by Jo Nesbo
'Gypsy,' Aune said. 'There were rumours going round about this mysterious figure for a number of years. He was supposed to be the real brains behind all the major robberies of security vans and financial institutions in Oslo in the eighties. It took a number of years for the police to accept that he actually existed and even then they never managed to produce any evidence against him.'
'Now I have a vague recollection,' Harry said. 'But I thought he'd been arrested.'
'False. The closest they got was two robbers who pledged they would give evidence against Raskol, but they disappeared under curious circumstances.'
'Not unusual,' Harry said, taking out a packet of Camel cigarettes.
'It's unusual when they're in prison.'
Harry gave a low whistle. 'I still think that's where he ended up.' 'That is true,' Aune said. 'But he wasn't arrested. Raskol gave himself up. One day he appears at the Police HQ reception desk, saying he wants to confess to a string of old bank robberies. Naturally, this creates a tremendous commotion. No one understands a thing, and Raskol refuses to explain why he is giving himself up. Before the case comes to court, they ring me up to check he is of sound mind and that his confessions will stand up. Raskol agrees to talk to me on two conditions. One, that we play a game of chess - don't ask me how he knew I was an active player. And, two, that I take a French translation of The Art of War with me, an ancient Chinese book about military strategy.'
Aune opened a box of Nobel Petit cigarillos.
'I had the book sent from Paris and took a chess set along. I was let into his cell and greeted a man with all the outward appearance of a monk. He asked if he could borrow my pen, flicked through the book and with a jerk of his head indicated that I could set out the board. I put the pieces in position and led with Reti's opening - you don't attack your opponent until you control the centre, frequently effective against medium-calibre players. Now it's impossible to see from a single move that this is what I'm thinking, but this gypsy peers over the book at the board, strokes his goatee, looks at me with a knowing smile, makes a note in the book . . .'
A silver lighter bursts into flame at the end of the cigarillo.
'. . . and continues to read. So I say: Aren't you going to make a move? I watch his hand scribbling away with my pen as he answers: I don't need to. I'm writing down how this game will finish, move for move. You will knock over your king. I explain that it is impossible for him to know how the game will develop after just one move. Shall we have a bet? he says. I try to laugh it off, but he is insistent. So I agree to bet a hundred to put him into a benevolent frame of mind for my interview. He demands to see the note and I have to place it beside the board where he can see it. He raises his hand as if to make his move, then things happen very fast.'
'Lightning chess?'
Aune smiled and, deep in thought, exhaled a ring of smoke towards the ceiling. 'The next moment I was held in a vice-like grip with my head forced backwards so that I was looking up at the ceiling, and a voice whispered into my ear: Can you feel the blade, Gadjo? Of course I could feel it, the sharp, razor-thin steel pressed against my larynx, straining to cut through the skin. Have you ever experienced that feeling, Harry?'
Harry's brain raced through the register of related experiences, but failed to find anything altogether identical. He shook his head.
'It felt, to quote a number of my patients, rank. I was so frightened I was on the point of urinating in my trousers. Then he whispered in my ear: Knock over the king, Aune. He slackened his grip a little so that I could raise my arm and I sent my pieces flying. Then, equally abruptly, he let me go. He returned to his side of the table and waited for me to get on my feet and regain control of my breathing. What the hell was that? I groaned. That was a bank robbery, he answered. First the plan and then the execution. Then he showed me what he had written in the book. All I could see was my solitary move and White king capitulates. Then he asked: Does that answer your questions, Aune?'
'What did you say?'
'Nothing. I yelled for the guard to come. However, before he came, I asked Raskol one last question because I knew I would drive myself crazy thinking about it if I didn't get an answer there and then. I said: Would you have done it? Would you have cut my throat if I hadn't capitulated? Just to win an idiotic bet?'
'And what did he answer?'
'He smiled and asked if I knew what pre-programming was.' 'Yes?'
'That was all. The door opened and I left.'
'But what did he mean by pre-programming?'
Aune pushed his mug away. 'You can pre-programme your brain to follow a particular pattern of behaviour. The brain will overrule other impulses and follow the predetermined rules, come what may. Useful in situations when the brain's natural impulse is to panic.
Such as when the parachute doesn't open. Then, I hope, parachutists have pre-programmed emergency procedures.' 'Or soldiers fighting.'
'Precisely. There are, however, methods which can programme humans to such a degree that they go into a kind of trance, unaffected by even extreme external influences, and they become living robots. The fact is that this is every general's wet dream, frighteningly easy, provided you know the necessary techniques.'
'Are you talking about hypnosis?'
'I like to call it pre-programming. There is less mystification. It is a matter of opening and closing routes for impulses. If you're clever, you can easily pre-programme yourself, so-called self-hypnosis. If Raskol had pre-programmed himself to kill me if I hadn't capitulated, he would have prevented himself from changing his mind.'
'But he didn't kill you, did he.'
'All programs have an escape button, a password which brings you out of the trance. In this case, it may have been knocking down the white king.'
'Mm. Fascinating.'
'And now I've come to my point . . .'
'I think I know it,' Harry said. 'The bank robber in the photo may have pre-programmed himself to shoot if the branch manager didn't keep to the time limit.'
'The rules of pre-programming have to be simple,' Aune said, dropping the cigarillo in the mug and putting the saucer on top. 'In order for you to fall into a trance they have to form a small yet logical closed system which rejects other thoughts.'
Harry put a fifty-kroner note beside the coffee mug and stood up. Aune watched in silence as Harry gathered up all the photographs before saying: 'You don't believe a word I've said, do you.'
'No.'
Aune stood up and buttoned up his jacket over his stomach. 'So, what do you believe?'
'I believe what experience has taught me,' Harry said. 'That villains by and large are as stupid as I am, go for easy options and have uncomplicated motives. In a nutshell, that things are very much what they seem to be. I would bet this robber was either out of his skull or panic-stricken. What he did was senseless and from that I conclude he is stupid. Take the gypsy whom you clearly consider to be very smart. How much time did he get in the slammer for attacking you with a knife?'
'Nothing,' Aune said with a sardonic smile.
'Eh?'
'They never found a knife.'
'I thought you said you were locked in his cell.'
'Have you ever been lying on your stomach on the beach and your chums tell you to lie still because they are holding red hot coals over your back? And then you hear someone say whoops and the next second you can feel the coals burning your back?'
Harry's brain sorted through his holiday memories. It didn't take
long. 'No.'
'And it turned out it was a trick; it was just ice cubes?'
'And?'
Aune sighed. 'Now and then I wonder how you've spent the thirty-five years you maintain you've been alive, Harry.'
Harry ran a hand across his face. He was tired. 'OK, Aune, what's your point?'
'My point is that a good manipulator can make you believe that the edge of a hundred-kroner note is the edge of a knife.'
The blonde looked Harry straight in the e
ye and promised him sun although it would cloud over in the course of the day. Harry pressed the off button and the picture shrank into a small luminous dot in the centre of the 14-inch screen. When he closed his eyes, however, it was the image of Stine Grette which remained on his retina, and he heard the echo of the reporter's '. . . the police have no suspects in the case so far'.
He opened his eyes again and studied the reflection in the dead screen. Himself, the old green wing chair from Elevator and the bare coffee table, embellished with glass and bottle rings. Everything was the same. The portable TV had stood on the shelf between the Lonely Planet guide to Thailand and a Norwegian road atlas for as long as he had lived here, and it hadn't travelled one metre for several years. He had read about the Seven Year Itch and how people typically began to long for somewhere new to live. Or a new job. Or a new partner. He hadn't noticed anything, and he had had the same job for almost ten years. Harry looked at his watch. Eight o'clock, Anna had said.
As far as partners were concerned, his relationships had never lasted long enough for him to test the theory. Apart from the two which might have lasted that long, Harry's romances had terminated because of what he called the Six Week Itch. Whether his reluctance to get involved was due to his being rewarded with tragedies on the two occasions he had loved a woman, he didn't know. Or should his two unswerving loves - murder investigations and alcohol - bear the blame? At any rate, before he met Rakel two years ago, he had begun to lean towards the view that he wasn't cut out for long-term relationships. He thought of her large, cool bedroom in Holmenkollen. The coded grunts they made at the breakfast table. Oleg's drawing on the refrigerator door, three people holding hands, one of whom was a towering figure, as high as the yellow sun in the clear blue sky, with HARY written underneath.
Harry got up from the chair, found the slip of paper with her telephone number on beside the answerphone and tapped the number into his mobile. It rang four times before there was an answer at the other end.
'Hi, Harry.'
'Hi. How did you know it was me?'
A low, deep laugh. 'Where have you been these last years, Harry?' 'Here. And there. Why's that? Have I said something stupid again?'
She laughed even louder.
'Aha, you can see my number on the display. How stupid I am.'
Harry could hear how lame he sounded, but it didn't matter. The most important thing was to say what he had to and ring off. End of story. 'Listen, Anna, about that date of ours this evening . . .'
'Don't be childish, Harry!'
'Childish?'
'I'm in the process of making the curry of the millennium. And if you're frightened I'm going to seduce you, I have to disappoint you. I just think we owe each other a couple of hours over a dinner to chat. Remember old times. Clear up a few misunderstandings. Or perhaps not. Maybe have a laugh. Can you remember japone chilli?'
'Well, yes.'
'Great. Eight sharp then, OK?'
'Well . . .' 'Good.'
Harry stood staring at the phone.
8
Jalalabad
'I'm going to kill you soon,' Harry said, squeezing harder on the cold steel of the gun. 'I just want you to know first. Let you think about it. Mouth open!'
Harry was talking to wax dolls. Immobile, soulless, dehumanised. Harry was sweating inside the mask now and the blood was throbbing in his temples, each throb leaving a dull pain. He didn't want to see people around him, didn't want to meet their accusatory eyes.
'Put the money in a bag,' he said to the faceless person in front of him. 'And put the bag above your head.'
The faceless one began to laugh, and Harry turned the gun round to hit him over the head with the butt, but missed. Now the others in the bank started to laugh and Harry observed them through the unevenly cut holes in the mask. They suddenly seemed familiar. The girl by the second counter resembled Birgitta. And he would swear the coloured man by the ticket dispenser was Andrew. And the white-haired lady with the pram ...
'Mother,' he whispered.
'Do you want the money or not?' the faceless one said. 'Twenty-five seconds to go.'
'I decide how long this takes!' Harry roared, jabbing the barrel into his open black mouth. 'It was you. I knew it was all the time. You're going to die in six seconds. Fear for your life!'
A tooth hung on a thread from the gum and blood ran from the faceless one's mouth, but he spoke as if he were unaware: I cannot defend the commitment of time and resources with personal considerations and emotions. Somewhere the frenetic tones of a telephone sounded.
'Fear for your life! Fear for your life as she did!'
'Don't let it become an idee fixe, Harry.' Harry felt the mouth chewing the gun barrel.
'She was a colleague, you bastard! She was my best . . The mask stuck to Harry's mouth and made it difficult to breathe. But the voice of the faceless one went on regardless: 'Gave her the heave-ho.'
'. . . friend.' Harry squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened. He opened his eyes.
Harry's first thought was that he had just dropped off. He was sitting in the same green chair looking into the lifeless TV screen. The coat was new though. It lay over him, covering half his face; he could taste the wet material in his mouth. And daylight filled the room. Then he felt the sledgehammer. It hit a nerve behind his eyes, time and time again, with merciless precision. The result was both a dramatic and a familiar pain. He tried to rewind the tape. Did he end up at Schroder's? Had he started drinking at Anna's? But it was all as he dreaded: a void. He remembered sitting in the sitting room after talking to Anna on the phone, but after that it was a blank. At that moment the contents of his stomach rose. Harry leaned over the edge of the chair and heard the vomit splashing on the parquet floor. He groaned, closed his eyes and tried to shut out the sound of the telephone ringing and ringing. When the answerphone cut in, he had fallen asleep.
It was as if someone had been snipping away at his time and had discarded the scraps. Harry woke up again, but delayed opening his eyes to find out if there was any improvement. None that he could detect. The only differences were that the sledgehammers were now spread over a wider area, he stank of vomit and he knew he wouldn't be able to go back to sleep. He counted to three, got up, staggered the eight steps into the bathroom with his head down by his knees and emptied his stomach. He stood clutching the toilet bowl as he struggled to regain his breath. To his surprise, he saw that the yellow matter running down the white porcelain contained microscopic red and green particles. He managed to catch one of the red bits between his forefinger and thumb, took it over to the tap where he washed it and held it up to the light. Then he cautiously placed it between his teeth and chewed. He pulled a face as he tasted the burning juices of japone chilli. He washed his face and stood up straight. And caught sight of the huge black eye in the mirror. The light in the sitting room stung his eyes as he played back the message on the answerphone.
'This is Beate Lonn. Hope I'm not disturbing, but Ivarsson said I should ring everyone immediately. There's been another bank robbery. Den norske Bank in Kirkeveien, between Frogner park and the Majorstuen crossroads.'
9
The Fog
The sun had disappeared behind a layer of steel-grey clouds which had crept in very low over Oslo fjord, and the southerly wind was gusting near to gale force, like an overture to the rain that had been forecast. Roof gutters whistled and awnings flapped all along Kirkeveien. The trees were completely stripped now; it was as though the last colours had been sucked out of the town and Oslo had been left in black and white. Harry bent into the wind and put his hands in his pockets to hold onto his coat. He noted that the bottom button had decamped, probably during the evening or night, and it wasn't the only thing to have gone missing. When he went to call Anna for some help reconstructing the night, he discovered he had lost his mobile phone, too. And on ringing her from a fixed line, he heard a voice which vaguely reminded him of an announcer from the past. It said the person he was tryi
ng to contact was unavailable at the moment, but he could leave his number or a message. He hadn't bothered.
Harry was soon on the mend and found it surprisingly easy to resist the urge to continue drinking, to take the all too short walk to Vinmonopolet or Schroder's. Instead he took a shower, dressed and
walked from Sofies gate past Bislett stadium, via Pilestredet, past Stenspark and across Majorstuen. He wondered what he had been drinking. In the absence of the obligatory abdominal pains autographed by Jim Beam, a fog lay over him coating all his senses, and even the fresh blasts of wind were unable to lift it.
Two police patrol cars with rotating blue lights stood outside the branch of Den norske Bank. Harry flashed his ID to one of the uniformed officers, ducked under the police tape and went to the entrance where Weber was talking to one of his men from Krimteknisk, the forensics department.
'Good afternoon, Inspector,' Weber said, emphasising the 'afternoon'. He raised an eyebrow when he saw Harry's shiner. 'Missus started beating you?'