by Jo Nesbo
15
Monday. Vena Amoris.
Harry’s rusty red-and-white Ford Escort pulled up in front of the television shop. Two police cars and Waaler’s red sports supercar looked as if they had been strewn randomly across the pavements around the crossroads with the flattering name of Carl Berners plass.
Harry parked, took the green chisel out of his jacket pocket and put it on the passenger seat. As he hadn’t been able to find his car keys in his flat he had taken some wire and the chisel with him while he trawled the neighbourhood. He found his beloved car again in Stensberggata. And, sure enough, with the car keys in the ignition. The green chisel was perfect for bending the car door so that he could flip up the locking device with the wire.
Harry crossed the pedestrian crossing on red. He walked slowly; his body wouldn’t allow high speeds. His stomach and head ached, and his sweaty shirt was stuck to his back. It was 5.55 and he had managed without his medicine so far, but he wasn’t making any promises to himself.
The board in the hallway said the solicitors’ firm of Halle, Thune amp; Wetterlid was on the fifth floor. Harry groaned. He cast a glance at the lift. Sliding doors. No grille.
The lift was manufactured by KONE and when the shiny metal doors closed, he had the feeling he was inside a welded tin can. Harry tried not to listen to the lift machinery as they rose. He closed his eyes, but opened them again in a hurry when images of Sis appeared on the inside of his eyelids.
One of the uniformed regulars opened the door to the office area.
‘She’s in there,’ he said, pointing down the corridor to the left of the reception desk.
‘Any uniformed officers here?’
‘On their way.’
‘They’d certainly appreciate it if you closed off the lift and the door downstairs.’
‘Fine.’
‘Anyone here from Forensics?’
‘Li and Hansen. They’ve gathered together all the people who were still here when she was found. They’re questioning them now in one of the conference rooms.’
Harry walked down the corridor. The carpets were worn and the reproductions of national romantic treasures faded. It was a firm that had seen better days. Or perhaps it hadn’t.
The door to the ladies’ lavatory was ajar and the carpets muffled the sound of Harry’s steps as he approached. He could hear the sound of Tom Waaler’s voice. Harry stopped outside. It sounded as if Waaler was talking on his mobile.
‘If it’s one of his, he’s obviously not going through us any more. OK, leave it with me.’
Harry pushed open the door and saw Waaler in a squat position. He looked up.
‘Hi, Harry. Be with you in a minute.’
Harry stood on the threshold, absorbing the scene and the sound of a distant crackling voice on Waaler’s phone in the background.
The room was surprisingly big, roughly four metres by five, with two white lavatory cubicles and three white basins placed below a long mirror. The neon lights in the ceiling cast a harsh glare on the white walls and white floor tiles. The absence of colour was almost conspicuous. Perhaps it was this background that made the body look like a small work of art, a carefully arranged exhibition. The woman was young and slim. She was kneeling with her forehead on the ground, like a Muslim at prayer, except that her arms were beneath her body. Her suit skirt had ridden up over her underwear, revealing a cream-yellow G-string. A narrow, dark red stream of blood ran in the grouting between the woman’s head and the drain. It looked almost painted on to achieve maximum effect.
The body was in balance, supported at five points: the two feet, the knees and the forehead. The suit, the bizarre position and the bared posterior made Harry think of a secretary preparing herself to be penetrated by the boss. Stereotypes again. For all he knew, she could be the boss.
‘OK, but we can’t deal with that now,’ Waaler said. ‘Call me this evening.’
The detective inspector put the phone back in his inside pocket, but remained in a squat position. Harry noticed that his other hand was on the woman’s white skin, just below the edge of her underwear. To support himself, he supposed.
‘They’ll be good photos, won’t they,’ Waaler said as if he had been reading Harry’s thoughts.
‘Who is she?’
‘Barbara Svendsen, twenty-eight years old from Bestum. She was the receptionist here.’
Harry squatted down beside Waaler.
‘She was shot through the back of her head, as you can see,’ Waaler said. ‘Must have been with the gun under the basin over there. It still smells of cordite.’
Harry looked at the black gun on the floor in the corner of the room. There was a large, black lump of metal attached to the end of the barrel.
‘A Ceska Zbrojovka,’ Waaler said. ‘Czech, with a specially made silencer.’
Harry nodded. He was tempted to ask if the gun was one of the items that Waaler imported. Or if that was what he had been talking about on the phone.
‘Unusual position,’ Harry said.
‘Yes, it’s my guess that she was bending down or kneeling and fell forwards.’
‘Who found her?’
‘One of the solicitors, a woman. Control room got the call at eleven minutes past five.’
‘Witnesses?’
‘No-one we’ve talked to so far saw anything. Nothing untoward, no suspicious persons coming or going in the last hour. A visitor due to meet one of the solicitors says that Barbara left the reception desk to get a glass of water for him at five to five and never came back.’
‘And she came here?’
‘I suppose so. The kitchen’s quite a walk from reception.’
‘But no-one else saw her on her way over here from reception?’
‘The two people with offices between reception and the toilets had both gone home for the day. And those who were still here were either in their offices or in one of the conference rooms.’
‘What did this visitor do when she didn’t return?’
‘He had a meeting at five and when the receptionist didn’t return he became impatient and walked on through until he found the office of the solicitor he was due to meet.’
‘So he knew his way around?’
‘No, he said it was the first time he’d ever been here.’
‘Mm. And he’s the last person we know of to see her alive?’
‘Yup.’
Harry noticed that Waaler had not moved his hand.
‘So it must have happened somewhere between five to five and eleven minutes past.’
‘It seems so, yes.’
Harry looked down at his notepad.
‘Do you have to do that?’ he said in a low voice.
‘What?’
‘Touch her.’
‘Don’t you like it?’
Harry didn’t answer. Waaler leaned closer.
‘Are you implying that you’ve never touched them, Harry?’
Harry tried to write, but his pen didn’t work.
Waaler chuckled.
‘You don’t have to answer. I can see it in your face. There’s nothing wrong with being curious, Harry. That’s one of the reasons we joined the police force, isn’t it? Curiosity and excitement. Like finding out what skin feels like when they’ve just died, when they’re neither very warm nor very cold.’
‘I…’
Harry dropped his pen when Waaler grabbed his hand.
‘Feel.’
Waaler pressed Harry’s hand against the dead woman’s thigh. Harry was breathing hard through his nose. His first reaction had been to withdraw his hand, but he didn’t. Waaler’s hand on his was warm and dry, but his skin didn’t feel like human skin. It was like holding rubber. Lightly warm rubber.
‘Can you feel it? It’s the excitement, Harry. It’s got you too, hasn’t it. But how will you find it when this job’s over? Will you do the same as the other poor guys? Look for it in video shops or at the bottom of one of your bottles? Or do you want it in real life? Fee
l, Harry. This is what we’re offering you. A real life. Yes or no?’
Harry cleared his throat.
‘I’m just saying that forensics will want to examine the evidence before we touch anything.’
Waaler kept his eyes on Harry for a long time. Then he blinked cheerily and let go of Harry’s hand.
‘You’re right. My mistake.’
Waaler stood up and walked out.
Harry’s stomach pains continued to overpower him, but he tried to take deep breaths and stay calm. Beate would never forgive him if he threw up over her crime scene.
He rested his cheek against the cool floor tiles and lifted up Barbara’s jacket so that he could see what was underneath her. Between her knees and beneath the smooth curve of her upper body he saw a white beaker. What really caught his attention though was her hand.
‘Fuck,’ Harry whispered. ‘Fuck.’
At 6.20 Beate came rushing into the offices of Halle, Thune amp; Wetterlid. Harry was sitting on the floor and leaning up against the wall outside the ladies’ lavatory, drinking from a white plastic cup.
Beate pulled up in front of him, put down her metal cases and drew the back of her hand across her moist, bright red forehead.
‘Sorry. I was lying on the beach in Ingierstrand. Had to go home first and change and then drive to Kjolberggata to pick up the equipment. Some idiot gave orders to close off the lift, so I had to take the stairs up here.’
‘Hmm. The person in question probably did that to protect the evidence. Has the press stuck its snout in yet?’
‘There are a few reporters making themselves comfortable in the sun outside. Not many. Holidays.’
‘I’m afraid the holidays are over.’
Beate grimaced.
‘Do you mean…?’
‘Come here.’
Harry went into the lavatory ahead of her and crouched down.
‘Look underneath her, her left hand. Her ring finger has been cut off.’
Beate groaned.
‘Not much blood,’ Harry said. ‘So it happened after she was dead. And then we’ve got this.’
He lifted the hair up over Barbara’s left ear.
Beate screwed up her nose: ‘An earring?’
‘In the shape of a heart. Quite unlike the silver earring she has in her other ear. I found the other earring on the floor in one of the cubicles. So the killer put this earring in her ear. The funny thing is that you can open it. Like this. Unusual contents or what?’
Beate nodded.
‘A red diamond in the shape of a five-pointed star,’ she said.
‘And so what have we got?’
Beate looked at him.
‘Can we say the words aloud now?’ she asked.
‘Serial killer?’
Bjarne Moller was speaking in such a low whisper that Harry instinctively pressed his mobile phone harder against his ear.
‘We’re at the scene of the crime and it is the same pattern,’ Harry said. ‘You’ll have to get things moving and cancel holidays, boss. We’re going to need everyone you can muster.’
‘Is it a copycat killing?’
‘Out of the question. We’re the only ones who know about the mutilation and the diamonds.’
‘This is very inconvenient, Harry.’
‘Convenient serial murders are rare, boss.’
Moller went quiet for a few moments.
‘Harry?’
‘I’m still here, boss.’
‘I’m going to ask you to spend your final weeks assisting Tom Waaler on this case. You’re the only person in Crime Squad who has any experience of serial killings. I know you’ll say no, but I’m going to ask you anyway. Just to get us moving, Harry.’
‘OK, boss.’
‘This is more important than the disagreements between you and Tom… What did you say?’
‘I said it was fine.’
‘Do you mean that?’
‘Yes. I’ll have to be going now though. We’ll be here most of the evening, so it would be good if you could organise the first meeting of those involved in the case for tomorrow. Tom suggests eight o’clock.’
‘Tom?’ Moller asked in astonishment.
‘Tom Waaler.’
‘I know who it is. I’ve just never heard you use his Christian name before.’
‘The others are waiting for me, boss.’
‘OK.’
Harry slipped the phone back into his pocket, tossed the plastic beaker into the litter bin, locked himself in one of the cubicles in the Gents and clung onto the toilet bowl as he threw up.
Afterwards he stood in front of the basin with the tap running, looking at himself in the mirror. He listened to the buzz of voices from the corridor. Beate’s assistant was urging people to keep behind the barriers; Waaler was telling policemen to find out who had been in the vicinity of the building; Magnus Skarre was shouting to a colleague that he wanted a cheeseburger without chips.
When the water finally ran cold, Harry stuck his face under the tap. He let the water run down his cheek, into his ear, down over his neck, inside his shirt, along his shoulder and down his arm. He drank greedily. He refused to listen to the enemy deep inside him. Then he ran into the cubicle and threw up again.
Outside, the evening had drawn in quickly and Carl Berners plass lay deserted as Harry walked out of the building, lit a cigarette and raised a hand in defence to one of the newspaper vultures approaching him. The man stopped. Harry recognised him. Gjendem, wasn’t that his name? He had chatted to him after the case in Sydney. Gjendem was no worse than the others, maybe even a little better.
The television shop was still open. Harry went in. There was no-one about except for a fat man in a filthy flannel shirt sitting behind the counter reading a newspaper. On the counter an electric fan was blowing around his carefully placed strands of hair intended to conceal his baldness, and radiating his sweaty odour all over the shop. He sniffed when Harry showed him his ID and asked whether he had seen anyone suspicious inside or outside the shop.
‘They’re all suspicious here,’ he said. ‘This area is going to the dogs.’
‘Anyone who looked like they might kill someone?’ Harry asked drily.
The man squeezed one eye shut. ‘Is that why there are so many police cars round here?’
Harry nodded.
The man shrugged his shoulders and began to read the paper again.
‘Who hasn’t thought about killing someone at one time or another, Constable?’
On his way out Harry stopped when he saw his own car on one of the television screens. The camera swept across Carl Berners plass and stopped when it met the redbrick building. Then the picture went back to TV2 news and the next moment it was a fashion show. Harry sucked hard at his cigarette and closed his eyes. Rakel was coming towards him on a catwalk, no, twelve catwalks. She walked through the wall with the television sets on and stood in front of him with her hands on her hips. She fixed him with a look, tossed her head back, turned round and left him. Harry opened his eyes again.
It was 8.00. He tried not to remember that there was a bar close by, in Trondheimsveien. They had a licence to serve spirits.
The hardest part of the evening lay before him.
Then there was the night.
It was 10.00, and even though the mercury had mercifully dropped by two degrees, the air was still hot and static, waiting for an offshore breeze or an onshore breeze, or any kind of breeze. Forensics was deserted except for Beate’s office where a light still burned. The murder in Carl Berners plass had turned the whole day upside down and Beate was still at the crime scene when her colleague Bjorn Holm had rung to say there was a woman in reception from De Beers who had come to examine some diamonds.
Beate had returned in a hurry and now she was concentrating on the short, energetic woman in front of her who spoke the perfect kind of English you would expect from a Dutch person settled in London.
‘Diamonds have geological fingerprints which, theore
tically, makes it possible for us to trace them right back to the owner as certificates, which go everywhere with the diamond, are issued showing their origin. Not in this case though, I’m afraid.’
‘Why not?’ Beate asked.
‘Because the two diamonds I have seen are what we call blood diamonds.’
‘Because of the red colour?’
‘No, because they most probably come from the Kiuvu mines in Sierra Leone. All the diamond dealers in the world boycott diamonds from Sierra Leone because the diamond mines are controlled by rebel forces who export diamonds to finance a war that is not about politics, but about money. Hence the name, blood diamonds. I believe these diamonds are new, and I suppose they have been smuggled out of Sierra Leone to another country where false certificates have been issued claiming they come from well-known mines in, say, South Africa.’
‘Any idea which country they were smuggled into?’
‘Most of them end up in ex-communist countries. When the Iron Curtain came down, the expertise acquired making false ID papers had to find a new outlet. And authentic-looking diamond certificates cost a pretty penny. That’s not the only reason, however, that I would go for Eastern Europe.’
‘Oh?’
‘I have seen these star-shaped diamonds before. They were smuggled in from the former GDR and Czechoslovakia. Like these ones, they were ground into diamonds of mediocre quality.’
‘Mediocre quality?’
‘Red diamonds may look attractive, but they’re cheaper than the white ones, the clear diamonds. The stones you’ve found also have substantial remains of uncrys-tallised carbon in them which makes them less clear than one would like. If you have to grind away so much of the diamond to produce the star shape, then you prefer not to use diamonds that are perfect from the very start.’
‘So, East Germany and Czechoslovakia.’ Beate closed her eyes.
‘Just an educated guess. If there’s nothing else, I can still make the evening flight back to London…’