by Jo Nesbo
'Correct. The problem here is that if I interpret these pictures, it will probably say more about my inner life than hers. Except that no one believes in the Rorschach blot any more, so why not? Let me see . . . These pictures are very dark, possibly more angry than depressed. One of them clearly isn't finished, though.'
'Perhaps it's supposed to be like that, perhaps it forms a whole?'
'What makes you say that?'
'I don't know, perhaps because the light from the three individual lamps falls perfectly on its own picture?'
'Hm.' Aune placed an arm over his chest and rested a forefinger on his lips. 'You're right. Of course you're right. And do you know what, Harry?'
'No. What?'
'They mean nothing to me at all - please excuse the expression -absolutely bugger all. Have we finished?'
'Yes. Oh, by the way, there is just one minor detail, since you paint. As you can see, the palette is on the left of the easel. Isn't that extremely impractical?'
'Yes, unless you're left-handed.'
'I see. I'll have to help Halvorsen. I don't know how I can thank you.'
'I know. I'll add an hour to my next invoice.' Halvorsen had finished in the bedroom.
'She didn't have many possessions,' he said. 'It's a bit like searching a hotel room. Just clothes, toiletries, an iron, towels, bed linen and so on. No picture of the family, no letters or personal papers.'
An hour later, Harry knew exactly what Halvorsen meant. They had gone through the whole flat and were back in the bedroom without having turned up so much as a telephone bill or a bank statement.
'That's the strangest thing I've ever experienced,' Halvorsen said, sitting down opposite Harry at the writing desk. 'She must have cleaned up. Perhaps she wanted to take everything with her, her whole person, when she went, if you know what I mean.'
'I do. You didn't see any signs of a laptop?'
'Laptop?'
'Portable PC.'
'What are you talking about?'
'Can't you see the faded square on the wood here?' Harry pointed to the desk between them. 'Looks like there's been a laptop here and it's been moved.'
'Does it?'
Harry could feel Halvorsen's probing eyes.
In the street, they stood staring up at her windows in the pale yellow facade while Harry smoked a stray concertinaed cigarette he had found lying in the inside pocket of his coat.
'That family business was strange, wasn't it,' Halvorsen said. 'The what?'
'Didn't Moller tell you? They couldn't find the addresses of her parents, brothers, sisters or anyone, just an uncle in prison. Moller had to ring the undertaker's himself to have the poor girl taken away. As if dying wasn't lonely enough.'
'Mm. Which undertaker?'
'Sandemann,' Halvorsen said. 'The uncle wanted her to be cremated.'
Harry pulled at his cigarette and watched the smoke rise and disperse. The end of a process which had started when a peasant sowed tobacco seeds in a field in Mexico. The seed became a tobacco plant as tall as a man within four months, and two months later it was harvested, shaken, dried, graded, packed and sent to RJ Reynolds factories in Florida or Texas where it became a filter cigarette in a vacuum-packed, yellow Camel packet in a carton and was shipped to Europe. Eight months after being a leaf on a green sprouting plant under the sun in Mexico, it falls out of a drunken man's coat pocket as he falls down steps or out of a taxi or spreads his coat over himself as a blanket because he cannot or dare not open the door to his bedroom with all the monsters under the bed. And then, when he finally finds the cigarette, crumpled and covered in pocket fluff, he puts one end in his malodorous mouth and lights the other. After the dried, sliced tobacco leaf has been inside this body for a brief moment of enjoyment, it is blown out and is at long last free. Free to dissolve, to turn to nothing. To be forgotten.
Halvorsen cleared his throat twice: 'How did you know she had ordered the keys from the locksmith in Vibes gate?'
Harry threw the end of the cigarette onto the ground and pulled his coat tighter around him. 'Looks like Aune was right,' he said. 'It's going to rain. If you're heading straight to Police HQ, I could use a
lift.'
'There must be hundreds of locksmiths in Oslo, Harry.'
'Mm. I rang the deputy chairman of the housing committee, Knut
Arne Ringnes. Nice man. They've used the same locksmith for twenty years. Shall we go?'
'Good you've come,' Beate Lonn said as Harry walked in the House of Pain. 'I discovered something last night. Look at this.' She rewound the video and pressed the pause button. A quivering still of Stine Grette's face turned towards the robber's balaclava filled the screen. 'I've magnified one portion of the video frame. I wanted to have Stine's face as large as possible.'
'Why was that?' Harry asked, flinging himself onto a chair.
'If you look at the counter, you'll see that this is eight seconds before the Expeditor shoots . . .'
'The Expeditor?'
She smiled bashfully. 'It's just something I've started calling him in private. My grandfather had a farm, so I . . . yes.'
'Where was that?'
'Valle in the Sete valley.'
'And you saw animals being slaughtered there?'
'Yes.' The intonation didn't invite further questions. Beate pressed the slow button and Stine Grette's face became animated. Harry saw her blinking and her lips moving in slow motion. He had begun to dread seeing the shot when Beate suddenly stopped the video.
'Did you see that?' she asked excitedly.
A few seconds passed before Harry clicked.
'She was speaking!' he said. 'She says something seconds before she is shot, but you can't hear anything on the sound recording.'
'That's because she's whispering.'
'How did I miss that? But why? And what does she say?'
'I hope we'll soon find out. I've got hold of a lip-reading specialist from the Institute for the Deaf and Dumb. He's on his way now.'
'Great.'
Beate glanced at her watch. Harry bit his bottom lip, breathed in and said quietly: 'Beate, I once . . .'
He saw her stiffen when he used her first name. 'I had a colleague called Ellen Gjelten.'
'I know,' she said in a rush. 'She was killed next to the river.'
'Yes. When she and I ground to a halt in a case we had several techniques for activating information trapped in the subconscious. Association games. We wrote down words on scraps of paper, that kind of thing.' Harry, ill at ease, smiled. 'It may sound a bit vague, but occasionally it produced results. I wondered if we could have a go.'
'If you like.' Again it struck Harry how much more confident Beate seemed when they focused on a video or a computer screen. Now she was eyeing him as if he had just suggested playing strip poker.
'I want to know what you feel about this particular case,' he said. She laughed nervously. 'Feelings, hm.'
'Forget cold facts for a while.' Harry leaned forward in his chair. 'Don't be the clever girl. You don't need to back up what you say. Just say what your gut instinct tells you.'
She stared at the table. Harry waited. Then she raised her gaze and looked him straight in the eyes: 'My money's on a two.'
'Two?'
'Football pools. Away team wins. It's one of the fifty per cent we never solve.'
'Right. And why's that?'
'Simple arithmetic. When you think of all the idiots we don't catch, a man like the Expeditor, who has thought things through and knows a bit about how we work, has pretty good odds.'
'Mm.' Harry rubbed his face. 'So your gut instincts do mental arithmetic?'
'Not exclusively. There's something about the way he functions. So determined. He seems to be driven . . .' 'What's driving him, Beate? Money?'
'I don't know. According to statistics, the prime motive for robberies is money and the second excitement and—'
'Forget statistics, Beate. You're a detective now. You're analysing not only video images n
ow, but your own subconscious interpretations of what you've seen. Trust me, that's the most important lead a detective has.'
Beate looked at him. Harry was aware he was trying to coax her out of herself. 'Come on!' he urged. 'What drives the Expeditor?'
'Feelings.'
'What kind of feelings?' 'Strong feelings.'
'What kind of strong feelings, Beate?'
She closed her eyes. 'Love or hatred. Hatred. No, love. I don't know.'
'Why does he shoot her?' 'Because he . . . no.'
'Come on. Why does he shoot her?' Harry had inched his chair towards hers.
'Because he has to. Because it is predetermined . . .' 'Good! Why is it predetermined?' There was a knock at the door.
Harry would have preferred it if Fritz Bjelke from the Institute for the Deaf and Dumb had not cycled quite as mercurially through the city to assist them, but now he was standing in the doorway - a gentle, rotund man with round glasses and a pink cycle helmet. Bjelke was not deaf, and definitely not dumb. In order that he could learn as much as possible about Stine Grette's lip positions, they played the first part of the video tape where they could hear what she said. While the tape was running, Bjelke talked non-stop.
'I'm a specialist, but actually we're all lip-readers even though we can hear what people say. That's why it's such an uncomfortable feeling when the dubbing on films is just hundredths of a second out.'
'Really,' Harry said. 'Personally, I can't make anything out of her lip movements.'
'The problem is that only thirty to forty per cent of all words can be read directly from the lips. To understand the rest you have to study the face and body language, and use your own linguistic instincts and logic to insert the missing words. Thinking is as important as seeing.'
'She starts whispering here,' Beate said.
Bjelke immediately shut up and concentrated intently on the minimalist lip movements on the screen. Beate stopped the recording before the shot was fired.
'Right,' Bjelke said. 'Once more.'
And afterwards: 'Again.'
Then: 'One more time please.'
After seven times, he nodded that he had seen enough. 'I don't understand what she means,' Bjelke said. Harry and Beate exchanged glances. 'But I think I know what she says.'
Beate half-ran down the corridor to keep up with Harry.
'He's reckoned to be the country's foremost expert in the field,' she said.
'That doesn't help,' Harry said. 'He said himself he wasn't sure.'
'But what if she did say what Bjelke thought?'
'It doesn't make sense. He must have missed a negative.'
'I don't agree.'
Harry came to a halt and Beate almost ran into him. With an alarmed expression, she looked up at one wide-open eye. 'Good,' he said.
Beate was perplexed. 'What do you mean?'
'Disagreeing is good. Disagreeing means that you've seen or understood something even though you're not exactly sure what. And there's something I haven't understood.' He set off again. 'Let's assume you're right. Then we can consider where this takes us.' He stopped in front of the lift and pressed the button.
'Where are you going now?' Beate asked.
'To check some details. I'll be back in less than an hour.' The lift doors opened and PAS Ivarsson stepped out. 'Aha!' He beamed. 'The master sleuths on the trail. Anything new to report?'
'The point about parallel groups is that we don't have to report in so often. Isn't it?' Harry said, sidestepping him and walking into the lift. 'If I understood you and the FBI correctly, that is.'
Ivarsson's broad smile and gaze held. 'We obviously have to share key information.'
Harry pressed the button for the first floor, but Ivarsson placed himself between the doors: 'Well?'
Harry shrugged. 'Stine Grette whispers something to the robber before she is shot.'
'Uhuh?'
'We believe she whispers: It's my fault.'
'It's my fault?'
'Yes.'
Ivarsson's brow furrowed. 'That can't be right, can it? It would make more sense if she had said It's not my fault. I mean, it isn't her fault the branch manager took six seconds too long putting the money in the holdall.'
'I don't agree,' Harry said, looking conspicuously at his watch. 'We've received assistance from one of the country's leading experts in the field. Beate can fill you in on the details.'
Ivarsson was leaning against one lift door, which was impatiently pushing at his back. 'So she forgets a negative in her confusion then. Is that all you have? Beate?'
Beate flushed. 'I've just started studying the video of the bank robbery in Kirkeveien.'
'Any conclusions?'
Her eyes wandered from Ivarsson to Harry and back again. 'Not for the time being.'
'Nothing then,' Ivarsson said. 'Perhaps you would be pleased to know that we have identified nine suspects we've brought in for questioning. And we have a strategy for finally getting something out of Raskol.'
'Raskol?' Harry asked.
'Raskol Baxhet, the king of the sewer rats himself,' Ivarsson said, hooking his fingers into his belt loops. He breathed in and hitched his trousers up with a cheery grin: 'But Beate can probably fill you in on the details later.'
13
Marble
Harry was aware that, on certain matters, he was small-minded. Take Bogstadveien, for example. He didn't like Bogstadveien. He didn't know why; perhaps it was because in this street, paved with gold and oil, the Mount Happy of Happyland, no one smiled. Harry didn't smile himself, but he lived in Bislett, wasn't paid to smile and right now had a few good reasons for not smiling. However, that didn't mean that Harry, in common with most Norwegians, didn't appreciate being smiled at.
Inwardly, Harry tried to excuse the boy behind the counter in the 7-Eleven. He probably hated his job, he probably lived in Bislett, too, and it had started to piss down with rain again.
The pale face with the fiery red pimples cast a bored eye over his police ID card: 'How should I know how long the skip's been outside?'
'Because it's green and it covers half of your view of Bogstadveien,' Harry said.
The boy groaned and put his hands on hips which barely held up his trousers. 'A week. Sort of. Hey, queue of people waiting behind you, you know.'
'Mm. I had a look inside. It's almost empty apart from a few bottles and newspapers. Do you know who ordered it?' 'No.'
'I see you have a surveillance camera over the counter. Looks as if it might just catch the skip?' 'If you say so.'
'If you still have the film from last Friday I would like to see it.' 'Ring tomorrow. Tobben's here.' 'Tobben?' 'Shop manager.'
'I suggest you ring Tobben now and get permission to give me the tape, then I won't detain you any longer.'
'You have a look for it,' he said and the spots went redder. 'I haven't got time to start searching for some video now.'
'Oh,' Harry said without making a move. 'What about after closing time?'
'We're open twenty-four hours,' the boy said, rolling his eyes. 'That was a joke,' Harry said.
'Right. Ha ha,' said the boy with the somnambulant voice. 'You going to buy sumfin or what?'
Harry shook his head and the boy looked past him: 'Till's free.'
Harry sighed and turned to the queue crowding towards the counter. 'The till is not free. I am from Oslo Police.' He held up his ID. 'And this person is arrested for being unable to pronounce th.'
Harry could be small-minded on certain matters. At this particular moment, though, he was extremely pleased with the response. He appreciated being smiled at.
But he didn't like the smile which appeared to be part of the professional training of preachers, politicians and undertakers. They smile with their eyes while speaking and it gave herr Sandemann of Sandemann Funeral Directors a sincerity which together with the temperature in the coffin storeroom under Majorstuen church made Harry shudder. He surveyed the locale. Two coffins, a chair, a wreath, a funeral
director, a black suit and a comb-over.
'She looks wonderful,' Sandemann said. 'Peaceful. Restful. Dignified. Are you a member of the family?'
'Not exactly.' Harry showed his police card in the hope that sincerity was reserved for closest family. It wasn't.
'Tragic that such a young life should pass on in this way.' Sandemann smiled, pressing his palms together. The funeral director's fingers were unusually thin and crooked.
'I would like to have a look at the clothes the deceased was wearing when she was found,' Harry said. 'At the office they said you had brought them here.'
Sandemann nodded, fetched a white plastic bag and explained that he had done this in case parents or siblings turned up, and he could dispose of them. Harry searched in vain for pockets in the black dress.