by Jo Nesbo
‘Listen, Silje,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you’re on something, I don’t know. That’s fine. Happens to all of us. This is my suggestion: you go now, we pretend this never happened and neither of us breathes a word about it ever again.’
‘Are you afraid someone will find out about us, Harry?’
‘There is no us, Silje. And listen to me. I’m giving you a chance here.’
‘Are you thinking that someone will find out that you’re shagging a student?’
‘I’m not shagging anyone. I’m thinking of your own good.’
Silje lowered her arm and raised her head. Harry was shocked. Her make-up had run like black blood, her eyes had a wild gleam to them and the sudden hungry-predator grin made him think of an animal he had seen on one of those nature programmes.
‘You’re lying, Harry. You’re shagging that bitch. Rakel. And you don’t think about me. Not the way you say, you hypocritical bastard. But you do think about me, all right. Like a piece of meat you can shag. Like you’re going to shag.’
She had slid off the desk and taken a step towards him. Harry sat there, sunk in his chair with his legs stretched out in front of him, as always. He was looking up at her with this sense that he was part of a scene that was going to be acted out, no, had already been acted out, for Christ’s sake. She stretched forward, gracefully, her hand rested on his knee, she stroked upwards, up over his belt as she leaned over him and her hand disappeared under his T-shirt. The voice purred: ‘Mmm, nice six-pack, teacher.’ Harry grabbed her hand, twisting her wrist round as he shot out of the chair. She screamed as he forced her arm up behind her back and pushed her head down towards the floor. Then he turned her towards the door, grabbed her rucksack and shoved her out of the room and down the corridor.
‘Harry!’ she groaned.
‘This hold is called the half-nelson, or by many, the police grip,’ Harry said without stopping, propelling her down the stairs. ‘Handy to learn for the exam. That is, if you get as far as the exam. Because I hope you realise you’ve put me in a position where I’ll have to report this.’
‘Harry!’
‘Not because I feel I’ve been harassed particularly, but because I question whether you have the psychological stability to work in the police force, Silje. I’ll leave it to the authorities to evaluate. So you’ll have to convince them that this was just a bit of a slip-up. Does that sound fair to you?’
He opened the front door with his free hand, and as he shoved her out she swung round and eyeballed him. It was a glare of such naked fury and ferocity it confirmed what Harry had been thinking for a while about Silje Gravseng. She was not someone who should be given police powers and unleashed on the general public.
Harry watched her as she tottered through the gate, across the square to Chateau Neuf, where a student was having a smoke and a break from the dull pounding of the music inside. He stood leaning against a street lamp, wearing an army jacket, Cuba 1960 style. Watched Silje with studied indifference until she’d passed, whereupon he turned and stared after her.
Harry stood in the corridor. Cursing loudly. Felt his pulse slowing. Took out his phone, rang one of the contacts from a list which was so short some people were entered with only one letter.
‘Arnold here.’
‘This is Harry. Silje Gravseng just turned up at my office. This time it went too far.’
‘Oh yes? Spill the beans.’
Harry gave his colleague the edited highlights.
‘This is not good, Harry. Worse, maybe, than you imagine.’
‘She might have been on something. Looked as if she’d come from a party. Or she just has problems controlling her impulses. But I need some advice here about what to do. I know I ought to report it but—’
‘You don’t understand. Are you still down by the front door?’
‘Yes. So?’ Harry said, surprised.
‘The guard must have gone home. Can you see anyone else?’
‘Anyone else?’
‘Anyone?’
‘Well, there’s a guy in the square outside Chateau Neuf.’
‘Would he have seen her leave?’
‘Yes.’
‘Perfect! Go over to him now. Talk to him. Get his name and address. Keep him occupied until I come and pick you up.’
‘You what?’
‘I’ll explain later.’
‘Am I supposed to sit on the back of your bike?’
‘I have to confess I have a kind of car here somewhere. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.’
‘Good . . . er, morning?’ Bjørn Holm mumbled. He peered at his watch, but wasn’t sure if he was still in dreamland.
‘Were you asleep?’
‘No, no,’ Bjørn Holm said, leaning back against the headboard and pressing the phone to his ear. As though it would bring her even closer.
‘I just wanted to tell you I’ve got a bit of the chewing gum stuck under Anton Mittet’s car seat,’ Katrine Bratt said. ‘I reckon it’s the murderer’s. But of course it’s a long shot.’
‘Yes,’ Bjørn said.
‘You mean it’s a waste of time?’
Bjørn thought she sounded disappointed. ‘You’re the detective,’ he answered and immediately regretted not saying anything more encouraging.
In the ensuing silence he wondered where she was. At home? Was she also in bed?
‘Oh well,’ she sighed. ‘By the way, something odd happened while I was in the Evidence Room.’
‘Oh yes?’ Bjørn said and could hear he was overdoing the enthusiasm.
‘I thought I heard someone else in there. I may have been mistaken, but on the way out it looked as if someone had moved one of the evidence boxes on the shelf. I checked the label . . .’
Bjørn Holm thought she was lying down; her voice had that lazy softness.
‘It was the René Kalsnes case.’
Harry closed the heavy door and locked out the gentle morning light behind him.
He walked through the cool darkness of the timber house to the kitchen. Slumped down onto a chair. Unbuttoned his shirt. It had taken time.
The guy in the army jacket had seemed fairly alarmed when Harry went over to him and asked him to wait until a police colleague arrived.
‘This is normal tobacco, you know!’ he had said, passing Harry the cigarette.
When Arnold came they took the student’s signed testimony and then got into a dust-covered Fiat of indeterminate vintage and went straight to Krimteknisk where people were still working because of the latest police murder. There, Harry undressed, and while someone took his clothing for examination, two of the male officers went over his genitals and hands with a light and contact paper. Then he was given an empty plastic beaker.
‘Give it your best shot, Hole. If there’s enough room. Toilet’s down the corridor. Think about something nice, OK?’
‘Mm.’
Harry had sensed rather than heard the suppressed laughter as he left them.
Think about something nice.
Harry fingered the copy of the report lying on the kitchen worktop. He had asked Hagen to send it. Privately. Discreetly. It consisted largely of medical terms in Latin. He understood some of them though. Enough to know that Rudolf Asayev had died in the same mysterious, inexplicable way that he had lived. And, lacking anything to suggest criminal activity, they had been obliged to conclude that it had been a cerebral infarction. A stroke. The kind of thing that happens.
As a detective, Harry could have told them that this kind of thing doesn’t happen. A Crown witness doesn’t ‘happen to’ die. What was it that Arnold had said? In ninety-four per cent of cases it was murder if someone had enough to lose as a result of the witness’s testimony.
The paradox was of course that Harry himself would have had something to lose if Asayev had testified. A lot to lose. So why bother? Why not just show gratitude, bow and move on with his life? There was a simple answer to that. His system had a malfunction.
Harry slung the re
port down to the end of the long oak table. And decided he would shred it in the morning. Now he needed to get some sleep.
Think about something nice.
Harry got up and undressed on his way to the bathroom. Stood under the shower, turned the dial to burning hot. Felt his skin tingle and smart, punishing him.
Think about something nice.
He dried himself, lay down under the clean white bedlinen in their double bed, closed his eyes and tried to hurry the process. But the thoughts reached him before sleep did.
He had thought about her.
When he had been standing in the toilet cubicle with his eyes closed, concentrating, trying to think of something nice, he had thought about Silje Gravseng. Thought of her soft, suntanned skin, her lips, her burning breath on his face, the wild fury in her eyes, the muscular body, the curves, the firm flesh, all the unjust beauty of the young.
Shit!
Her hand over his belt, on his stomach. Her body on its way down to meet his. The half-nelson. Her head almost on the ground, the protesting groans, the arched back with her bottom raised towards him, as slender as a doe.
Shit, shit!
He sat up in bed. Rakel was smiling warmly at him from the photo on the bedside table. Warm, clever and knowing. But did she actually know? If she had been allowed to spend five seconds in his head, to see who he actually was, would she have run off screaming? Or are we all equally sick? Is the difference only who lets the monster loose and who doesn’t?
He had thought about her. Thought that he had done exactly what she’d wanted, there, on the desk, knocked the pile of students’ work flying, sending the sheets fluttering around the room like faded butterflies, which stuck to their skin, rough paper with small, black letters that became categories of murder: sex, alcohol, crimes of passion, family feuds, honour killings and greed. He had thought about her as he stood there in the toilet. And he had filled the beaker to the brim.
21
BEATE LØNN YAWNED, blinked and stared out of the tram window. The morning sun had started its work burning away the mist over Frogner Park. The dewy tennis courts were empty. There was just one emaciated, elderly man standing lost in thought on a shale court where they still hadn’t put up the nets for the new season. Staring at the tram. Thin thighs protruding from antiquated shorts, blue office shirt buttoned up wrongly, racket dragging on the ground. Waiting for a partner who wasn’t coming, Beate thought. Perhaps because the arrangement was for this time last year, and he was no longer alive. She knew how he felt.
She glimpsed the Monolith as they glided past the main park gate to where the tram stopped.
In fact, she had a partner, she had visited him last night, after Katrine had collected the key for the Evidence Room. That was why she was on this tram on this side of town. He was an ordinary man. That was how she classified him. Not the kind of man you dreamt about. Just the kind of man you needed once in a while. His children were at the ex’s, and now that her little one was staying with her mother-in-law in Steinkjer they had the time and opportunity to meet a little more. Nevertheless, Beate noticed that she limited it. Basically it was more important for her to know he was there as an option rather than for them to spend time together. He hadn’t been able to replace Jack, but that didn’t matter. She didn’t want a replacement, she wanted this. Something else, something non-committal, something that wouldn’t cost her much if it was taken from her.
Beate stared through the window, at the tram going the opposite way sliding in beside them. In the silence she could hear low music coming from the headphones of the girl sitting next to her and recognised an irritating pop hit from the nineties. From the time when she had been the quietest girl at Police College. Pale with an embarrassing tendency to blush as soon as anyone looked in her direction. Though fortunately not many did. And those who did forgot her at once. Beate Lønn had the type of face and charisma that made her a non-event, an aquarium fish, visual Teflon.
But she remembered them.
Every single one of them.
And that was why she could look at the faces on the tram alongside her and remember where she had seen them and when. Perhaps on the same tram the day before, perhaps in a school playground twenty years ago, perhaps on CCTV footage of a bank robbery, perhaps on an escalator at Steen & Strøm where she went to buy a pair of tights. And it didn’t make any difference if they had grown older, put on make-up, grown a beard, had a haircut, Botox or silicone implants, it was as though the face, their real face, shone through, as though it was a constant, something unique, an eleven-figure number in a DNA code. And this was her blessing and curse, which some psychiatrists wanted to label Asperger’s syndrome, others minor brain damage, for which her fusiform gyrus – the brain’s centre for facial recognition – tried to compensate. And which others, wiser counsels, didn’t call anything at all. They just stated that her brain stored the uniqueness of every face like a computer stores the numbers of a DNA code for later identification.
And that was why it was not unusual for Beate Lønn’s brain to be whirring already, trying to place the face of the man in the other tram.
What was unusual was that she couldn’t place it straight away.
Only a metre and a half separated them, and her attention had been drawn to him because he was writing in the condensation on the window and therefore had his face turned to her. She had seen him before, but the name, the numbers of the DNA code markers that linked the face to the name, was concealed.
Perhaps it was the reflection on the glass, perhaps a shadow covering his eyes. She was about to give up when her tram lurched into motion, the light fell differently and he raised his gaze and met hers.
An electric shock went through Beate Lønn.
His gaze was that of a reptile.
The cold gaze of a murderer who knew who she was.
Valentin Gjertsen.
And she also knew why she hadn’t recognised him at once. How he had managed to stay hidden.
Beate Lønn got up from her seat. Tried to get out, but the girl beside her had her eyes closed and was nodding her head. Beate nudged her and the girl looked up with annoyance.
‘Out,’ Beate mouthed.
The girl raised a pencilled eyebrow, but didn’t stir.
Beate grabbed her headphones.
‘Police. I’m getting off.’
‘We’re moving,’ the girl said.
‘Shift your fat arse now!’
The other passengers turned towards Beate Lønn. But she didn’t blush. She wasn’t that quiet girl any longer. Her figure was as petite, her skin pale to the point of transparency, her hair colourless and dry like uncooked spaghetti. But that Beate Lønn no longer existed.
‘Stop the tram! Police! Stop!’
She ploughed her way through to the driver and the exit. Heard the thin scream of brakes. She was there, had flashed her ID at the driver, waited impatiently. They came to a halt with a final jerk, the standing passengers lunged forward and hung onto the straps as the doors banged open. Beate was outside in one leap, and running up the tramway that divided the road. Felt the dew on the grass through the thin fabric of her shoes. The other tram was moving, she heard the low, rising song of the rails, and she ran as fast as she could. There was no reason to assume that Valentin was armed, and he would never escape from a packed tram with her waving police ID, shouting that he was under arrest. If she could only catch the tram. Running wasn’t her strong suit. That was what the doctor who’d thought she had Asperger’s had said. People like her tended to be physically uncoordinated.
She slipped on the wet grass, but managed to stay on her feet. Just a few more metres. She caught up with the end of the tram. Slapped her hand against it. Screamed, waved her ID, hoping the driver would see her in the mirror. And perhaps he did. Saw a commuter who had overslept desperately waving her monthly ticket. The song of the rails rose another quarter of a tone and the tram left her standing.
Beate stopped and watched the tram
disappear up Majorstuen. She turned and saw her tram heading for Frogner plass.
Cursing quietly, she took out her mobile, crossed the road, leaned against the wire fence of the tennis courts and tapped in a number.
‘Holm.’
‘It’s me. I’ve just seen Valentin.’
‘Eh? Are you sure?’
‘Bjørn . . .’
‘Sorry. Where?’
‘On the tram passing Frogner Park up towards Majorstuen. Are you at work?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s a number 12. Find out where it goes and have it cut off. He mustn’t get away.’
‘Fine. I’ll find the stops and send a description of Valentin to all the patrol cars.’
‘That’s no good.’
‘What’s no good?’
‘The description. He’s changed.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘Plastic surgery. Radically enough to be able to move around undetected in Oslo, for example. Tell me where the tram has been stopped and I’ll make my way there and point him out.’
‘Received and out.’
Beate put the phone back in her pocket. It was only now that she noticed how out of breath she was. In front of her the morning rush-hour traffic inched past as if nothing had happened. As if the fact that a murderer had just been exposed made no difference one way or the other.
‘What’s happened to them?’
Beate pushed herself off the fence and turned to the creaky voice.
The old man looked at her with enquiring eyes.
‘Where are they all?’ he reiterated.
And when Beate saw the pain there she quickly had to swallow the lump in her throat.
‘Do you think . . .’ he said, attempting a tentative swing of the racket, ‘they’re on the other court?’
Beate nodded slowly.
‘Yes, they probably are,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t be here. They’re on the other court. They’re waiting for me there.’