by Jo Nesbo
‘Sorry, Bjarne. Call on the mobile. How can I help you?’
‘We’ve got a job.’
‘At last.’
The conversation was over in ten seconds. Now he just needed one more person.
Moller had thought of Halvorsen, but according to the list he was taking his leave at home in Steinkjer. His finger continued down the column. Leave, leave, sick leave. The Chief Inspector sighed when his finger stopped against the name he had been hoping to avoid.
Harry Hole.
The lone wolf, the drunk, the department’s enfant terrible and, apart from Tom Waaler, the best detective on the sixth floor. But for that and the fact that Bjarne Moller had over the years developed a sort of perverse penchant for putting his head on the block for this policeman with the serious drinking problem, Harry Hole would have been out years ago. Ordinarily Harry was the first person he would have rung and given the assignment to, but things were not ordinary.
Or to put it another way: they were more extraordinary than usual.
It had all come to a head the month before, after Hole had spent the winter reworking an old case, the murder of his closest colleague, Ellen Gjelten, who was killed close to the River Akerselva. During that time he lost all interest in any other cases. The Ellen Gjelten case had been cleared up a long time ago, but Harry had become more and more obsessed and quite frankly Moller was beginning to worry about his mental state. The crunch came when Harry appeared in his office four weeks ago and presented his hair-raising conspiracy theories. Basically, without any proof he was making fanciful charges against Tom Waaler.
Then Harry simply disappeared. Some days later Moller rang Restaurant Schroder and learned what he had feared: that Harry had gone on another drinking binge. To cover his absence, Moller put Harry down as on leave. Once again. Harry generally put in an appearance after a week, but now four weeks had passed. His leave was over.
Moller eyed the receiver, stood up and went to the window. It was 5.30 and yet the park in front of the police station was almost deserted. There was just the odd sun worshipper braving the heat. In Gronlandsleiret a couple of shop owners were sitting under an awning next to their vegetables. Even the cars – despite zilch rush-hour traffic – were moving more slowly. Moller brushed back his hair with his hands, a lifetime’s habit which his wife said he should give a rest now as people might suspect him of trying to cover his bald patch. Was there really no-one else except Harry? Moller watched a drunk staggering down Gronlandsleiret. He guessed he was heading for the Raven, but he wouldn’t get a drink there. He’d probably end up at the Boxer. The place where the Ellen Gjelten case was emphatically brought to a close. Perhaps Harry Hole’s career in the police force, too. Moller was being put under pressure; he would soon have to make up his mind what to do about the Harry problem. But that was long term; what was important now was this case.
Moller lifted the receiver and considered for a moment what he was about to do: put Harry Hole and Tom Waaler on the same case. These holiday periods were such a pain. The electrical impulse started on its journey from Telje, Torp amp; Aasen’s monument to an ordered society and began to ring in a place where chaos reigned, a flat in Sofies gate.
3
Friday. The Awakening.
She screamed again and Harry Hole opened his eyes.
The sun gleamed through the idly shifting curtains as the grating sound of the tram slowing down in Pilestredet faded away. Harry tried to find his bearings. He lay on the floor of his own sitting room. Dressed, though not well dressed. In the land of the living, though not really alive.
Sweat lay like a clammy film of make-up on his face, and his heart felt light, but stressed, like a ping-pong ball on a concrete floor. His head felt worse.
Harry hesitated for a moment before making up his mind to continue breathing. The ceiling and the walls were spinning around, and there was not a picture or a ceiling light in the flat his gaze could cling to. Whirling on the periphery of his vision was an IKEA bookcase, the back of a chair and a green coffee table from Elevator. At least he had escaped any more dreams.
It had been the same old nightmare. Rooted to the spot, unable to move, in vain he had tried closing his eyes to avoid seeing her mouth, distorted and opened in a silent scream. The large, blankly staring eyes with the mute accusation. When he was young, it had been his little sister, Sis. Now it was Ellen Gjelten. At first the screams had been silent, now they sounded like squealing steel brakes. He didn’t know which was worse.
Harry lay there quite still, staring out between the curtains, up at the shimmering sun over the streets and back yards of Bislett. Only the tram broke the summer stillness. He didn’t even blink. He stared at the sun until it became a leaping golden heart, beating against a thin, milky-blue membrane and pumping out heat. When he was young, his mother told him that if children looked straight into the sun it would burn away their eyesight and that they would have sunlight inside their heads all day long and for all their lives. Sunlight in their heads consuming everything else. Like the image of Ellen’s smashed skull in the snow by the Akerselva with the shadow hanging over it. For three years he had tried to catch that shadow. But he hadn’t managed it.
Rakel…
Harry raised his head cautiously and gazed at the lifeless, black eye of the telephone answer machine. There had been no life in it for however many weeks had passed since his meeting with the head of Kripos, the Norwegian CID, at the Boxer. Presumably burned up by the sun as well.
Shit, it was hot in here!
Rakel…
He remembered now. At one point in the dream the face had changed and it became Rakel’s. Sis, Ellen, Mum, Rakel. Women’s faces. As if in one constantly pumping, pulsating movement they could change and merge again.
Harry groaned and let his head sink back down on the floor. He caught a glimpse of the bottle balancing on the edge of the table above him. Jim Beam from Clermont, Kentucky. The contents were gone. Evaporated, vaporised. Rakel. He closed his eyes. There was nothing left.
He had no idea what the time was, he just knew that it was late. Or early. Whatever it was, it was the wrong moment to wake up. Or to be precise, to be asleep. You should do something else at this time of day. Such as drink.
Harry got up onto his knees.
There was something vibrating in his trousers. That, he now realised, was what had woken him. A moth trapped and desperately flapping its wings. He shoved his hand into his pocket and pulled out his mobile phone.
Harry walked slowly towards St Hanshaugen. His headache throbbed behind his eyeballs. The address Moller had given him was within walking distance. He had splashed a little water over his face, found a drop of whisky in the cupboard under the sink and set off hoping that a walk would clear his head. Harry passed Underwater: 4 p.m. till 3 a.m., 4 p.m. till 1 a.m. on Mondays, closed Sundays. This was not one of his more frequent watering holes since his local, Schroder, was in the parallel street, but like most serious drinkers Harry always had a place in his brain where the opening hours of taprooms were stored automatically.
He smiled at his reflection in the grimy windows. Another time.
At the corner he turned right, down Ullevalsveien. Harry didn’t like walking in Ullevalsveien. It was a street for cars, not for pedestrians. The best thing he could say about Ullevalsveien was that the pavement on the right afforded some shade on days like this.
Harry stopped in front of the house bearing the number he had been given. He gave it a quick once-over.
On the ground floor was a launderette with red washing machines. The note on the window gave the opening times as 8.00 till 21.00 every day and offered a 20-minute dry for the reduced price of 30 kroner. A dark-skinned woman in a shawl sat beside a rotating drum, staring out into the air. Next to the launderette was a shop window with headstones in, and further down, a green neon sign displaying KEBAB HOUSE above a snack-bar-cum-grocer’s. Harry’s eyes wandered over the filthy house front. The paint on the old window fr
ames had cracked, but the dormer windows on the roof suggested there were new attic conversions on top of the original four floors. A camera was placed over the newly installed intercom system by the rusty iron gate. Money from Oslo’s West End was flowing slowly but surely into the East End. He rang the top bell next to the name of Camilla Loen.
‘Yes,’ the loudspeaker replied.
Moller had warned him, but nevertheless he was taken aback when he heard Tom Waaler’s voice.
Harry tried to answer, but could not force a sound from his vocal cords. He coughed and made a fresh attempt.
‘Hole. Open up.’
There was a buzzing sound and he grasped the cold, rough door handle of black iron.
‘Hi.’
Harry turned round.
‘Hi, Beate.’
Beate Lonn was just under average height, with dark blonde hair and blue eyes, neither good-looking nor unattractive. In short, there was nothing particularly striking about Beate Lonn, apart from her clothes. She was wearing a white boiler suit that looked a bit like an astronaut’s outfit.
Harry held open the gate while she carried in two large metal containers.
‘Have you just arrived?’
He tried not to breathe on her as she passed.
‘No. I had to come back down to the car for the rest of my stuff. We’ve been here for half an hour. Hit yourself?’
Harry ran a finger over the scab on his nose.
‘Apparently.’
He followed her through the next door leading into the stairwell.
‘What’s it like up there?’
Beate put the boxes in front of a green lift door, still looking up at him.
‘I thought it was one of your principles to look first and ask questions later,’ she said, pressing the lift button.
Harry nodded. Beate Lonn belonged to that section of the human race who remembered everything. She could recite details from criminal cases he had long forgotten and from before she began Police College. In addition, she had an unusually well-developed fusiform gyrus – the part of the brain that remembers faces. She had had it tested and the psychologists were amazed. Just his luck that she remembered the little he had managed to teach her when they worked together on the spate of bank robberies that swept Oslo the previous year.
‘I like to be as open as possible to my impressions the first time I am at the scene of a crime, yes,’ Harry said and gave a start when the lift sprang into action. He began to go through his pockets looking for cigarettes. ‘But I doubt that I’m going to be working on this particular case.’
‘Why not?’
Harry didn’t answer. He pulled out a crumpled pack of Camels from his left-hand trouser pocket and extracted a crushed cigarette.
‘Oh yes, now I remember,’ Beate smiled. ‘You said this spring that you were going to go on holiday. To Normandy, wasn’t it? You lucky thing…’
Harry put the cigarette between his lips. It tasted dreadful. And it would hardly do anything for his headache, either. There was only one thing that helped. He took a look at his watch. Mondays, 4 p.m. to 1 a.m.
‘There won’t be any Normandy,’ he said.
‘Oh?’
‘No, so that’s not the reason. It’s because he’s running this case.’
Harry took a long drag on his cigarette and nodded upwards.
She gave him a long, hard look. ‘Watch out that he doesn’t become an obsession. Move on.’
‘Move on?’ Harry blew out smoke. ‘He hurts people, Beate. You should know that.’
She blushed. ‘Tom and I had a brief fling, that’s all, Harry.’
‘Wasn’t that the time you were going round with a bruised neck?’
‘Harry! Tom never…’
Beate stopped when she realised that she was raising her voice. The echo resounded upwards in the stairwell, but was drowned out by the lift coming to a halt in front of them with a brief dull thud.
‘You don’t like him,’ she said. ‘So you imagine things. In fact, Tom has a number of good sides you know nothing about.’
‘Mm.’
Harry stubbed his cigarette out on the wall while Beate pulled open the door to the lift and went in.
‘Aren’t you coming up?’ she asked, looking at Harry who was still outside intently staring at something. The lift. There was a sliding gate inside the door, a simple iron grille that you push open and close behind you so that the lift can operate. There was the scream again. The soundless scream. He could feel sweat breaking out all over his body. The nip of whisky had not been enough. Nowhere near enough.
‘Something the matter?’ Beate asked.
‘Not at all,’ Harry answered in a thick voice. ‘I just don’t like these old-fashioned lifts. I’ll take the stairs.’
4
Friday. Statistics
The house did have attic flats, two of them. The door to one stood open, but some orange police tape placed it off-limits. Harry stooped to get his full height of 192 centimetres under the tape and quickly took another step to steady his balance when he emerged on the other side. He was standing in the middle of a room with an oak parquet floor, a slanting ceiling and dormer windows. It was warm, much like a bathroom. The flat was small and furnished in a minimalist style, as his own was, but that was where the similarity ended. This flat had the latest sofa from Hilmers Hus, a coffee table from r.o.o.m. and a small 15-inch Philips TV in ice-blue translucent plastic to match the stereo system. Harry looked through doorways to a kitchen and a bedroom. That was all there was. And it was strangely still. A policeman in uniform with his arms folded was standing by the kitchen door rocking on his heels. He was sweating and watching Harry from under raised eyebrows. He shook his head and smirked when Harry went to show his ID card.
Everyone knows the monkey, Harry thought. The monkey doesn’t know anyone. He wiped his face with his hand.
‘Where is the Crime Scene Unit?’
‘In the bathroom,’ the police officer said, nodding towards the bedroom. ‘Lonn and Weber.’
‘Weber? Have they started calling in pensioners now as well?’
The officer shrugged his shoulders. ‘Holiday period.’
Harry had a look around.
‘OK, well, close off the entrance and the door. People wander in and out of this building quite freely.’
‘But -’
‘Listen. That’s all part of the scene of the crime. Alright?’
‘I understand,’ the officer said with an edge to his voice, and Harry knew that in two sentences he had managed to find himself another enemy on the force. The queue stretched for miles.
‘But I was given clear instructions to…’ the officer went on.
‘… to keep an eye on things here,’ said a voice from inside the bedroom.
Tom Waaler appeared in the doorway.
Despite the dark suit he was wearing, there was not so much as a bead of sweat under his dark, thick hairline. Tom Waaler was a good-looking man. Not a charmer perhaps, but he had uniform, symmetrical features. He was not as tall as Harry, but many would have perceived him to be. Perhaps because of Waaler’s upright bearing. Or the effortless self-confidence he exuded. Most people working around him were not only impressed, they also felt that his composure rubbed off on them, so they relaxed and found their natural place. The impression of good looks could also emanate from his physical presence – no suit could hide five workouts a week doing karate and weights.
‘And he should continue to keep an eye on things here,’ Waaler said. ‘I’ve just sent someone down in the lift to close off whatever is needed. Everything in order, Hole.’
The last was delivered with such flat intonation that it was unclear whether it was to be taken as a statement or a question. Harry cleared his throat.
‘Where is she?’
‘In here.’
Waaler’s face feigned a look of concern as he moved aside to let Harry pass.
‘Hit yourself, did you, Hole?’
&
nbsp; The bedroom was simply furnished, but with taste and a touch of romance. A bed made for one – but with room for two – gave on to a supporting beam carved with something that looked like a heart with a triangle inside it. Perhaps a lover’s mark, Harry thought. On the wall over her bed hung three framed pictures of naked men, erotically PC, lying somewhere between soft porn and intimate art. No personal pictures or objects, as far as he could see.
The bathroom an en suite. It was no bigger than the room needed to accommodate a sink, a lavatory, a shower without a curtain and Camilla Loen. She lay on the tiled floor with her face twisted towards the door, but she was looking upwards, at the shower, as if waiting for more water.
She was naked under the sopping wet, white bathrobe which lay open and covered the drain. Beate was standing in the doorway taking photographs.
‘Anyone checked how long she’s been dead?’
‘Pathologist’s on his way,’ Beate said. ‘But rigor mortis hasn’t set in and she’s still not completely cold. I’d guess a couple of hours at most.’
‘Wasn’t the shower on when the neighbour and the caretaker found her?’
‘Yes.’
‘The hot water could have maintained her body temperature and delayed the onset of stiffening.’
Harry looked down at his watch: 6.15.
‘Let’s say she died at about five o’clock.’
It was Waaler’s voice.
‘Why?’ Harry asked, without turning round.
‘There’s nothing to suggest that the body has been moved, so we can assume that she was killed while she was in the shower. As you can see, her body and her bathrobe are blocking the drain. That’s what caused the flooding. The caretaker who turned off the shower said that it was on full, and I checked the water pressure. Pretty good for an attic flat. With it being such a small bathroom it can’t have taken many minutes before the water spilled over the threshold and out into the bedroom. And then not much longer before the water found a way down to the flat underneath. The woman downstairs says that it was exactly twenty minutes past five when she discovered the leak.’