by Samuel Bjork
He glanced around nervously, but there was no sign of anyone coming to meet him. Perhaps it had all been a joke? Working for the police? At first he had thought some of his cyber friends were messing with him. He knew a couple of people who would think a prank like this was hilarious. Wind people up. Hack their medical records. Hack solicitors’ offices. Send messages to strangers telling them they were pregnant. False paternity claims. Wreak as much havoc as possible. Gabriel Mørk was not that kind of hacker, but he knew many who were. It was possible that someone was setting him up, but he didn’t think so. The guy who had called him had seemed very credible. They had got his name from GCHQ in Great Britain. MI6. The intelligence service. Like most of his acquaintances, Gabriel Mørk had had a go at Canyoucrackit?, a challenge which had been posted on the Internet the previous autumn. To ordinary people, it was a seemingly unbreakable code. One hundred and sixty pairs of numbers and letters with a clock counting down to zero to increase the tension. He had not been the first to solve the code, but neither had he been very far behind. The first had been a Russian, a black hacker, who had cracked the code only a few hours after it had been uploaded to the Net. Gabriel Mørk knew that the Russian had not cracked the code itself, he had merely reversed engineered it by hacking the website, canyoucrackit.co.uk, and found the HTML file, which was supposed to contain the solution. Kind of fun, but not really the point of the challenge.
Gabriel Mørk had spotted straightaway that it was machine code, X86, and that it implemented the RC4 algorithm. It had not been a piece of cake – the creators of the code had put in place numerous obstacles, such as hiding a block of data inside a PNG file, so it was not enough merely to decrypt the numbers, but despite that it had taken him only a couple of nights. A fun challenge. The solution to the code itself was not quite as entertaining. The whole thing had turned out to be a PR stunt on behalf of GCHQ, a section of the British intelligence service, a test, a job application. If you can break this code you are smart enough to work for us.
He had entered his name and explained how he had cracked the code. Why not? He might as well. He had received a friendly reply that, yes, his solution was correct but, unfortunately, only British nationals could apply for jobs with the service.
Gabriel Mørk had thought nothing more of it. Not until his mobile had rung last Friday. Today was Thursday, and here he was with his computer under his arm, meeting a stranger before starting some kind of job. Working for the police.
‘Gabriel Mørk?’
Gabriel almost jumped, and turned around.
‘Yes?’
‘Hi, my name is Kim.’
The man who had spoken his name stuck out his hand. Gabriel had no idea where he had appeared from; he looked very ordinary, perhaps that would explain it. Somehow, he had been expecting flashing blue lights and sirens, or a uniform – at the very least, a brusque tone – but the man now standing in front of him could have been anyone. He was practically invisible. Ordinary trousers, ordinary shoes, an ordinary jumper in colours which did not stand out from the crowd in any way, and then it struck Gabriel that this was precisely the point. He was a plain-clothes police officer. He was trained to blend in. Not to stand out. Suddenly to appear out of nowhere.
‘Please follow me. It’s this way,’ said the man who was called Kim, and led Gabriel across the street to a yellow office block.
The police officer produced a card outside the front door and entered a code. The door opened. Gabriel followed the man to the lift: same procedure here, you needed a card to operate the lift as well. Gabriel watched the man furtively as he entered the code in the lift. He didn’t know exactly what to say, or if he should say anything at all. He had never had any dealings with the police. Nor had he ever taken a lift which required a code. The police officer called Kim looked completely at ease, as if he did this all the time. Met new, unknown colleagues in the street. Entered codes in lifts. The two men were the same height, but the police officer was of a slimmer build and, despite his invisibility, he looked in great physical shape. He had short, dark hair and had not shaved recently. Gabriel was unable to tell if this was on purpose or whether he had just not got round to it. He did not want to stare, but he noticed out of the corner of his eye how the police officer suppressed a small yawn, so it was probably the latter. Long days. Heavy caseload would be his guess.
The lift stopped on the third floor and the police officer got out first. Gabriel followed him down a long corridor until they reached another door, which also required a card and had a keypad. There were no explanatory signs anywhere. Nothing saying ‘Police’ or listing the names of any other agencies. Total anonymity. The man opened a final door, and they had arrived. The offices were not large, but they were open and light. Some desks put together in an open-plan office, some smaller, individual rooms here and there, most with glass walls, others with the blinds drawn. No one paid much attention to the two men who had just arrived; everyone was busy doing their own thing.
Gabriel followed the police officer through the open-plan office to a smaller room. One of those with glass walls. He would be on display, but at least he had his own office.
‘This is where you’ll be,’ Kim said, letting Gabriel enter first.
It was sparsely furnished. A desk, a lamp, a chair. Everything looked brand-new.
‘You submitted a list of the equipment you needed?’
Gabriel nodded.
‘And that was a desk and a lamp from IKEA?’
For the first time, the police officer called Kim showed signs of emotion. He winked and slapped Gabriel on the back.
‘Eh, no, there was more than that,’ Gabriel said.
‘I’m just pulling your leg. The IT guys are on their way. They’ll get you up and running in the course of the day. I would have shown you around and introduced you to everyone, but we have a briefing in five minutes, so we won’t have time for that. Do you smoke?’
‘Smoke?’
‘Yes, you know? Cigarettes?’
‘Er, no.’
‘Good for you. We don’t have many rules here, but there is one which is quite important. When Holger Munch goes outside to the smoking terrace, nobody joins him. That’s where Holger Munch thinks. That’s when Holger Munch does not want to be disturbed, get it?’
The police officer pulled Gabriel out of his new office and pointed towards the terrace. Gabriel could see a man standing there, presumably Holger Munch, his new boss. The man who had called him and casually, just ten minutes into the conversation, offered him a job. With the police. Don’t bother the boss when he’s smoking. No problem. Gabriel had no intention of disturbing anyone or doing anything except what he was told to do. Suddenly, he spotted the woman standing next to Holger.
‘Oh, wow!’ he exclaimed.
He thought he had said it to himself, but Kim turned around.
‘Eh?’
‘Is that Mia Krüger?’
‘Do you know her?’
‘What? No, not like that, but of course I have … Well … I’ve heard about her.’
‘Yes, who hasn’t.’ Kim chuckled. ‘Mia is brilliant, no doubt about it. She’s unique.’
‘Is it true that she only ever wears black and white?’
Gabriel had asked spontaneously – his curiosity had got the upper hand – but he regretted it immediately. Unprofessional. Like an amateur. He had forgotten that they had already hired him. Kim probably thought he was a fan or something, which was partly true, but this was not how Gabriel Mørk wanted to come across to a colleague on his first day at work.
Kim studied him briefly before he replied.
‘Well, I don’t remember ever seeing her in anything else. Why?’
Kim blushed faintly and stared at the floor for a moment.
‘Nothing, just something I read on the Net.’
‘You shouldn’t believe everything you read.’ Kim smiled and took an envelope from his jacket pocket. ‘Here is your card. The code is your birthday, the incident
room is at the end of the corridor. We start in five or ten minutes. Don’t be late.’
Kim winked, slapped Gabriel on the shoulder once more and left him alone inside the small office.
Gabriel was at a loss. Should he stay where he was, or sit down, or maybe just run home and forget the whole thing ever happened? Find another job, do something else. He felt like a fish out of water. And how could you be on time for a meeting which started in five or ten minutes?
He opened the envelope and was surprised to see a photograph of himself on the card.
Gabriel Mørk.
Violent Crimes Section.
He felt a sudden surge of pride. Secret doors. Secret codes. Specialist units. And he was on the inside. And Mia Krüger herself was standing outside on the terrace. He decided to make his way to the incident room in a few minutes. Being early had to be better than being late, whatever that meant up here in this mysterious place.
Chapter 15
Tom Lauritz Larsen, a pig farmer from Tangen, had originally been dead set against the Internet. But when Jonas, the young farmhand, had moved into the spare bedroom, he had insisted that the sixty-year-old farmer got broadband, otherwise he would refuse to work for him. Tom Lauritz Larsen had been cross, that went without saying: being grumpy was his default setting, there was never anything to smile about. And now he had managed to get this sickness in his lungs. Going on sick leave? What kind of nonsense was that? No one in his family had ever been on sick leave. What was this idiot doctor telling him? Was he suggesting that Tom Lauritz Larsen couldn’t run his own farm? There had been three generations of pig farmers on Tangen, and no one had ever been on sick leave or taken sickness hand-outs from the state. What was the world coming to? But then he had started fainting without warning. Frequently, and all over the place. The last time, he had fainted in the pigsty with the doors open. When he regained consciousness, he was surrounded by his neighbours, the pigs were at large in the village and Tom Lauritz Larsen had been so embarrassed that he had taken his doctor’s advice the next day. Attended appointments at the hospital in Hamar. Gone on sick leave. And found a farmhand through the job centre.
Nineteen-year-old Jonas from Stange had proved to be an exceptional worker. Tom Lauritz Larsen had taken to the boy right from the start. He was not one of those of those hobby farmers who didn’t know the meaning of hard work; no, this boy had what it took. Except for this business with the Internet, with which Tom Lauritz Larsen would have no truck. But he had had it installed anyway, because of the nineteen-year-old lad in the spare bedroom. It was something about a girlfriend from Vestlandet and expensive telephone bills, and talking on the Internet was free, it would appear, they could even see each other and God knows what. What did he know? So Telenor had dispatched an engineer from Hamar, and now the Internet had been up and running on the small farm for several months.
Tom Lauritz Larsen poured himself another cup of breakfast coffee and searched the Norwegian Farmers Union’s website. There was a very interesting article which he had looked at briefly the night before, but he wanted to reread it in depth. According to Norsvin, as many as one in four pig farmers in Hedmark had quit farming since 2007, saying that pig-rearing was no longer profitable. The average amount of pigs owned by those who remained was 53.2, where, the year before, the figure had been 51.1. It didn’t take a genius to work out what was happening: the big farms grew bigger, and the small ones went out of business.
Tom Lauritz Larsen got up for a refill, but stopped at the kitchen window, still holding his cup and seeing Jonas run out of the pig barn as if the devil were at his heels. What was up with the boy this time? Larsen headed for the door and had just stepped outside when the young man reached him, sweating profusely, his face deathly pale and his eyes filled with panic, as if he had seen a ghost.
‘What on earth is the matter?’ Larsen said.
‘Youuu, itttt … Kristió … Kristió’
The lad was incapable of speech. He pointed and flapped his arms about like some lunatic. He dragged Larsen, who was still wearing his slippers, still with his coffee cup in his hand, across the yard. He did not let go of him until they were inside the barn, standing by one of the sties. The sight that met the pig farmer was so extreme that for several months afterwards he struggled to tell people what he had seen. He dropped his coffee cup and did not even feel the hot coffee scald his thigh.
One of his sows, Kristine, lay dead on the floor in the pen. Not the whole pig, though. Only her body remained. Someone had decapitated her. With a chainsaw. Severed her neck completely. The pig was headless. Only the body remained.
‘Call the police,’ Tom Lauritz Larsen managed to say to the lad, and that was the last he remembered before he fainted.
This time, it was not because of his lungs.
Chapter 16
Sarah Kiese was sitting in the reception area in her lawyer’s office in Tøyen, growing increasingly irritated. She had expressly told the lawyer that she wanted absolutely nothing to do with her late husband’s estate. What kind of inheritance was it, anyway? More kids with other women? More letters from debt collectors demanding money and threatening to seize her belongings? Sarah Kiese was not perfect, far from it, but compared to her late husband she was a saint. Having a child with that loser had been a massive mistake. She had been ashamed of it then, and she still was. Not only had she had a child with him, she had even gone and married him. Christ, how stupid could you get? He had charmed her; she remembered, the first time she saw him in a bar in Grønland she had not fancied him straightaway, but she had been weak. He had bought her beers, drinks … yes, she had been an idiot, but so what? It was over now. She would love her daughter for ever, but she wanted nothing to do with that prat. When had he ever visited her? Whenever he wanted money. A loan for one of his schemes. He had claimed to be a builder, but he never had a steady job, or started his own business. No, nothing like that: never any plans, no ambition either, just odd jobs here and there, a hand-to-mouth existence. And he would always come home smelling of other women. Didn’t even bother to shower before slipping between her freshly washed sheets. Sarah Kiese felt sick just thinking about it, but at least it was over now. He had fallen from the tenth floor of one of the new developments down by the Opera. She imagined he had got himself a job of some kind there, cash in hand, no doubt, that was how it usually was with him, casual night-time work. Sarah Kiese smirked when she thought how awful it must have been, falling ten floors on a construction site, she had chuckled with glee when she heard the news. A fifty-metre drop to his death? Served him right; surely he must have felt extreme terror while it happened. How long could that fall have lasted? Eight, ten seconds? Fantastic.
She glanced irritably at the clock in the reception, and then at the door to her lawyer’s office. ‘No, no, no,’ she had said when he had called, ‘I want nothing to do with that tosser,’ but the sleazy lawyer had insisted. Bunch of sharks, the lot of them. There would never be another man in her life unless he was the Crown Prince, perhaps not even him. No more men for her. Just her and her daughter, now in their small new flat in Carl Berner. Perfect. Just her own scent under the duvet, not fifty other cheap perfumes mixed with bad breath. Why had she even agreed to come here? She had said no, hadn’t she? Wasn’t that what they had practised on that course she had been offered through Social Services? ‘Say no, say no, build a ring around yourself, you’re your own best friend, you need no one else. No, no, no, no.’
‘Sarah? Hi? Thanks for coming.’
The dodgy lawyer with the combover stuck out his head and waved her into his office. He reminded her of a small mouse. Feeble, with tiny eyes and hunched shoulders. No, not a mouse, a rat. A disgusting, cowardly sewer rat.
‘I said no,’ Sarah said.
‘I know,’ the sewer rat fawned. ‘And I’m all the more grateful to you for making the trip. You see, it turns out …’
He cleared his throat.
‘That I had overlooked something when
I settled the estate. A small detail, that’s all it is, my mistake, obviously.’
‘More debt collectors? More court summonses?’
‘He-he, no, no.’ The sewer rat coughed and pressed his fingertips together. ‘This is it.’
He opened a drawer and placed a memory stick in front of her.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s for you,’ the sewer rat said. ‘Your late husband left it with me some time ago, asked me to give it to you.’
‘Why didn’t he give it to me himself?’
The sewer rat offered her a faint smile.
‘Possibly because he got a hot iron in his face the last time he showed up at your flat?’
Sarah felt pleased with herself. Her husband had let himself into the flat. Startled her. Suddenly, he had appeared in her living room. Wanting to touch her, be all nice, like he always used to be shortly before asking her a favour. The iron had hit his gawping face with considerable force. He had not seen it coming and it had floored him on the spot. She had not seen or heard anything from him since that day.
‘I should have given it to you long ago, but we’ve been very busy,’ the rat said, sounding almost apologetic.
‘You mean he promised to pay you to do it, but you never saw the money?’ Sarah said.
The lawyer smiled at her.
‘At least that should conclude matters.’
Sarah Kiese took the memory stick, put it in her handbag and headed for the door. The rat half rose from his dusty chair and cleared his throat.