by Jo Nesbo
Then he kicked in the panel.
He passed his hand through, found the latch and opened the door.
Stepping over the shards of glass, he continued into the living room.
The first thing that struck him was the darkness, that it was darker than a room should be, even unlit. He realised that the curtains were drawn. Thick blackout curtains of the kind they used at the military camp in Finnmark to keep out the midnight sun.
The second thing that struck him was the sense that he was not alone. And since Harry’s experience was that such feelings were almost always accompanied by quite tangible sensory impressions he concentrated on what they could be, and repressed his own natural reaction: a faster pulse rate and the need to go back the same way he had come. He listened, but all he could hear was a clock ticking somewhere, probably in an adjacent room. He sniffed. A pungent, stale smell, but there was something else, distant, but familiar. He closed his eyes. As a rule he could see them before they came. Over the years he had developed coping strategies to ward them off. But now they were on him before he could bolt the door. The ghosts. It smelt of a crime scene.
He opened his eyes and was dazzled. The light. It swept across the living-room floor. Then came the sound of the plane, and in the next second the room was plunged into darkness again. But he had seen. And it was no longer possible to repress the faster pulse and the urge to get out.
It was the Beetle. Zjuk. It hovered in the air in front of his face.
21
THE FACE WAS A MESS.
Harry had switched on the living-room light and was looking down at the dead man.
His right ear had been nailed to the parquet floor and his face displayed six black, bloody craters. He didn’t need to search for the murder weapon: it hung at head height right in front of him. At the end of a rope suspended from a beam was a brick. From the brick protruded six blood-covered nails.
Harry crouched down and stretched out his hand. The man was cold, and rigor mortis had definitely set in, despite the heat of the room. The same applied to livor mortis; the combination of gravity and the absence of blood pressure had allowed the blood to settle at the body’s lowest points and lent the underside of the arms a slightly reddish colour. The man had been dead for more then twelve hours, Harry guessed. The white, ironed shirt had rucked up and some of the stomach could be seen. It did not yet have the green hue which showed that bacteria had started to consume him, a feast which generally started after forty-eight hours and spread outwards from the stomach.
In addition to the shirt, he was wearing a tie, which had been loosened, black suit trousers and polished shoes. As though he had come straight from a funeral or a job with a dress code, Harry thought.
He took out his phone and wondered whether to ring the Ops Room or Crime Squad directly. He tapped in the number for the Ops Room while looking around. He hadn’t noticed any signs of a break-in, and there was no evidence of a struggle in this room. Apart from the brick and the corpse there was no evidence of any kind, and Harry knew that when the SOC people came they would not find a shred. No fingerprints, no shoe prints, no DNA. And the detectives would be none the wiser; no neighbours who had seen anything, no surveillance cameras at nearby petrol stations with shots of familiar faces, no revealing telephone conversations to or from Schultz’s line. Nothing. While Harry waited for an answer he went into the kitchen. Instinctively he trod with care and avoided touching anything. His glance fell on the kitchen table and a plate with a half-eaten piece of bread and cervelat. Over the back of the chair was a suit jacket matching the trousers on the corpse. Harry searched the pockets and found four hundred kroner, a visitor’s pass, a train ticket and an airline ID card. Tord Schultz. The professional smile on the face in the picture resembled the remains of the one he had seen in the living room.
‘Switchboard.’
‘I have a body here. The address is—’
Harry noticed the visitor’s pass.
‘Yes?’
There was something familiar about it.
‘Hello?’
Harry picked up the visitor’s pass. At the top was OSLO POLITIDISTRIKT. Beneath it was TORD SCHULTZ and a date. He had visited a police HQ or a station two days ago. And now he was dead.
‘Hello?’
Harry rang off.
Sat down.
Pondered.
He spent ninety minutes searching the house. Afterwards he wiped all the places where he might have left prints and removed the plastic bag he had put around his head with an elastic band so as not to drop hairs. It was an established rule that all detectives and other officers who might conceivably enter a crime scene should register their fingerprints and DNA. If he left any clues it would take the police five minutes to find out that Harry Hole had been there. The fruits of his labours were three small packages of cocaine and four bottles of what he assumed was contraband booze. Otherwise there was exactly what he presumed: nothing.
He closed the door, got in the car and drove off.
Oslo Politidistrikt.
Shit, shit, shit.
When he reached the city centre, he parked and sat staring out of the windscreen. Then he rang Beate’s number.
‘Hi, Harry.’
‘Two things. I’d like to ask you a favour. And give you an anonymous tip-off that there is another man dead in this case.’
‘I’ve just been told.’
‘So you know?’ Harry said in surprise. ‘The method is called Zjuk. Russian for “beetle”.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘The brick.’
‘Which brick?’
Harry breathed in. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Gojke Tošić.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘The guy who attacked Oleg.’
‘And?’
‘He’s been found dead in his cell.’
Harry looked straight into a pair of headlights coming towards him. ‘How …?’
‘They’re checking now. Looks like he hanged himself.’
‘Delete himself. They killed the pilot as well.’
‘What?’
‘Tord Schultz is lying on the living-room floor of his house by Gardermoen.’
Two seconds passed before Beate answered. ‘I’ll inform the Ops Room.’
‘OK.’
‘What was the second thing?’
‘What?’
‘You said you wanted to ask me for a favour?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Harry pulled the visitor’s pass from his pocket. ‘I wonder whether you could check the visitors’ register in reception at Police HQ. See who Tord Schultz visited two days ago.’
Silence again.
‘Beate?’
‘Are you sure this is something I’ll want to be mixed up in, Harry?’
‘I’m sure this is something you won’t want to be mixed up in.’
‘Sod you.’
Harry rang off.
Harry left his vehicle in the multi-storey car park at the bottom of Kvadraturen and headed for Hotel Leon. He passed a bar, and the music floating through the open door reminded him of the evening he arrived: Nirvana’s inviting ‘Come As You Are’. He was not aware that he had entered the bar until he was standing in front of the counter in the winding intestine of a room.
Three customers sat hunched on bar stools. It looked like a month-old wake no one had broken up. There was a smell of corpses and creaking flesh. The barman sent Harry an order-now-or-go-to-hell look while slowly removing a cork from a bottle opener. He had three large Gothic letters tattooed across a broad neck. EAT.
‘What’s it to be?’ he shouted, managing to drown out Kurt Cobain, who was asking Harry to come as a friend.
Harry moistened his lips, which had suddenly gone dry. Looked at the barman’s hands twisting. It was a corkscrew of the simplest kind, one that requires a firm, trained hand, but only a couple of turns to penetrate, followed by a quick pull. The cork was pierced right through. T
his however was not a wine bar. So what else did they serve? He saw the distorted image of himself in the mirror behind the barman. The disfigured face. But it was not only his face; all of their faces, all the ghosts, were there. And Tord Schultz was the latest to join. His gaze scanned the bottles on the mirror shelf and like a heat-seeking rocket found its target. The old enemy. Jim Beam.
Kurt Cobain didn’t have a gun.
Harry coughed. Just one.
No gun.
He gave his order.
‘Eh?’ shouted the bartender, leaning forward.
‘Jim Beam.’
There is no gun.
‘Gin what?’
Harry swallowed. Cobain repeated the word ‘memoria’. Harry had heard the song a hundred times before, but he realised he had always thought Cobain sang ‘The more’ followed by something else.
In memoriam. Where had he seen it? On a gravestone?
He saw a movement in the mirror. At that moment the phone in his pocket began to vibrate.
‘Gin what?’ shouted the barman, placing the corkscrew on the counter.
Harry pulled out his mobile. Looked at the display. R. He took the call.
‘Hi, Rakel.’
‘Harry?’
Another movement behind him.
‘All I can hear is noise, Harry. Where are you?’
Harry turned and walked with hurried strides to the exit. Inhaled the exhaust-polluted yet fresher air outside.
‘What are you doing?’ Rakel asked.
‘Wondering whether to turn left or right,’ Harry said. ‘And you?’
‘I’m going to bed. Are you sober?’
‘What?’
‘You heard me. And I can hear you. I notice when you’re stressed. And that sounds like a bar.’
Harry took out a pack of Camel. Tapped out a cigarette. Saw his hand was shaking. ‘It’s good you rang, Rakel.’
‘Harry?’
He lit his cigarette. ‘Yeah?’
‘Hans Christian’s arranged for Oleg to be held in custody at a secret location. It’s in Østland, but no one knows where.’
‘Not bad.’
‘He’s a good man, Harry.’
‘Don’t doubt it.’
‘Harry?’
‘I’m here.’
‘If we could plant some evidence. If I took the rap for the murder. Would you help me?’
Harry inhaled. ‘No.’
‘Why not?’
The door opened behind Harry. But he didn’t hear any footsteps walking away.
‘I’ll ring you from the hotel. OK?’
Harry rang off and strode down the street without a backward glance.
Sergey watched the man jog across the street.
Watched him go into Hotel Leon.
He had been so close. So close. First of all in the bar and now here on the street.
Sergey’s hand was still pressed against the deer-horn handle of the knife in his pocket. The blade was out and cutting the lining. Twice he had been on the point of stepping forward, grabbing his hair with his left hand, knife in, carving a crescent. True, the policeman was taller than he had imagined, but it wouldn’t be a problem.
Nothing would be a problem. And as his pulse slowed he could feel his calm return. The calm he had lost, the calm his terror had repressed. And again he could feel himself looking forward, looking forward to the completion of his task, to becoming at one with the story that was already told.
For this was the place, the place for the ambush. Sergey had seen the eyes of the policeman when he was staring at the bottles. It was the same look his father had when he returned home from prison. Sergey was the crocodile in the billabong, the crocodile that knew the man would take the same path to get something to drink, that knew it was only a question of waiting.
Harry lay on the bed in room 301, he blew smoke at the ceiling and listened to her voice on the phone.
‘I know you’ve done worse things than planting evidence,’ she said. ‘So, why not? Why not for a person you love?’
‘You’re drinking white wine,’ he said.
‘How do you know it’s not red wine?’
‘I can hear.’
‘So, explain why you won’t help me.’
‘May I?’
‘Yes, Harry.’
Harry stubbed out the cigarette in the empty coffee cup on the bedside table. ‘I, lawbreaker and discharged police officer, consider that the law means something. Does that sound weird?’
‘Carry on.’
‘Law is the fence we’ve erected at the edge of the precipice. Whenever someone breaks the law they break the fence. So we have to repair it. The guilty party has to atone.’
‘No, someone has to atone. Someone has to take the punishment to show society that murder is unacceptable. Any scapegoat can rebuild the fence.’
‘You’re gouging out chunks of the law to suit you. You’re a lawyer. You know better.’
‘I’m a mother, I work as a lawyer. What about you, Harry? Are you a policeman? Is that what you’ve become? A robot, a slave of the anthill and ideas other people have had? Is that where you are?’
‘Mm.’
‘Have you got an answer?’
‘Well, why do you think I came to Oslo?’
Pause.
‘Harry?’
‘Yes?’
‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t cry.’
‘I know. Sorry.’
‘Don’t say sorry.’
‘Goodnight, Harry. I …’
‘Goodnight.’
Harry woke. He had heard something. Something that drowned the sound of his running footsteps in the corridor and the avalanche. He looked at his watch. 01.34. The broken curtain pole leaned against the window frame and formed the silhouette of a tulip. He got up and went to the window and peered down into the backyard. A bin lay on its side, still rattling around. He rested his forehead against the glass.
22
IT WAS EARLY, AND THE morning rush-hour traffic was creeping along at a whisper towards Grønlandsleiret as Truls walked up to Police HQ. He caught sight of the red poster on the linden tree just before he arrived at the doors with the curious portholes. Then he turned, walked calmly back. Past the slow-moving queues in Oslo gate to the cemetery.
The cemetery was as deserted as usual at this time. At least with respect to the living. He stopped in front of the headstone to A. C. Rud. There were no messages written on it, ergo it had to be pay day.
He crouched down and dug the earth beside the stone. Caught hold of the brown envelope and pulled it out. Resisted the temptation to open it and count the money there and then, stuffed it in his jacket pocket. He was about to get up, but a sudden sense that he was being watched made him stay in the crouch for a couple of seconds, as if meditating about A. C. Rud and the transient nature of life or some such bullshit.
‘Stay where you are, Berntsen.’
A shadow had fallen over him. And with it a chill, as if the sun was hidden behind a cloud. Truls Berntsen felt as though he were in free fall, and his stomach lurched into his chest. So this was what it would be like. Being exposed.
‘We have a different type of job for you this time.’
Truls felt terra firma beneath his feet again. The voice. The slight accent. It was him. Truls glanced to his side. Saw the figure standing with bowed head two gravestones away, apparently praying.
‘You have to find out where they’ve hidden Oleg Fauke. Look straight ahead!’
Truls stared at the stone in front of him.
‘I’ve tried,’ he said. ‘But the move hasn’t been recorded anywhere. Nowhere I can access at any rate. And no one I’ve spoken to has heard anything about the guy, so my guess is they’ve given him another name.’
‘Talk to those in the know. Talk to the defence counsel. Simonsen.’
‘Why not the mother? She must—’
‘No women!’ The words came like a whiplash. Had there been other people in the cemet
ery they would surely have heard them. Then, calmer: ‘Try the defence counsel. And if that doesn’t work …’
In the ensuing pause Berntsen heard the whoosh through the cemetery treetops. It must have been the wind; that was what had suddenly made everything so cold.
‘… then there’s a man called Chris Reddy,’ the voice continued. ‘On the street he’s known as Adidas. He deals in—’
‘Speed. Adidas means amphet—’
‘Shut up, Berntsen. Just listen.’
Truls shut up. And listened. The way he had shut up whenever anyone with a similar voice had told him to shut up. Listened when they told him to dig muck. Told him …
The voice gave an address.
‘You’ve heard a rumour that Adidas has been going round boasting he shot Gusto Hanssen. So you take him in for questioning. And he makes a no-holds-barred confession. I’ll leave it to you to agree on the details so that it’s a hundred per cent credible. First, though, try to make Simonsen talk. Have you understood?’
‘Yes, but why would Adidas—’
‘Why is not your problem, Berntsen. Your sole question should be “how much”.’
Truls Berntsen swallowed. And kept swallowing. Dug shit. Swallowed shit. ‘How much?’
‘That’s right, yes. Sixty thousand.’
‘Hundred thousand.’
No answer.
‘Hello?’
But all that could be heard was the whisper of the morning congestion. Bernsten sat still. Glanced to the side. No one there. Felt the sun beginning to warm him again. And sixty thousand was good. It was.
There was still mist on the ground as Harry swung up in front of the main building on Skøyen farm at ten in the morning. Isabelle Skøyen stood on the steps, smiling and slapping a little riding whip against the thigh of her black jodhpurs. While Harry was getting out of the car he heard the gravel crunch under her boots.
‘Morning, Harry. What do you know about horses?’
Harry slammed the car door. ‘I’ve lost a lot of money on them. Does that help?’
‘So you’re a gambler as well?’
‘As well?’
‘I’ve done a bit of detective work too. Your achievements are offset by your vices. That, at least, is what your colleagues claim. Did you lose the money in Hong Kong?’