by Jo Nesbo
Normally, they would never have mentioned the name of the witness, but it was important here that the man they were addressing – the murderer – would understand that they had indeed found someone from the guest book. Bellman had not laid special emphasis on the word ‘one’ when he mentioned the detective, but that was the message. There would be just two people, the witness and an ordinary detective. In a cabin. Far from habitation.
‘We hope of course that Miss Peller will be able to give us a description of the other guests present that night.’
They had had a long discussion about the wording. They wanted to sow the seed that the witness could bring down the murderer. At the same time Harry thought it important that they didn’t arouse too much suspicion with the witness being accompanied by only one detective, and that the pithy introduction ‘Finally, something about the witnesses’ and the downplayed ‘we hope of course’ signalled that the police did not consider this an important witness who would therefore require highlevel protection. They hoped the killer would be of a different opinion.
‘What do you think she may have seen? And can you spell the witness’s name?’
This was the Rogaland journalist. Ninni leaned forward to remind them that questions would be at the end, but Mikael shook his head.
‘We’ll have to see what she remembers when she gets to the cabin,’ Bellman said, stretching towards the microphone labelled NRK. The state channel. Nationwide. ‘She will be going up there with one of our most experienced detectives and will be there for twenty-four hours.’
He looked at Harry Hole standing at the back, saw him give a slow nod. He had driven the point home. Twenty-four hours. The bait was prepared and the trap set. Bellman let his gaze wander further. It found the Pelican. She had been the only one to protest, to consider it scandalous that they were deliberately setting out to mislead the press. He had asked the group to take five and had talked to her privately. Afterwards she had concurred with the majority view. Ninni opened the floor for questions. The assembly came to life, but Mikael Bellman relaxed and made ready to give vague answers, glib formulations and the ever-useful ‘I’m afraid we can’t go into that at this phase of the investigation’.
His legs were freezing, so frozen that they were completely numb. How could that be? When the rest of his body was burning? He had screamed so loud he had no voice left; his throat was dry, dried out, riven asunder, an open wound with blood singed to red dust. There was a smell of burnt hair and flesh. The stove had seared through his flannel shirt into his back and as he screamed and screamed they fused. He melted as if he were a tin soldier. Feeling that the pain and the heat had begun to eat into his consciousness and that he was finally slipping into oblivion, he awoke with a start. The man had poured a bucket of cold water over him. The sudden relief had caused him to cry again. Then he heard the hiss of boiling water between his back and the stove and the pain returned with renewed vigour.
‘More water?’
He looked up. The man stood over him with another bucket. The mist before his eyes cleared, and for a couple of seconds he saw him with total clarity. The light from the flames through the holes in the stove flickered on his face, making the beads of sweat on his forehead glisten.
‘It’s very simple. All I need to know is who. Is it someone in the police? Is it one of those who were at Håvass that night?’
‘Which night?’ he sobbed.
‘You know which night. They’re almost all dead now. Come on.’
‘I don’t know. I haven’t got anything to do with this, you have to believe me. Water. Please. Plea …’
‘… se? Please as in … please?’
The smell. The smell of his body burning. The words he stuttered were no more than a hoarse whisper. ‘It w-was … just m-me.’
Gentle laughter. ‘Smart. You’re trying to make it sound like you would do anything to avoid the pain. So that I believe you when you can’t cough up the name of your collaborator. But I know you can stand more. You’re made of tougher stock.’
‘Charlotte—’
The man swung the poker. He didn’t even feel the blow. Everything went black for one wonderfully long second. Then he was back in hell.
‘She’s dead!’ the man yelled. ‘Come up with something better.’
‘I meant the other one,’ he said, trying to get his brain to work. He remembered now, he had a good memory, why was it failing him? Was he really in such bad shape? ‘She’s Australian—’
‘You’re lying!’
He felt his eyes wander again. Another shower of water. A moment of clarity.
The voice. ‘Who? How?’
‘Kill me! Mercy! I … you know I’m not protecting anyone. Lord Jesus, why should I?’
‘I know nothing of the sort.’
‘So why not kill me? I killed her. Do you hear me? Do it. Revenge is thine.’
The man put down the bucket, flopped into a chair, leaned forward with his elbows on the armrests and chin resting on his fists, and answered slowly as though he hadn’t heard what had been said, but was thinking about something else. ‘You know, I’ve dreamed about this for so many years. And now, now we’re here … I had been hoping it would taste sweeter.’
The man struck him with the poker one more time. Tilted his head and studied him. With a sour expression, probingly, he stabbed the poker into his ribs.
‘Perhaps I lack imagination. Perhaps this justice lacks the appropriate spice?’
Something made the man turn. To the radio. It was on low. The man went over to it, turned up the volume. News. Voices in a large room. Something about the cabin in Håvass. A witness. Reconstruction. He froze, his legs were no longer there. He closed his eyes and again prayed to his God. Not to be liberated from the pain, as he had been doing until now. He prayed for forgiveness, for all his sins to be cleansed by the blood of Jesus, for someone else to bear all that he had done. He had taken a life. Yes, he had. He prayed that he would be bathed in the blood of forgiveness. And then be allowed to die.
PART SIX
56
Decoy
A HELL OF LIGHTS. EVEN WITH SUNGLASSES HARRY’S EYES smarted. The sun was shining on the snow, which was shining back at the sun; it was like looking into an ocean of diamonds, of frantically glittering lights. Harry retreated from the window, although he was aware that, seen from the outside, the panes were black, impenetrable mirrors. He checked his watch. They had arrived at Håvass the previous night. Jussi Kolkka had installed himself in the cabin with Harry and Kaja, the others had dug themselves into the snow in two groups of four at opposite ends of the valley, separated by about thirty kilometres.
There were three reasons for choosing Håvass to lay the bait. First of all, because their being there made sense. Secondly, the killer would, they hoped, think he knew the area well enough to feel comfortable about an attack. Thirdly, because it was a perfect trap. The dip where the cabin lay allowed entry from only the north-east and the south. In the east the mountain was too steep and in the west there were so many precipices and crevices that you had to know the terrain very well to make any progress at all.
Harry grabbed the binoculars and tried to spot the others, but all he could see was white. And lights. He had spoken to Mikael Bellman, who was south of him, and Milano, who was in the north. Usually they would have used their mobile phones, but up here in the uninhabited mountains the only network that had coverage was Telenor. The former state-owned telephone monopoly had had the capital to build base stations on every wind-blown crag, but as several of the policemen, including Harry, subscribed to other companies, they were using walkie-talkies. So that they could get hold of him in case anything happened at Rikshospital, Harry had left a message on his voicemail before he left, saying that he would have no network coverage and had given Milano’s Telenor number.
Bellman claimed they hadn’t been cold during the night, that the combination of sleeping bags, heat-reflecting ground pads and paraffin stoves was so effi
cient that they’d had to take off clothing. And that now melted water was dripping from the ceiling of the snow caves they had scraped out from the side of the mountain.
The press conference had been so well covered on TV, radio and in the newspapers that you would have had to be absolutely indifferent to the case not to know that Iska Peller and a police officer had gone to Håvass. Every now and then Kolkka and Kaja went out and pointed to the cabin, the way they had come and the outside toilet. Kaja in her role as Iska; Kolkka as the lone detective helping her to reconstruct the events of the fateful night. Harry hid in the sitting room, where he kept his skis and ski poles, so that only the other two had their skis embedded in the snow outside where they could be seen.
Harry followed a gust of wind blowing a furrow across the bare wastes, swirling up the light fresh snow that had fallen in the hollow overnight. The snow was driven towards mountain peaks, precipices, slopes, irregularities in the terrain where it formed frozen waves and great drifts, similar to the one that protruded like a hat brim from the top of the mountain behind the cabin.
Harry knew of course that there was no guarantee that the man they were hunting would even show up. For some reason or other Iska Peller may not have been on the hit list, he may not consider this opportunity appropriate, he may have other plans for Iska. Or he may have smelt a rat. And there might be more banal reasons. Ill, on a trip …
Nonetheless. If Harry had counted up all the times his intuition had misled him, the number would have told him to give up intuition as a method and guide. But he didn’t count them. Instead, he counted all the times intuition had told him something he didn’t know he already knew. And now it was telling him the killer was on his way to Håvass.
Harry glanced at his watch again. The killer had twenty hours. In the huge fireplace the spruce crackled and spat behind the fine-mesh fireguard. Kaja had gone for a nap in one of the bedrooms while Kolkka sat by the coffee table oiling a disassembled Weilert P11. Harry recognised the German weapon by the fact that it had no gun sights. The Weilert pistol was made especially for close combat, when you had to remove it from a holster, belt or pocket at speed and with minimal risk of it snagging. In such situations sights were superfluous anyway; you pointed it at the target and shot, you didn’t take aim. The spare pistol, a SIG Sauer, lay next to it, assembled and loaded. Harry felt the shoulder holster of his Smith & Wesson .38 chafe against his ribs.
They had landed by helicopter during the night by Lake Neddalvann, a few kilometres away, and had covered the rest of the way on skis. Under different circumstances Harry might have taken in the beauty of a snow-clad expanse bathed in moonlight, of the Northern Lights playing on the sky, or Kaja’s almost euphoric expression as they glided through the white silence as if in a fairy tale, the lack of sound so complete that he had the feeling the scraping noises of their skis would carry for kilometres across the mountain plateau. But there was too much at stake, too little he could afford to lose for him to have his eyes on anything except the job, the hunt.
It was Harry who had cast Kolkka in the role of ‘one detective’. Not because Harry had forgotten Kafé Justisen, but if things didn’t go to plan, they could use the Finn’s close combat skills. Ideally, the killer would make a move during the day and be seen by one of the two groups hidden in the snow. But if he came by night, without being noticed before he reached the cabin, the three of them would have to tackle the situation on their own.
Kaja and Kolkka took a bedroom each; Harry slept in the sitting room. The morning had passed without unnecessary chit-chat; even Kaja had been quiet. Concentrated.
From the reflection in the window Harry watched Kolkka assemble the gun, aim at the back of his head and fire a practice shot. Twenty hours left. Harry hoped the killer would waste no time.
While Bjørn Holm was taking the light blue hospital clothes from Adele’s wardrobe he felt Geir Bruun’s eyes on his back from the doorway.
‘Why don’t you just take everything?’ Bruun said. ‘Then I won’t have the bother of throwing it out. Where’s your colleague, Harry, by the way?’
‘He’s gone skiing in the mountains,’ Holm said patiently, putting the garments individually in the plastic bags he had brought along.
‘Really? Interesting. He didn’t strike me as the skiing type. Where?’
‘Can’t say. Talking of skis, what was Adele wearing when she went to Håvass? There’s no ski gear here.’
‘She borrowed it from me, of course.’
‘She borrowed ski stuff from you?’
‘You sound so surprised.’
‘You didn’t strike me as … the skiing type.’ Holm noticed that his words projected an innuendo that had not been intentional and felt his neck glow.
Bruun chuckled and twirled round in the doorway. ‘Right, I’m more … the clothes type.’
Holm cleared his throat and – without knowing why – made his voice go deeper. ‘May I have a look?’
‘Ooh, goodness me,’ Bruun lisped, seeming to revel in Holm’s discomfort. ‘Come on, let’s go and see what I’ve got.’
‘Half past four,’ Kaja said, passing the pot of stew to Harry for the second time. Their hands didn’t touch. Nor did their eyes. Nor their words. The night they had shared in Oppsal was as distant as a two-day-old dream. ‘According to the script, I’m supposed to be standing on the south side now, smoking a cigarette.’
Harry nodded and passed the pot to Kolkka who scraped it out before shovelling down the contents.
‘OK,’ Harry said. ‘Kolkka, will you take the west-facing window? The sun’s low now, so check for any glinting of binoculars.’
‘Not until I’ve eaten,’ he answered slowly in Swedish and with emphasis, shoving yet another fully loaded fork into his mouth.
Harry cocked an eyebrow. Glanced at Kaja and motioned for her to go.
When she was outside Harry sat by the window and combed the plateau and the ridges. ‘So Bellman employed you when no one else would, did he?’ He said it softly, but the silence in the room was so complete he could have whispered it.
A few seconds passed with no response. Harry assumed Kolkka was processing the fact that Harry had engaged him on a personal matter.
‘I know about the rumour that was spread after you were given the boot by Europol. You had beaten up an ex-con during questioning. That’s right, isn’t it?’
‘That’s my business,’ Kolkka said, lifting the fork to his mouth. ‘But he might not have shown me sufficient respect.’
‘Mm. The interesting thing was that Europol spread the rumour themselves. So that the rumour would make things easier for them. And for you, I suppose. And of course for the parents and solicitors of the girl you were questioning.’
Harry heard the chewing behind him stop.
‘So that they got their compensation on the quiet without having to drag you and Europol into a courtroom. The girl avoided having to sit in the witness box and say that when you were in her room asking her about the friend who had been raped, you got so excited by the answers that you started to touch her up. Fifteen years old, it says in Europol’s internal files.’
Harry could hear Kolkka breathing heavily.
‘Let’s assume that Bellman also read the files,’ Harry continued. ‘Was given access via contacts and roundabout methods. Like me. He waited a bit before contacting you. Waited until the anger was out of you, until all the air was gone, until you were on the wheel rim, punctured. And then he picked you up. Gave you a job and gave you back some of the pride you had lost. And knew you would repay him with loyalty. He buys when the market is at the bottom, Kolkka. That’s how he gets his bodyguards.’
Harry turned to Jussi Kolkka. The Finn’s face was white.
‘You’re bought, but you’re hardly paid, Jussi. Slaves like you don’t gain respect, not from Massa Bellman and not from me. Christ, you don’t even have any self-respect, man.’
Kolkka’s fork fell to his plate with an almost deafening clat
ter. He got up, slipped his hand inside his jacket and pulled out a gun. He strode towards Harry and leaned over him. Harry didn’t budge, just calmly looked up.
‘So how are you going to find your respect again, Jussi? By shooting me?’
The Finn’s pupils were quivering with rage.
‘Or by working yourself to hell?’ Harry looked out at the snowy expanse again.
Heard Kolkka’s heavy breathing. Waited. Heard him turn. Heard him move away. Heard him sit down by the west-facing window.
The radio crackled. Harry grabbed the microphone.
‘Yes?’
‘Soon be dark.’ It was Bellman’s voice. ‘He’s not coming.’
‘Still keep a lookout.’
‘What for? It’s clouded over and without moonlight we can’t see a—’
‘If we can’t see, neither can he,’ Harry said. ‘So keep a lookout for a head torch.’
The man had switched off the head torch. He didn’t need any light, he knew where the ski trail he was following led. To the Tourist Association cabin. And his eyes would get used to the dark, he would have large, light-sensitive pupils before he arrived. There it was, the log wall with black windows. As though no one were at home. The new snow creaked as the man kicked off and slid down the last few metres. He stopped and listened to the silence for a couple of seconds before soundlessly unclipping his skis. He took out the large, heavy Sami knife with the intimidating boat-shaped blade and the smooth, varnished yellow wooden hilt. It was as good at cutting down branches for a fire as carving up a reindeer. Or slitting throats.
The man opened the door as quietly as he could and entered the hall. Stood listening at the sitting-room door. Silence. Too silent? He pressed the handle and threw open the door while standing back against the wall next to the doorway. Then – to make the target as elusive and small as possible – he crouched down and rushed into the darkness with the knife to the fore.