by Jo Nesbo
'Why's your father's name still on the sign?' he asked when she came into the sitting room with a cup. 'So that strangers will think a man lives in the house?'
She shrugged and settled into a deep armchair. 'We've never got round to doing anything about it. His name has probably been there so long we don't see it any more.'
'Mm.' Harry pressed his palms together. 'That's basically what I wanted to talk about.'
'The door sign?'
'No. Dysosmia. Not being able to smell bodies.' 'What do you mean?'
'I was standing in the hall yesterday looking at the first e-mail I'd received from Anna's murderer. It was the same as with your door sign. The senses registered it, but not the brain. That's what dysosmia is. The printout had been hanging there for so long I had stopped seeing it, just like the photo of Sis and me. When it was stolen, I only noticed something was different, but not what it was. Do you know why?'
Beate shook her head.
'Because nothing had happened to me which would make me see things differently. I saw only what I assumed to be there. Something happened yesterday, though. Ali said he had seen a woman's back by the cellar door. It suddenly struck me that all the time I had assumed Anna's murderer was a man, without realising it. Whenever you make the mistake of imagining what you think you're looking for, you don't see the other things you find. That made me see the e-mail with new eyes.'
Beate's eyebrows formed two quotation marks. 'Do you mean to say it wasn't Alf Gunnerud who killed Anna Bethsen?' 'You know what an anagram is, don't you,' Harry said. 'A letter game . . .'
'Anna's murderer left a patrin for me. A sign. I saw it in the mirror. The e-mail was signed with a woman's name. Back to front. So I sent the e-mail to Aune, who contacted a specialist in cognitive psychology and language. From a single sentence in an anonymous threatening letter he had been able to determine gender, age and origins of the person. In this case, he was able to say the e-mails were written by a person of either gender, between twenty and seventy and potentially from anywhere in the country. Not much help, in other words. Except that he thought it may have been a woman. Because of one single word. It says "you policemen" and not "you police" or some non-specific collective term. He says the sender may have chosen that word unconsciously because it makes a distinction between the gender of the receiver and the sender.' Harry leaned back in the chair.
Beate put down her cup. 'I can't exactly say I'm convinced, Harry. An unidentified woman in the stairwell, a code which is a woman's name backwards and a psychologist who thinks Alf Gunnerud chose a female way of expressing himself.'
'Mm,' Harry nodded. 'Agreed. First of all, I want to tell you what put me onto this trail. But before I tell you who killed Anna, I would like to ask you if you can help me find a missing person.'
'Of course. But why ask me? Missing persons are not—'
'Yes, they are.' Harry smiled sadly. 'Missing persons are your field.'
43
Ramona
Harry found Vigdis Albu down by the beach. She was sitting on the same smooth rock where he had fallen asleep with his hands around his knees staring into the fjord. In the morning mist the sun resembled a pale imprint of itself. Gregor ran up to Harry wagging his tail. It was low tide and the sea smelt of seaweed and oil. Harry sat down on a small rock behind her and flipped out a cigarette.
'Did you find him?' she asked, without turning. Harry wondered how long she had been waiting for him.
'Many people found Arne Albu,' he answered. 'I was one of them.'
She stroked away a wisp of hair dancing in front of her face in the wind. 'Me, too. But that was a long, long time ago. You may not believe me, but I loved him once.'
Harry clicked the lighter. 'Why shouldn't I believe you?'
'You can believe what you like. Not everyone can love. We - and they - may believe that, but it is so. They learn the movements, the lines and the steps, that's all. Some of them are so good they can fool us for quite a while. What surprises me is not that they succeed, but
that they can be bothered. Why go to all the effort to have a feeling reciprocated which you don't understand? Do you understand, Constable?'
Harry didn't answer.
'Perhaps they're just frightened,' she said, turning to him. 'To see themselves in the mirror and discover they're cripples.' 'Who are you talking about, fru Albu?'
She turned back to the water. 'Who knows? Anna Bethsen? Arne? Me? The me I became?'
Gregor licked Harry's hand.
'I know how Anna Bethsen was killed,' Harry said. He studied her back, but no reaction was discernible. The cigarette caught light at the second attempt. 'Yesterday afternoon I got the results of an analysis Krimteknisk were doing on four glasses which had been in the sink at Anna Bethsen's flat. They were my fingerprints. I had apparently been drinking Coke. I would never have dreamed of drinking it with wine. One wineglass had not been used. The interesting part, however, is that traces of morphine hydrochloride were found in the dregs of the Coke. In other words, morphine. You know the effect of large doses, don't you, fru Albu?'
She scoured his face. Shook her head slowly.
'No?' Harry said. 'Collapse and amnesia from the moment you ingest the drug followed by severe nausea and a headache when you come to. Easily confused with the effects of going on the bottle. It's a good date-rape drug, much like Rohypnol. And we have been raped. All of us. Haven't we, fru Albu?'
A seagull screamed with laughter above them.
'You again,' Astrid Monsen said with a brief, nervous laugh and let him in. They sat in the kitchen. She scuttled about, made some tea, put out a cake she had bought at Hansen's bakery 'in case anyone dropped by'. Harry mumbled trivialities about yesterday's snow and how the world they all thought would cave in, along with the twin towers on TV, hadn't changed much by and large. It was only when she had poured out the tea and sat down, that he asked her what she had thought of Anna.
She was open-mouthed.
'You hated her, didn't you.'
In the ensuing silence a tiny electronic ping was audible in another room.
'No. I didn't hate her.' Astrid hugged an enormous cup of green tea. 'She was just . . . different.' 'Different in what way?'
'The life she led. The way she was. She was lucky to be the way . . . she was.' 'And you didn't like that?' 'I . . . don't know. No, perhaps I didn't.' 'Why not?'
Astrid Monsen looked at him. For a long time. The smile flickered in and out of her eyes like an unsettled butterfly.
'It's not what you think,' she said. 'I envied Anna. I admired her. There were days when I wished I were her. She was the opposite of me. I sit inside here while she . . .'
Her eyes went to the window. 'She wore barely anything and stepped out into life, Anna did. Men came and went, she knew she couldn't have them, but she loved them, anyway. She couldn't paint, but she exhibited her pictures so the rest of the world could see for themselves. She talked to everyone as if she were justified in thinking they liked her. To me, too. There were days when I felt Anna had stolen the real me, that there was not enough room for the two of us and I would have to wait my turn.' She emitted the same nervous titter. 'But then she died. And I discovered it wasn't like that. I can't be her. Now no one can. Isn't that sad?' She directed her gaze at Harry. 'No, I didn't hate her. I loved her.'
Harry could feel his neck prickle. 'Can you tell me what happened the evening you found me in the corridor?'
The smile appeared and disappeared like an ailing neon light. As though a happy person occasionally appeared and peeped out of her eyes. Harry had a feeling a dam was about to burst.
'You were ugly,' she whispered. 'But in an attractive way.'
Harry raised an eyebrow. 'Mm. When you lifted me up, did you notice if I smelt of alcohol?'
She looked surprised. As though she hadn't thought of that before. 'No. Not really. You smelt . . . of nothing.'
'Nothing?'
She blushed a deep red. 'Nothing . . . in
particular.' 'Did I lose anything on the stairs?' 'Like what, for example?' 'A mobile phone. Keys.'
'What keys?'
'You have to answer me.'
She shook her head. 'No mobile phone. And I put the keys back in your pocket. Why are you asking about all this?'
'Because I know who killed Anna. I just wanted to double-check the details first.'
44
Patrin
The next day the last remnants of the two-day-old snow were gone. At the morning meeting in the Robberies Unit, Ivarsson said if they were going to make any headway in the Expeditor case their best hope was another bank raid, but he added that unfortunately Beate's prediction that the Expeditor would strike sooner or later was incorrect. To everyone's surprise, Beate didn't seem to take this indirect criticism to heart. She shrugged and repeated confidently that it was just a question of time before the Expeditor cracked.
The same evening a police car slid into the car park in front of the Munch Museum and came to a halt. Four men stepped out, two uniformed officers plus two plain-clothes men who from a distance looked as if they were walking hand in hand.
'Apologies for the security precautions,' Harry said, jerking his head towards the handcuffs. 'It was the only way I could get permission to do this.'
Raskol hunched his shoulders. 'I think it irks you more than me that we're cuffed together, Harry.'
The group crossed the car park towards the football pitch and the
caravans. Harry signalled to the officers to wait outside while he and Raskol entered the small caravan.
Simon was waiting inside. He had put out a bottle of Calvados and three glasses. Harry shook his head, unlocked the cuffs and crawled onto the sofa.
'Nice to be back?' Harry asked.
Raskol didn't answer, and Harry waited while Raskol's black eyes examined the caravan. Harry saw them stop by the photograph of the two brothers over the bed. He thought he detected a tiny twist of the gentle mouth.
'I've promised we'll be back in Botsen by twelve, so we have to get down to brass tacks,' Harry said. 'Alf Gunnerud did not kill Anna Bethsen.'
Simon looked across at Raskol, who was staring at Harry. 'And neither did Arne Albu.'
In the silence, the roar of the traffic in Finnmarkgata seemed to increase. Did Raskol miss the traffic noise when he lay in his cell at night? Did he miss the voice from the other bed, the smell, the sound of his brother's regular breathing? Harry turned to Simon: 'Would you mind leaving us alone?'
Simon turned to Raskol, who gave a brief nod. He closed the door after leaving. Harry folded his hands and raised his eyes. Raskol's eyes were shiny, as though he had a temperature.
'You've known for some time, haven't you,' Harry said in a low voice.
Raskol pressed his palms together, on the surface a sign of inner calm, but the white fingertips told a different story.
'Perhaps Anna had read Sun Tzu,' Harry said. 'And knew the first rule of all war was deception. Nevertheless she gave me the solution. I just couldn't crack the code. S2MN. She even gave me a clue; she said the retina inverted things, so I would have to look in the mirror to see what they were.'
Raskol had closed his eyes. He seemed to be praying. 'Her mother was beautiful and crazy,' he whispered. 'Anna inherited both elements.'
'You solved the code ages ago, I know,' Harry said. 'Her signature was S2MN. The two stands for a second S and there are three vowels missing. From left to right it reads S-S-M-N, but in the mirror it becomes N-M-S-S, or with the vowels NeMeSiS. The goddess of vengeance. She told me. It was her masterpiece. What she wanted to be remembered for.'
Harry said it without a hint of triumph in his voice. It was a statement of fact. The cramped caravan seemed to shrink around them.
'Tell me the rest,' Raskol breathed. 'I suppose you can work it out.' 'Tell me!' he hissed.
Harry looked at the small, round window over the table, which had already misted up. A porthole. A spaceship. He fantasised that if he wiped away the condensation they would discover they were in outer space, two lonely astronauts in the Horsehead Nebula on board a flying caravan. That wouldn't be very much more fantastic than what he was about to tell now.
45
The Art of War
Raskol straightened up and Harry began:
'This summer my neighbour, Ali Niazi, received a letter from someone purporting to owe rent from the time he lived in the building several years ago. Ali couldn't find his name in the list of occupants, so he wrote to him telling him to forget it. The name was Eriksen. I rang Ali yesterday and asked him to dig up the letter he had received. It turned out the address was Sorgenfrigata 17. Astrid Monsen told me that Anna's letter box had had another name sticker on it for a few days this summer. Name of Eriksen. What was the point of the letter? I rang the locksmith. They had, in fact, received an order for a key to my flat. I had the papers faxed over. The first thing I noticed was that the order was made a week before Anna's death. The order was signed by Ali, chairman and key-man of our housing co-op. The forged signature on the order form was no more than passable. Done by a no more than passable painter, imitating the signature on a letter she had received, for instance. But it was good enough for the locksmith, who promptly ordered a key for Harry Hole's flat from Trioving. And Harry Hole had to appear personally, show ID and sign for the key, believing he was signing for a spare key for Anna. You could kill yourself laughing, couldn't you?'
Raskol didn't seem to have any problems restraining himself.
'Between our meeting and the evening meal she rigged all this up. Arranged an e-mail account via a server in Egypt and wrote the e-mails on the laptop, pre-programming their delivery dates. During the day she unlocked the door to our cellar and found my storeroom. She used the same key to get into my flat to look for an easily recognisable personal item which she could plant at Alf Gunnerud's. She chose the photo of Sis and me. Next item on the agenda was a visit to her ex-lover and dealer. Alf Gunnerud must have been a little surprised to see her again. What did she want? Buy or borrow a gun maybe? Because she knew he had one of the weapons Oslo appears to be full of right now, with the manufacturer's serial number filed off. He found her a gun, a Beretta M92F, while she went to the toilet. He thought she was in there for a long time. And when she eventually came out, she was suddenly in a hurry and had to leave. At least we can imagine that was how it might have happened.'
Raskol's jaws were clenched so hard Harry could see his lips narrow. Harry leaned backwards. 'The next job was to break into Albu's chalet and plant the key to her flat. That was child's play; she knew the chalet key was in the outside lamp. While she was there she unstuck the photograph of Vigdis and the children from the photo album and took it with her. And so everything was ready. She only had to wait now. For Harry to come to the meal. The menu was tom yam with japone chilli, Coke and morphine hydrochloride. The latter ingredient is particularly popular as a date-rape drug, as it is liquid and relatively tasteless, the dosage simple and the effect unpredictable. The victim will wake up with a big hole in their memory, which they think is caused by alcohol since they have all the symptoms of a hangover. And in many ways you could say I was raped. I was so befuddled she had no problem taking my mobile out of my jacket pocket before shoving me out of the door. After I had gone, she left as well and went to my room in the cellar, where she connected the mobile to the laptop. When she came home, she sneaked up the stairs. Astrid Monsen heard her, but thought it was fru Gundersen from the third floor. Then she prepared herself for the last performance before leaving the rest of the action to take care of itself. Of course, she knew I would investigate the case, officially or otherwise, so she left me two patrins. She held the gun in her right hand, knowing I knew she was left-handed. And she placed the photo in the shoe.'
Raskol's lips moved, but not a sound passed them. Harry ran a hand across his face. 'The last brushstroke of the masterpiece was to pull the trigger of a gun.' 'But why?' whispered Raskol.
Harr
y shrugged. 'Anna was a person of extremes. She wanted to avenge herself on the people she thought had taken from her what she lived for. Love. The guilty parties were Albu, Gunnerud and me. And your family. In short: hatred won.'
'Bullshit,' Raskol said.
Harry turned and took down the photograph of Raskol and Stefan from the wall and placed it on the table between them. 'Hasn't hatred always won in your family, Raskol?'
Raskol knocked back his head and drained the glass. Then he beamed.
Harry recollected the seconds afterwards as a video on fast forward. When they were over, he was lying on the floor, held in a neck lock by Raskol, with alcohol in his eyes, the smell of Calvados in his nose and the jagged edge of the broken bottle against his neck.
'There's only one thing more dangerous than excessively high blood pressure, Spiuni, Raskol whispered. 'And that's excessively low blood pressure. So keep still.'