by Jo Nesbo
‘City Hall,’ Bellman said as he settled in the back seat.
The car glided away from the kerb, rounded Grønland Church and headed towards the Plaza Hotel and the Post Office building, which despite the excavations around the Opera House still dominated Oslo’s small skyline. But today there was no skyline, only snow, and Bellman thought three mutually independent thoughts. Bloody December. Bloody Vennesla case. And bloody Truls Berntsen.
Mikael had neither seen nor spoken to Truls since he had been forced to suspend his childhood friend and subordinate last October. Although he thought he’d glimpsed him outside the Grand Hotel last week in a parked car. It was the large injections of cash into Truls’s account that had led to his suspension. As he couldn’t – or didn’t want to – explain them, Mikael, as his boss, had had no choice. Of course Mikael knew where the money had come from: burner jobs – sabotaging evidence – which Truls had done for Rudolf Asayev’s drug cartel. Money the idiot had put straight into his account. The sole consolation was that neither the money nor Truls could point a finger at Mikael. There were only two people in the world who could expose Mikael’s cooperation with Asayev. One was the Councillor for Social Affairs and she was an accomplice, and the other lay in a coma in a closed wing of the Rikshospital.
They drove through Kvadraturen. Bellman stared with fascination at the contrast between the prostitutes’ black skin and the white snow in their hair and on their shoulders. He also saw that new layers of dope dealers had moved into the vacuum left by Asayev.
Truls Berntsen. He had followed Mikael through his childhood in Manglerud the way sucker fish follow sharks. Mikael with the brain, the leadership qualities, the eloquence, the appearance. Truls ‘Beavis’ Berntsen with the fearlessness, the fists and the almost childlike loyalty. Mikael, who made friends wherever he turned. Truls, who was so difficult to like that everyone actively avoided him. Yet it was precisely these two who hung out together, Bellman and Berntsen. Their names were called out one after the other in class and later at Police College, Bellman first, Berntsen tagging along afterwards. Mikael had got together with Ulla, but Truls was still there, two steps behind. As the years passed Truls had lagged further behind; he had none of Mikael’s natural buoyancy in his private life and career. As a rule Truls was an easy man to lead and to predict – when Mikael said jump, he jumped. But he could also get that blackness in his eyes, and then he seemed to become someone Mikael didn’t know. Like the time with the young guy they arrested, whom Truls blinded with his truncheon. Or the guy at Kripos who tried it on with Mikael. Colleagues had seen, so Mikael had to do something to avoid the impression he would let such matters go. He had tricked the guy into meeting in the Kripos boiler room, and there Truls had attacked the man with his baton. First of all, in a controlled way, then more and more savagely as the blackness in his eyes seemed to spread, until he appeared to be possessed, his eyes wide and dark, and Mikael had to stop him so that he didn’t kill the guy. Yes, Truls was loyal, but he was also a loose cannon, and that in particular worried Mikael Bellman. When Mikael had told him the Appointments Board had decided he was suspended until they were satisfied they knew where the money in Truls’s account came from, Truls had just shrugged as though it was of no significance and left. As if Truls ‘Beavis’ Berntsen had anything to go to, a life outside work. And Mikael had seen the blackness in his eyes. It had been like lighting a fuse, watching it burn in a mine gallery and then nothing happens. But you don’t know if the fuse is just long or if it has gone out, so you wait, on tenterhooks, because something tells you the longer it takes, the worse the explosion is going to be.
The car parked behind City Hall. Mikael got out and walked up the steps to the entrance. Some claimed this was the real main entrance, the way the architects Arneberg and Poulsson had designed it in the 1920s, and that the drawing had been turned round by mistake. And when the error was discovered in the late 1940s the building was so far along that they hushed the matter up and went on as if nothing was wrong, hoping that people sailing up Oslo Fjord to Norway’s capital city wouldn’t realise the sight that met them was the kitchen entrance.
Mikael Bellman’s Italian leather soles gently caressed the stone floor as he marched over to reception, where the woman behind the counter flashed him a dazzling smile.
‘Good morning, sir. You are expected. Ninth floor, end of the corridor on the left.’ Bellman studied himself in the lift mirror on his way up. And reflected that was exactly what he was: on his way up. Despite this murder case. He straightened the silk tie Ulla had bought him in Barcelona. Double Windsor knot. He had taught Truls how to tie a knot at school. But only the thin, easy one. The door at the end of the corridor was ajar. Mikael pushed it open.
The office was bare. The desk cleared, the shelves empty and the wallpaper had light patches where pictures had hung. She was sitting on a windowsill. Her face had the conventional good looks that women often call ‘nice’, but it had no sweetness or charm despite the blonde doll’s hair arranged in comic ringlets. She was tall and athletic with broad shoulders and broad hips which had been negotiated into a tight leather skirt for the occasion. Her thighs were crossed. The masculinity in her face – emphasised by an aquiline nose and a pair of cold, blue lupine eyes – combined with a self-confident, provocative, playful gaze had caused Bellman to make a couple of quick assumptions the first time he saw her. Isabelle Skøyen was an initiative-taker and a risk-loving cougar.
‘Lock,’ she said.
He hadn’t been mistaken.
Mikael closed the door behind him and turned the key. Walked over to one of the other windows. City Hall towered above Oslo’s modest development of four- and five-storey buildings. Overlooking Rådhusplassen, the City Hall square, was the 700-year-old Akershus Fortress, on high ramparts with ancient, war-damaged cannons pointing at the fjord, which seemed to have goose pimples as it trembled in the freezing gusts of wind. It had stopped snowing, and under the leaden grey sky the town was bathed in a bluish-white light. Like the colour of a dead body, Bellman thought. Isabelle’s voice echoed off the bare walls. ‘Well, my dear, what do you think of the view?’
‘Impressive. If I remember rightly the previous councillor had an office that was both smaller and lower down.’
‘Not that view,’ she said. ‘This one.’
He turned to her. Oslo’s latest Councillor for Social Affairs had spread her legs. Her panties were on the windowsill beside her. Isabelle had repeatedly said she didn’t understand the attractions of a shaven pussy, but Mikael reckoned there had to be a halfway house as he stared into the thick bush and mumbled a repeat of his comment about the view. Truly impressive.
Her heels hit the parquet floor hard and she walked over to him. Brushed an invisible speck of dust off his lapel. Even without stilettos she would have been a centimetre taller than him, but now she towered over him. He didn’t find this intimidating. On the contrary, her physical size and domineering personality were an interesting challenge. It required more of him as a man than Ulla’s slender figure and gentle compliance. ‘I think it’s only right and proper that you’re the person to inaugurate my office. Without your . . . willing cooperation I wouldn’t have got this job.’
‘Ditto,’ Mikael Bellman said. He breathed in the fragrance of her perfume. It was familiar. It was . . . Ulla’s. The Tom Ford perfume – what was it called? Black Orchid. Which he’d bought for her when he was in Paris or London because it was impossible to get hold of in Norway. The coincidence seemed highly improbable.
He saw the laughter in her eyes as she saw the astonishment in his. She interlaced her fingers behind his neck and leaned back laughing. ‘Sorry, I couldn’t stop myself.’
What the hell. After the house-warming Ulla had complained that the bottle of perfume had disappeared and that one of the celeb guests he’d invited must have stolen it. He’d been pretty sure it had been one of the local Mangleruders, namely Truls Berntsen. He wasn’t exactly unaware that Truls had been
head over heels in love with Ulla ever since their boyhood days. Which of course he had never mentioned to her or Truls. Nor the business with the bottle of perfume. After all, it was better that Truls pinched Ulla’s perfume than her panties.
‘Have you ever wondered if that might be your problem?’ Mikael said. ‘Stopping yourself?’
She laughed softly. Closed her eyes. Her long, broad fingers opened behind his neck, moved down his back and stole inside his belt. She looked at him with mild disappointment in her gaze.
‘What’s up, my stallion?’
‘The doctors say he’s not going to die,’ Mikael said. ‘And recently he’s been showing signs of coming out of the coma.’
‘In what way? Is he moving?’
‘No, but they can see changes in his EEG, so they’ve started doing neurophysiological examinations.’
‘So what?’ Her lips were close to his. ‘Are you frightened of him?’
‘I’m not frightened of him but of what he could say. About us.’
‘Why would he do anything so stupid? He’s alone and he has nothing to gain by it.’
‘Let me put it this way, my love,’ Mikael said, shoving her hand away. ‘The thought that there’s someone out there who can testify that you and I have been working with a dope dealer to further our careers—’
‘Listen,’ Isabelle said. ‘All we did was make a careful intervention to prevent market forces ruling. It’s good, tried and tested Socialist Party politics, my dear. We let Asayev have a monopoly on dope, and we arrested all the other drug barons because Asayev’s goods caused fewer ODs. Anything else would have been an unsatisfactory drugs policy.’
That made Mikael smile. ‘I can hear you’ve been honing your rhetoric on the debating course.’
‘Shall we change the topic, darling?’ She slipped her hand around his tie.
‘You know how it will be interpreted in a court of law, don’t you? I got the Chief of Police number and you the Councillor job because it looked as if we’d personally cleaned up Oslo’s streets and brought down the death rate. While in reality we let Asayev destroy the evidence, remove his rivals and sell a type of drug that was four times as potent and addictive as heroin.’
‘Mmm, you make me so hot when you talk like that . . .’ She pulled him close. Her tongue was in his mouth, and he could hear the crackle of her stockings as she rubbed her thigh against his. She towed him after her as she backed unsteadily to the desk.
‘If he wakes up in the hospital and starts blabbing—’
‘Stop it. I didn’t get you here for a chit-chat.’ Her fingers were working on his belt.
‘We’ve got a problem we have to solve, Isabelle.’
‘I know, but now you’re Chief of Police you’re in the prioritisation business, my love. And right now your City Hall prioritises this.’
Mikael parried her hand.
She sighed. ‘Fine. Let me hear. What have you got planned?’
‘He has to feel threatened. In a credible way.’
‘Why threaten him? Why not just kill him now?’
Mikael laughed. Right up to the moment he realised she was serious.
‘Because . . .’ Mikael held her eyes, his voice firm. Trying to be the same masterful Mikael Bellman who, half an hour ago, had stood in front of the assembled detectives. Trying to come up with an answer. But she was quicker on her feet.
‘Because you don’t dare. Shall we see if we can find someone under “Active Euthanasia” in the Yellow Pages? You remove the police guard, misuse of resources blah blah blah, and afterwards the patient receives an unexpected visit from the Yellow Pages. Unexpected as far as he’s concerned, that is. Or, no, as a matter of fact, you could send your shadow. Beavis. Truls Berntsen. He’ll do anything for money, won’t he?’
Mikael shook his head in disbelief. ‘First of all, it was the head of Crime Squad, Gunnar Hagen, who ordered the twenty-four-hour police supervision. If the patient was killed after I’d overruled Hagen, that would make me look bad, if I can put it like that. Secondly, we’re not going to murder anyone.’
‘Listen, darling, no politician is better than her adviser. That’s why the basic premise for getting to the top is you always surround yourself with people who are smarter than you are. And I’m beginning to doubt that you’re smarter than me, Mikael. First off, you can’t even catch this police killer. And now you don’t know how to solve a simple problem of a man in a coma. So when you don’t want to fuck me either, I have to ask myself: “What am I going to do with him?” Answer me that, please.’
‘Isabelle . . .’
‘I’ll take that as a no. So, listen to me. This is how we’re going to play it . . .’
He had to admire her. Her controlled, cool professionalism, yet her risk-embracing unpredictability, which made her colleagues sit a little further back on their chairs. Some saw her as a ticking bomb, but they hadn’t realised that creating uncertainty was a feature of Isabelle Skøyen’s game. She was the type to soar further and higher than anyone else, and in a shorter time. And – if she fell – to plummet to a nasty end. It wasn’t that Mikael Bellman didn’t recognise himself in Isabelle Skøyen, he did, but she was an extreme version of himself. And the strange thing was that instead of dragging him along, she made him more cautious.
‘The patient hasn’t come out of the coma yet, so for the time being we do nothing,’ Isabelle said. ‘I know an anaesthetist from Enebakk. Very shady type. He supplies me with pills that as a politician I can’t get on the street. He – like Beavis – does most things for money. And anything at all for sex. Apropos of which . . .’
She had perched herself on the edge of the table, raised and spread her legs and unbuttoned his flies in one go. Mikael grabbed her wrists. ‘Let’s wait until Wednesday at the Grand.’
‘Let’s not wait until Wednesday at the Grand.’
‘Well, actually, I vote that we do.’
‘Oh yes?’ she said, freeing her hands and opening his trousers. She looked down. Her voice was throaty. ‘The noes have it by one, darling.’
5
DARKNESS AND THE temperature had fallen, and a pale moon was shining in through the window of Stian Barelli’s room when he heard his mother’s voice from the living room downstairs.
‘It’s for you, Stian!’
He had heard their landline ringing and hoped it wasn’t for him. He put down the Wii controller. He was twelve under par with three holes left to play and thus very well on the way to qualifying for the Masters. He was playing Rick Fowler, as he was the only golfer in the Tiger Woods Masters who was cool and anywhere close to his own age, twenty-one. And they both liked Eminem and Rise Against and wearing orange. Of course Rick Fowler could afford his own flat whereas Stian still lived at home. But it was only temporary, until he got a scholarship to go to university in Alaska. All semi-decent downhill skiers went there if they got good results in the Nordic Junior Ski Championship and so on. Of course, no one became a better skier from going there, but so what? Women, wine and skis. What could be better. Perhaps the odd exam if there was time. The qualification could lead to an OK job. Money for his own flat. A life that was better than this, sleeping in the slightly too short bed under posters of Bode Miller and Aksel Lund Svindal, eating Mum’s rissoles and obeying Dad’s rules, training mouthy brats who according to their snow-blind parents had the talent to be a Kjetil André Aamodt or a Lasse Kjus. Operating the ski lifts in Tryvannskleiva for a wage they wouldn’t bloody dare give child workers in India. And that was how Stian knew it was the chairman of the Ski Club on the phone now. He was the only person Stian knew who avoided ringing people on their mobiles because it was a bit more expensive, and who preferred to force them to run downstairs in prehistoric houses that still had landlines.
Stian took the receiver his mother held out for him.
‘Yes?’
‘Hi, Stian, Bakken here.’ Bakken meant slope, and it really was his name. ‘I’ve been told the Kleiva lift’s running.�
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‘Now?’ Stian said, looking at his watch. 11.15 at night. Closing time was at nine.
‘Could you nip up and see what’s going on?’
‘Now?’
‘Unless you’re extremely busy, of course.’
Stian ignored the sarcasm in the chairman’s intonation. He knew he’d had two disappointing seasons and that the chairman didn’t think it was down to lack of talent but to the large amounts of time Stian did his best to fill with general idleness.
‘I haven’t got a car,’ Stian said.
‘You can use mine,’ his mother chipped in. She hadn’t gone away; she was standing next to him with her arms crossed.
‘Sorry, Stian, but I heard that,’ the chairman commented laconically. ‘The Heming skateboarders must have broken in. I suppose they think it’s funny.’
It took Stian ten minutes to drive the winding road up to Tryvann Tower. The TV mast was a 118-metre-long javelin drilled into the ground at the top of Oslo’s north-western mountains.
He came to a halt in the snow-covered car park and noted that the only other vehicle there was a red Golf. He took his skis from the roof box, put them on and skated past the main building and up to where the main chairlift, Tryvann Ekspress, marked the top of the skiing facilities. From there he could see down to the lake and the smaller Kleiva lift with T-bars. Even though there was light from the moon it was too dark to check whether the bars were moving, but he could hear it. The hum of the machinery down below.