Police: A Harry Hole thriller (Oslo Sequence 8)

by Jo Nesbo

  Beate watched his narrow back as he tottered towards the gate.

  Then she hurried off to Majorstuen. And even as her mind raced, wondering where Valentin could be going, where he was coming from and how close they might be to arresting him, she still couldn’t shake off the echo of the old man’s whisper.

  They’re waiting for me there.

  Mia Hartvigsen watched Harry Hole.

  She had crossed her arms and half turned her shoulder to him. Around the pathologist lay blue plastic tubs of severed body parts. The students had left the room at the Institute of Forensic Medicine on the ground floor of the Rikshospital, and then this blast from the past had marched in with the pathology report on Asayev under his arm.

  The dismissive body language was not because Mia Hartvigsen disliked Hole, but that he spelt trouble. When he’d worked as a detective Hole had always meant extra work, tighter deadlines and an increased chance of being pilloried for blunders for which they were hardly responsible.

  ‘We’ve done a post-mortem on Rudolf Asayev,’ Mia said. ‘A thorough one.’

  ‘Not thorough enough,’ Harry said, putting the report down on one of the shiny metal tables where the students had just been cutting into human flesh. A muscular arm, severed at the shoulder, hung out from under a blanket. Harry read the letters of the faded tattoo on the upper arm. Too young to die. Well. Maybe one of the Los Lobos bikers, a rival gang Asayev was determined to eliminate.

  ‘And what makes you think we haven’t been thorough enough, Hole?’

  ‘First of all, you couldn’t show any cause of death.’

  ‘Sometimes the body simply doesn’t give us any clues. You know that. It doesn’t necessarily mean there isn’t a perfectly natural cause.’

  ‘And the most natural cause in this case would be that someone murdered him.’

  ‘I know he was a potential Crown witness, but a post-mortem follows certain fixed routines which are not influenced by such circumstances. We find what we find, and nothing else. Pathology isn’t a hunch science.’

  ‘With regard to the science,’ Hole said, sitting on her desk. ‘It’s based on hypothesis testing, isn’t it? You form a theory and then you test it, true or false. Right?’

  Mia Hartvigsen shook her head. Not because it wasn’t right, but because she didn’t like the direction this conversation was taking.

  ‘My theory,’ Hole continued with an innocent smile, making him look like a boy trying to persuade his mother he should have an atomic bomb for Christmas, ‘is that Asayev was killed by someone who knows exactly how you work and what is required to ensure you don’t find anything.’

  Mia shifted feet, turning the other shoulder to him. ‘So?’

  ‘So how would you have done that, Mia?’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘You know all the tricks. How would you have fooled yourself?’

  ‘Am I a suspect?’

  ‘Until further notice.’

  She stopped herself reacting when she saw him smiling.

  ‘Murder weapon?’ she asked.

  ‘Syringe,’ Hole said.

  ‘Oh? Why’s that?’

  ‘Something to do with anaesthesia.’

  ‘I see. We can trace almost all drugs, especially when we have access as quickly as we did in this case. The only option I can see is . . .’

  ‘Yes?’ He smiled as though he had already got his way. Irritating man. The kind you can’t decide whether to slap or kiss.

  ‘An air injection.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘The oldest and still the best trick in the book. You fill a syringe with enough air to put air bubbles into the blood vessel and block it. If it’s blocked for long enough the blood doesn’t reach vital parts of the body such as the heart or the brain and you die. Fast and without any chemical residue. A blood clot can form inside the body without any external intervention. Case closed.’

  ‘But the needle mark would be visible.’

  ‘Not if you use a thin enough needle. You’d have to examine every centimetre of skin to reveal a mark.’

  Hole brightened up. The boy opened the present and thought it was an atomic bomb.

  Mia was happy.

  ‘Then you’ll have to examine—’

  ‘We did.’ Smack. ‘Every millimetre of it. We even checked the intravenous drip. It’s possible to inject air bubbles there as well, you see. There wasn’t so much as a mozzie bite anywhere.’ She watched the feverish light in his eyes die. ‘Sorry, Hole, but we were aware the death was suspicious.’ She stressed were.

  ‘Now I have to prepare the next lecture, so maybe—’

  ‘What about somewhere that wasn’t skin?’ Hole said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘What about if he injected the needle somewhere else? Orifices. Mouth, rectum, nostrils, ears.’

  ‘Interesting idea, but in the nose and ears there are very few blood vessels which would be suitable. The rectum is a possibility, but the odds of isolating vital organs in those regions are lower, and furthermore you have to know your way around extremely well to find a vein blind. The mouth may be feasible as it has veins with a short route to the brain and would have led to a quick, certain death, but we always check the mouth. And it’s full of mucous membranes where an injection would have caused swelling, and that would be easy to see.’

  She looked at him. Sensed his brain still churning round for a solution, but he gave a resigned nod.

  ‘Nice to see you again, Hole. Pop by if you fancy giving it another shot.’

  She turned and walked over to one of the tubs and pushed a pale, grey arm with outstretched fingers down into the alcohol.

  ‘Another . . . shot,’ she heard Harry muttering. She heaved a deep sigh. Very irritating man.

  ‘He could have tried another shot,’ Hole said.

  ‘Where exactly?’

  ‘You said a short route to the brain. From behind. He could have hidden the shot from behind.’

  ‘Behind what . . .?’ She stopped. Looked where he was pointing. Closed her eyes and sighed again.

  ‘Sorry,’ Harry said. ‘But FBI statistics show that in cases where a post-mortem has been performed on witnesses, the percentage of murders rises from seventy-eight to ninety-four with a second post-mortem.’

  Mia Hartvigsen shook her head. Harry Hole. Trouble. Extra work. An increased chance of being pilloried for blunders not of their own making.

  ‘Here,’ Beate Lønn said, and the taxi pulled into the kerb.

  The tram was at the Welhavens Café gate stop. There was one police car parked in front and two behind. Bjørn Holm and Katrine Bratt were leaning against the Amazon.

  Beate paid and jumped out.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Three officers are in the tram and no one has been allowed to leave. We were waiting for you.’

  ‘It says number 11 on this tram. I said 12.’

  ‘It changes number after the Majorstuen crossing, but it’s the same tram.’

  Beate hurried over to the front door, knocked hard and held up her ID. The door opened with a snort and she climbed in. Nodded to the uniformed policeman standing there. He was holding a Heckler & Koch P30L.

  ‘Follow me,’ she said and started walking through the packed tram.

  She scrutinised all the faces as she made her way to the middle of the carriage. Felt her heart beating faster as she approached, saw the doodlings in the condensation on the window. She signalled to the officer before addressing the man in the seat.

  ‘Excuse me! Yes, you.’

  The face turned up to her bore angry red pimples and a terrified expression.

  ‘I . . . I didn’t mean to. I left my travel card at home. Won’t happen again.’

  Beate closed her eyes and swore under her breath. Nodded to the officer to keep following her. When they had reached the end of the carriage without any success, she called to the driver to open the back door and clambered out.

  ‘Well?’ Katrine said.


  ‘Gone. Question the passengers to see if they saw him. In an hour they’ll have forgotten, if they haven’t already. As a reminder, he’s a man in his forties, about one eighty tall with blue eyes. But the eyes are a bit slanted now. He’s got short brown hair, high, pronounced cheekbones and thin lips. And no one touch the window where he was writing. Take fingerprints and photos. Bjørn?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Take all the stops between here and Frogner Park, talk to people working in nearby shops, ask if they know anyone of this description. When people catch trams early in the morning it’s often part of a routine. They’re going to work, school, the gym, a regular coffee bar.’

  ‘We’ve got a few more bites at the cherry then,’ Katrine said.

  ‘Yes, but be careful, Bjørn. Make sure the people you talk to aren’t likely to warn him. Katrine, see if we can borrow some officers to take the tram early in the morning. Get a couple of men on the trams from here to Frogner Park for the rest of the day, in case Valentin should return the same way. OK?’

  While Katrine and Bjørn joined the police officers and allocated tasks, Beate looked up at the window of the tram. The lines he had drawn in the condensation had run. There was a recurrent pattern, a bit like frilly lace. A vertical line followed by a circle. After one row there was another, forming a square matrix.

  It wasn’t necessarily important.

  But as Harry used to say: ‘It might not be important or relevant, but everything means something. And we start searching where there is light, where we can see something.’

  Beate took out her mobile and photographed the window. And remembered something.

  ‘Katrine! Come here!’

  Katrine heard her and left the briefing to Bjørn.

  ‘How did it go last night?’

  ‘Fine,’ Katrine said. ‘I took the chewing gum for testing this morning. Registered it with the file number of a shelved rape case. They’re prioritising the police murders, but they promise to look at it asap.’

  Beate nodded pensively. Ran a hand across her face. ‘How soon is asap? We can’t let what might be the murderer’s DNA end up last in the queue just to get the bouquets for ourselves.’

  Katrine put a hand on her hip and eyed Bjørn, who was gesticulating to the officers. ‘I know one of the women up there,’ she lied. ‘I’ll ring her and do some pushing.’

  Beate looked at her. Hesitated. Nodded.

  ‘And you’re sure you didn’t just want it to be Valentin Gjertsen?’ Ståle Aune said. He was standing by the window and staring down at the busy street beneath the office. At the people hurrying hither and thither. At the people who could be Valentin Gjertsen. ‘Optical illusions are common among those suffering from a lack of sleep. How much sleep have you had in the last forty-eight hours?’

  ‘I’ll count them up,’ Beate Lønn answered, in a way that made it clear to Ståle that she didn’t need to. ‘I’m ringing because he drew something on the window inside the tram. Did you get my text?’

  ‘Yes,’ Aune said. He had just started a therapy session when Beate’s text shone up at him from his open desk drawer.

  See pic. Urgent. I’ll ring.

  And he had felt an almost perverse sense of pleasure when he had looked straight into Paul Stavnes’s astonished face, said there was a call he absolutely had to take and saw the subtext had been received: it’s much more important than your bloody whingeing.

  ‘You told me once that you psychologists can analyse the scribbles of sociopaths and deduce something about their subconscious.’

  ‘Well, what I said was probably that Granada University has developed a method for studying psychopathological personality disorders through art. But then individuals are told what they have to draw. And this looks more like writing than drawing,’ Ståle said.

  ‘Does it?’

  ‘At least I can see i’s and o’s. That’s much more interesting than a drawing.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Early in the morning on a tram, still half asleep, your writing is governed by your subconscious. And the thing about the subconscious is that it likes codes and rebuses. Sometimes they’re incomprehensible, at others they’re astonishingly simple, downright banal even. I had a patient once who walked around terrified of being raped. She had a recurrent dream about being woken up by the gun barrel of a tank coming through her bedroom window and stopping at the foot of her bed. And hanging from the end of the barrel was a note, on which was written P plus N plus 15. It may seem odd that she herself was unable to crack the childishly simple code, but the brain often camouflages its real thoughts. For reasons of comfort, guilt, terror . . .’

  ‘What do the i’s and o’s mean?’

  ‘It might mean trams bore him. Don’t overestimate my abilities, Beate. I entered the field of psychology when it was seen as a good option for those too stupid to be doctors or engineers. Let me ruminate and get back to you. I have a patient with me now.’

  ‘OK.’

  Aune rang off and looked down at the street again. There was a tattoo parlour on the other side, a hundred metres down Bogstadveien. The number 11 tram went down Bogstadveien, and Valentin had had a tattoo. A tattoo that would identify him. Unless he’d had it removed. Or modified at a tattoo parlour. An image could be changed radically by adding a couple of simple lines. Like tacking a semicircle onto a vertical line to make a D. Or placing a diagonal line across an O to make an Ø. Aune breathed on the window.

  Behind him he heard the sound of an irritated cough.

  He drew a vertical line and a circle in the condensation the way he had seen it on the picture message.

  ‘I refuse to pay the full fee if you—’

  ‘Do you know what, Paul?’ Aune said, adding a semicircle and a diagonal line. He read it. DØ, meaning die. Rubbed it out. ‘You can have this session free.’

  22

  RICO HERREM KNEW he was going to die. He had always known. What was new was that he knew he was going to die within the next thirty-six hours.

  ‘Anthrax,’ the Thai doctor repeated. With a proper ‘r’ and an American accent. The slit-eye must have studied medicine there. And qualified for a job at this private clinic which probably had only ex-pats and tourists as patients.

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  Rico breathed into the oxygen mask; even that was difficult. Thirty-six hours. He had said thirty-six hours. Had asked if Rico had wanted them to contact any next of kin. They might be able to make it to Thailand if they caught a plane right away. Or a priest. Was he Catholic?

  The doctor must have seen from Rico’s bewildered expression that further explanation was necessary.

  ‘Anthrax is a disease caused by bacteria. It’s in your lungs. You probably inhaled it a few days ago.’

  Rico still didn’t understand.

  ‘If you’d digested it or got it on your skin, we might have been able to save you. But in the lungs . . .’

  Bacteria? Was he going to die of bacteria? That he’d breathed in? Where could that have been?

  The thought was repeated like an echo by the doctor.

  ‘Any idea where? The police will want to know to prevent other people from being exposed to the bacteria.’

  Rico Herrem closed his eyes.

  ‘Mr Herrem, please try to think back. You might be able to save other people . . .’

  Other people. But not himself. Thirty-six hours.

  ‘Mr Herrem?’

  Rico wanted to nod to show he’d heard, but he couldn’t. A door opened. Several pairs of shoes click-clacked in. A woman’s breathless voice, low.

  ‘Kari Farstad, Norwegian Embassy. We came as soon as we could. Is he . . .?’

  ‘His blood’s stopped circulating. He’s going into shock now.’

  Where? In the food he’d eaten when the taxi stopped at the lousy roadside restaurant between Bangkok and Pattaya? From the stinking hole in the ground they called a toilet? Or at the hotel? Wasn’t that how bacteria were often spread, throug
h the air conditioning? But the doctor had said the initial symptoms were the same as with a cold, and he’d had those on the flight. But if these bacteria had been in the air on the plane, the other passengers would have been ill too. He heard the woman’s voice, lower and in Norwegian this time:

  ‘Anthrax. My God, I thought that only existed as a biological weapon.’

  ‘Not at all.’ Man’s voice. ‘I googled it on the way here. Bacillus anthracis. Can lie dormant for years. It’s a tough little bugger. Spreads by forming spores. Same spores as in the powder posted to the Americans, do you remember? Ten or so years ago.’

  ‘Do you think someone sent him a letter containing anthrax?’

  ‘He may have caught it anywhere, but the most common scenario is close contact with livestock. We’ll probably never find out.’

  But Rico knew. Knew with a sudden clarity. He put a hand to his oxygen mask.

  ‘Did you track down his next of kin?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘They said he could rot.’

  ‘Right. Paedophile?’

  ‘No. But the list was long enough. Hey, he’s moving.’

  Rico had managed to remove the mask and was trying to speak. But all that came out was a hoarse whisper. He tried again. Saw that the woman had blonde curls and was staring down at him with a mixture of concern and disgust.

  ‘Doctor, is it . . .?’

  ‘No, it isn’t contagious between humans.’

  Not contagious, so it was just him.

  Her face came closer. And even dying – or perhaps precisely because he was – Rico Herrem greedily inhaled her perfume. Inhaled it the way he had inhaled that day in Fiskebutikken. From the woollen glove, smelling of wet wool and tasting of chalk. Powder. The man with a scarf in front of his nose and mouth. Not to hide his face. Tiny spores flying through the air. Might have been able to save you. But in the lungs . . .’

  He strained to speak, and with great difficulty pronounced the words. Three words. It flashed through his mind that they were his last. Then – like the curtain falling after a pathetic, tormented performance lasting forty-two years – a great darkness descended over Rico Herrem.