The Devil's star hh-5

by Jo Nesbo

  The Griever grunted.

  Harry hoped that meant that he had appreciated the point; that there was less risk for the Griever if Harry signed out the prisoner according to regulations. That way, later on, he could tell the detectives everything exactly as it happened. Instead of risking being caught lying when he said that no-one had come in or gone out at the time of the mysterious death in cell number nine. He hoped Groth was thinking at this very moment that Harry could take a weight off his mind at the stroke of a pen and that this was good news. No reason to double-check. After all, Waaler had said that this idiot was on their side now.

  The Griever cleared his throat.

  Harry scribbled his name on the dotted line.

  ‘March,’ he said, giving Sivertsen a shove.

  The night air in the car park outside the custody block tasted like cold beer in his throat.

  34

  Sunday Night. The Ultimatum.

  Rakel woke up.

  She had heard the door go downstairs.

  She rolled over in bed and looked at the clock: 12.45.

  She stretched and lay still, listening. The feeling of sleepy well-being was replaced by the tingle of expectation. She would pretend that she was sleeping when he crept into bed. She knew it was a childish game, but she enjoyed it. He would just lie there breathing. And when she turned in her sleep and her hand happened to touch his stomach, she would hear him breathing faster and deeper. Then they would lie there without moving and see who could hold out longest, a kind of competition. And he would lose.

  Maybe.

  She closed her eyes.

  After a while, she opened them again. A nagging fear had entered her mind.

  She got up, opened the bedroom door and listened.

  Not a sound.

  She went over to the stairs.

  ‘Harry?’

  Her voice sounded anxious and it frightened her even more. She pulled herself together and went downstairs.

  There was no-one there.

  She concluded that the unlocked front door had not been properly closed and that she had woken up when it blew open.

  After locking it she sat down in the kitchen with a glass of milk. She listened to the creaking of the wooden house. The old walls seemed to be talking.

  At 1.30 she got up. Harry had gone back to his place. And he would never know that he could have won tonight.

  On her way to the bedroom a thought occurred to her and created momentary panic. She turned back. And gave a sigh of relief when she saw from the door of Oleg’s room that he was asleep in bed.

  Nevertheless, she woke up an hour later with nightmares and lay tossing and turning for the rest of the night.

  The white Ford Escort passed through the summer’s night like a rumbling, ageing submarine.

  ‘Okernveien,’ Harry mumbled. ‘Sons gate.’

  ‘What?’ Sivertsen asked.

  ‘Just talking to myself.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘About the shortest route.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘You’ll soon find out.’

  They parked down a small one-way street where a few detached houses had strayed into a zone of high-rise flats. Harry leaned over Sivertsen and pushed the door open on the passenger side. The car had been broken into a number of years ago and the passenger door wouldn’t open from the outside. Rakel joked about it, about cars and the personality of car owners. He was not sure that he had grasped the subtext. Harry walked round the car to the passenger door, pulled Sivertsen out and told him to stand with his back to him.

  ‘Are you a southpaw?’ Harry asked while unlocking the handcuffs.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you punch best with your left hand or your right?’

  ‘Oh, I see. I don’t punch.’

  ‘Terrific.’

  Harry attached the handcuffs to Sivertsen’s right wrist and to his own left. Sivertsen sent him a surprised look.

  ‘Don’t want to lose you, old chap.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it have been easier to point a gun at me?’

  ‘Course it would, but I had to be a good boy and hand it over a couple of weeks ago. Let’s go.’

  They cut across a field towards the dark, heavy profiles of high-rise flats towering up against the night sky.

  ‘Nice to be back in old familiar territory?’ Harry asked when they stood in front of the entrance to the student block.

  Sivertsen shrugged his shoulders.

  Once inside, Harry heard something he would have preferred not to hear. Footsteps on the stairs. He shot a quick glance around. He saw the light in the porthole-shaped window in the lift door and stepped sideways into the lift, dragging Sivertsen after him. The lift rocked under their weight.

  ‘Guess which floor we’re going to!’ Harry said.

  Sivertsen rolled his eyes as Harry dangled a bunch of keys with a plastic skull attached in front of his face.

  ‘Not in the mood for games? OK, take us to the fourth, Sivertsen.’

  Sivertsen pressed the button with the figure four on and looked up, waiting for the lift to move. Harry scrutinised Sivertsen’s face. He was a damned good actor; he had to give him that.

  ‘The grille,’ Harry said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The lift won’t move unless you close the grille. You know that.’

  ‘This?’

  Harry nodded. The metal rattled as Sivertsen pulled the grille door to the right. The lift still didn’t budge.

  Harry felt a bead of sweat forming on his brow.

  ‘Pull it right to the end,’ Harry said.

  ‘Like this?’

  ‘Cut out the play-acting,’ Harry said, swallowing. ‘It has to be pulled right over. If it doesn’t touch the contact on the floor by the door frame, the lift won’t work.’

  Sivertsen smiled.

  Harry clenched his right fist.

  The lift gave a jerk and the white brick wall began to move behind the black, glistening iron grille. They passed one lift door and through the porthole Harry saw the back of someone’s head, going downstairs. One of the students, he hoped. At any rate, Bjorn Holm had said that forensics had finished their work here.

  ‘You don’t like lifts, do you?’

  Harry didn’t answer; he just watched the wall gliding by.

  ‘A tiny little phobia?’

  The lift stopped suddenly and Harry had to take a step to the side not to lose balance. The floor rocked beneath them and the wall was visible through the porthole.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ he whispered.

  ‘You’re soaked in sweat, Inspector Hole. I thought this would be a good moment to get one thing clear with you.’

  ‘This is not a good moment for anything. Move, or else…’

  Sivertsen had taken up a position in front of the lift buttons and didn’t seem to have any intention of moving. Harry raised his right hand. It was then that he saw it. The chisel in Sivertsen’s left hand. With the green handle.

  ‘I found it at the back of the seat,’ Sivertsen said with almost an apologetic smile. ‘You should tidy up your car. Are you listening to me now?’

  The steel flashed. Harry tried to think. Tried to keep panic at bay.

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘Good, because what I’m going to say requires a little bit of concentration. I’m innocent. That is, I did smuggle arms and diamonds. I’ve been doing that for years. However, I have not taken anyone’s life.’

  Sivertsen raised the chisel when Harry moved his hand. Harry dropped it again.

  ‘The gun-running went through someone called Prince, who I’ve known for a little while now is the same person as Inspector Tom Waaler. And even more interesting, I can prove that it’s Tom Waaler. Also, if I’ve understood the situation correctly, you’re dependent on my testimony and my evidence to nail Tom Waaler. If you don’t nail him, he’ll nail you. Right?’

  Harry’s eyes were on the chisel.

  ‘Ho
le?’

  Harry nodded.

  Sivertsen’s laugh was high-pitched, like a girl’s.

  ‘Isn’t that a wonderful paradox, Hole? Here we are, an arms smuggler and a flatfoot, chained together and totally dependent on one another, and still we’re puzzling how to kill each other?’

  ‘True paradoxes don’t exist,’ Harry said. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I want,’ said Sivertsen, raising the chisel in the air and holding it so that the handle pointed at Harry, ‘you to find the person who made it look as if I’d killed four people. If you can do that, then you can have Waaler’s head served on a silver platter. You scrub my back and I’ll scrub yours.’

  Harry gave Sivertsen an intense glare. Their handcuffs rubbed together.

  ‘OK,’ Harry said. ‘But let’s do things in the right order. First we put Waaler behind bars. That done, we can work undisturbed and I can help you.’

  Sivertsen shook his head.

  ‘I’m aware of the case against me. I’ve had an entire day to think about it, Hole. The only thing I have to bargain with is my evidence against Waaler, and the only person I have to bargain with is you. The police have already received the bouquets for their triumph and so none of them is going to look into this case with fresh eyes and risk the success of the century being turned into the blunder of the century. The maniac who murdered these women wants me to take the rap. I’ve been set up. And I don’t have a chance in hell without help.’

  ‘Are you aware that Tom Waaler and his colleagues are busting a gut at this very moment to find us? For every hour that passes, they’ll be closer. And when – not if – they find us, we’re done for, both of us?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So why take the risk? Given that what you say about the police is correct, that they won’t under any circumstances waste more time on this case, isn’t twenty years in prison still better than losing your life?’

  ‘Twenty years in prison is not a choice I have any more, Hole.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I’ve just found out that something is about to change my life for ever.’

  ‘And that is?’

  ‘I’m going to be a father, Inspector Hole.’

  Harry blinked twice.

  ‘You have to find the real murderer before Waaler finds us, Hole. It’s as simple as that.’

  Sivertsen passed the chisel to Harry.

  ‘Do you believe me?’

  ‘Yes,’ Harry lied, stuffing the chisel into his jacket pocket.

  The steel cables screamed as the lift began to move again.

  35

  Sunday Night. Fascinating Nonsense.

  ‘Hope you like Iggy Pop,’ Harry said handcuffing Sven Sivertsen to the radiator under the window of room 406. ‘This is the only view we’re going to have for a while.’

  ‘Could be worse,’ Sven said looking up at the poster. ‘I saw Iggy and the Stooges in Berlin. I suppose before the owner of the poster was born.’

  Harry checked his watch: 1.10. Waaler and his people had probably already checked his flat in Sofies gate and were doing the rounds of the hotels. It was impossible to say how much time they had left. Harry sank down into the sofa and rubbed his face with both palms.

  Damned Sivertsen!

  The plan had been so simple. Just find a safe place, then ring Bjarne Moller and the head of Kripos and let them hear Sven Sivertsen’s testimony over the telephone. Then tell them they had three hours to arrest Tom Waaler before Harry rang the press and dropped the bombshell. A simple choice. All he and Sivertsen had to do was sit tight until they had confirmation that Tom Waaler was in the slammer. Afterwards, Harry would phone Roger Gjendem at Aftenposten and ask him to ring the head of Kripos for a comment about the arrest. Only then – when it was public – would Harry and Sivertsen crawl out of their hidey-hole.

  But for Sivertsen and his ultimatum, it would have been relatively plain sailing.

  ‘What if…’

  ‘Don’t try it, Hole.’

  Sivertsen didn’t even look at him.

  Damn him!

  Harry checked his watch again. He knew he had to stop doing it. He had to shut out the time element and collect his thoughts, regroup, improvise, see what options the situation threw up. Shit!

  ‘OK,’ Harry said, closing his eyes. ‘Give me your side of things.’

  The handcuffs rattled as Sven Sivertsen leaned forwards.

  Harry stood by the open window smoking a cigarette while listening to Sven Sivertsen’s high-pitched voice. He began with the time when he was 17 and met his father for the first time.

  ‘My mother thought I was in Copenhagen, but I’d gone to Berlin to search him out. He lived in a huge house with guard dogs in the area around Tiergarten Park, where the embassies are. I persuaded the gardener to accompany me to the front door and I rang the bell. When he opened up it was like looking at a mirror image. We just stood there gawping at each other. I didn’t even need to say who I was. In the end he began to cry and embraced me. I stayed with him for four weeks. He was married and had three children. I didn’t ask him what he did and he didn’t tell me. Randi, his wife, was staying at some expensive sanatorium in the Alps with an incurable heart ailment. It sounded like something out of a romance novel, and I did sometimes wonder if that was what had inspired him to send her there. There was no doubt that he loved her. Or it might be more correct to say that he was in love. When he talked about her dying, it sounded like something out of a women’s weekly mag. One afternoon one of his wife’s girlfriends came by. We drank tea and my father said that it was fate that had sent Randi his way, but they had loved each other so much and so shamelessly that fate had punished them by letting her wither away with her beauty still untarnished. He could say things like that without a hint of a blush. That night, when I couldn’t sleep, I went downstairs to rummage around in his drinks cabinet and saw the girlfriend sneaking out of his bedroom.’

  Harry nodded. Was there more of a nip in the night air, or was he imagining it? Sivertsen shifted position.

  ‘During the day I had the house to myself. He had two daughters, one fourteen and the other sixteen. Bodil and Alice. For them, of course, I was incredibly exciting. An unheard of older half-brother who had dropped in out of the blue. Both of them fell in love with me, but I chose Bodil, the younger one. One day she came home early from school and I took her into her father’s bedroom. She was removing the blood-stained sheets afterwards when I chased her out, locked the door, gave the key to the gardener and asked him to give it to my father. At breakfast the next morning Father asked me if I wanted to work for him. That was how I got into smuggling diamonds.’

  Sivertsen broke off.

  ‘Time’s ticking away,’ Harry said.

  ‘I worked from Oslo. Apart from a couple of early blunders that led to two conditional sentences, I did well. My speciality was going through customs at airports. It was very easy. Just dress up as a respectable person and don’t look frightened. And I wasn’t frightened; I didn’t give a damn. I used to wear a priest’s dog collar. Of course it’s such an obvious trick that it can arouse the suspicions of the customs people right away, but the thing is you also have to know how a priest walks, how he wears his hair, what shoes he likes, the way he holds his hands and the facial expression he uses. If you learn these things, you’ll almost never be stopped. A customs officer may still be suspicious, but the threshold for stopping priests is higher. Any customs officer going through a priest’s suitcase without finding anything while long-haired hippies stroll through is bound to be the subject of complaints. The customs set-up is like any other. They’re bent on giving the public a positive – though erroneous – impression that they’re doing a good job.

  ‘My father died of cancer in 1985. Randi’s incurable heart ailment was still incurable, but it was not bad enough to prevent her from flying back home and taking over the business. I don’t know if she found out that I had deflowered Bodil, but I soon found myself
without work. Norway was no longer an area they wanted to operate in, she said, but she didn’t offer me anything else. After some years of unemployment in Oslo I moved to Prague, which was a smugglers’ El Dorado after the fall of the Iron Curtain. I spoke good German and soon found my feet. I earned fast money, but spent it just as quickly. I made friends, but no strong attachments to anyone. Not to women, either. I didn’t need to, because do you know what, Hole? I discovered that I had inherited a gift from my father – the power of falling in love.’

  Sivertsen nodded towards the Iggy Pop poster.

  ‘There’s no greater aphrodisiac for a woman than a man who is in love. I specialised in married women – they didn’t give me so much trouble afterwards. When I was strapped for cash, they could also be a welcome, though fleeting, source of income. And so the years flitted by without a twinge of worry. For more than thirty years my smile was free, the bed my stamping ground and my dick the relay baton.’

  Sivertsen rested his head against the wall and closed his eyes.

  ‘It must sound cynical, but you can take it from me that every declaration of love that came out of my mouth was just as genuine and sincere as those my stepmother received from my father. I gave them everything I had, until it was over and I showed them the door. I couldn’t afford a sanatorium. It always ended like that and that was how I thought it would always be. Until one autumn day I went into the cafe in Grand Hotel Europa in Wenceslas Square and there she was. Eva. Yes, that was her name, and it’s not true that para-doxes do not exist, Hole. The first thing that struck me was that she was no beauty; she just behaved like one. However, people who are convinced that they are beautiful are beautiful. I have a certain knack with women and I went over to her. She didn’t tell me to go to hell; she just treated me with a distant courtesy that drove me wild.’

  Sivertsen gave a knowing smile.

  ‘There’s no stronger aphrodisiac for a man than a woman who’s not in love. She was twenty-six years younger than me, had more style than I will ever have and – most of all – she didn’t need me. She could continue with her work that she thinks I know nothing about, whipping German businessmen and giving them blow jobs.’