by Jo Nesbo
Rikard had not tried to kiss her when she got out of the car. He had just looked at her with puppy eyes and said he was going to be the new chief administrator. There had been signals. Positive signals. It would be him. There had been a strange stiffness in his expression when he had asked her if she thought so, too.
She had said he would make a good chief administrator and went to open the door handle while waiting for his touch. But it hadn't come. And then she was out.
Martine sighed, picked up the mobile phone and dialled the number she had been given.
'Speak.' Harry Hole's voice sounded quite different on the phone. Or perhaps it was because he was at home; maybe this was his home voice.
'It's Martine,' she said.
'Hi.' It was impossible to hear if he was pleased or not.
'You asked me to have a think,' she said. 'About whether I could remember anyone ringing or asking about the duty roster. About Jon's shift.'
'Yes?'
'I've had a think.'
'And?'
'No one.'
Long pause.
'Did you ring to tell me that?' His voice was warm and rough. As though he had been asleep.
'Yes. Shouldn't I have done?'
'Yes, yes, of course. Thank you very much for your help.'
'Not at all.'
She closed her eyes and waited until she heard his voice again.
'Did you… get home alright?'
'Mm. There's a power cut here.'
'Here too,' he said. 'It'll be back soon.'
'What if it isn't?'
'What do you mean?'
'Will we be cast into chaos?'
'Do you think about that sort of thing a lot?'
'From time to time. I think civilisation's infrastructure is much more fragile than we like to believe. What do you think?'
He paused for a long time before answering. 'Well, I think all the systems we rely on can short-circuit and hurl us into deepest night, where laws and regulations no longer protect us, where the cold and beasts of prey rule, and everyone has to try to save their own skin.'
'That,' she said, when no more was forthcoming, 'was not very suitable for helping little girls get off to sleep. I think you're a real dystopian, Harry.'
'Of course. I'm a policeman. Goodnight.'
He had put down the receiver before she had a chance to formulate an answer.
Harry crept back under the duvet and gazed at the wall.
The temperature had plummeted in his flat.
Harry thought about the sky outside. About Andalsnes. About his grandfather. And his mother. The funeral. And the prayer she had whispered at night in her gentle, gentle, voice. 'A mighty fortress is our God.' But in the weightless moment before sleeping he thought of Martine and her voice which was still in his head.
The TV in the sitting room came to life with a groan and began to hiss. The light bulb in the corridor came back on and cast light through the open bedroom door and onto Harry's face. But by then he was already asleep.
Twenty minutes later Harry's telephone rang. He thrust open his eyes and swore. Shuffled, shivering, into the hallway and lifted the receiver.
'Speak. Softly.'
'Harry?'
'Just about. What's up, Halvorsen?'
'Something's happened.'
'Something, or a lot?'
'A lot.'
'Fuck.'
15
Early Hours, Thursday, 18 December. The Raid.
Sail stood shivering on the path beside the Akerselva. To hell with the Albanian bastard! Despite the cold, the river was icefree and black and reinforced the darkness under the plain iron bridge. Sail was sixteen years old and had come from Somalia with his mother when he was twelve. He had started selling hash when he was fourteen, and heroin last spring. Now Hux had let him down again, and he couldn't risk standing here all night with his goods and no trade. Ten fixes. If he had been eighteen he could always have gone down to Plata and sold them there. But the cops hauled in underage dealers at Plata. Their territory was here, along the river. Most of them were young boys from Somalia selling to customers who were either underage, too, or had other reasons not to be seen at Plata. Sod Hux, he needed the cash desperately!
A man came walking down the footpath. It wasn't Hux, that was for sure; he was still limping after the B gang had beaten him up for selling diluted amphetamines. As if there were anything else. And he didn't look like an undercover man, either. Or a junkie, even though he was wearing the type of blue coat he had seen many junkies wear. Sail looked around. They were alone.
When the man was close enough Sail stepped out of the shadow of the bridge. 'Wanna fix?'
The man gave a brief smile, shook his head and made to walk on. However, Sail had positioned himself in the middle of the path. He was big for his age. For any age. And his knife was, too. A Rambo: First Blood with a hollow handle containing a compass and fishing line. It cost around a thousand kroner at the Army Shop but he had got it for three hundred from a pal.
'Do you want to buy or just pay up?' Sail asked, holding the knife so that the grooved blade reflected the pale light from the street lamp.
'Excuse me?'
Foreignerspeak. Not Sail's strongest suit.
'Money.' Sail heard his voice rising. He always got so angry when he robbed people; he didn't know why. 'Now.'
The foreigner nodded and held up his left hand in defence while calmly moving his right inside his jacket. Then he withdrew his hand with lightning speed. Sail did not have time to react; he whispered a 'shit' as he realised he was staring down the muzzle of a gun. He wanted to run, but the black metal eye seemed to have frozen his feet to the ground.
'I…' he began.
'Run,' said the man. 'Now.'
And Sail ran. Ran with the cold, damp air from the river burning in his lungs and the lights from the Plaza Hotel and the Post House jumping up and down on his retina, ran until the river flowed out into the fjord and he could run no further, and he screamed at the fences around the container terminal that one day he would kill them all.
A quarter of an hour had passed since Harry had been awoken by Halvorsen's call. The police car pulled up by the kerb of Sofies gate and Harry slid onto the back seat beside his colleague. He mumbled an 'Evening' to the uniformed policemen at the front.
The driver, a hefty fellow with a closed police face, drove off quietly.
'Put your foot down,' said the pale, young, pimply policeman in the passenger seat.
'How many are there of us?' Harry peered at his watch.
'Two cars plus this one,' Halvorsen said.
'So six plus us two. I don't want any blue lights. We'll try and do this in a calm manner. You, me, a uniform and a gun will perform the arrest. The other five will cover potential escape routes. Are you carrying a weapon?'
Halvorsen slapped his chest pocket.
'That's good because I'm not,' Harry said.
'Haven't you got the firearms licence sorted yet?'
Harry leaned forward between the front seats.
'Which of you would most like to join us in arresting a professional hit man?'
'Me!' was the instant response from the young man in the passenger seat.
'Then it's you,' Harry said to the driver, nodding slowly to the mirror.
Six minutes later they had parked at the bottom of Heimdalsgata in Gronland and were studying the front door where Harry had been standing earlier in the evening.
'So our man in Telenor was sure?' Harry asked.
'Yep,' Halvorsen said. 'Torkildsen says an internal number in the Hostel tried to call Hotel International about fifty minutes ago.'
'Can't be a coincidence,' Harry said, opening the car door. 'This is Salvation Army territory. I'll have a recce. Be back in a minute.'
When Harry returned the driver was sitting with a machine gun in his lap, an MP5, which recent regulations allowed patrol cars to carry locked in the boot.
'You haven't got an
ything more discreet?' Harry asked.
The man shook his head. Harry turned to Halvorsen. 'And you?'
'Just a sweet little Smith amp; Wesson. 38.'
'You can borrow mine,' said the young policeman in the passenger seat with gusto. 'Jericho 941. Real power. Same as the police in Israel use to blow off the heads of the Arab scum.'
'Jericho?' Harry echoed. Halvorsen could see his eyes had narrowed. 'I'm not going to ask where you got hold of that gun. But I think I should inform you that in all probability it comes from a gang of gun smugglers. Led by your former colleague Tom Waaler.'
The policeman in the passenger seat turned round. His blue eyes vied with his fiery pimples for brightness. 'I remember Tom Waaler. And do you know what, Inspector? Most of us think he was a good guy.'
Harry swallowed and looked out of the window.
'Most of you are wrong,' Halvorsen said.
'Give me the radio,' Harry said.
He passed on quick, efficient instructions to the other drivers. Said where he wanted each car without mentioning street names or buildings that could be identified by the regular radio audience: crime correspondents, crooks and nosy parkers who picked up the frequency and doubtless already knew that something was brewing.
'Let's get going,' Harry decided, turning to the passenger seat. 'You stay here and stay in contact with the Ops Room. Call us on your colleague's walkie-talkie if there is anything. OK?'
The young man shrugged.
Only after Harry had rung three times at the front door of the Hostel did a young boy come shuffling out. He opened the door a little and peered at them through sleepy eyes.
'Police,' Harry said, rummaging in his pocket. 'Shit. Looks like I've left my ID at home. Show him yours, Halvorsen.'
'You can't come in here,' the boy said. 'You know that.'
'This is murder, not drugs.'
'Eh?'
The boy was looking with big eyes over Harry's shoulder at the policeman who had raised his MP5. Then he opened the door and stepped back without even noticing Halvorsen's ID.
'Have you got a Christo Stankic here?' Harry asked.
The boy shook his head.
'A foreigner with a camel-hair coat perhaps?' Halvorsen asked as Harry slipped behind the reception desk and opened the guest register.
'The only foreigner we have here is one they brought from the soup bus,' the boy stuttered. 'But he didn't have a camel-hair coat. Just a suit jacket. Rikard Nilsen gave him a winter jacket from the storehouse.'
'Did he ring from here?' Harry called from behind the desk.
'He used the phone in the office behind you.'
'Time?'
'Approx half past eleven.'
'Matches the call to Zagreb,' Halvorsen murmured.
'Is he in?' Harry asked.
'Don't know. He took the key with him and I've been asleep.'
'Have you got a master key?'
The boy nodded, unhooked a key from the bunch he had attached to his belt and put it in Harry's outstretched hand.
'Room number?'
'Twenty-six. Up the stairs. At the end of the corridor.'
Harry had already set off. The uniformed policeman followed close behind with both hands on the machine gun.
'Stay in your room until this is over,' Halvorsen said to the boy as he pulled out his Smith amp; Wesson revolver, winked and patted him on the shoulder.
He unlocked the door and noted that reception was unmanned. Natural enough. As natural as a police car occupied by a policeman parked further up the street. After all, he had just discovered first-hand that this was a criminal area.
He trudged up the stairs, and as he rounded the corner of the corridor he heard a crackle he recognised from the bunkers in Vukovar – a walkie-talkie.
He glanced up. At the end of the corridor, by the door to his room, stood two men in plain clothes and one uniformed policeman holding a machine gun. Straight away he recognised one of the plain-clothes men with his hand on the door handle. The uniformed policeman raised the walkie-talkie and spoke quietly into it.
The other two were facing him. It was too late to retreat.
He nodded to them, stopped in front of room 22 and shook his head as if to show his despair at the increasing criminality in the neighbourhood while pretending to rummage through his pockets for his room key. From the corner of his eye he watched the policeman from the reception queue at Scandia Hotel push open the door to the room without a sound, closely followed by the other two.
As soon as they were out of sight he went back down the way he had come. Took the stairs in two strides. He had noted all the exits – as he always did – when he arrived in the white bus earlier in the evening. For an instant he wondered about the back door leading into the garden, but it was too obvious. Unless he was very much mistaken, they would have placed a policeman there. His best chance was the main entrance. He walked out and turned left, straight towards the police car. On that route there was only one of them. If he managed to slip past he could go down to the river and the darkness.
'Fuck, fuck, fuck!' Harry shouted, on finding the room empty.
'Perhaps he's gone out for a walk,' Halvorsen said.
They both turned to the driver. He hadn't said anything, but the walkie-talkie on his chest was speaking. 'It's the same guy I saw going in a moment ago. Now he's coming out again. He's coming towards me.'
Harry breathed in the air. There was a particular perfumed smell in the room which he vaguely recognised.
'That's him,' Harry said. 'He tricked us.'
'That's him,' the driver said into the microphone, running after Harry who was already out of the door.
'Fantastic. I've got him,' the radio crackled. 'Out.'
'No!' Harry shouted as they stormed down the corridor. 'Don't try to stop him. Wait for us!'
The driver repeated the order into the mike, but received a wordless hiss in response.
He saw the door of the police car open and a young uniformed officer step out under the street light with a gun.
'Halt!' shouted the man, standing with legs apart and the gun pointed at him. Inexperienced, he thought. There was almost fifty metres of darkened street between them, and unlike the young mugger under the bridge this policeman was not canny enough to wait until the victim's escape routes were cut off. For the second time that night he took out his Llama Minimax. And instead of making off he began to run straight towards the policeman.
'Halt!' repeated the police officer.
The distance had shrunk to thirty metres. Twenty metres.
He raised his gun and shot.
People tend to overestimate the chances of hitting another person at distances over ten metres. On the other hand, they often underestimate the psychological effect of the sound, of the explosion combined with the pinging of lead against something close by. When the bullet hit the car windscreen, which went white then collapsed, the same thing happened to the policeman. He went white and sank to his knees as his fingers tried to cling to the rather too heavy Jericho 941.
Harry and Halvorsen arrived in Heimdalsgata at the same time.
'There,' Halvorsen said.
The young policeman was still on his knees beside the car with his gun pointing to the sky. But further up the street they caught sight of the back of the blue coat they had seen in the corridor.
'He's running towards Eika,' Halvorsen said.
Harry turned to the driver who had joined them.
'Give me the MP5.'
The officer passed Harry the weapon. 'It isn't…'
But Harry had already started running. He heard Halvorsen behind him, but the rubber soles of his Doc Martens gave him a better purchase on the blue ice. The man in front of him had a long lead; he had already rounded the corner to Vahls gate, which skirted the park. Harry held the machine gun in one hand and concentrated on breathing while trying to run with a light efficiency of movement. He slowed down and got the gun into a shooting position before arriv
ing at the corner. Tried not to think too much as he stuck out his head and looked to the right.
There was no one waiting for him.
No one to be seen in the street, either.
But a man like Stankic would hardly have been stupid enough to run into any of the backyards, which were rat traps with their locked gates. Harry peered into the park where the large white surface of snow reflected the lights of the surrounding buildings. Wasn't something moving over there? Sixty, seventy metres away, a figure making slow headway through the snow. Blue jacket. Harry sprinted across the road, took off and sailed over the snowdrift and plunged into it, sinking up to his waist in fresh snow.
'Fuck!'
He had dropped the machine gun. The figure ahead of him turned, then struggled forward. Harry's hand searched for the gun as he watched Stankic feverishly fighting his way through the loose snow, which wouldn't allow him to gain a foothold. His fingers met something hard. There. Harry pulled out the weapon and heaved himself up. Got one leg out, stretched it as far as he could, rolled over, pulled the other leg, stretched it out. After thirty metres the lactic acid was burning in his thigh muscles, but the distance had shrunk. The other man was almost on the footpath and out of the mass of snow. Harry gritted his teeth and managed to speed up. He put the distance at fifteen metres. Close enough. Harry dropped onto his stomach in the snow and set up the weapon. Blew the snow off the sights, released the safety catch, selected the lever for single-fire mode and waited until the man had reached the cone of light from the street lamp by the footpath.
'Police!' Harry didn't appreciate the comical side of the word until he had shouted it: 'Freeze!'
The man ahead continued to plough his way through. Harry squeezed the trigger.
'Halt or I'll shoot!'
The man was only five metres from the path now.
'I'm aiming at your head,' Harry shouted. 'And I won't miss.'
Stankic dived forward, grabbed the lamp post with both hands and pulled himself out of the snow. Harry had the blue jacket in his sights. Held his breath and did what he had been taught, to overrule the impulse in the cerebellum which, with the logic of evolution, says you should not kill anyone of your kind; he concentrated on technique, on not pushing or jerking the trigger. Harry felt the spring mechanism give and heard a metallic click, but there was no recoil against his shoulder. A malfunction? Harry fired again. Another click.