by Jo Nesbo
Harry stopped the hammer. ‘Repeat.’
‘I’m in Kripos,’ he hissed in Swedish, with the Finnish accent of which witty speech-makers at Norwegian wedding receptions are so fond.
Harry stared at the man. He didn’t have a second’s doubt that he was telling the truth. Yet it was totally incomprehensible.
‘In my wallet,’ the Finn snarled, not letting the fury in his voice reach his eyes.
Harry opened the wallet and checked inside. Removed a laminated ID card. There wasn’t much information, but it was adequate. The man in front of Harry was employed by Krimpolitisentralen, Kripos for short, the central crime unit in Oslo that assisted in – and usually led – the investigations into murder cases affecting the whole of the country.
‘What the hell does Kripos want with me?’
‘Ask Bellman.’
‘Who’s Bellman?’
The Finn uttered a brief sound; it was difficult to determine whether it was a cough or laughter. ‘POB Bellman, you poor sod. My chief. Let me go now, handsome.’
‘Fuck,’ Harry said, inspecting the card again. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck.’ He dropped the wallet on the floor and made for the door.
‘Hey! Hey!’
The Finn’s shouts faded as the door slid to behind Harry and he walked down the corridor to the exit. The nurse who had been with his father was coming from the opposite direction and nodded with a smile when they were close enough. Harry tossed the tiny key for the handcuffs up in the air.
‘There’s a flasher in the boys’ room, Altman.’
Out of instinct, the nurse caught the key with both hands. Harry could feel the open-mouthed stare on his back until he was out of the door.
9
The Dive
IT WAS A QUARTER TO ELEVEN AT NIGHT. NINE DEGREES centigrade, and Marit Olsen remembered that the weather forecaster had said it would be even milder tomorrow. In Frogner Park there wasn’t a soul to be seen. Something about the lido made her think of laid-up ships, of abandoned fishing villages with the wind whispering through house walls, and fairgrounds out of season. Fragmented memories of her childhood. Like the drowned fishermen who haunted Tronholmen, who emerged from the sea at night, with seaweed in their hair and fish in their mouths and nostrils. Ghosts without breath, but who were wont to scream cold, hoarse seagull cries. The dead with their swollen limbs, which snagged on branches and were wrenched off with a ripping sound, not that this halted their advance towards the isolated house in Tronholmen. Tronholmen where Grandma and Grandpa lived. Where she herself lay trembling in the children’s room. Marit Olsen breathed out. Kept breathing out.
Down there the wind was still, but up here at the top of the ten-metre-high diving platform you could feel the air moving. Marit felt her pulse throbbing in her temples, in her throat, in her groin, blood streaming through every limb, fresh and life-giving. Living was wonderful. Being alive. She had hardly been out of breath after scaling all the steps of the tower, had just felt her heart, that loyal muscle, racing wildly. She stared down at the empty diving pool beneath her, to which the moonlight lent an almost unnatural bluish sheen. Further away, at the end of the pool, she could see the large clock. The hand had stopped at ten past five. Time stood still. She could hear the city, see car lights in Kirkeveien. So close. And yet too far. Too far away for anyone to hear her.
She was breathing. And was dead nonetheless. She had a rope as thick as a hawser around her neck and could hear the gulls screaming, ghosts she would soon be joining. But she was not thinking about death. She was thinking about life, how much she would have liked to live. All the small things, and the big things, she would like to have done. She would have travelled to countries she hadn’t seen, watched her nephews and nieces grow, seen the world come to its senses.
It had been a knife; the blade had glistened in the light from the street lamp, and it had been held to her throat. Fear is said to release energy. Not in her case, it had stolen all her energy, deprived her of the power to act. The thought of steel cutting into her flesh had turned her into a quivering bundle of helplessness. So when she had been told to climb over the fence, she had not been able to and had fallen to the ground and lain there like a beanbag, tears streaming down her cheeks. Because she knew what was going to happen. She would do everything she could not to be cut and knew she would not be able to prevent it. Because she wanted so much to live. A few more years, a few more minutes, it was the same crazy, blind rationality that drove everyone.
She had started to explain that she couldn’t climb over; she had forgotten that he had told her to keep her mouth shut. The knife had writhed like a snake, sliced her mouth, twisted round, crunched against her teeth and then been pulled out. The blood had gushed at once. The voice had whispered something behind the mask and nudged her forward along the fence. To a place in the bushes where she was pushed through a gap in the fence.
Marit Olsen swallowed the blood that continued to fill her mouth and looked down at the spectator stands beneath her; they, too, were bathed in the blue moonlight. They were so empty, it was a courtroom without spectators or jury, just a judge. An execution without a mob, just the executioner. A final public appearance which no one had considered worth attending. It struck Marit that she lacked as much appeal in death as in life. And now she couldn’t speak, either.
‘Jump.’
She saw how beautiful the park was, even now in winter. She wished the clock at the end of the pool were working so that she could see the seconds of life she was stealing.
‘Jump,’ the voice repeated. He must have removed his mask, for his voice had changed, she recognised it now. She turned her head and stared in shock. Then she felt a foot on her back. She screamed. She no longer had ground beneath her feet; for one astonishing moment she was weightless. But the ground was pulling her down, her body accelerated and she registered that the bluish-white porcelain of the pool was racing towards her, to smash her into pieces.
Three metres above the bottom of the pool the rope tightened around Marit Olsen’s neck and throat. The rope was an old-fashioned type, made of linden and elm, and had no elasticity. Marit Olsen’s stout body was not checked to any appreciable degree; it detached itself from the head and hit the base of the pool with a dull thud. The head and the neck were left in the rope. There wasn’t much blood. Then the head tipped forward, slipped out of the noose, fell onto Marit Olsen’s blue tracksuit top and rolled across the tiles with a rumble.
Then the lido was still again.
PART TWO
10
Reminders
AT THREE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING HARRY ABANDONED his attempts to sleep and got up. He turned on the tap in the kitchen and put a glass underneath, held it there until the water overflowed and trickled down his wrist, cold. His jaw ached. His attention was held by two photographs pinned up over the kitchen worktop.
One, with a couple of disfiguring creases, showed Rakel in a light blue summer dress. But it wasn’t summer, the leaves behind her were autumnal. Her dark brown hair cascaded down onto her bare shoulders. Her eyes seemed to be searching for something behind the lens, perhaps the photographer. Had he taken the photo himself? Strange that he couldn’t remember.
The other was of Oleg. Taken with Harry’s mobile phone camera at Valle Hovin skating rink during a training session last winter. At that time, a delicate young boy, but if he had continued his training he would have soon filled out that red skinsuit of his. What was he doing now? Where was he? Had Rakel managed to create a home for them wherever they were, a home that felt safer than the one they had in Oslo? Were there new people in her life? When Oleg became tired, or lost concentration, did he still refer to Harry as ‘Dad’?
Harry turned off the tap. He was conscious of the cupboard door against his knees. Jim Beam was whispering his name from inside.
Harry pulled on a pair of trousers and a T-shirt, went into the sitting room and put on Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue. It was the original, the one where they didn’t compensate fo
r the reel tape in the studio running a tiny bit slow, so the whole record was an almost imperceptible displacement of reality.
He listened for a while before increasing the volume to drown the whispering from the kitchen. Closed his eyes.
Kripos. Bellman.
He had never heard the name. He could, of course, have rung Hagen and enquired, but he couldn’t be bothered. Because he had a feeling he knew what this might be about. Best to let sleeping dogs lie.
Harry had come to the last track, ‘Flamenco Sketches’, then he gave up. He got to his feet and left the sitting room for the kitchen. In the hall he turned left, emerged wearing Doc Martens boots and went out.
He found it under a split plastic bag. Something akin to dried pea soup coated the front of the file.
Back in his sitting room he sat down in the green wing chair and began to read with a shiver.
The first woman was Borgny Stem-Myhre, thirty-three years old, originally from Levanger, in the north. Single, no children, resident of Sagene in Oslo. Worked as a hairstylist, had a large circle of acquaintances, particularly among hairdressers, photographers and people in the fashion press. She frequented several of Oslo’s restaurants, and not just the coolest. Besides that, she was keen on the outdoors and liked walking or skiing from mountain cabin to mountain cabin.
‘You can take the woman out of Levanger, but you can’t take Levanger out of the woman,’ was the general summary of interviews with her colleagues. Harry assumed the remark came from colleagues who had succeeded in erasing their own small-town upbringings.
‘We all liked her. In this line of business she was one of the few who was genuine.’
‘It’s incomprehensible. We can’t understand how anyone could take her life.’
‘She was too nice. And sooner or later all the men she fell for exploited her. She became a toy for them. She aimed too high, that was basically the problem.’
Harry studied a photograph of her. One in the file of when she was still alive. Blonde, maybe not natural. Run-of-the-mill looker, no obvious beauty, but she was smartly dressed in a military jacket and a Rastafarian hat. Smartly dressed and too nice – did they go together?
She had been to Mono restaurant for the monthly launch and preview of the fashion magazine Sheness. That had been between seven and eight, and Borgny had told a colleague slash friend that she would be at home preparing for a photo shoot the day after, at which the photographer had wanted a ‘jungle meets punk meets eighties look’.
They assumed she would go to the nearest taxi rank, but none of the taxi drivers in the vicinity at the time in question (computerised lists from Norgestaxi and Oslotaxi attached) had recognised the photograph of Borgny Stem-Myhre or had driven to Sagene. In short, no one had seen her after she left Mono. Until two Polish brickies had showed up for work, noticed the padlock on the iron bomb shelter door had been snapped, and gone in. Borgny had been lying in the middle of the floor, in a contorted position, with all her clothes on.
Harry examined the photo. The same military jacket. The face looked as if it had been made up with white foundation. The flash cast sharp shadows against the cellar wall. Photo shoot. Smart.
The pathologist had determined that Borgny Stem-Myhre died somewhere between ten and eleven o’clock at night. Traces of the drug ketanome were found in her blood, a strong anaesthetic that worked fast even when injected intramuscularly. But the direct cause of death was drowning, triggered by blood from wounds in the mouth. And this was where the most disturbing elements came in. The pathologist found twenty-four stab wounds in the mouth, symmetrically distributed and at the same depth, seven centimetres, those that did not pierce the face, that is. But the police were at a loss as to what kind of weapon or instrument had been used. They had simply never seen anything like it. There were absolutely no forensic clues: no fingerprints, no DNA, not even shoe or boot prints, as the concrete floor had been cleaned the day before in preparation for heating cables and floor covering. In the report collated by Kim Erik Lokker, a forensics officer who must have been appointed after Harry’s time, there was a photograph of two grey-black pebbles found on the floor which did not originate from the gravel around the crime scene. Lokker pointed out that small stones often got stuck in boots with heavy-duty tread, and came loose when worn on firmer ground, such as this concrete floor. Furthermore, these stones were so unusual that if they turned up later in the investigation, for example in a gravel path, they might well find a match. There was one addition to the report after it had been signed and dated: small traces of iron and coltan had been found on two molars.
Harry could already guess the conclusion. He flicked through.
The other woman’s name was Charlotte Lolles. French father, Norwegian mother. Resident of Lambertseter, in Oslo. Twenty-nine years old. Qualified lawyer. Lived alone, but had a boyfriend: one Erik Fokkestad who had been quickly eliminated from inquiries. He had been at a geology seminar in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, USA. Charlotte should have joined him, but had prioritised a serious property dispute on which she had been working.
Colleagues had last seen her at the office on Monday evening at around nine. She had probably never returned home. Her briefcase of papers had been found next to her body behind the abandoned car by the wood in Maridalen. In addition, both parties in the property dispute had been eliminated. The post-mortem report highlighted bits of paint and rust found under Charlotte Lolles’s nails, which fitted with the crime scene report’s mention of scrape marks around the car-boot lock, as though she had been trying to get it open. Closer examination of the lock revealed that it had been picked at least once. But hardly by Charlotte Lolles. Harry formed a mental image of her chained to something locked inside the boot and speculated that that was why she had been trying to escape. Something the killer had taken with him afterwards. But what? And how? And why?
Records of the interview with a female colleague from the law firm included a quote: ‘Charlotte was an ambitious person and always worked late. Although how efficient she was, I don’t know. Always gentle, but not as outgoing as her smiles and Mediterranean appearance would have suggested. Quite private, basically. She never talked about her partner, for example. But my bosses liked her very much.’
Harry could imagine the female colleague serving up one intimate revelation after another about her boyfriend, without getting more than a smile from Charlotte in return. His investigative brain was on autopilot now: perhaps Charlotte had held back from embracing a clingy sisterhood, perhaps she had had something to hide. Perhaps …
Harry studied the photographs. Hardish but attractive features. Dark eyes, she looked like … Shit! He closed his eyes. Opened them again. Flicked through to the pathologist’s report. Skimmed through the document.
He had to check Charlotte’s name at the top to make sure he wasn’t reading the report on Borgny for a second time. Anaesthetic. Twenty-four wounds to the mouth. Drowning. No external violence, no signs of sexual interference. The only difference was that the time of death was between eleven and midnight. However, this report had an additional note as well, concerning traces of iron and coltan found on the victim’s teeth. Presumably because Krimteknisk had later realised that it might be relevant since it was found on both victims. Coltan. Wasn’t Schwarzenegger’s Terminator made of that?
Harry realised he was wide awake now and found himself perching on the edge of the chair. He felt the stirrings, the excitement. And the nausea. Like when he took his first drink, the one that made his stomach turn, the one his body desperately rejected. And soon he would be begging for more. More and more. Until it destroyed him and everyone around him. As this was doing. Harry jumped up so quickly he went dizzy, grabbed the file, knew it was too thick, but still managed to tear it in two.
He picked up the bits of paper and took them back to the refuse container. Let them fall down the side and lifted the plastic bags so that the documents slipped right down, to the very bottom. The dustcart would be rou
nd tomorrow or the day after, he hoped.
Harry went back and sat down in the green chair.
As night softened into a greyish hue, he heard the first sounds of a waking town. But over the regular drone of the first rush-hour traffic in Pilestredet, he could also hear a distant, reedy police siren gyrating through the frequencies. Could be anything. He heard another siren winding up. Anything. And then another. No, not anything.
The landline telephone rang.
Harry lifted the receiver.
‘Hagen speaking. We’ve just received a mess—’
Harry put down the phone.
It rang again. Harry looked out of the window. He hadn’t rung Sis. Why not? Because he didn’t want to show himself to his little sister – his most enthusiastic, most unconditional admirer. The woman who had what she called ‘a touch of Down’s syndrome’ and still coped with her life immeasurably better than he did his own. She was the only person he could not allow himself to disappoint.
The telephone stopped ringing. And started again.
Harry snatched at the phone. ‘No, boss. The answer is no, I don’t want the job.’
The other end of the line was quiet for a second. Then an unfamiliar voice said, ‘Oslo Energy here. Herr Hole?’
Harry cursed to himself. ‘Yes?’
‘You haven’t paid the bills we sent you, and you haven’t responded to our final demands. I’m ringing to say we are cutting off the electricity supply to Sofies gate 5 from midnight tonight.’
Harry didn’t answer.
‘We will only reconnect when we’ve received the outstanding amount.’
‘And that is?’
‘With fees for reminders and disconnection, plus interest, it’s fourteen thousand, four hundred and sixty-three kroner.’
Silence.
‘Hello?’
‘I’m here. I’m a bit out of pocket right now.’
‘The outstanding amount will be recovered by our debt collection agency. In the meantime we’ll have to hope the temperature doesn’t fall below zero. Won’t we?’