

  “I just want to take a look in his house,” Harry said.

  “Do you think he killed Rakel?”

  “Don’t think about that.”

  “No, because that’s really easy to do,” Øystein groaned. “OK, if I was stupid enough to say yes, what’s in it for me?”

  “The satisfaction of knowing that you’ve done your best and only friend a favour.”

  “And unemployment benefit when the Jealousy’s owner ends up in prison.”

  “OK, good. Say you’re taking the rubbish out, then meet me in the backyard at nine o’clock. That’s in…six minutes.”

  “You know this is a really bad idea, don’t you, Harry?”

  “Let me think about it. OK, I’ve thought about it. And you’re right. A really bad idea.”

  Øystein hung up and told Ringdal he was taking a cigarette break, went out through the back door, stopped between the parked cars and rubbish bins, lit a cigarette and pondered the same two eternal mysteries: how could it be that the more expensive players Vålerenga bought, the greater their chances of fighting to avoid relegation rather than competing for medals seemed to be? And how come the more hair-raising things Harry asked Øystein to do, the greater the chances were of him saying yes? Øystein rattled the key ring he had taken from the Catalina jacket and tucked in his pocket as he thought about Harry’s concluding argument: A really bad idea. But it’s the only one I’ve got.