by Jo Nesbo
In the ensuing silence Harry could hear a car horn outside, shouting, then laughter and swearing. The traffic was at a standstill.
‘It’s not exactly complicated,’ Folkestad said, tentatively smiling into his beard. ‘So if you’ve done your calculations and-’
The hydraulic snort of brakes being released. And then the bang as Silje Gravseng got up from her chair immediately followed by the bang of the door as she left the room.
Krohn sat with his head lowered for some time. When he raised it again, his gaze was directed at Harry.
‘I apologise,’ he said. ‘As a defence counsel we have to accept that our clients lie to save their skins. But this. . I should have read the situation better.’
Harry shrugged. ‘You don’t know her, do you?’
‘No,’ Krohn said. ‘But I know you. Should know you after so many years, Hole. I’ll get her to sign your agreement.’
‘And if she won’t?’
‘I’ll explain to her the consequences of making a false accusation. And an official expulsion from PHS. She’s not stupid, you know.’
‘I know,’ Harry said, getting up with a sigh. ‘I know.’
Outside, the traffic had started again.
Harry and Arnold Folkestad walked up Karl Johans gate.
‘Thank you,’ Harry said. ‘But I’m still wondering how you grasped everything so quickly.’
‘I have some experience of OCD,’ Arnold smiled.
‘Sorry?’
‘Obsessive compulsive disorder. When a person with that predisposition has made a decision, she stops at nothing. Action is in itself more important than the consequences.’
‘I know what OCD is. I have a psychologist pal who has accused me of being halfway there myself. What I meant was, how did you twig so fast that we needed a witness and that we had to get ourselves to Krimteknisk?’
Arnold Folkestad chuckled. ‘I don’t know if I can tell you that, Harry.’
‘Why not?’
‘What I can tell you is that I was involved in a case where two policemen were about to be reported by someone they’d beaten senseless. But by doing something similar to what we’ve just done they got one over on him. One of them burnt the evidence that counted against them. And what was left wasn’t enough, so the man’s lawyer advised him to drop the charge because they wouldn’t get anywhere. I reckoned the same would happen here.’
‘Now you’re making it sound as if I really did rape her, Arnold.’
‘Sorry.’ Arnold laughed. ‘I had been half expecting that something like this would happen. The girl’s a ticking time bomb. Our psychological tests should have disqualified her before she was offered a place on the course.’
They walked across Egertorget. Images flickered through Harry’s brain. A smile from a laughing girlfriend one May when he was young. The body of a Salvation Army soldier in front of the Christmas kettle. A town full of memories.
‘So who were the two policemen?’
‘One pretty high up.’
‘Is that why you won’t tell me? And you were part of it? Guilty conscience?’
Arnold Folkestad shrugged. ‘Anyone who doesn’t dare to stand up for justice should have a guilty conscience.’
‘Mm. A policeman with a history of violence and a predilection for burning evidence. There aren’t many of them. We wouldn’t by any chance be talking about an officer by the name of Truls Berntsen, would we?’
Arnold Folkestad said nothing, but the wince that recoiled through his short, round body was more than enough to tell Harry what he wanted to know.
‘Mikael Bellman’s shadow. That’s what you mean by pretty high up, isn’t it?’ Harry spat on the tarmac.
‘Shall we talk about something else, Harry?’
‘Yes, let’s do that. Lunch at Schrøder’s?’
‘Schrøder’s? Do they really have. . er, lunch?’
‘They have burgers on bread. And room.’
‘That looks familiar, Rita,’ Harry said to the waitress who had just placed two burnt burgers covered with pale fried onions in front of them.
‘Nothing changes here, you know.’ She smiled and left them.
‘Truls Berntsen, yes,’ Harry said, looking over his shoulder. He and Arnold were almost alone in the single, square room which despite years of anti-smoking legislation still felt smoky. ‘I think he’s been operating as a burner inside the police for many years.’
‘Oh?’ Folkestad studied the animal cadaver in front of them with scepticism. ‘And what about Bellman?’
‘He was responsible for narcotics during that time. I know he had some deal with one Rudolf Asayev, who was selling a heroin-like substance called violin,’ Harry said. ‘Bellman granted Asayev the monopoly in Oslo in return for an assurance that visible signs of drug trafficking, junkies in the streets and of course ODs went down. That made Bellman look good.’
‘So good that he got his hands on the Police Chief job?’
Harry chewed tentatively on the first bite of burger and shrugged his shoulders to suggest a ‘maybe’.
‘And why haven’t you passed on what you know?’ Arnold Folkestad cut carefully into what he hoped was meat. Gave up and looked at Harry, who returned a blank stare as he chewed and chewed. ‘A blow for justice?’
Harry swallowed. Wiped his mouth with a paper serviette. ‘I had no proof. Besides, I was no longer a policeman. It wasn’t my business. It isn’t my business now either, Arnold.’
‘No, I suppose not.’ Folkestad speared a chunk on his fork and raised it for inspection. ‘But if this isn’t your business, and you’re no longer a policeman, why has the pathologist sent you a post-mortem report on this Rudolf Asayev?’
‘Mm. So you saw it?’
‘Only because I usually collect your post as well when I’m by the pigeonholes. And because I’m a nosy parker, of course.’
‘What’s it like?’
‘I haven’t tried it yet.’
‘Go for it. It won’t bite.’
‘Same to you, Harry.’
Harry smiled. ‘They searched behind the eyeball. And found what we’d been searching for. A little pinprick in the large blood vessel. Someone could have pushed Asayev’s eyeball to the side while he was in the coma and injected air bubbles into the corner of the eye. The result would have been instant blindness followed by a blood clot in the brain which couldn’t be traced.’
‘Now I really feel like eating this,’ Folkestad grimaced and put down his fork. ‘Are you saying you’ve proved that Asayev was murdered?’
‘Nope. The cause of death is still impossible to determine. But the mark proves what might have happened. The conundrum is of course how anyone got into the hospital room. The duty officer insisted he didn’t see anyone pass during the period when the injection must have been made. Neither a doctor nor anyone else.’
‘The mystery of the locked room.’
‘Or something simpler. Like the officer leaving his post or falling asleep and, quite understandably, not admitting it. Or he was in on the murder, directly or indirectly.’
‘If he went AWOL or fell asleep the murder would have depended on serendipity, and surely we don’t believe in that?’
‘No, Arnold, we don’t. But he could have been lured away from his post. Or doped.’
‘Or bribed. You’ll have to get the officer in for questioning!’
Harry shook his head.
‘Why on earth not?’
‘First of all, I’m not a policeman any more. Secondly, the officer’s dead. He was the one killed in the car outside Drammen.’ Harry nodded as if to himself, raised his coffee cup and took a sip.
‘Damn!’ Arnold had leaned forward. ‘And thirdly?’
Harry signalled to Rita for the bill. ‘Did I say there was a thirdly?’
‘You said “secondly”, not “and secondly”. As though you were in the middle of reeling off a list.’
‘Right. I’ll have to sharpen up my Norwegian.’
&
nbsp; Arnold tilted his head. And Harry saw the question in his colleague’s eyes. If this is a case you’re not going to follow up, why are you telling me about it?
‘Come on, eat up,’ Harry said. ‘I’ve got a lecture.’
The sun slipped across a pale sky, made a gentle landing on the horizon and coloured the clouds orange.
Truls Berntsen sat in his car half listening to the police radio while waiting for darkness to fall. Waiting for the lights in the house above him to be switched on. Waiting to see her. A fleeting glimpse would be enough.
Something was brewing. He could hear it in the style of communication, something was happening alongside the usual, subdued, routine normality. Short, intense reports came sporadically, as though they had been told not to use the radio more than necessary. And it wasn’t what was said, more what wasn’t said. The way it wasn’t said. The staccato sentences on the surface about surveillance and transport, but without addresses, times or individual names being mentioned. People used to say the police frequency was the fourth most popular local radio in Oslo, but that was before it had been encrypted. Nevertheless, they were talking this evening as though they were terrified of revealing something.
There they were again. Truls turned up the volume.
‘Zero one. Delta two zero. All quiet.’
Delta, the elite force. An armed operation.
Truls picked up his binoculars. Focused on the living-room window. It was harder to see her in the new house; the terrace in front of the living room was in the way. With the old house, he had been able to stand in the trees and see straight into the room. See her sitting on the sofa with her feet tucked up underneath her. Barefoot. Stroking the blonde curls away from her face. As though she knew she was being watched. So beautiful he could cry.
The sky above Oslo Fjord changed from orange to red and then violet.
It had been all black the night he had parked by the mosque in Åkebergveien. He had walked down to Police HQ, clipped on his ID card in case the duty officers saw him, unlocked the door to the atrium and sauntered downstairs to the Evidence Room. Unlocked the door with the copy he’d had for three years now. Put on his night-vision goggles. He’d started doing that after the time he’d switched on the lights and aroused the suspicions of a security guard during one of Asayev’s burner jobs. He had been quick, found the box by date, opened the bag containing the 9mm bullet taken from Kalsnes’s head and replaced it with the one he had in his jacket pocket.
The only oddity had been that he hadn’t felt alone.
He watched Ulla. Did she feel that too? Was that why she kept looking up from her book towards the window? As though there was something outside. Something waiting for her.
They were talking on the radio again.
He knew what they were talking about.
Understood what they were planning.
25
D-day was drawing to an end.
The walkie-talkie crackled quietly.
Katrine Bratt twisted on the thin ground sheet. Raised her binoculars again and focused on the house in Bergslia. Dark and silent. As it had been for almost twenty-four hours.
Something had to happen soon. In three hours it would be another date. The wrong date.
She shivered. But it could have been worse. About nine degrees during the day and no rain. But after the sun went down the temperature had plummeted and she had begun to feel cold, even with the full complement of winter underwear and the padded jacket which, according to the salesman, was ‘eight hundred on the American scale, not the European one, that is’. It had something to do with insulation. Or was it feathers? Right now she wished she had something warmer than eight hundred. Like a man she could snuggle up to. .
There was no one posted in the house itself; they hadn’t wanted to risk being seen going in or out. Even for the recce they had parked a long way away, then sneaked around at some distance from the house, never more than two people at once and always out of uniform.
The spot she had been allocated was a little hill in Berg Forest, set back from where the Delta troops were deployed. She knew their positions, but even when she scanned them with the binoculars she couldn’t see anything. She knew there were four marksmen, though, covering every side of the house, as well as eleven men ready to storm the place in under eight seconds.
She looked at her watch again. Two hours and fifty-eight minutes to go.
To the best of their knowledge the original murder had taken place at the end of the day, but it was hard to determine the moment death occurred when the body was cut into bits of no more than two kilos. Anyway, the timings of the copycat murders had so far matched the originals, so the fact that nothing had happened as yet was in a sense expected.
Clouds were moving in from the west. Dry weather had been forecast, but it would get darker and visibility would worsen. On the other hand, perhaps it might become milder. She should have brought a sleeping bag with her. Katrine’s mobile vibrated. She answered it.
‘What’s happening?’ It was Beate.
‘Nothing to report here,’ Katrine said, scratching her neck. ‘Except that global warming is a fact. There are midges here. In March.’
‘Don’t you mean mosquitoes?’
‘No, midges. They. . well, we have a lot of them in Bergen. Any interesting phone calls?’
‘No. Just Cheez Doodles, Pepsi Max and Gabriel Byrne. Tell me, is he hot or just a tad too old?’
‘Hot. Are you watching In Treatment?’
‘First season. Disc three.’
‘Didn’t know you’d succumbed to calories and DVDs. Trackie bottoms?’
‘With very loose elastic. Have to go for some hedonism when the little one’s not here.’
‘Shall we swap?’
‘Nope. I’d better call off in case the prince rings. Keep me posted.’
Katrine put the phone next to the walkie-talkie. Lifted the binoculars and studied the road in front of the house. In principle he could come from any direction. It was unlikely he would cross the fences on either side of the tracks where the metro had just clattered past, of course, but if he came from Damplassen he could come through the forest on any one of the many paths. He could walk through the neighbouring gardens alongside Bergslia, especially now that it was clouding over and getting darker. But if he felt confident there was no reason why he wouldn’t come on the road. Someone on an old bike was pedalling uphill, staggering from side to side, perhaps he wasn’t quite sober.
Wonder what Harry’s doing tonight.
No one ever quite knew what Harry was doing, even when you were sitting opposite him. Secret Harry. Not like anyone else. Not like Bjørn Holm, who wore his heart on his sleeve. Who had told her yesterday he would play several Merle Haggard records while waiting by the phone. Eat home-made elk burgers from Skreia. And when she had screwed up her nose he had said, heck, when this was over he would invite her to eat his mother’s elk burgers with fries and initiate her into the secrets of the Bakersfield sound. Which was probably all the music he had. No wonder the guy was single. He’d looked as if he regretted making the offer when she politely refused.
Truls Berntsen drove through Kvadraturen. The way he did almost every night now. Slowly cruising up and down, here, there and everywhere. Dronningens gate, Kirkegata, Skippergata. Nedre Slottsgate, Tollbugata. This had been his town. And it would become his town again.
They were prattling away on the radio. Codes which were meant for him, Truls Berntsen, it was him they wanted to keep on the outside. And the idiots probably thought they were succeeding and that he didn’t understand. But they didn’t fool him. Truls Berntsen straightened the mirror, glanced at the service pistol lying on his jacket on the front seat. It was, as usual, the other way round. It was him who would fool them.
The women on the street ignored him; they recognised the car, knew he wasn’t going to buy their services. A boy wearing make-up and trousers that were far too tight swung round the pole of a No Parking sign lik
e a pole dancer, jutting out a hip and pouting at Truls, who responded by giving him the finger.
The darkness felt as if it had become a touch denser. Truls leaned into the windscreen and looked up. Clouds were on their way in from the west. He stopped at the lights. Glanced back down at the seat. He had fooled them time after time and was about to fool them again. This was his town, no one could come here and take it away from him.
He shifted the gun into the glove compartment. The murder weapon. It was so long ago, but he could still see his face. René Kalsnes. The weak lady-boy features. Truls smacked the wheel with his fist. Turn green, for Christ’s sake!
He had hit him first with the baton.
Then he had taken his gun.
Even with his face bleeding, smashed to pieces, Truls had seen the pleading look, heard the begging wheeze, like a punctured cycle tyre. Wordless. Useless.
He had put the gun in the guy’s nose, fired, seen the jerk, as if it were in a film. Then he had rolled the car over the cliff and driven off. Further down the road he had wiped the baton and thrown it into the forest. He had several more in the bedroom cupboard at home. Weapons, night-vision goggles, bulletproof vest, even a Märklin rifle which they thought was still in the Evidence Room.
Truls drove down the tunnels and into Oslo’s belly. The car lobby, on the political right, had called the recently constructed tunnels the capital’s vital arteries. A representative of the environment lobby had responded by calling them the town’s bowels. They might be vital but they still carried shit.
He manoeuvred his way through the spur roads and roundabouts, signposted in the Oslo tradition, so that you had to be a local not to fall foul of the Department of Transport’s practical jokes. Then he was high up. East Oslo. His part of town. On the radio they were rabbiting away. One of the voices was drowned out by a rattling sound. The metro. The idiots. Did they think he couldn’t work out their childish codes? They were in Bergslia. They were outside the yellow house.