by Jo Nesbo
‘International matches are subject to FIFA rules and regulations,’ Bjørn said. ‘Hooliganism.’
‘Of course,’ Harry shouted from behind the bathroom door. ‘Well done, Bjørn!’ Then the door slammed.
‘What?’ Katrine shouted. ‘What are you on about?’
‘CCTV,’ Bjørn said. ‘FIFA requires match organisers to film the spectators in case there are any disturbances. The ruling came in during the wave of hooliganism in the 1990s to help the police find the troublemakers and charge them. They film the stands throughout the match with high-definition cameras so that they can zoom in and identify every single face. And we’ve got the seating area, row and seat number of where Valentin sat.’
‘Didn’t sit!’ Katrine shouted. ‘He’s not allowed to be on any bloody footage, all right? Or we’ll be back to square one.’
‘They may of course have deleted the images,’ Bjørn said. ‘There wasn’t any trouble during the match, and I’m sure the data-archiving directive states how long they’re allowed to keep-’
‘The data-archiving directive. .’
‘If the images are stored electronically then all they have to do is press Delete for the files to disappear.’
‘Trying to remove files permanently is like trying to remove dog shit from your trainers. Difficult. How do you think we find child porn on computers pervs have handed in voluntarily, thinking they’ve got rid of the lot? Believe me, I’ll find Valentin Gjertsen if he was at the stadium that evening. What was the assumed time of death for Erlend Vennesla?’
They heard the toilet flush.
‘Between seven and half eight,’ Bjørn said. ‘In other words, right at the start of the game, after Henriksen equalised. Vennesla must have heard the cheering up in Maridalen. It’s not far from Ullevål, is it?’
The bathroom door opened. ‘Which means he could have made it to the match after the murder in Maridalen,’ Harry said, doing up the last button. ‘Once he was in the stadium he could have done something that people around him would remember. Alibi.’
‘Valentin was not at the match,’ Katrine said. ‘But if he was I’ll watch the sodding video from start to finish and time him if he so much as lifts his bum off the seat. Alibi, my arse.’
There was a silence hanging over the large detached houses.
The silence before the storm of Volvos and Audis returning home after working for Norway Ltd, Truls Berntsen thought.
He rang the bell and looked around.
Nicely established garden. Well looked after. You probably had time to do that if you were a retired Chief of Police.
The door opened. He looked older. The same sharp blue eyes, but the skin around his neck was a little looser, his back not quite as straight. He was simply not as impressive as Truls remembered him. Perhaps it was just the faded casual clothes; perhaps that’s how it is when your job doesn’t keep you on your toes any more.
‘Berentzen, Orgkrim.’ Truls held up his ID in the certain knowledge that if the old boy really read Berntsen he would think that was what he heard as well. Lies with backup. But the Chief nodded without looking. ‘I think I’ve seen you before. How can I help you, Berentzen?’
He gave no indication that he was going to invite Truls in. Which was fine by Truls. No one could see them and there was minimal background noise.
‘It’s about your son, Sondre.’
‘What about him?’
‘We’re running an operation to catch Albanian pimps, and for that purpose we’ve been keeping an eye on movements in Kvadraturen and taking pictures. We’ve identified a number of cars seen picking up prostitutes and we’re intending to bring the owners in for questioning. We’ll offer them reduced sentences if we can act on information they give us about the pimps. And one of the cars we’ve photographed belongs to your son.’
The Chief of Police raised his bushy eyebrows. ‘What’s that? Sondre? Impossible.’
‘I thought so too. But I wanted to confer with you. If you think this must be some misunderstanding, that the woman he picks up is not even a prostitute, we’ll shred the photo.’
‘Sondre is happily married. I brought him up. He knows the difference between right and wrong, believe me.’
‘Of course, I just wanted to be sure that this is how you see the matter as well.’
‘My God, why would he buy. .’ The man in front of Truls was grimacing as if he had been chewing a rotten grape. ‘. . sex in the street? The danger of infection. The children. No, no, no.’
‘Sounds like we agree there’s no point following this up. Even though we have reason to suspect that the woman is a prostitute, your son may have lent his car to someone else. We don’t have a photo of the driver.’
‘So you don’t even have any proof. No, you’d better just forget this one.’
‘Thank you. We’ll do as you say.’
The Chief of Police nodded slowly while carefully studying Truls. ‘Berentzen at Orgkrim, did you say?’
‘Correct.’
‘Thank you, Berentzen. You officers are doing a good job.’
Truls beamed. ‘We do the best we can. Have a good day.’
‘What was that you said again?’ Katrine said, staring at the black screen in front of her. In the world outside the Boiler Room, where the air was thick with evaporating human being, it was afternoon.
‘I said there was a good chance the images of the crowds had been deleted because of the data-archiving directive,’ Bjørn said. ‘And as you can see, I was right.’
‘And what did I say?’
‘You said that files are like dog shit on trainers,’ Harry said. ‘Impossible to remove.’
‘I didn’t say impossible,’ Katrine said.
The four members of the team sat around Katrine’s computer. When Harry had rung Ståle and asked him to join them, Ståle had sounded relieved more than anything else.
‘I said it was difficult,’ Katrine said. ‘But as a rule there’s a mirror image of them somewhere. Which a clever computer man will be able to find.’
‘Or woman?’ Ståle suggested.
‘Nope,’ Katrine said. ‘Women can’t park, they don’t remember football results and they can’t be bothered to learn the fiddly bits on computers. For that you need weird men with band T-shirts and minimal sex lives, and it’s been like this ever since the Stone Age.’
‘So you can’t-’
‘I keep trying to explain that I’m not a computer specialist, Ståle. My search engines searched the files of the Norwegian Football Association, but all the recordings had been deleted. And I’m afraid that from here on in I’m no use.’
‘We could have saved ourselves a bit of time if you’d listened to me,’ Bjørn said. ‘So what do we do now?’
‘I don’t mean I’m no use for anything,’ Katrine said, still addressing Ståle. ‘You see, I’m equipped with a few relative virtues. Such as feminine charm, unfeminine get-up-and-go and no shame. Which can give you an edge in nerd land. The guy who showed me these search engines also got me in with an Indian IT man, known as Side Cut. And an hour ago I rang Hyderabad and put him on the case.’
‘And. .?’
‘And here’s the footage,’ Katrine said, pressing the return button.
The screen lit up.
They stared.
‘That’s him,’ Ståle said. ‘He looks lonely.’
Valentin Gjertsen, alias Paul Stavnes, was sitting in front of them with his arms crossed. He was watching the match without any visible interest.
‘Goddamn!’ Bjørn cursed under his breath.
Harry asked Katrine to fast-forward.
She pressed a button and the crowd around Valentin Gjertsen began to move jerkily as the clock and the counter in the bottom right-hand corner raced forward. Only Valentin Gjersten sat still, like a lifeless statue amid a swarm of life.
‘Faster,’ Harry said.
Katrine clicked again and the same people became even more active, leaning forward and back, ge
tting up, throwing their arms in the air, leaving, returning with a hot dog or a coffee. Then lots of empty blue seats shone back at them.
‘One-one and half-time,’ Bjørn said.
The stadium filled up again. Even more movement in the crowd. The clock in the corner was running. Heads shaking and obvious frustration. All of a sudden: arms in the air. For a couple of seconds the image seemed to be frozen. Then people jumped up from their seats at once, cheering, bouncing up and down, embracing each other. All except for one.
‘Riise penalty in extra time,’ Bjørn said.
It was over.
People vacated their seats. Valentin sat, unmoving, until everyone had left. Then he got up and was gone.
‘Suppose he doesn’t like queueing,’ Bjørn said.
The screen was black once more.
‘So,’ Harry said. ‘What have we seen?’
‘We’ve seen my patient watching a football match,’ Ståle said. ‘I imagine I have to say my ex-patient, providing he doesn’t turn up for the next therapy session. Nevertheless, it was apparently an entertaining match for everyone apart from him. As I know his body language, I may say with some certainty that this did not interest him. Which of course prompts the question: why go to a football match then?’
‘And he didn’t eat, go to the toilet or get up from his seat during the whole game,’ Katrine said. ‘Just sat there like a bloody pillar of salt. How spooky’s that? As though he knew we would check this recording and didn’t want us to miss ten seconds of his damn alibi.’
‘If only he’d made a call on his mobile,’ Bjørn said. ‘Then we could have blown up the picture and perhaps seen the number he dialled. Or clocked the split second he rang and checked it against outgoing calls at the base stations covering Ullevål Stadium and-’
‘He didn’t ring,’ Harry said.
‘But if-’
‘He didn’t ring, Bjørn. And whatever Valentin Gjertsen’s motive for watching the match at Ullevål, it’s a fact that he was sitting there when Erlend Vennesla was murdered in Maridalen. And the other fact is. .’ Harry gazed above their heads, at the bare white-brick wall. ‘. . we’re back to square one.’
34
Aurora sat on the swing looking at the sun filtering through the leaves of the pear trees. At least, Dad stubbornly maintained they were pear trees, but no one had ever seen any pears on them. Aurora was twelve years old and a bit too big for a swing and a bit too big to believe everything her dad told her.
She had come home from school, done her homework and gone into the garden while Mum went to the shop. Dad wouldn’t be home for dinner; he’d started working long days again. Even though he’d promised her and Mum that now he would come home like other dads, he wouldn’t do police work in the evenings, just do his psychotherapy in his consulting room and then come home. But now he was working for the police after all. Neither Mum nor Dad had wanted to tell her exactly what it was he was doing.
She found the song she was looking for on her iPod, Rihanna singing that if he wanted her he should come and take a walk with her. Aurora stretched out her long legs to get more speed. The legs that had become so long she had to fold them underneath her or hold them up high so they wouldn’t drag along the ground under the swing. She would soon be as tall as her mother. She leaned her head back, felt the weight of her long, thick hair hanging from her scalp. So nice. Closed her eyes to the sun above the trees and the swing ropes, heard Rihanna singing, heard the low creak of the branch whenever the swing was at the lowest point. Heard another sound as well, the gate opening and footsteps on the gravel path.
‘Mummy,’ she called, not wanting to open her eyes, not wanting to move her face away from the sun which was so wonderfully hot. But she didn’t receive an answer and remembered she hadn’t heard a car pull up, hadn’t heard the hectic growl of her mother’s little blue dog kennel.
She dragged her heels along the ground, slowing the swing down until it was stationary, her eyes still closed, not wanting to abandon the wonderful bubble of music, sun and daydreams.
She felt a shadow fall across her and at once it was cold, like when a cloud passes in front of the sun on a chilly day. She opened her eyes and saw a figure standing over her, no more than a silhouette against the sky, with a halo round the head where the sun had been. And for a moment she blinked, confused by the thought that had struck her.
That Jesus was back. That he was standing here, now. And it meant that Mum and Dad were wrong. God really did exist, and there was forgiveness for all our sins.
‘Hello, little girl,’ the voice said. ‘What’s your name?’
Jesus could speak Norwegian if push came to shove.
‘Aurora,’ she said, squeezing one eye shut to see his face better. No beard or long hair, anyway.
‘Is your father at home?’
‘He’s at work.’
‘I see. So you’re on your own, are you, Aurora?’
Aurora was about to answer. But something stopped her; quite what, she didn’t know.
‘Who are you?’ she said instead.
‘Someone who needs to talk to your father. But you and I can talk. Since we’re alone, I mean. Can’t we?’
Aurora didn’t answer.
‘What kind of music are you listening to?’ the man asked, pointing to her iPod.
‘Rihanna,’ Aurora said, pushing the swing back. Not just to get out of the man’s shadow but to see him better.
‘Oh yes,’ the man said. ‘I’ve got lots of her CDs at home. Would you like to borrow some?’
‘I listen to the songs I haven’t got on Spotify,’ Aurora said, establishing that the man looked quite normal, at least there wasn’t anything particularly Jesus-like about him.
‘Oh yes, Spotify,’ the man said, crouching down, not just to be at her height but lower. It felt better. ‘You can listen to all the music you like then.’
‘Almost,’ Aurora said. ‘But I’ve got the free Spotify, and there are lots of ads between the songs.’
‘And you don’t like that?’
‘I don’t like the talking. It messes up the atmosphere.’
‘Did you know there are records where they talk and they’re the best songs?’
‘No,’ Aurora said, tilting her head, wondering why the man spoke so softly, it didn’t sound like it was his usual voice. It was the same voice that Emilie, her friend, used when she was asking Aurora for a favour, such as to borrow her favourite clothes, but Aurora didn’t like lending them because it was such a messy arrangement. You never knew where your clothes were.
‘You should listen to Pink Floyd.’
‘Who’s that?’
The man looked round. ‘We can go inside to the computer and I’ll show you. While we’re waiting for your dad.’
‘You can spell it for me. I’ll remember.’
‘Best to show you. Then I can have a glass of water at the same time.’
Aurora looked at him. Now that he was sitting below her she had the sun in her face again, but it didn’t warm her any more. Strange. She leaned back on the swing. The man smiled. She saw something glint between his teeth. As if the tip of his tongue was there and gone again.
‘Come on,’ he said, standing up. He held one of the ropes, at head height.
Aurora slipped off the swing and darted under his arm. Started walking towards the house. She heard his footsteps behind her. The voice.
‘You’ll like it, Aurora. I promise.’
Gentle, like a priest administering confirmation. That was Dad’s expression. Perhaps he was Jesus after all? But Jesus or not, she didn’t want him in the house. Still, she kept walking. What would she say to Dad? That she had stopped someone he knew coming in for a glass of water? No, she couldn’t do that. She walked more slowly to give herself time to think, to find an excuse for not letting him in. But she couldn’t find one. And because she slowed down he came closer, and she could hear his breathing. Heavy, as though the few steps he had walked from the sw
ing had made him breathless. And there was a weird smell coming from his mouth that reminded her of nail varnish remover.
Five paces to the doorsteps. An excuse. Two paces. The doorsteps. Come on. No. They were at the door.
Aurora swallowed. ‘I think it’s locked,’ she said. ‘We’ll have to wait outside.’
‘Oh?’ the man said, gazing round from the top step, as though searching for Dad somewhere behind the hedges. Or neighbours. She felt the heat from his arm as it stretched across her shoulder, grabbed the door handle and pushed it down. It opened.
‘Well, hello,’ he said, and he was breathing faster now. And there was a light quiver to his voice. ‘We were lucky there.’
Aurora faced the doorway. Stared into the darkened hall. Just a glass of water. And this music with the talking that didn’t have any interest for her. In the distance there was the sound of a lawnmower. Angry, aggressive, insistent. She stepped inside.
‘I have to. .’ she began, came to an abrupt halt, and at that moment felt his hand on her shoulder, as though he had crossed a line. Felt the heat of his hand where her shirt stopped and her skin started. Felt her little heart pounding. Heard another lawnmower. Which wasn’t a lawnmower but an excitedly purring little engine.
‘Mummy!’ Aurora shouted and squirmed out of the man’s grip, dived past him, jumped down all four steps, landed in the gravel and raced off. Shouting over her shoulder:
‘I have to help with the shopping.’
She ran to the gate, listened for footsteps coming after her, but the crunch of her trainers on the gravel was almost deafening. Then she was at the gate, tearing it open and watching her mother get out of the little blue car in front of the garage.
‘Hi, sweetheart,’ Mum said, looking at her with a quizzical smile. ‘That was quite a turn of speed.’
‘There’s someone here asking for Dad,’ Aurora said, realising the gravel path was longer than she thought, she was out of breath anyway. ‘He’s on the steps.’
‘Oh?’ Mum said, passing her one of the bags from the rear seat, slamming the door and walking with her daughter through the gate.
No one was on the steps, but the front door was still open.