by Anne Holt
‘Not a complete one, no,’ Bastesen said. ‘But I can safely say that it was generally . . . chaotic. The most important thing is that no one was watching the CCTV screens. There was a full alarm and we had problems with—’
‘Not even your people?’ Adam cut in, looking at Warren.
The American didn’t answer. His eyes were glued to the screen. The clock showed 07:25:32 when the cleaner came out again. He struggled to get the trolley over the threshold. The wheels were pressing down against it and the front of the trolley was stuck for a few seconds before he finally managed to push it out into the corridor.
The basket was full. A sheet or a large towel lay on top; one of the corners was hanging over the edge. The trolley approached the camera and the man’s face was clearly visible.
‘Does he work there?’ Adam asked quietly. ‘I mean, really work there. Is he an employee?’
Bastesen nodded. ‘We’ve got people on their way to pick him up now,’ he whispered. ‘But that man there . . .’ He pointed to the man who was behind the young Pakistani cleaner; a sturdy figure dressed in a dark suit with dark shoes. His hair was thick and short, and he had a hand pressed against the Pakistani boy’s back, as if to hurry him along. He was carrying something that resembled a small, foldable ladder. ‘We don’t know anything about him for the moment. But it’s only twenty minutes since we saw this for the first time, so the work . . .’
Adam wasn’t listening. He was staring at Warren Scifford. The American’s face was grey, and he had a thin layer of sweat on his forehead. He was biting his knuckles and still had not said a word.
‘Is something wrong?’ Adam asked.
‘Shit,’ Warren responded in anger, and then got up abruptly, almost tipping the chair over. He pulled his coat from the chair, hesitated for a moment and then repeated, loud enough for everyone in the room to hear, ‘Shit! Shit!’
He grabbed Adam hard by the arm. The sweat had made the curls in his fringe stick to his forehead.
‘I have to see the hotel room immediately. Now.’
He stormed over towards the door. Adam exchanged looks with the Chief of Police before shrugging and jogging after the American.
‘He didn’t say who it was who gave him the idea,’ the policeman by the computer said sulkily. ‘You know, to check the footage from later. Did you catch who that bloody genius was?’
The woman at the neighbouring table shrugged.
‘Now, at least, I’ve definitely earned a rest,’ the man said, and went in search of something that might resemble a bed.
XVIII
Helen Lardahl Bentley woke up from a heavy sleep. She had no idea how long she had been out cold, but she remembered she had been sitting on the flimsy chair by the wall when the attack started. When she tried to sit up, she noticed that her right arm and shoulder had been hurt. A large bump on her temple made it difficult to open her eye.
The fall should have woken her. Maybe she had lost consciousness when she hit the floor. She must have been out of it for a long time. She couldn’t get up. Her body wouldn’t listen to her. She had to remember to breathe.
Her mind was spinning. It was impossible to focus on anything. She caught a glimpse of her daughter as a child, a little fair-haired three-year-old, the most beautiful one of all – and then she vanished. Billie was sucked into the light on the wall, which was like a deep red hole, and Helen Bentley remembered her grandma’s funeral, and the rose she had laid on the coffin; it was red, and dead, and the light was so bright that it hurt her eyes.
Breathe. Out. In.
The room was far too silent. Abnormally still. She tried to scream. All she managed was a whimper, and it was muffled, as if there was a huge pillow in the room. There was no echo from the walls.
She had to breathe. She had to breathe properly.
Time went into a vortex. She thought she could see numbers and clock faces all over the room, and she closed her eyes against the shower of arrows.
‘I want to get up,’ she shouted in a hoarse voice, and finally managed to haul herself up into a sitting position.
The leg of the chair dug into her back.
‘I do solemnly swear,’ she said and crossed her right leg over the left, ‘that I will faithfully execute . . .’
She twisted round. It felt as if her thigh muscles were about to explode when she finally managed to get up on to her knees. She leant her head against the wall for support, and vaguely registered that it was soft. She leaned her shoulder into the wall too, and with great effort got to her feet.
‘. . . the office of the President of the United States.’
She had to take a quick step to the side to avoid falling. The plastic strips had cut even deeper into her wrists. She suddenly felt light-headed, as if her skull had been emptied of everything other than the echo of her heartbeat. As she was only a few centimetres from the wall, she stayed upright.
There was only one door in the room. On the opposite wall. She had to cross the floor.
Warren had betrayed her.
She had to find out why, but her head was empty; it was impossible to think, and she had to cross the floor. The door was locked. She remembered that now. She had tried it earlier. The padded walls swallowed what little sound she managed to make, and it was impossible to open the door. But still, it was the only hope she had, because behind the door was the possibility of something else, someone else, and she had to get out of the soundless box that was about to be the death of her.
With extreme care, she put one foot in front of the other and started to cross the dark, heaving floor.
XIX
After a while, Adam Stubo started to understand why Warren Scifford had been given the nickname ‘The Chief’.
He didn’t have much in common with Geronimo. His cheekbones were high, his eyes were deep set, his nose was small and his facial hair was profuse, so that he already had a visible grey shadow. The man had been clean-shaven in the morning. His steel-grey hair fell in soft curls and the fringe was slightly too long.
‘No,’ Warren Scifford said and stopped outside the door of the Hotel Opera’s presidential suite. ‘I don’t know who the man in the CCTV footage was.’
His face was blank and his look direct, without giving away anything. There was nothing to express indignation at being asked the question, no fake or real surprise at what Adam was intimating.
‘It just seemed that way,’ Adam insisted, playing with the key. ‘It definitely looked like you knew him.’
‘Then I gave the wrong impression,’ Warren said, without so much as blinking. ‘Shall we go in?’
There had been nothing reminiscent of native Indians about the American’s outburst in the gym hall, but now he had obviously pulled himself together. He went into the suite and stood in the middle of the room, with his hands in his pockets. He stood there for a long time.
‘So we’re assuming that she was in the dirty laundry basket on the way out,’ he eventually summarised; he seemed to be talking to himself. ‘Which would mean that she was hidden away somewhere when the two agents came in at seven o’clock.’
‘Or had hidden herself away,’ Adam said.
‘What?’
‘She might have been hidden away,’ Adam explained. ‘But equally she might have hidden herself. One is more passive than the other.’
Warren wandered over to the window and stood there with his back to Adam. He leaned his shoulder nonchalantly against the window frame, as if he was admiring the view of the Oslo Fjord.
‘So you think that she might be involved in this herself in some way?’ he said suddenly, without turning. ‘That the President of the United States of America might orchestrate her own disappearance in a foreign country. I see.’
‘I didn’t say that,’ Adam replied. ‘I simply suggested that there could be many explanations. That all possibilities must be kept open in an investigation like this.’
‘That can be ruled out,’ Warren said calmly. ‘Helen would n
ever put her country in a situation like this. Never.’
‘Helen?’ Adam repeated, astonished. ‘Do you know her that well?’
‘Yes.’
Adam waited for him to explain. But he didn’t. Instead, he started to walk around the large suite, still with a saunter, still with his hands in his pockets. It was difficult to know what he was looking for, but his eyes darted here, there and everywhere.
Adam sneaked a look at his watch. It was twenty past five. He wanted to go home. He wanted to ring Johanne and find out what was going on, and not least, where she was. If he could get away soon, he might still have a chance of persuading her to come home with Ragnhild before bedtime.
‘I think we can assume that the agents only checked the room superficially before they ran out to raise the alarm,’ Adam said, in an attempt to encourage the American to be more communicative. ‘And there are lots of possible hiding places. The cupboards over there, for example. Have the men been questioned, by the way? Have they been asked what they did in here?’
Warren stopped in front of the double doors of the wardrobe, which were light oak. He didn’t open them.
‘This really is a beautifully designed room,’ he said. ‘I love the way Scandinavians use wood. And the view . . .’ He threw out his arm and moved over to the window again. ‘It’s magnificent. Apart from that building site down there. What’s that going to be?’
‘The opera house,’ Adam said, and took a few steps towards him. ‘Hence the name of the hotel. But listen, Warren, all this secrecy is not helping anyone. I understand that the case may have implications for the US that we might not, or cannot, understand. But—’
‘We will tell you what you need to know. Don’t worry.’
‘Cut the crap,’ Adam hissed.
Warren spun round. He flashed a smile, as if Adam’s outburst amused him.
‘Don’t underestimate us,’ Adam said, his cheeks flushed with unfamiliar rage. ‘You’d be making a mistake. Don’t underestimate me. You should know better.’
Warren shrugged and opened his mouth to say something.
‘You knew that man in the film,’ Adam snarled. ‘None of us who were there are in any doubt. And you don’t need to be a detective with nearly thirty years’ experience to realise that he must have been in the room all night. It’s not the President’s hiding place that you’re looking for. She could have been anywhere. Under the bed, in the wardrobe.’ Adam pointed around the room. ‘For that matter, she could have hidden herself behind the curtains. And considering the terrible . . .’ A fine shower of spray fell on to Warren’s face. He didn’t move a muscle, and Adam took a step closer as he drew breath, and then continued: ‘. . . what an appalling job those special agents of yours did when they searched the room, the woman could have been hanging from the lampshade without being discovered!’
‘They were scared,’ Warren said.
‘Who was?’
‘The agents. They haven’t said so themselves, of course. But that’s what happened. Frightened people don’t do a good job.’
‘Frightened? Frightened? You’re standing here saying that the world’s best security agents . . . that your Gurkha boys were frightened!’
Warren finally took a step back. His indifferent expression had been replaced by something that resembled scepticism. Adam interpreted it as arrogance.
‘This is not like you,’ the American said.
‘You don’t know me.’
‘I know your reputation. Why do you think I asked for you, in particular, to be my liaison?’
‘I have in fact wondered about that,’ Adam said, calmer now.
‘The Gurkhas are soldiers. Secret Service agents aren’t.’
‘Whatever,’ Adam muttered.
‘But you’re right. I do want to find out where the man in the suit might have hidden.’
‘Then in heaven’s name let’s look!’
Warren shrugged again and pointed to the adjoining room. Adam nodded and walked towards the open door. He stood for a moment and waited for Warren to go in first. The American had stopped in the middle of the floor. He was staring at a point on the ceiling.
‘The ventilation system has been checked,’ Adam said impatiently. ‘A metal grate two metres further in means that it wouldn’t be possible to get any further. And it hasn’t been tampered with.’
‘But what about this vent here?’ Warren asked, his voice getting higher as he leant his head back. ‘There are visible marks on the screw heads. Can you see?’
‘Of course there are marks,’ Adam said, standing by the door to the office of the suite. ‘The police have taken it out to see if the ventilation pipes were used as an escape.’
‘But now we know better,’ Warren said and pulled a chair over. ‘Now we’re not looking for an escape, but rather a hiding place. Isn’t that so?’
He climbed up on to the chair, carefully placed a foot on each arm and pulled out a Swiss Army knife from his jacket pocket.
‘Doesn’t the Secret Service use dogs?’ Adam asked.
‘Yes, of course.’
Warren had teased out a tiny screwdriver from the red knife.
‘Wouldn’t the dogs have reacted to the smell of a person in the ceiling?’
‘Madam President is allergic to dogs.’ Warren groaned as he started to unscrew the four screws that held the perforated metal grate in place on the ceiling. ‘The Secret Service use sniffer dogs well in advance of her arrival, so there’s enough time to vacuum afterwards. Can you give me a hand, please?’
He undid the last screw in the metal grate. It was square, and about half a metre across. He just managed to catch it when it suddenly came loose.
‘Here.’ He passed it to Adam. ‘I assume that fingerprints and the like were secured a long time ago.’
Adam nodded. Warren hopped down on to the floor with remarkable grace.
‘I need something higher than this to stand on,’ he said and looked around. ‘I would rather not touch anything up there.’
‘Look,’ Adam said quietly; he held the metal grate up to his eyes and squinted. ‘Look, Warren.’
The American leant towards him; their heads almost touched. Warren looked over the top of his glasses.
‘Glue? Tape?’
He folded the screwdriver back into the army knife and pulled out an awl. With great care he pricked at the almost transparent, apparently sticky mass. It could hardly be more than a millimetre wide and perhaps half a centimetre long.
‘Be careful,’ Adam warned him. ‘I’ll get it sent over for analysis.’
‘Glue,’ Warren stated and straightened his glasses. ‘Perhaps the remains of double-sided tape.’
Adam looked instinctively at the ceiling, where an edging of enamelled metal framed the opening. The light in the room made it impossible to see any details in the shaft. The reflection of the table lamp showed that the actual ventilation pipe was matt aluminium. But he was more interested in two tiny specks on the white frame than in the space inside.
‘We definitely need something to stand on,’ Warren said, and went over to the door into the other room. ‘Maybe we can . . .’ The rest was swallowed in a mumble.
‘I’ll call for some people,’ Adam said. ‘This is the responsibility of Oslo Police and I . . .’
Warren didn’t answer.
Adam followed him into the smaller room. A large black desk was positioned at an angle in the middle of the room. The surface was empty apart from a beautiful flower arrangement and a leather folder, which Adam assumed contained writing paper. In front of the glass doors out on to the terrace was a chaise longue with exquisite silk cushions in shades of pink and red. They matched the curtains and a feature wall with Japanese-inspired, patterned wallpaper.
On the opposite wall, behind a sitting area, was a robust bookshelf in solid wood, which must have been about one and a half metres tall. The American tried to tip it.
‘It’s free-standing,’ he said, emptying the shelves of t
en or so books and a glass bowl. ‘Can you give me a hand?’
‘This is not our job,’ Adam said and pulled out his mobile phone.
‘Give me a hand,’ Warren said. ‘I just want to look, not touch.’
‘No, I’m going to get people over here now.’
‘Adam,’ Warren exclaimed in exasperation, throwing out his arms, ‘you said it yourself. This suite has been gone over with a fine-toothed comb, and all the evidence has been secured. But they still . . . someone has overlooked a small detail. You and I are both experienced policemen. We won’t damage anything. I just want to have a look. OK? Then these people of yours can come over and do their job.’
‘They’re not my people,’ Adam muttered.
Warren smiled and started to pull at the bookshelf. Adam hesitated for a little while longer before reluctantly taking hold of the other end. Together they managed to get the bookshelf into the main room and position it right under the open shaft.
‘Will you hold it steady?’
Adam nodded and Warren tested with one foot on the second lowest shelf. It held him, so with his right hand on Adam’s shoulder, he carried on climbing to the top. He had to twist his neck in order to study the small specks Adam had noticed.
‘Glue here too,’ he mumbled without touching it. ‘Looks like the same stuff that was on the grate.’
He stuck his head up into the shaft.
‘Plenty of room,’ he confirmed. His voice sounded hollow and muffled, due to the reverberation within the metal walls. ‘It would be perfectly possible for . . .’
Adam couldn’t make out the rest.
‘What did you say?’
Warren lowered his head down from the opening in the ceiling.
‘Just as I thought,’ he said. ‘It’s big enough for a grown man. And these friends of yours . . .’ He bent his knees and dropped to the floor. ‘I hope that they secured any evidence in the shaft before they crawled in to check the grates.’
‘I’m sure they did.’