by Jo Nesbo
‘Bravo Two to Alpha. According to his bank card, this guy’s name is Odd Einar Lillebostad.’
Otto slumped back in his chair.
‘Relax, folks,’ Waaler said. ‘He may still come. Isn’t that right, Harry?’
That bastard Harry didn’t answer. Instead his mobile phone bleeped.
Marius Veland stared at the two blank pieces of paper he had taken out of the envelope.
‘Who are your next of kin?’ the man asked.
Marius gulped and wanted to answer, but his voice would not obey.
‘I’m not going to kill you,’ the man said. ‘So long as you do what I say.’
‘Mum and Dad,’ Marius whispered. It sounded like a pathetic SOS.
The man told him to write his parents’ names and address on the envelope. Marius put pen to paper. The names. The familiar names. And Bjoford. He stared at the writing afterwards. So crooked and shaky.
The man began to dictate a letter. Marius moved his hand compliantly across the page.
‘Hi! Sudden change of plans! I’m off to Morocco with Georg, a Moroccan boy I’ve met here. We’re going to stay with his mother and father in a little mountain village called Hassane. I’ll be away for four weeks. Probably difficult to get a signal, but I’ll try to write, though Georg says the post is a bit iffy. Anyway, I’ll get in touch as soon as I’m back, love…’
‘Marius,’ said Marius.
‘Marius.’
The man told Marius to put the letter in the envelope and then in the bag he held in front of him.
‘On the other piece of paper just write “Gone abroad. Back in four weeks ”. Sign it with the day’s date and Marius. That’s it, thank you.’
Marius sat in the chair contemplating his lap. The man was standing directly behind him. A puff of wind made the curtain sway. The birds were twittering hysterically outside. The man leaned forwards and closed the window. Now there was only the low hum of the combined radio and CD player on the bookshelf.
‘What’s the song?’ the man asked.
‘“Blister In The Sun”,’ Marius said. He had pressed ‘repeat’. He liked it. He would have given it a good review. A warmly ironic, inclusive review.
‘I’ve heard it before,’ the man said, found the volume knob and turned it up. ‘I just can’t remember where.’
Marius lifted his head and gazed out of the window, at the summer that had gone mute, at the birch tree that seemed to be waving farewell, at the green lawn. In the reflection he saw the man behind him raise the gun and point it at the back of his head.
‘Go wild!’ came the squeal from the small loudspeakers.
The man lowered the gun again.
‘Sorry. Forgot to release the safety catch. That’s it.’
Marius squeezed his eyes shut. Shirley. He thought about her. Where was she now?
‘Now I remember,’ the man said. ‘It was in Prague. They’re called Violent Femmes, I think. My wife took me to a concert. They’re not very good, are they?’
Marius opened his mouth to answer, but at that moment the gun gave a dry cough and no-one ever found out what Marius thought about Violent Femmes.
Otto kept his eyes on the screens. Behind him, Falkeid was speaking the bandit lingo with Bravo Two. That bastard Harry answered the bleeping mobile phone. He didn’t say a lot. Probably some ugly dame who wants to get laid, Otto thought, and pricked up his ears.
Waaler didn’t say anything, just sat biting his knuckles with a blank face as he watched Odd Einar Lillebostad being led away. No handcuffs. No real cause for suspicion. No bloody nothing.
Otto kept his eyes on the screens. He had the feeling he was sitting beside a nuclear reactor. On the outside there was nothing to see, on the inside it was seething with stuff you wouldn’t want to touch with a barge pole for anything in the world. Eyes on the screens.
Falkeid said ‘over and out’ and put the jabber thingy down. That bastard Harry was still feeding her monosyllables.
‘He’s not coming,’ Waaler said, his eyes on the pictures showing empty corridors and stairs.
‘Still early days,’ Falkeid said.
Waaler slowly shook his head. ‘He knows we’re here. I can feel it in my bones. He’s sitting somewhere laughing at us.’
In a tree in the garden, Otto thought.
Waaler got up.
‘Let’s just pack everything up, boys. The theory about the pentagram won’t hold. We’ll start from scratch again tomorrow.’
‘The theory holds.’
The other three turned towards that Harry bastard who slipped his mobile phone into his pocket.
‘His name is Sven Sivertsen,’ he said. ‘Norwegian national living in Prague, born in Oslo in 1946, but looks a lot younger, according to our colleague Beate Lonn. He’s been done twice for smuggling. He gave his mother a diamond which is identical to the ones we’ve found on the bodies. His mother says he’s been in Oslo to visit her on all the days in question. In Villa Valle.’
Otto saw Waaler’s face stiffen and blanch.
‘His mother,’ Waaler almost whispered. ‘In the house the last point of the star was pointing to?’
‘Yes,’ that bastard Harry said. ‘And now she’s waiting for a visit from him. This evening. A car with reinforcements is already on its way to Schweigaards gate. I’ve got my car here in the street.’
He got up from his chair. Waaler was rubbing his chin.
‘We have to regroup,’ Falkeid said, grabbing the walkie-talkie.
‘Wait!’ Waaler shouted. ‘Nobody does anything until I say.’
The others looked at him expectantly. Waaler closed his eyes. Two seconds passed. Then he opened them again.
‘Stop the car before it gets there, Harry. I don’t want a police car within a kilometre’s radius of that house. If he gets wind of the slightest danger, we’ve had it. I know a few things about smugglers from Eastern Europe. They always – always – make sure they have a way out. And another thing is that when you’ve lost them, you never find them again. Falkeid, you and your boys stay here and continue with the job until you hear otherwise.’
‘But you yourself said that he wasn’t -’
‘Do as I say. This may be the only chance we get, and since it’s my head on the block, I’d like to deal with this personally. Harry, you take charge here. OK?’
Otto saw the Harry bastard staring at Waaler, but in a vacant sort of way.
‘OK?’ Waaler repeated.
‘Fine,’ the bastard said.
28
Saturday. The Dildo.
Olaug Sivertsen watched Beate with big red eyes as Beate checked that she had bullets in all the chambers of her revolver.
‘My Sven? Goodness me, they have to understand they’re making a mistake! Sven wouldn’t hurt a fly.’
Beate clicked the drum of her revolver into place and went over to the kitchen window with the view out onto the car park in Schweigaards gate.
‘Let’s hope so. But to find out, first we have to arrest him.’
Beate’s heart was beating fast, but not too fast. Her fatigue vanished and was replaced by a feeling of lightness and centredness, almost as if she had been taking some kind of drug. It was her father’s old service revolver. Once she had heard him say to a colleague that you should never rely on a single-shot handgun.
‘He didn’t say what time he was coming here?’
Olaug shook her head.
‘There were a few things he had to sort out, he said.’
‘Has he got a key to the front door?’
‘No.’
‘Good. Then -’
‘I don’t usually lock it if I know he’s coming.’
‘Isn’t the door locked?’
Beate could feel the blood rushing to her head and her voice became sharp and jagged. She didn’t know who she was angrier with, the old lady who had been given police protection, but left the door open so that her son could walk right in, or herself for not having checked such an elem
entary thing.
She breathed in to make her voice calmer.
‘I want you to sit here, Olaug. Then I’ll go out into the hall and -’
‘Hi!’
The voice came from behind Beate and her heart beat quickly, but not too quickly, as she swung round with her right arm outstretched and her thin white finger crooked round the taut, inert trigger. A figure filled the doorway to the hall. She hadn’t even heard him. There was good and good, and stupid and stupid.
‘Wow,’ the voice said with a chuckle.
Beate had his face in the sights. She hesitated for a fraction of a second before releasing the pressure on the trigger.
‘Who’s that?’ Olaug asked.
‘The cavalry, fru Sivertsen,’ the voice said. ‘Inspector Tom Waaler.’ He put out his hand and said, with a brief glance at Beate, ‘I took the liberty of locking your front door, fru Sivertsen.’
‘Where are the rest?’ Beate asked.
‘There is no rest. It’s just…’ Beate froze as Tom Waaler added with a smile, ‘… us two, sweetie.’
It was gone 8 p.m.
On the TV the newscaster warned that a cold front was on its way across England and that the heatwave would soon be over.
In a corridor in the Post House Roger Gjendem said to a colleague that the police had been conspicuously uncommunicative the last couple of days and his guess was that something was brewing. He had heard rumours that Special Forces had been mobilised and the head, Sivert Falkeid, had not returned one single call in the last two days. His colleague thought it was wishful thinking and the editorial desk agreed. The cold front became front-page news.
Bjarne Moller was sitting on the sofa watching Beat for Beat. He liked Ivar Dyrhaug. He liked his songs. And he didn’t care if some people at work thought it was dated and too homely. He liked the home atmosphere. And again it struck him that Norway must have so many talented singers who never made it into the spotlight. This evening, however, Moller couldn’t concentrate on the lyrics and the message; he merely stared blankly as his mind went over the update he had just received from Harry on the phone.
He checked his watch and glanced over to the telephone for the fifth time in half an hour. The agreement was that Harry would ring as soon as they had something new. And the Chief Superintendent had asked for a briefing as soon as the operation was concluded. Moller wondered whether the Chief had a TV in his log cabin and whether, right now, he was sitting, like him, watching a pop quiz with the answers in his mouth but his brain elsewhere.
Otto sucked on his cigarette, closed his eyes and saw the light in the windows, heard the wind rustling in the dry leaves and felt the sinking feeling when they drew the curtains. The other tin can had been thrown in the ditch. Nils had gone home.
Otto had run out of cigarettes, but he bummed one off that police bastard called Harry. Harry pulled out a packet of Camel Light from his pocket half an hour after Waaler had gone off. A good choice, except for the Light bit. Falkeid had glowered disapprovingly when they began to smoke, but he didn’t say anything. He glimpsed Sivert Falkeid’s face through the blue mist of smoke, which also cast a compensatory veil over the irritatingly static pictures of corridors and stairs.
Harry had shoved his chair close up to Otto’s so that he could get closer to the screen. He smoked his cigarette unhurriedly while staring intensely at the pictures and studying them one by one. As if there might be something there he hadn’t noticed yet.
‘What’s that?’ Harry asked, pointing to one of the pictures on the left-hand screen.
‘There?’
‘No, higher up. On the fourth floor.’
Otto stared at a picture of yet another empty corridor with pale yellow walls.
‘I can’t see anything special,’ Otto said.
‘Over the third door on the right-hand side. In the plaster.’
Otto squinted. There were some white marks. He wondered at first if they had been made while unsuccessfully trying to mount one of the cameras, but he couldn’t remember making a hole in the wall in that particular spot.
Falkeid bent forwards. ‘What is that?’
‘Don’t know,’ Harry said. ‘Otto, could you magnify just that…?’
Otto dragged the cursor across the screen and drew a little square above the door. He held down two keys. The section above the door covered the whole of the 21-inch screen.
‘Oh my God,’ Harry mumbled.
‘Yessir, this is no mean shit,’ Otto boasted, patting the console with affection. He was beginning to take to this Harry character.
‘The devil’s star,’ Harry whispered.
‘Hey?’
But the policeman had already turned to Falkeid.
‘Ask Delta One or whatever the fuck he’s called to get ready to break into 406. Tell them to wait until they see me.’
The policeman got up and took out a gun that Otto recognised from late-night surfing on the Net. Glock 21. He didn’t know what, but he knew something was going to happen, something that might mean he got his scoop after all.
The policeman was already out the door.
‘Alpha to Delta One,’ Falkeid said and released the button on the walkie-talkie.
Noise. Lovely, crackling atmospheric noise.
Harry stopped in front of the lift inside the entrance, dithered for a second, then grasped the handle and slid open the door. His heart skipped a beat when he saw the black grille. A sliding grille.
He let the door go as if he had been burned, let it close. It was too late anyway. This was just the pathetic final spurt towards the platform when you know the train has already gone, but you would like to catch a glimpse of it before it completely disappears.
Harry took the stairs. He tried to walk calmly. When had the man been here? Two days ago? A week ago?
He couldn’t restrain himself. His shoe soles sounded like sandpaper on the stairs as he began to run. He wanted to catch a glimpse.
Just as he swung left into the corridor on the fourth floor, three black-clad figures came from the furthest end of the corridor.
Harry stood under the star carved into the wall. The whiteness shone against the yellow of the wall.
Beneath the room number – 406 – there was a name. VELAND. And beneath that a piece of paper stuck to the wall with two bits of tape.
GONE ABROAD. BACK IN FOUR WEEKS, MARIUS
He nodded to Delta One that they could go into action.
Six seconds later the door was open.
Harry told the others to wait outside and he went in alone. Empty. His eyes scanned the room. It was clean and tidy. Too tidy. It did not match the torn poster of Iggy Pop on the wall above the sofa bed. A few tatty paperbacks on the shelf above the cleared desk. Beside the books, five or six keys on a keyring in the shape of a skull. A photo of a suntanned girl smiling. Girlfriend or sister, Harry guessed. Between a book by Bukowski and a ghettoblaster there was a wax thumb painted white and pointing upwards, giving the thumbs up. Everything ready. Everything OK. Was it?
Harry looked at Iggy Pop, the lean, bare body stripped to the waist, the self-inflicted scars, the intense gaze from the deep eye sockets, a man who must have been through a Calvary or two of his own. Harry touched the thumb on the shelf. Too soft to be plaster or plastic, it almost felt like a real finger. Cold, but real. He thought of the dildo he had seen at Barli’s while sniffing the white thumb. It smelled of a mixture of formalin and paint. He held it between two fingers and squeezed. The paint cracked. Harry recoiled as he caught the pungent smell.
‘Beate Lonn.’
‘Harry here. How’s it going with you?’
‘We’re still waiting. Waaler has taken up a position in the hall and chased me and Miss Sivertsen into the kitchen. So much for women’s liberation.’
‘I’m ringing from room 406 in the student block. He’s been here.’
‘Been there?’
‘He carved a devil’s star in the plaster above the door. The boy staying here,
a Marius Veland, has gone. The other residents haven’t seen him for several weeks. And there’s a slip of paper hanging on the door saying he’s gone away.’
‘Well, perhaps he really has gone away.’
Harry noticed that Beate had started to take on his speech mannerisms.
‘Hardly,’ Harry said. ‘His thumb is still in his room. In a sort of embalmed state.’
It went quiet at the other end of the line.
‘I’ve rung your lot at Forensics. They’re on their way now.’
‘But I don’t understand,’ Beate said. ‘Haven’t you had the whole building under surveillance?’
‘Well, yes. But not for the 20 days since this happened.’
‘Twenty days. How do you know that?’
‘Because I found his parents’ telephone number and called them. They’d received a letter saying that he was off to Morocco. His father says that it’s the first time he can remember ever receiving a letter from Marius. Usually he phones. The postmark on the letter is from 20 days ago.’
‘Twenty days…’ Beate murmured.
‘Twenty days. In other words, exactly five days before the murder of Camilla Loen. In other words…’
He could hear Beate taking deep breaths on the phone.
‘… five days before what we thought was the first murder,’ he said.
‘My God.’
‘There’s more. We rounded up the occupants of the house and asked if anyone could remember anything from that day and the girl in 303 says she remembers sunbathing on the grass outside the building that afternoon. On her way back she passed a bike courier. She remembers it because they don’t often have couriers here and she’d joked about it with the others in the corridor when the papers had started writing about the Courier Killer a couple of weeks later.’
‘He’s cheated with the sequence of murders then?’