by Jo Nesbo
‘The unsteady step you just took. Dizzy?’
Harry shrugged.
‘Confused?’
‘Constantly,’ Harry said.
Altman smiled. ‘You’ve got a bit too much CO2 in you. The body disposes of it quickly when you breathe in oxygen, but you ought to have a blood test so that we can check your carbon dioxide levels.’
‘No, thank you,’ Harry said. ‘How’s he getting on?’ He nodded towards the bed.
‘What did the doctor say?’
‘Unchanged. I’m asking you.’
‘I’m not a doctor, Harry.’
‘So you don’t need to answer like one. Give me an estimate.’
‘I can’t …’
‘It’ll remain between us.’
Sigurd Altman eyed Harry. Was on the point of saying something. Changed his mind. Chewed his lower lip. ‘Days,’ he said.
‘Not even weeks?’
Altman didn’t answer.
‘Thanks, Sigurd,’ Harry said and went to the door.
Kaja’s face was pale and beautiful against the pillowslip. Like a flower in a herbarium, Harry thought. Her hand was small and cold in his. On the bedside table was today’s Aftenposten with the AVALANCHE BURIES CABIN IN HÅVASS headline. It described the tragic event and quoted Mikael Bellman, who said it was a great loss that Officer Kolkka had died protecting Iska Peller. He was thankful, however, that the witness had been saved and she was now safe.
‘So the avalanche was started with dynamite?’ Kaja said.
‘Yes, it’s beyond doubt,’ Harry replied.
‘So you and Bellman worked well together up there, did you?’
‘Yes, indeed.’ Harry turned to shield his coughing fit.
‘Heard you found a snowmobile at the bottom of a ravine. With a possible body underneath.’
‘Yes. Bellman stayed in Ustaoset to go back to the site with the local County Officer.’
‘Krongli?’
‘No, he couldn’t be located. But his deputy, Roy Stille, seemed solid. They’ve quite a job on their hands, though. We weren’t sure where we were, more snow has fallen and it’s drifting, and in that terrain …’ Harry shook his head.
‘Any idea who the body might be?’
Harry shrugged. ‘I would be very surprised if it wasn’t Tony Leike.’
Kaja’s head spun round. ‘Oh?’
‘I haven’t told anyone yet, but I saw the corpse’s fingers.’
‘What about them?’
‘They were twisted. Tony Leike had arthritis.’
‘Do you think he started the avalanche? And then drove over the precipice in the dark?’
Harry shook his head. ‘Tony told me he knew the area well, it was his terrain. It was a clear day and the snowmobile wasn’t going fast – it landed only three metres from the point where it took off. And he had a burned arm, which was not caused by dynamite. And the snowmobile was not burned.’
‘Wha—?’
‘I think Tony Leike was tortured, killed and then dumped with the snowmobile so that we wouldn’t find the body.’
Kaja pulled a face.
Harry rubbed his little finger. He wondered whether it could have frostbite. ‘What do you think about this Krongli?’
‘Krongli?’ Kaja chewed on that one. ‘If it’s true he tried to rape Charlotte Lolles, he should never have become a policeman, should he.’
‘He beat his wife up, too.’
‘Doesn’t surprise me.’
‘It doesn’t?’
‘No.’
He looked at her. ‘Is there something you haven’t told me?’
Kaja shrugged. ‘He’s a colleague, and I thought he was just drunk, nothing I would spread around, but, yes, I’ve had a glimpse of that side of him. He came to my place and reckoned in a pretty persistent way we should get cosy.’
‘But?’
‘Mikael was there.’
Harry felt himself twitch.
Kaja pushed herself up into a sitting position. ‘You don’t seriously think Krongli might have …’
‘I don’t know. I only know that whoever started the avalanche must have known the area well. Krongli has a connection with some of those girls at Håvass. In addition, Elias Skog said before he was killed that he had seen something which might have been a rape at Håvass. Aslak Krongli sounds like he can be violent.
‘And then there’s this avalanche. If you wanted to kill a woman you thought was alone with a detective in a remote mountain cabin, how would you do it? Starting an avalanche doesn’t exactly give you a guaranteed result. So why not make it simple and effective, take along your favourite murder weapon and go straight to the cabin? Because he knew that Iska Peller and the detective were not on their own. He knew we were waiting for him. So he sneaked in and attacked in the only way that would allow him to escape afterwards. We’re talking about an insider. Someone who knew about our Håvass theories and understood what was going on when he heard us naming a witness at a press conference. The local County Officer at Ustaoset—’
‘Geilo,’ Kaja corrected.
‘Krongli definitely received the urgent call from Kripos requesting permission to land the police helicopter in the national park that night. He must have known the circumstances.’
‘Then he should also have known that Iska Peller wasn’t there, that we wouldn’t have endangered the life of a witness,’ Kaja said. ‘So it’s odd he didn’t keep well away.’
Harry nodded. ‘Good point, Kaja. I agree. I don’t think Krongli thought for a second that Peller was in the cabin. I think the avalanche was a continuation of what he’s been doing for some time.’
‘Which is?’
‘Playing with us.’
‘Playing?’
‘I received a call from Tony Leike’s phone while we were at the cabin. Tony saved my number, and I’m pretty certain it wasn’t him who phoned me. The thing is the caller didn’t ring off quickly enough, voicemail started recording and you can hear something for a second before the connection is cut. I’m not sure, but to me it sounded like laughter.’
‘Laughter?’
‘The laughter of someone who is amused. Because he’d just heard my message saying that I would have no network coverage for a couple of days. Let’s imagine it was Aslak Krongli who had just had his suspicions confirmed that I was at the cabin in Håvass waiting for the killer.’
Harry paused and stared into the air, deep in thought.
‘Well?’ Kaja said after a while.
‘I just wanted to hear how the theory sounded when I said it aloud,’ Harry said.
‘And?’
He got to his feet. ‘Sounded half-arsed, in fact. But I’ll check Krongli’s alibis for the dates of the murders. See you.’
‘Truls Berntsen?’
‘Speaking.’
‘Roger Gjendem, Aftenposten. Have you got time to answer a few questions?’
‘Depends. If you’re going to pester me about Jussi, you’d better talk to—’
‘This is not about Jussi Kolkka, but my condolences by the way.’
‘OK.’
Roger was sitting with his feet up on his office desk in the Post Office tower gazing at the low buildings that constituted Oslo Central Station and down to the Opera House which would soon be finished. After the conversation with Bent Nordbø at Stopp Pressen he had spent the whole day – and parts of the night – poring over Mikael Bellman in greater detail. Apart from the rumour that the temp at Stovner police station had been beaten up, there were not a lot of tangible facts. But, as a crime journalist, over the years Roger Gjendem had gathered a number of regular and reliable sources who would gladly inform on their grandmothers for the price of a bottle of booze or a pouch of tobacco. And three of them lived in Manglerud. After a few calls it turned out all three of them had grown up there, too. Perhaps it was true what he had heard someone say, that no one moves from Manglerud. Or to Manglerud.
There were obviously very few secrets in this m
ilieu, because all three remembered Mikael Bellman. Partly because he had been a bastard of a policeman at Stovner. But mostly because he had made a beeline for Julle’s woman while Julle was serving a twelve-month sentence for an earlier drugs conviction, which had been suspended but became custodial after someone had shopped him for pinching petrol from Mortensrud. The woman was Ulla Swart, Manglerud’s finest, and a year older than Bellman. When Julle’s sentence was up and he strolled out of prison having vowed to all and sundry that he was going to take care of Bellman, there had been two guys waiting in the garage when Julle went home to pick up his Kawasaki. They had been wearing balaclavas and beat him black and blue with iron bars and promised there would be more where that came from if he touched either Bellman or Ulla. Rumour had it that neither of the two had been Bellman. But one of them had been someone they called Beavis, Bellman’s eternal lackey. It was the only card Roger Gjendem had when he rang Truls ‘Beavis’ Berntsen. All the more reason to pretend he had four aces.
‘I just wanted to ask if there was any truth in the assertion that on instructions from Mikael Bellman you once beat up Stanislav Hesse, who was depping at the wages and personnel office of Stovner police station.’
Thunderous silence at the other end.
Roger cleared his throat. ‘Well?’
‘That’s a damned lie.’
‘Which part?’
‘I was never given any instructions by Mikael to do that. Everyone could see the bloody Pole was trying it on with his wife. Could have been anyone taking matters into their own hands.’
Roger Gjendem tended to believe the former, the bit about the instructions. But not the latter, the bit about ‘anyone’. None of Bellman’s other colleagues at Stovner that Roger had spoken to had anything directly bad to say about Bellman; however, it was evident that Bellman was not beloved, not a man for whom they would have answered a call to arms. Apart from one.
‘Thank you, that was all,’ Roger Gjendem said.
As Roger Gjendem put his mobile away, Harry rummaged in his jacket pocket and put his phone to his ear.
‘Yes?’
‘Bjørn Holm here.’
‘I can see that.’
‘Christ. Didn’t think you would have bothered to set up a phone book.’
‘I have indeed. You should feel honoured. You’re one of the four names in it.’
‘What’s the racket in the background? Where are you actually?’
‘Punters cheering because they think they’re going to win. I’m at a horse race.’
‘What?’
‘Bombay Garden.’
‘Isn’t that a … did they let you in?’
‘I’m a member. What do you want?’
‘Jesus, Harry, are you gambling on horses? Didn’t you learn anything in Hong Kong?’
‘Relax, I’m here checking up on Aslak Krongli. According to his office he was on police business in Oslo when both Charlotte and Borgny were killed. Not that unusual actually, because it turns out he’s quite often in Oslo. And I’ve just discovered the reason.’
‘Bombay Garden?’
‘Yup. Aslak Krongli has a not insubstantial gambling problem. Thing is, I’ve checked his credit card payments on the computer here. Time of payment and everything. Krongli has used his card a lot, and the times give him an alibi. Unfortunately.’
‘I see. And they’ve got the computer in the same room as the race course?’
‘Eh? They’re in the final straight now, you’ll have to talk louder!’
‘They’ve … Forget it. I’m ringing to say we’ve got semen off the ski pants that Adele Vetlesen was wearing at Håvass.’
‘What? You’re kidding? That means …’
‘We may soon have the DNA of the eighth guest. If it’s his semen. And the only way we can be sure is by excluding the other men at Håvass.’
‘We need their DNA.’
‘Yes,’ said Bjørn Holm. ‘Elias Skog’s fine, of course, we’ve got his DNA. Not so good with Tony Leike. We’d have found it at his house, no problem, but for that we need a warrant. And after what happened last time it’s gonna be really tough.’
‘Leave it to me,’ Harry said. ‘We should also have Krongli’s DNA profile. Even though he didn’t kill either Charlotte or Borgny, he may have raped Adele.’
‘OK. How do we get it?’
‘As a policeman he must have been at a crime scene at some point or other,’ Harry said. It was unnecessary to conclude his reasoning. Bjørn Holm was already nodding. To avoid confusion and identity mistakes, fingerprints and DNA were routinely taken from all officers who had been present at a crime scene and had potentially contaminated it.
‘I’ll check the database.’
‘Well done, Bjørn.’
‘Wait, there’s more. You asked us to look harder for a nurse’s uniform and we did. We found one with PSG on it. And I’ve checked. There’s a disused PSG factory in Oslo, up in Nydalen. If it’s empty and the eighth guest had sex with Adele there, we may still be able to find semen there.’
‘Mm. Knobbed in Nydalen and humped in Håvass. The eighth guest may just have fucked his bolt-hole. PSG, you said. Is that the Kadok factory?’
‘Yes, how …?’
‘Pal’s father worked there.’
‘Repeat, there’s a helluva racket now.’
‘They’re crossing the finishing line. See you.’
Harry put the phone in his jacket pocket, swivelled round in his chair, so he didn’t see the gloomy faces of the losers around the felt course, nor the croupier’s smile. ‘Conglatulations again, Hally!’
Harry got up, donned his jacket and looked at the note the Vietnamese man was holding out for him. With the portrait of Edvard Munch. A thousand kroner.
‘Mm, velly lucky,’ Harry said. ‘Put it on the green horse in the next race. I’ll pick up the cash another day, Duc.’
Lene Galtung was sitting in the living room staring at the double-glazed window, at the double-exposed reflection. Her iPod was playing Tracy Chapman. ‘Fast Car’. She could listen to the song again and again, never got tired of it. It was about a poor girl wanting to flee from everything, just get in her lover’s fast car and leave the life she had, working on the till at the supermarket, being responsible for her drunken father, burn all the bridges. This could not have been further from Lene’s own life, nevertheless the song was about her. The Lene she could have been. The Lene she actually was. One of the two she saw in the double reflection. The ordinary one, the grey one. In all her years at school she had been scared stiff that the classroom door would open, someone would come in, point a finger at her and say, we’re on to you now, take off those fine clothes. Then they would toss her a few rags and say, now everyone can see who you really are, the illegitimate child. She had been sitting there, year in, year out, hiding, as quiet as a mouse, glancing at the door, just waiting. Listening to friends, listening for the telltale signs that would give her away. The embarrassment, the fear, the defence she put up seemed like arrogance to others. And she knew she overplayed her role as rich, successful, spoilt and carefree. She was not at all good-looking and radiant, like the other girls in her circle, the ones who could chirrup with a self-assured smile ‘I don’t have a clue’, in the charming knowledge that whatever they didn’t know couldn’t possibly be important and that the world would never require any more from them than their beauty. So she had to pretend. That she was beautiful. Radiant. Superior to everything. But she was so tired of it. Had just wanted to sit in Tony’s car and ask him to leave everything behind. Drive to a place where she could be the real Lene and not these two false personae who hated each other. As the song said, together, she and Tony could find that place.
The reflection in the glass moved. Lene recoiled when she realised it was not her face after all. She hadn’t heard her come in. Lene straightened up and pulled out the earphones.
‘Put the coffee tray there, Nanna.’
The woman hesitated. ‘You should forge
t him, Lene.’
‘Stop it!’
‘I’m just saying. He won’t be a good man for you.’
‘Stop it, I told you!’
‘Shh!’ The woman smacked down the tray with a clatter on the table, and her turquoise eyes flashed. ‘You have to see common sense, Lene. We’ve all had to do that in this house when the situation demanded it. I’m just saying this as your—’
‘As my what?’ Lene snorted. ‘Look at you. What could you be to me?’
The woman ran her hands down the white apron, went to put one on Lene’s cheek, but Lene waved it away. The woman sighed, and it sounded like a drop of water falling in a well. Then she turned and left. As the door closed behind her, the black phone next to Lene rang. She felt her heart leap. Since Tony had disappeared, her phone had been constantly switched on and always within arm’s length. She grabbed it. ‘Lene Galtung.’
‘Harry Hole, Crime Squ—I mean, Kripos. I’m sorry to intrude, but I need to ask you for some help with a case. It’s about Tony.’
Lene could feel her voice careering out of control as she replied: ‘Has … has something happened?’
‘We’re looking for someone we suspect died from a fall in the mountains around Ustaoset.’
She felt herself going dizzy; the floor was rising and the ceiling falling.
‘We haven’t located the body yet. It’s been snowing and the search area is vast and extremely rugged. Can you hear me?’
‘Y-yes, I can.’
The policeman’s voice, a touch hoarse, continued. ‘When the body has been recovered, we’ll try to get it identified as soon as possible. But there may be extensive burns. Therefore we require DNA now from anyone who might conceivably be the deceased person. And while Tony is a missing person …’
Lene’s heart felt as if it was coming up her throat, ready to leap out of her mouth. The voice at the other end droned on.
‘That is why I was wondering if you could help one of our forensics officers to find DNA material in Tony’s home.’
‘S-such as what?’
‘A hair from a brush, saliva on a toothbrush, they know what they need. The important thing is that you, as his fiancée, give us permission and come to his house with a key.’