by Jo Nesbo
‘They’ve been running up and down our stairs all weekend,’ she said.
‘Who?’
‘The police, I suppose.’
Harry slowly absorbed the information that a weekend had passed since he had stood in Camilla Loen’s flat. He tried to catch a glimpse of himself in the shop window. A whole weekend? What did he look like now?
‘They won’t tell us anything,’ she said. ‘And the papers only say they haven’t got any leads. Is that true?’
‘It’s not my case,’ he said.
‘Right.’ Vibeke Knutsen nodded her head. Then she began to smile. ‘And do you know what?’
‘What?’
‘Actually, it’s probably a good thing too.’
It took a couple of seconds before Harry realised what she meant. He laughed. The laugh developed into a hacking cough.
‘Funny that I’ve never seen you in this shop before,’ he said when he had regained his composure.
Vibeke shrugged her shoulders. ‘Who knows? Perhaps we’ll see each other here again soon?’
She beamed at him and began to walk away. The plastic bags and her backside swung from side to side.
Yes, you and me and a flying pig.
Harry was thinking furiously and for a moment he was afraid that he had thought out loud.
A man with his jacket slung over one shoulder and a hand pressed against his stomach was sitting on the steps outside the entrance to the apartment block in Sofies gate. His shirt had dark, sweaty patches on the front and under the armpits. On seeing Harry, he stood up.
Harry breathed in and steeled himself. It was Bjarne Moller.
‘My God, Harry.’
‘My God to you too, boss.’
‘Have you seen what you look like?’
Harry took out his keys. ‘Not quite peak of fitness?’
‘You were told to assist with the murder case at the weekend and no-one has seen hide nor hair of you. Today you didn’t even turn up for work.’
‘Overslept, boss. And that’s not as bloody far from the truth as you might think.’
‘Perhaps you overslept during those weeks when you only came in on Fridays as well?’
‘Probably. I picked up a bit after the first week. So I rang into work and was told that someone had put my name up on the staff leave list. I reckoned it was you.’
Harry trudged into the hallway with Moller hard on his heels.
‘I had absolutely no choice,’ Moller said, groaning and holding his hand against his stomach. ‘Four weeks, Harry!’
‘Well, just a nanosecond in the universe…’
‘And not one single word about where you were!’
Harry guided the key into the lock with some difficulty. ‘It’s coming now, boss.’
‘What is?’
‘A single word about where I was. Here.’
Harry shoved open the door to his flat and an acrid stench of beer, cigarette ends and stale refuse rose up to meet them.
‘Would you have felt better if you’d known?’
Harry went in, and hesitantly Moller stepped in after him.
‘You don’t need to take your shoes off, boss,’ Harry shouted from the kitchen.
Moller rolled his eyes and tried not to tread on any of the empty bottles, ashtrays full of cigarette butts and old vinyl records on his way across the sitting-room floor.
‘Have you been sitting here drinking for four weeks, Harry?’
‘With some breaks, boss. Long breaks. After all, I am on holiday, aren’t I? Last week I hardly touched a drop.’
‘I’ve got some bad news for you, Harry,’ Moller shouted, releasing the catches on the window and pushing feverishly at the glass. At the third shove the window sprang open. He groaned, loosened his belt and undid the top trouser button. As he turned round he saw Harry standing by the sitting-room door with an open bottle of whisky.
‘That bad, is it,’ Harry said, noticing the Chief Inspector’s slackened belt. ‘Am I going to be whipped or ravished?’
‘Slow digestion,’ Moller explained.
‘Mm.’ Harry put the top back on the whisky bottle. ‘Funny expression that, slow digestion. I’ve been suffering with my stomach a bit myself, so I read up about it. It takes somewhere between twelve and twenty-four hours to digest food. For everyone. Whoever and whatever. It might keep hurting, but your intestines don’t need any longer.’
‘Harry…’
‘A glass, boss? Unless it has to be clean, that is.’
‘I’ve come to tell you it’s finished, Harry.’
‘Are you resigning?’
‘Now that’s enough of that!’
Moller banged the table so hard the empty bottles jumped. Then he sank down into a green armchair. He ran his hand across his face.
‘I’ve risked my own job too many times to save yours, Harry. There are people in my life I am closer to than you. People I provide for. This is where it stops, Harry. I can’t help you any more.’
‘Fine.’
Harry sat down on the sofa and poured whisky into one of the glasses.
‘No-one asked you to help me, boss, but thank you anyway. For as long as it lasted. Skal.’
Moller took a deep breath and closed his eyes.
‘Do you know what, Harry? At times you are the most arrogant, the most selfish and the most unintelligent pile of shit on this planet.’
Harry shrugged his shoulders and emptied his glass in one swallow.
‘I’ve written your dismissal papers,’ Moller said.
Harry refilled his glass.
‘They’re on the Chief’s desk. All that’s missing is his signature. Do you understand what that means, Harry?’
Harry nodded. ‘Sure you won’t have a little snifter before you go, boss?’
Moller got up. He paused by the sitting-room door.
‘You have no idea how much it hurts me to see you like this, Harry. Rakel and your work were everything you had. First of all you spat on Rakel, and now you’re spitting on your job.’
I spat on both exactly four weeks ago, Harry declared roundly in his thoughts.
‘I’m really sorry, Harry.’
Moller closed the door gently behind him as he left.
Three-quarters of an hour later Harry was asleep in the chair. He had been visited. Not by his three regular women, but by the head of Kripos. Four weeks and three days ago, to be precise.
The Chief Superintendent himself had asked to meet at the Boxer, a bar for the exuberantly thirsty a stone’s throw from Police HQ and a few teetering steps from the gutter. Just him, Harry and Roy Kvinsvik. He explained to Harry that as long as no official decision had been taken it was best to do everything as unofficially as possible so that he had room for manoeuvre.
He didn’t say anything about Harry’s room for manoeuvre.
When Harry arrived at the Boxer a quarter of an hour later than they had agreed the Chief Superintendent was sitting at a table at the back of the bar with a beer. Harry could feel his eyes on him as he sat down, his blue eyes shining in their deep sockets on either side of his thin, imperious nose. He had thick, grey hair, an upright posture and he was slim for his age. The Chief was like one of those 60-year-olds you could never really imagine ever having been young. Or ever really being old. In Crime Squad they called him the President because his office was oval and also because he – particularly on public occasions – talked like one. But this was ‘as unofficial as possible’. The Chief Superintendent’s lipless mouth opened.
‘You’ve come on your own.’
Harry ordered a Farris mineral water from the waitress, picked up the menu lying on the table, studied the front page and remarked casually as if it were redundant information:
‘He’s changed his mind.’
‘Your witness has changed his mind?’
‘Yes.’
The head of Kripos sipped his beer.
‘For five months he said that he would appear as a witness,’ Harry said. ‘T
he last time was the day before yesterday. Do you think the knuckle of pork is good?’
‘What did he say?’
‘We agreed that I would meet him after the Philadelphia meeting today. When I turned up he said that he’d changed his mind and that he’d come to the conclusion that it wasn’t Tom Waaler he’d seen in the car with Sverre Olsen anyway.’
The Chief Superintendent fixed Harry with a straight look. Then he pushed up his coat sleeve and checked his watch, a movement which Harry took to mean that the meeting was concluded.
‘Then we have no choice but to assume that it was someone else your witness saw and not Tom Waaler. Or what do you think?’
Harry swallowed. And swallowed again. He stared at the menu.
‘Knuckle of pork. I think pork.’
‘By all means. I have to be running along, but put it on my bill.’
Harry gave a brief laugh. ‘Very nice of you, sir, but to be honest I have a horrible feeling that I’m going to be left paying the bill anyway.’
The Chief Superintendent frowned and when he spoke there was a quiver of irritation in his voice.
‘May I be absolutely frank, Hole? It is well known that you and Inspector Waaler cannot stand the sight of each other. From the very moment you came to me with these wild accusations I have suspected that you have allowed your personal antipathies to colour your judgment. From where I am sitting, I have just had this suspicion confirmed.’
The Chief Superintendent pushed his unfinished glass of beer away from the edge of the table, stood up and buttoned his coat.
‘May I therefore be concise and I hope clear, Hole. Ellen Gjelten’s murder has been cleared up and the case is hereby closed. Neither you nor anyone else has successfully presented anything new that is substantial enough to warrant further investigation. If you so much as touch the case again it will be interpreted as countermanding orders and your dismissal papers signed by myself will be sent to the Police Appointments Committee forthwith. I am not saying this because I want to turn a blind eye to corrupt policemen, but because it is my responsibility to maintain the morale of the police force at a reasonable level. So we cannot have policemen crying wolf for no reason. Should I discover that you have made the slightest attempt to proceed with your charges against Inspector Waaler, you will be suspended with immediate effect and the case will be put before SEFO .’
‘Which case?’ Harry asked in a low voice. ‘Waaler versus Gjelten?’
‘Hole versus Waaler.’
When the Chief Superintendent had left, Harry sat staring at the half-empty glass of beer. He could do exactly what the head of Kripos said, but it would not change a thing. He was finished whatever happened. He had failed and now he had become a risk to the force. A paranoid traitor, a ticking bomb, they would get rid of him at the earliest opportunity. It was simply up to Harry to supply them with that opportunity.
The waitress arrived with the bottle of Farris water and asked him if he wanted anything to eat. Or to drink. Harry moistened his lips as his thoughts collided into one another. It was simply up to Harry to provide them with an opportunity; others would take care of the rest.
He pushed the bottle of Farris to the side and answered the waitress. That was four weeks and three days ago, and that was when it had all started. And finished.
Part Two
8
Tuesday and Wednesday.
Chow Chow.
On Tuesday the temperature in Oslo rose to 29 degrees in the shade and by three o’clock, office workers were already making for the beaches in Huk and Hvervenbukta. The tourists were flocking to open-air restaurants in Aker Brygge and in Frogner Park where, covered in sweat, they snapped obligatory pictures of the Monolith before drifting down to the Fountain in the hope that a breath of wind would send a cooling mist of fine droplets over them.
Off the tourists’ beaten track it was quiet, and what little life there was moved in slow motion. Roadworkers, their torsos bared, leaned over their machines, bricklayers on scaffolding at the building site around the Rikshospital peered down over deserted streets and taxi drivers found places to park in the shade, where they stood in groups discussing the murder in Ullevalsveien. Only in Akersgata were there signs of increased activity. The sensation-seeking rags had released the silly-season news and were greedily milking the latest killing. With many of their colleagues on holiday, the editors were putting everyone to work on the story, from journalism students doing summer jobs to unemployed political commentators. Only the cultural correspondents escaped.
It was still quieter than usual. It may have been because Aftenposten had moved from its position in Akersgata, the street the press traditionally occupied, down towards the centre, to the Post House, Aftenposten House or Post Giro Building. Whatever you called it, it was an unlovely small-town version of a skyscraper pointing up into a blue, cloudless sky. The golden-brown colossus at the top edge of the building site in Bjorvika had been smartened up, but for the time being crime reporter Roger Gjendem had only a view of Plata, the junkies’ market square, and their outdoor shooting gallery behind the sheds where they hoped to meet their brave new world. He occasionally caught himself looking to see if Thomas was down there. But Thomas was in Ullersmo prison serving a sentence for attempting to break into a policeman’s flat last winter. How crazy can you get? Or how desperate? At any rate, Roger would not have to worry that he would suddenly be looking down on his little brother shooting an overdose into his arm.
Aftenposten had not formally appointed a new crime editor. The last one had been offered a financial pay-off as part of downsizing and had accepted it with alacrity and left. Crime was then simply placed under the news coverage umbrella and, in practice, that meant that Roger Gjendem had to step in as the crime editor, but was paid the basic journalist’s salary. He sat behind his desk with his fingers on the keyboard, his eyes on the smiling face of the woman he had scanned in as his screensaver and his mind on the woman who had packed her bags for the third time and left him and his flat in Seilduksgata. He knew that Devi would not come back this time and that it was time to move on. He went into the control panel on his computer and deleted the screensaver. That was a start. He had been working on a heroin case, but he had put it aside. Good, he hated writing about drugs. Devi insisted that it was because of Thomas. Roger tried to shut out both Devi and his little brother so that he could concentrate on the case he was supposed to be writing about.
He was summarising the details of the murder story in Ullevalsveien, enjoying some respite while they were waiting for developments, new evidence or a suspect or two. This would be an easy job. It was a sexy case in every way, with most of the ingredients that any crime reporter could wish for. A young woman of 23, single, shot in the shower room of her own flat, in broad daylight one Friday. The handgun found in the rubbish bin in the flat turns out to be the murder weapon. None of the neighbours has seen anything, no strangers have been observed roaming the area and just one of the neighbours claims to have heard something that could have been a shot. Since there are no signs of a break-in, the police are working on the theory that Camilla Loen let the killer in herself, but there is no-one in her circle of friends and acquaintances who stands out as suspicious and they all have more or less watertight alibis. The fact that Camilla Loen left her work as a graphic designer at Leo Burnett’s at 4.15 to meet two friends in front of Kunstnernes Hus at 6.00 makes it highly unlikely that she would have invited anyone home. It is equally unlikely that anyone would have rung Camilla Loen’s doorbell and sneaked into the apartment block using a false identity as she would have seen them on the video camera at the intercom panel at the entrance.
It was bad enough that the news desk could publish headlines like ‘Psycho Murder’ and ‘Neighbour Tasted Blood’, but two further details leaked out which gave the front pages two more splashes: ‘Camilla Loen’s Finger Severed’ and ‘Red Diamond Star Found Under Eyelid’.
Roger Gjendem began his summary in the presen
t historic in order to give it dramatic emphasis, but he discovered that the material didn’t need it and he deleted everything he had written. He sat for a while with his head in his hands. Then he double-clicked the recycle bin icon on the screen, placed the cursor over ‘Empty the recycle bin’ and hesitated. It was the only picture he had of her. In his flat all vestiges of her had been removed. He had even washed the woollen jumper she used to borrow and which he liked wearing because it smelled of her.
‘Bye-bye,’ he whispered and clicked.
He reread his introduction and decided to change ‘Ullevalsveien’ to ‘Our Saviour’s Cemetery’ – it sounded better. Then he began to write, and this time it flowed.
At 7.00 people were reluctantly making a move homewards from the beaches although the sun was still beating down from a cloudless sky. It turned 8.00 and then 9.00. People wearing sunglasses were still drinking beer outside while the waiters in restaurants without terraces were twiddling their thumbs. It was 9.30, the sun was red over Ullernasen and then it plunged. Unlike the temperature. It was a tropical night and people were returning home from restaurants and bars to lie awake and sweat in their beds.
In Akersgata the deadline was approaching and the editorial staff sat down to discuss the front page for the last time. The police had not made any new announcements. Not that they were holding back information, it was just that four days after the murder it seemed as if they didn’t have anything else to say. On the other hand, silence allowed Gjendem and his colleagues even greater scope for speculation. It was time to be creative.
At roughly the same time in Oppsal the telephone rang in a house with yellow timber cladding and an apple orchard. Beate Lonn stretched out an arm from under the sheet and wondered if her mother, who lived on the floor below, had been woken up by the telephone ringing. Probably.
‘Were you asleep?’ asked a hoarse voice.
‘No,’ Beate said. ‘Is anyone?’
‘Right. I’ve only just woken up.’
Beate sat up in bed.
‘How’s it going?’
‘What can I say? Well, yes, badly, I suppose I can say that.’