by Jo Nesbo
‘Check the FBI’s statistics for witnesses who have died in the period between their initial summons and the start of the trial.’
‘What’s that got to do with anything?’
‘Just give me the figures, OK?’
‘Not OK!’
‘Well, regard it as an order then, Katrine Bratt.’
‘OK, but . . . hey, just a minute! Who’s the boss here?’
‘If you have to ask, I doubt it’s you.’
Harry heard more Bergensian swearing before he broke the connection.
Mikael Bellman was sitting on the sofa with the TV on. The news had finished, the sport was starting, so Mikael’s gaze wandered from the TV to the window. To the town lying in the black cauldron far beneath them. The item about the City Hall chairman had lasted ten seconds. He had said that reshuffles at City Hall were standard practice, and that this time it was because of an unusually large burden on this particular post, so it was reasonable to pass the baton on to someone else. Isabelle Skøyen would return to her post as secretary to the committee for Social Affairs, which would allow the council to benefit from her skills there. Skøyen herself was unavailable for comment, it was said.
It glittered like a jewel, his town.
He heard the door to one of the children’s rooms close gently and immediately afterwards she snuggled up to him on the sofa.
‘Are they sleeping?’
‘Like logs,’ she said, and he felt her breath on his neck. ‘Feel like watching TV?’ She bit his earlobe. ‘Or . . .?’
He smiled, but didn’t budge. Enjoying the moment, feeling how perfect it was. Being here right now. At the top of the pile. The alpha male with women at his feet. One hanging on his arm. The other neutralised and rendered innocuous. The same was true of the men. Asayev was dead, Truls reinstated as his henchman, the former Police Chief an accomplice in their shared wrongdoing in such a way that he would obey if Mikael needed him again. And Mikael knew that now he had the council’s confidence even if it took time to find the cop killer.
It was a long time since he had felt so good, so relaxed. He felt her hands on him. Knew what they would do before she knew herself. She could turn him on. Though not set him alight the way other people could. Like her, the one he had cut down to size. Like him, the one who had died in Hausmanns gate. But she could arouse him enough to know he would be fucking her soon. That was marriage. And it was good. It was more than enough, and there were more important things in life.
He pulled her to him and put his hand up her green sweater. Bare skin, like placing your hand on a stove ring on low heat. She sighed softly. Leaned over to him. He didn’t actually like using his tongue when kissing her. Maybe he had once, but not any more. He had never told her that. Why should he as long as it was something she wanted and he hated? Marriage. Nevertheless it felt like a tiny relief when the cordless phone began to warble on the little table by the sofa.
He took it. ‘Yes?’
‘Hi, Mikael.’
The voice said his Christian name in such an intimate way that at first he was convinced he knew it, he just needed a couple of seconds to place the person in question.
‘Hi,’ he answered accordingly and got off the sofa. Walked towards the terrace. Away from the sound of the TV. Away from Ulla. It was an automatic movement, perfected over the years. Half out of consideration for her. Half out of consideration for his secrets.
The voice at the other end chuckled. ‘You don’t know me, Mikael. Relax.’
‘Thank you. I am relaxed,’ Mikael said. ‘I’m at home. And for that reason it would be nice if you could get to the point.’
‘I’m a nurse at the Rikshospital.’
That was a thought that hadn’t struck Mikael before, at least not that he could remember. However, it was as if he knew what was coming off by heart. He opened the door to the terrace and stepped onto the cold flagstones without taking his phone from his ear.
‘I was Rudolf Asayev’s nurse. You remember him, Mikael. Yes, of course you do. You and he did business together. He opened his heart to me when he came out of the coma. About what you two were doing.’
It had clouded over, the temperature had plummeted and the flagstones were so cold that they were hurting his feet through his socks. Nevertheless, Mikael Bellman’s sweat glands were working flat out.
‘Talking about business,’ the voice said. ‘Perhaps we have something to discuss as well.’
‘What do you want?’
‘I want some of your money to stay shtum, let me put it like that.’
It had to be him, the nurse from Enebakk. The one Isabelle had hired to get rid of Asayev. She had claimed he would gladly take his payment in sex, but obviously that hadn’t been enough.
‘How much?’ Bellman asked, attempting to be businesslike, but noticed he failed to sound as cold-blooded as he would have liked.
‘Not much. I’m a man of simple tastes. Ten thousand.’
‘Too little.’
‘Too little?’
‘It sounds like a first instalment.’
‘We could say a hundred thousand.’
‘So why don’t you?’
‘Because I need money tonight, now, the banks are closed and you can’t get more than ten thousand from an ATM.’
Desperate. That was good news. Or was it? Mikael walked to the edge of the terrace, looked down over his town and tried to concentrate. This was one of those situations where he was usually at his best, where everything was at stake and one false move could prove fatal.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Well, you can call me Dan. As in Danuvius.’
‘Great, Dan. You realise, do you, that although I’m negotiating with you, it doesn’t mean I admit anything? I could be trying to entice you into a trap and then arrest you for blackmail.’
‘The only reason you’re saying that is that you’re scared I’m a journalist who’s heard a rumour and is trying to trick you into giving yourself away.’
Damn.
‘Where?’
‘I’m at work, so you’ll have to come here. But somewhere discreet. Meet me in the locked ward. There’s no one there now. In three-quarters of an hour in Asayev’s room.’
Three-quarters of an hour. He was in a rush. It could of course be a precaution. He didn’t want to give Mikael time to set a trap. But Mikael believed in simple explanations. Like being faced with a junkie anaesthetic nurse who had suddenly run out of supplies. And, if so, that would make things easier. He might even be able to keep that particular cat in the bag for good.
‘Fine,’ Mikael said, and rang off. Breathed in the strange, almost suffocating smell coming from the terrace. Then he went into the living room and shut the door behind him.
‘I have to go out,’ he said.
‘Now?’ Ulla said, staring at him with the wounded expression that would normally annoy him enough to snap at her.
‘Now.’ He thought of the gun he had locked in the boot of his car. A Glock 22, a present from an American colleague. Unused. Unregistered.
‘When will you be back?’
‘I don’t know. Don’t wait up.’
He walked towards the hall, feeling her eyes on his back. He didn’t stop. Not until he reached the doorway.
‘No, I’m not meeting her. OK?’
Ulla didn’t answer. Just turned to the TV and pretended to be interested in the weather report.
Katrine swore, dripping with sweat in the Boiler Room’s clammy heat, but she kept typing.
Where the hell was it hiding, the FBI’s statistic about dead witnesses? And what the hell did Harry want with it?
She looked at her watch. Sighed and rang his number.
He didn’t pick up. Of course not.
She left a message saying she needed more time. She was deep in the FBI’s website, but this statistic had to be either very bloody secret or he’d misunderstood. Chucked the phone onto the desk. She felt like calling Leif Rødbekk. No, not him. Som
e other idiot who could be bothered to fuck her tonight. The first person to pop into her head produced a frown. Where did he come from? Sweet, but . . . but what? Had she been unconsciously nurturing this thought for a while?
She dismissed the notion and concentrated on the screen again.
Perhaps it wasn’t the FBI, perhaps it was the CIA?
She tried new search terms. Central Intelligence Agency, witness, trial and death. Return. The computer whirred. The first hits came in.
The door behind her opened, and she felt the draught from the culvert outside.
‘Bjørn?’ she said, without looking up from the screen.
Harry parked his car outside Jakob Church in Hausmanns gate and walked up to number 92.
He stopped outside and looked up at the facade.
There was a dim light on the second floor, and he noticed there were bars on the windows now. The new owner was probably sick of the burglaries via the rear fire escape.
Harry had imagined he would feel more. After all, this was where Gusto had been killed. Where he had almost had to pay with his own life.
He felt the door. It was just like before. He opened up, went straight in. At the bottom of the stairs he took out the Odessa, released the safety catch, peered up the steps and listened as he breathed in the smell of urine- and vomit-marinated woodwork. Total silence.
He started up the stairs. Moving as noiselessly as he could over wet newspaper, milk cartons and used syringes. On the second floor he stopped by the door. This was new as well. A metal door. Multiple locks. Only extremely motivated burglars would bother with this.
Harry saw no reason to knock. No reason to surrender any possible element of surprise. So when he pressed the handle, felt the door react with taut springs, but found it unlocked, he gripped the Odessa with both hands and kicked the heavy door with his right foot.
He dashed inside and to the left, so as not to stand like a silhouette in the doorway. The springs slammed the door shut behind him.
Then all was still, there was only a low ticking sound.
Harry blinked in astonishment.
Apart from a small portable TV on standby, with white digits showing the wrong time, nothing had changed. It was the same cluttered junkie pit with mattresses and rubbish all over the floor. And one item of rubbish was sitting on a chair staring at him.
It was Truls Berntsen.
At least he thought it was Truls Berntsen.
Had been Truls Berntsen.
45
THE CHAIR HAD been placed in the centre of the room, beneath the only light, a torn ricepaper lampshade hanging from the ceiling.
Harry thought that the light, the chair and the TV with the stuttering ticking sound of a dying electrical appliance had to be from the seventies, but he wasn’t sure.
The same was true of the body on the chair.
Because it wasn’t easy to say if it was Truls Berntsen, born sometime in the seventies, dead this year, who was taped to the chair. The man had no face. What had once been there was a mush of relatively fresh red blood, black dried blood and white bone fragments. This mush would have run if it hadn’t been held in place by a transparent membrane of plastic wrapped tightly round the head. One of the bones stuck through the plastic. Cling film, Harry thought. Freshly packed mincemeat the way you see it in shops.
Harry forced himself to look away and tried holding his breath to hear better as he hugged the wall. With his gun half raised, he scanned the room from left to right.
Stared at the corner leading to the kitchen, saw the side of the old fridge and the work surface, but someone could have been there in the semi-darkness.
Not a sound. Not a movement.
Harry waited. Reasoned. If this was a trap someone had set for him, he should already be dead.
He drew a deep breath. He had the advantage of having been here before, so he knew there was nowhere else to hide other than in the kitchen and the toilet. The disadvantage was that he would have to turn his back on one to check the other.
He took a decision, strode towards the kitchen, poked his head round the corner, pulled it back fast and waited for his brain to process the information it had received. Stove, piles of pizza boxes and the fridge. No one there.
He went towards the toilet. He stood in the doorway and pressed the light switch. Counted to seven. Thrust his head out. Back in. Empty.
Slid down to the floor with his back to the wall. Only now feeling how hard his heart had been pounding against his ribs.
He sat like that for some seconds. Recovering.
Then he walked over to the body on the chair. Crouched down and examined the red mass behind the plastic film. No face, but a prominent forehead, underbite and the cheap haircut left Harry in no doubt: it was Truls Berntsen.
Harry’s brain had already started processing the fact that he had been wrong. Truls Berntsen was not the cop killer.
The next thought came hard on its heels. It was definitely not alone.
Could that be what he was witnessing here: the murder of an accessory, a murderer covering his tracks? Could Truls ‘Beavis’ Berntsen have been working with someone as sick as himself, who committed this atrocity? Could Valentin have been deliberately sitting in front of the CCTV at Ullevål Stadium while Berntsen performed the murder in Maridalen? And, if so, how had they divvied the murders between them? Which murders did Berntsen have alibis for?
Harry straightened up and cast his eyes around. And why had he been summoned here? They would have found the body soon enough. And there were several things that didn’t tally. Truls Berntsen had never been involved in the investigation into Gusto Hanssen’s murder. It had been a small investigative unit consisting of Beate and a couple of other forensics officers who hadn’t had much to do because Oleg had been arrested as the presumed perpetrator minutes after they’d arrived and the evidence had supported the presumption. The only . . .
In the silence Harry could still hear the low ticking. Regular, unchanging, like clockwork. He completed his thought.
The only other person bothered enough to investigate this trivial, sordid drug murder was here in the room. Himself.
He had been – like the other policemen – summoned to die at the crime scene for the unsolved murder.
The next second he was by the door pressing down the handle. And it was as he feared: it gave easily, no resistance, without opening. It was like a hotel-room door. Except that he didn’t have a key card.
Harry scanned the room again.
The thick windows with the steel bars on the inside. The iron door that had slammed shut by itself. He had walked straight into the trap like the crazed idiot he had always been, caught up in the thrill of the chase.
The ticking hadn’t got louder; it just seemed like it.
Harry stared at the portable TV. At the seconds ticking away. It wasn’t the wrong time. It wasn’t telling the time; clocks don’t go backwards.
It had been 00.06.10 when he came in, now it was 00.03.51.
It was a countdown.
Harry walked over, grabbed the TV and tried to lift it. In vain. It must have been screwed to the floor. He aimed a hard kick at the top of the TV, and the plastic casing cracked with a bang. He looked inside. Metal pipes, glass tubes, leads. Harry was definitely no expert, but he had seen the innards of enough TVs to know there was too much in this one. And enough pictures of improvised explosives to recognise a pipe bomb.
He assessed the leads and dismissed the idea at once. One of the bomb blokes in Delta had explained to him that cutting the blue or red wires and being home and dry was the good old days; now it was digital hell, with Bluetooth signals, codes and safeguards that sent the counter to zero if you fiddled with anything.
Harry took a run-up and threw himself against the door. The door frame may have had frailties of its own.
It didn’t.
Nor the bars on the windows.
His shoulders and ribs ached as he got to his feet again. He screame
d at the window.
No sounds came in, no sounds went out.
Harry took out his mobile phone. Ops Room. Delta. They could use explosives. He looked at the clock on the TV. 00.03.04. They would hardly have time to transmit the address. 00.02.59. He stared at the contact list. R.
Rakel.
Ring her. Say farewell. To her and Oleg. Tell them he loved them. That they had to go on living. Living better than he had done. Be with them for the last two minutes. So as not to die alone. Have company, share a last traumatic experience with them, let them have a taste of death, give them a final nightmare to accompany them on their way.
‘Fuck, fuck, fuck!’
Harry slipped the phone back in his pocket. Looked around. The doors had been removed. So that there was nowhere to hide.
00.02.40.
Harry strode into the kitchen, which constituted the short part of the L-shaped room. It wasn’t long enough. A pipe bomb would smash everything in here as well.
He eyed the fridge. Opened it. A milk carton, two bottles of beer and a packet of liver paste. For a brief second he weighed up the alternatives, beer or panic, before plumping for panic and pulling out the shelves, sheets of glass and plastic boxes. They clattered to the ground behind him. He curled up and forced himself inside. Groaned. He couldn’t bend his neck enough to get his head inside. Tried again. Cursing his long limbs as he organised them in the most ergonomic way.
Bloody impossible!
He looked at the clock on the TV. 00.02.06.
Harry shoved his head in, pulled up his knees, but now his back wasn’t flexible enough. Shit! He laughed out loud. The offer of free yoga he had rejected when he was in Hong Kong, was that going to be his downfall?
Houdini. He remembered something about breathing in and out and relaxing.
He breathed out, tried to clear his mind, concentrate on relaxing. Ignore the seconds. Just feel how his muscles and joints were becoming more flexible, more supple. Feel how he was gradually compressing himself.
Possible.
Hallelujah, it really was possible! He was inside the fridge. A fridge with enough metal and insulation to save him. Perhaps. If it wasn’t the pipe bomb from hell.