by Jo Nesbo
Harry jumped as a pain seared through his right foot. He automatically pulled his foot away and looked down. In the frugal light from the stars he could make out a black line down the whitewashed wall. The line ran from the door, across the stairs where his foot had been, and down the step, where he lost sight of it. He rummaged around in his pocket for a mini Maglite torch and switched it on. Ants. Large, yellow, semi-transparent ants formed into two columns - one down the steps and one in under the door. They were clearly a different order of ant from the black ants of home. It was impossible to see what they were transporting, but Harry knew enough about ants - yellow or not - to know there was something.
Harry switched off the torch. Had a think. And left. Down the steps and towards the gate. He stopped halfway, turned and began to run. The simple, rotting wooden door flew off the frame on both sides as it was struck by ninety-five kilos of Harry Hole, doing just under thirty kilometres an hour. He had one elbow tucked underneath him as he and the remains of the door smacked down on the stone floor and the pain shot up his arm and into his neck. Lying on the floor in the dark, he waited for the smooth click of a trigger. When it didn't come, he stood up and switched on his torch. The narrow path of light found the column of ants along the wall. Harry could feel from the heat beneath the bandage that he was bleeding again. He followed the glistening bodies of the ants across a filthy carpet into the next room. There the column took a sharp turn to the left and continued up the wall. The light of the torch caught a Kama Sutra picture on the way up. The caravan of ants forked off and continued across the ceiling. Harry leaned back. His neck hurt like never before. Now they were directly above him. He had to turn. The torch beam wandered around until it found the ants again. Was this really the shortest way for them? That was Harry's final thought before he stared into Lev Grette's face. Lev's body loomed over
Harry, who dropped the torch and reeled backwards. His brain might have told him it was too late, but his hands fumbled in a mixture of shock and stupidity for a Namco G-Con 45 to hold onto.
28
Lava Pe
Beate couldn't stand the stench for more than a couple of minutes and had to dash out. She was bent double as Harry strolled out and sat down on the steps for a cigarette.
'Couldn't you smell it?' Beate groaned, with saliva dribbling down from her mouth and nose.
'Dysosmia.' Harry contemplated the glow of his cigarette. 'Partial loss of smell. There are some things I can't smell any more. Aune says it's because I've smelt too many bodies. Emotional trauma and so
on.'
Beate retched again.
'I apologise,' she groaned. 'It was the ants. I mean, why do the disgusting creatures have to use the nostrils as a kind of two-lane highway?'
'Well, if you insist, I can tell you where you'll find the richest protein sources in the human body.' 'No, thank you!'
'Sorry.' Harry flicked the cigarette onto the dry ground. 'You coped very well in there, Lonn. It's not the same as videos.' He stood up and went back in.
Lev Grette was hanging from a short piece of rope tied to the lamp hook in the ceiling. He hovered a good half-metre off the floor and the overturned chair, and that was the reason the flies had enjoyed the monopoly of the corpse before the yellow ants, who continued their procession up and down the rope.
Beate had found the mobile phone with the charger on the floor beside the sofa and said she could find out when he last had a conversation. Harry went into the kitchen and switched on the light. A blue metallic cockroach stood on an A4 piece of paper, swinging its feelers towards him, and then made a rapid retreat to the cooker. Harry lifted the piece of paper. It was handwritten. He had read all sorts of suicide letters and very few had been great literature. The famous last words were usually confused babble, desperate cries for help or prosaic instructions about who would inherit the toaster and the lawnmower. One of the more meaningful ones Harry had seen was when a farmer from Maridalen had written in chalk on the barn wall: A man has hanged himself in here. Please call the police. Apologies. In light of this, Lev Grette's letter was, if not unique, then at least unusual.
Dear Trond,
I've always wondered how it felt when the footbridge suddenly disappeared beneath him. When the precipice opened and he knew something completely devoid of meaning was about to happen. He was going to die for no purpose. Perhaps he still had things he wanted to do. Perhaps someone was sitting and waiting for him that morning. Perhaps he thought that day would be the start of something new. In a way he was right about that ...
I never told you I visited him in hospital. I took a large bunch of flowers with me and told him I had seen the whole thing from the window of my flat; I rang for the ambulance and gave the police a description of the boy and his bike. He lay there in bed, so small and grey, and he thanked me. Then I asked him a silly sports commentator question: 'How did it feel?'
He didn't answer. He just lay there with all the tubes and the drips, and watched me. Then he thanked me again and a nurse said I had to go.
So I never knew what it felt like. Until one day when the precipice opened beneath me too. It didn't happen when I was running up Industrigata after the robbery. Or while I was counting the money afterwards. Or while I was watching the news. It happened the same way it happened to the old man. One morning I was walking along happily, unaware of any danger. The sun was shining, I was safely back in d'Ajuda, I could relax and began to think. I had taken from the person I loved most what they loved most. I had two million kroner to live off, but nothing to live for. That was this morning.
I don't expect you to understand this, Trond. I robbed a bank, I saw she recognised me, I was caught in a game with its own rules, none of this has any place in your world. I don't expect you to understand what I am doing now, but perhaps you can see that it is possible to get tired of this, too. Of living. Lev
PS It didn't strike me at the time that the old man didn't smile when he thanked me. I thought about it today, though, Trond. Perhaps he didn't have anything or anyone waiting for him after all. Perhaps he just felt relief when the precipice opened and he thought he wouldn't have to do it himself.
Beate was standing on a chair beside Lev's body when Harry came in. She was struggling to bend one of Lev's fingers so she could press it against the inside of a small shiny metal box.
'Blast,' she said. 'The ink pad has been standing in the sun at the hotel and it's dried out.'
'If you can't get a good print, we'll have to use the firemen's method.'
'And that is?'
'People caught in a fire automatically use their hands. Even on charred bodies the skin on the fingertips may be intact and you can use fingerprints to identify bodies. Sometimes, for practical reasons, firemen cut off a finger and take it to Forensics.' 'That's called desecration of a body.'
Harry shrugged. 'If you look at his other hand, you can see he's already missing one finger.'
'I can see,' she said. 'Looks like it's been cut off. What might that mean?'
Harry went closer and shone the torch. 'It means the finger was cut off long after he hanged himself. Someone may have come here and seen he'd already done the job for them.'
'Who?'
'Well, in some countries gypsies punish thieves by cutting their fingers off,' Harry said. 'If they stole from gypsies, that is.'
'I think I've got a good print,' Beate said, wiping the sweat off her brow. 'Shall we cut him down?'
'No,' Harry said. 'As soon as we've had a look around, we'll tidy up after us and clear off. I saw a phone box in the main street. I'll phone the police anonymously from there and report the death. When we get to Oslo, you can phone the Brazilian police and have the medical report sent. I have no doubt he died of asphyxiation, but I want the time of death.'
'What about the door?'
'Not much we can do about that.'
'And your neck? The bandage is all red.'
'Forget it. My arm hurts more. I landed on it when I went thro
ugh the door.'
'How bad is it?'
Harry gingerly raised his arm and grimaced. 'It's fine so long as I don't move it.'
'Think yourself lucky you haven't got the Setesdal Twitch.'
Two out of three in the room laughed, but their laughter quickly subsided.
On the way back to the hotel, Beate asked Harry if it all made sense to him.
'From a technical point of view, yes. Beyond that, I'll never get suicide to make sense.'
He flicked his cigarette away. It described a glowing arc in the almost tangible night. 'But that's me.'
29
Room 316
The window opened with a bang.
'Trond is travelling,' she trilled. Her bleached hair had obviously been given another dose of chemicals since their previous visit and her scalp shone through the devitalised hair. 'Have you been down south?'
Harry raised a tanned face and peered at her.
'In a way. Do you know where he is?'
'He's packing his car,' she said, pointing to the other side of the houses. 'I think he's going to travel, the poor thing.' 'Mm.'
Beate wanted to go, but Harry stayed put. 'You've lived here a long time, have you?' he asked. 'Oh yes. Thirty-two years.'
'You can probably remember Lev and Trond from the time they were small, can you?'
'Of course. They left their mark on Disengrenda.' She smiled and leaned against the frame of the window. 'Especially Lev. A real charmer. We always knew he would be dangerous for the ladies.'
'Dangerous, yes. Maybe you know the story about the man who fell from the footbridge?'
Her face darkened and she whispered in a tragic voice: 'Oh, yes. Dreadful business. I heard he was never able to walk properly again, the poor chap. His knees stiffened up. Can you imagine a child thinking up such a wicked trick?'
'Mm. He must have been a real wild child.'
'Wild child?' She shaded her eyes. 'I wouldn't exactly say that. He was a polite, well-brought-up boy. That was what was so shocking.'
'And everybody round here knew he'd done it?'
'Everybody. I saw him from this window. A red jacket heading off on his bike. I should have known there was something wrong when he came back. The lad's face was completely drained of colour.' She shuddered in the cold gust of wind. Then she pointed across the road.
Trond was walking towards them with his arms hanging down by his sides. He slowed down more and more until, in the end, he was hardly moving.
'It's Lev, isn't it,' he said on finally reaching them.
'Yes,' Harry said.
'Is he dead?'
From the corner of his eye he saw the gaping face in the window. 'Yes, he's dead.'
'Good,' said Trond. Then he bent over and hid his face in his hands.
Bjarne Moller stood staring through the window with a concerned expression on his face when Harry peeked in through the half-open door. Harry tapped.
Moller turned and brightened up. 'Oh, hi.'
'Here's the report, boss.' Harry tossed a green Manila wallet on his desk.
Moller fell into his chair, managed after some exertion to heap his excessively long legs under the desk and put on his glasses.
'Aha,' he mumbled as he opened the wallet inscribed LIST OF documents. Inside there was a solitary piece of A4 paper.
'Didn't think you'd want to know all the ins and outs,' Harry said.
'If you say so, I'm sure you're right,' Moller said, running his eyes over the generously spaced lines.
Harry looked over his boss's shoulder and out of the window. There was nothing to see, just thick damp mist which lay like a used nappy over the town. Moller put down the piece of paper.
'So you just went there, someone told you where the man lived and you found the Expeditor hanging from a rope?'
'In broad outline, yes.'
Moller shrugged his shoulders. 'Fine by me so long as we have watertight evidence that this is the man we've been looking for.' 'Weber checked the fingerprints this morning.' 'And?'
Harry sat down in the chair. 'They tally with those we found on the Coke bottle the robber was holding before he went into action.' 'Can we be sure it's the same bottle . . . ?'
'Relax, boss. We've got the bottle and the man on the video. You just read in the report that we have a handwritten suicide note in which Lev Grette confesses, didn't you? We went to Disengrenda this morning and informed Trond Grette. We asked if we could borrow some of Lev's old schoolbooks from the loft and Beate took them to the Kripos handwriting expert. He says there's no doubt the suicide note was written by the same person.'
'Yes, yes, yes, I just wanted to be absolutely sure before we went public with this, Harry. It's front-page news, you know.'
'You should try to be a little happier, boss.' Harry got to his feet. 'We've just solved our biggest case for a good while. The place should be festooned with streamers and balloons.'
'I'm sure you're right,' Moller sighed. He paused before asking, 'Why don't you look happier then?'
'I won't be happy until we solve the other case, you know . . .' Harry went towards the door. 'Halvorsen and I are clearing our desks today and we'll make a start on the Ellen Gjelten case tomorrow.'
He stopped in the doorway when Moller cleared his throat. 'Yes, boss?'
'I was wondering how you found out Lev Grette was the Expeditor.'
'Well, the official version is that Beate recognised him on the video. Would you like to hear the unofficial one?'
Moller was massaging a stiff knee. The concerned expression was back. 'Probably not.'
'Mm,' said Harry, standing in the doorway to the House of Pain.
'Mm,' said Beate, twisting round on her chair and glancing at the pictures rolling across the screen.
'Suppose I ought to thank you for great teamwork.'
'Same to you.'
Harry stood fingering his bunch of keys. 'Anyway,' he said. 'I don't think Ivarsson will be pissed off for very long. After all, he bathed in some of the glory as it was his idea to make us a team.'
Beate smiled faintly. 'For as long as it lasted.'
'Don't forget what I said about you-know-who.'
'No.' Her eyes flashed.
Harry pushed his shoulders forward. 'He's a bastard. It would be unconscionable of me not to tell you.' 'Lovely to know you, Harry.' Harry let the door close behind him.
Harry unlocked the door to his flat, put down his bag and the plastic Playstation carrier in the middle of the hall floor and went to bed. Three dreamless hours later he was awoken by the telephone ringing. He turned over and saw it was 19.03 on his alarm clock; he swung his legs out of bed, shuffled into the hallway, picked up the telephone and said: 'Hi, 0ystein,' before the other person could even introduce himself.
'Hello, you in Oslo, I'm at the airport in Cairo,' Oystein said. 'We said we'd speak now, didn't we?'
'You're punctuality personified,' Harry said with a yawn. 'And you're drunk.'
'Not drunk, no,' 0ystein slurred indignantly. 'Just had a couple of Stellas. Or was it three? Have to watch your fluids in the desert, y'know. I'm clear-headed and sober, Harry.'
'That's good to hear. I hope you have more good news.'
'As the doctor says, there's good news and bad news. I'll tell you the good news first . . .'
'Right.'
A long pause followed, during which all Harry could hear was a crackling noise over what sounded like heavy breathing.
'Oystein?' 'Yes?'
'I'm standing here, getting as excited as a child at Christmas.'
'Hey?'
'The good news?'
'Oh, yes. Um, well, I've got the client's number, Harry. No problemo, as they say here. It was a Norwegian mobile phone number.'
'Mobile? Is that possible?'
'You can send wireless e-mails all over the world. You just connect your computer to a mobile which in turn connects to the server. That's pretty damn old news, Harry.'
'OK, but has this client a na
me?'
'Er . . . of course. But the guys in El Tor don't have it. They just bill the Norwegian telephone operator, Telenor in this case, who in turn invoices the end client. So I rang Information in Norway and got the name.'
'Yes?' Harry was fully awake now.
'Now we've come to the not quite such good news.'
'OK?'
'Have you checked your telephone bill recently, Harry?' It took a few seconds before it clicked. 'My mobile phone. Is the bastard using my mobile phone?'
'You no longer have it, I suppose?' 'No, I lost it that evening . . . with Anna. Fuck!' 'And it never occurred to you it might be a good idea to cancel your contract?'