by Jo Nesbo
'Halt!' shouted the man, standing with legs apart and the gun pointed at him. Inexperienced, he thought. There was almost fifty metres of darkened street between them, and unlike the young mugger under the bridge this policeman was not canny enough to wait until the victim's escape routes were cut off. For the second time that night he took out his Llama Minimax. And instead of making off he began to run straight towards the policeman.
'Halt!' repeated the police officer.
The distance had shrunk to thirty metres. Twenty metres.
He raised his gun and shot.
People tend to overestimate the chances of hitting another person at distances over ten metres. On the other hand, they often underestimate the psychological effect of the sound, of the explosion combined with the pinging of lead against something close by. When the bullet hit the car windscreen, which went white then collapsed, the same thing happened to the policeman. He went white and sank to his knees as his fingers tried to cling to the rather too heavy Jericho 941.
Harry and Halvorsen arrived in Heimdalsgata at the same time.
'There,' Halvorsen said.
The young policeman was still on his knees beside the car with his gun pointing to the sky. But further up the street they caught sight of the back of the blue coat they had seen in the corridor.
'He's running towards Eika,' Halvorsen said.
Harry turned to the driver who had joined them.
'Give me the MP5.'
The officer passed Harry the weapon. 'It isn't . . .'
But Harry had already started running. He heard Halvorsen behind him, but the rubber soles of his Doc Martens gave him a better purchase on the blue ice. The man in front of him had a long lead; he had already rounded the corner to Vahls gate, which skirted the park. Harry held the machine gun in one hand and concentrated on breathing while trying to run with a light efficiency of movement. He slowed down and got the gun into a shooting position before arriving at the corner. Tried not to think too much as he stuck out his head and looked to the right.
There was no one waiting for him.
No one to be seen in the street, either.
But a man like Stankic would hardly have been stupid enough to run into any of the backyards, which were rat traps with their locked gates. Harry peered into the park where the large white surface of snow reflected the lights of the surrounding buildings. Wasn't something moving over there? Sixty, seventy metres away, a figure making slow headway through the snow. Blue jacket. Harry sprinted across the road, took off and sailed over the snowdrift and plunged into it, sinking up to his waist in fresh snow.
'Fuck!'
He had dropped the machine gun. The figure ahead of him turned, then struggled forward. Harry's hand searched for the gun as he watched Stankic feverishly fighting his way through the loose snow, which wouldn't allow him to gain a foothold. His fingers met something hard. There. Harry pulled out the weapon and heaved himself up. Got one leg out, stretched it as far as he could, rolled over, pulled the other leg, stretched it out. After thirty metres the lactic acid was burning in his thigh muscles, but the distance had shrunk. The other man was almost on the footpath and out of the mass of snow. Harry gritted his teeth and managed to speed up. He put the distance at fifteen metres. Close enough. Harry dropped onto his stomach in the snow and set up the weapon. Blew the snow off the sights, released the safety catch, selected the lever for single-fire mode and waited until the man had reached the cone of light from the street lamp by the footpath.
'Police!' Harry didn't appreciate the comical side of the word until he had shouted it: 'Freeze!'
The man ahead continued to plough his way through. Harry squeezed the trigger.
'Halt or I'll shoot!'
The man was only five metres from the path now.
'I'm aiming at your head,' Harry shouted. 'And I won't miss.'
Stankic dived forward, grabbed the lamp post with both hands and pulled himself out of the snow. Harry had the blue jacket in his sights. Held his breath and did what he had been taught, to overrule the impulse in the cerebellum which, with the logic of evolution, says you should not kill anyone of your kind; he concentrated on technique, on not pushing or jerking the trigger. Harry felt the spring mechanism give and heard a metallic click, but there was no recoil against his shoulder. A malfunction? Harry fired again. Another click.
The man stood up with a flurry of snow around him, stepped onto the path and stamped his feet. He turned and watched Harry. Harry didn't move. The man stood with his arms hanging down by his sides. Like a sleepwalker, thought Harry. Stankic raised his hand. Harry saw the gun and knew he was helpless where he lay. Stankic's hand continued up to his forehead in an ironic salute. Then he pivoted and set off at a run up the path.
Harry closed his eyes and felt his heart pounding against the inside of his ribs.
By the time Harry had fought his way through to the path, the man had long been swallowed up by the darkness. Harry slid out the magazine of the MP5 and checked. As he thought. In a sudden bout of fury he hurled the weapon in the air and it rose like an ugly black bird in front of the Plaza Hotel before falling and landing with a gentle splash in the black water beneath him.
When Halvorsen arrived Harry was sitting in the snow with a cigarette between his lips.
Halvorsen was bent double, holding his knees, his chest heaving. 'Christ, you can run,' he wheezed. 'Gone?'
'Vanished,' Harry said. 'Let's go back.'
'Where's the MP5?'
'Didn't you just ask me that?'
Halvorsen looked at Harry and decided not to dig any further.
* * *
Two police cars stood in front of the Hostel with blue lights flashing. A crowd of shivering men with long lenses protruding from their chests were thronging outside the front door, which was obviously locked. Harry and Halvorsen walked down Heimdalsgata. Halvorsen was finishing a conversation on his mobile.
'Why do I always think of the queue for a porn film when I see that?' Harry said.
'Journalists,' Halvorsen said. 'How did they get wind of this?'
'Ask the whelp on the walkie-talkie,' Harry said. 'My guess is he let the cat out of the bag. What did they say in the Ops Room?'
'They're sending all available patrol cars to the river at once. Uniformed Division is sending a dozen foot soldiers. What do you think?'
'He's good. They'll never find him. Call Beate and ask her to come.'
One of the journalists had spotted them and came over.
'Well, Harry?'
'You're up late, Gjendem.'
'What's going on?'
'Not a great deal.'
'Oh? I see someone has shot out the windscreen of one of your police cars.'
'Who says someone didn't hit it with a stick?' Harry said, with the journalist still trotting after him.
'The officer sitting in there. He says he was shot at.'
'Christ, I'd better have a word with him,' Harry said. 'Excuse me, gentlemen!'
The throng moved aside with grudging reluctance and Harry knocked on the front door. There was a clicking and buzzing of cameras and flashes.
'Is there any connection between this and the murder in Egertorget?' one of the journalists shouted. 'Is the Salvation Army involved?'
The door opened a crack and the driver's face came into view. He stepped back, and Harry and Halvorsen pushed through. They walked through reception where the young policeman was sitting in a chair staring into space with vacant eyes while a colleague crouched in front of him, speaking in a low voice.
On the floor above, the door to room 26 was still open.
'Touch as little as possible,' Harry said to the driver. 'Beate Lønn's sure to want fingerprints and DNA.'
They cast around, opened cupboard doors and peeked under the bed.
'Jeez,' Halvorsen said. 'Not a single thing. The guy had only what he was standing up in.'
'He must have had a suitcase or something to bring the gun into the country
,' Harry said. 'He may have got rid of it of course. Or put it somewhere for safekeeping.'
'There aren't that many left-luggage places in Oslo any more.'
'Think.'
'Right. The luggage room in one of the hotels where he was staying. The lockers in Oslo Central Station of course.'
'Follow the line of thought.'
'Which line?'
'He's out there now and has a bag somewhere.'
'He might need it now, yes. I'll ring Ops and get someone sent to Scandia and the station and . . . what was the other hotel that had Stankic on their lists?'
'Radisson SAS in Holbergs plass.'
'Thank you.'
Harry turned to the driver and asked if he wanted to go out and have a smoke. They went down and out of the back door. On the snow-covered handkerchief of a garden in the quiet backyard an old man was standing and smoking while contemplating the dirty yellow sky, oblivious of their presence.
'How's your colleague?' Harry asked, lighting both of their cigarettes.
'He'll survive. Sorry about the reporters.'
'It's not your fault.'
'Yes, it is. When he called me on the radio he said someone had entered the Hostel. I should have drilled things like that into him.'
'There were a couple of other things you should have drilled more.'
The driver's eyes shot up. And blinked twice, in quick succession. 'I apologise. I tried to warn you, but you ran off.'
'OK. But why?'
The glow of the cigarette lit up, red and reproachful, as the driver sucked hard. 'Most criminals give up the second they have an MP5 pointing at them.'
'That wasn't what I asked.'
The muscles in his jaw tensed and relaxed. 'It's an old story.'
'Mm.' Harry regarded the policeman. 'We've all got old stories to tell. That doesn't mean we can put colleagues' lives at risk with empty magazines.'
'You're right.' The man dropped the half-smoked cigarette and it disappeared into the fresh snow with a hiss. He took a deep breath. 'And you won't get into any trouble about it, Hole. I'll confirm your report.'
Harry shifted weight. Studied his cigarette. He put the policeman's age at about fifty. There weren't so many of them left in patrol cars. 'The old story, is it one I would like to hear?'
'You've heard it before.'
'Mm. Young lad?'
'Twenty-two, no previous.'
'Killed?'
'Paralysed from the chest down. I hit him in the stomach, but the bullet went right through.'
The old man coughed. Harry looked across. He was holding the cigarette between two matches.
In reception the young officer was still sitting on the chair being comforted. Harry motioned with his head for the sympathetic colleague to withdraw and sank down onto his haunches.
'Trauma counselling doesn't help,' Harry said to the wan young man. 'Sort yourself out.'
'Eh?'
'You're frightened because you think you were a shot away from dying. You weren't. He wasn't aiming at you. He aimed at the car.'
'Eh?' the whelp repeated in the same monotone.
'This guy's a pro. He knows that if he had shot a policeman he wouldn't have had a hope of getting away. He fired to frighten you.'
'How do you know . . . ?'
'He didn't fire at me, either. You tell yourself that and you'll be able to sleep. And don't go to a psychologist; there are other people who need them.' Harry's knees gave a nasty crack as he stood up. 'And remember that higher ranked officers are by definition cleverer than you. So, next time, follow orders, OK?'
His heart was beating like a hunted animal's. A gust of wind caught the lamps hanging from the thin wires above the street and his shadow danced across the pavement. He wished he could take longer strides, but because of the ice's slippery surface he had to keep his legs beneath him as far as possible.
It must have been the telephone call to Zagreb from the office that had led the police to the Hostel. And it had happened at such speed! As a result he would not be able to call her. He heard a car coming from behind and had to force himself not to turn round. Instead he listened. It hadn't braked so far. It passed by, followed by a rush of air and a flurry of powdery snow that settled on the tiny strip of neck not covered by the blue jacket, the jacket that the policeman had seen him wearing and meant he was no longer invisible. He had considered discarding the jacket, but a man in a shirt would not only look suspicious but would also freeze to death. He glanced at his watch. There were quite a few hours before the town came to life, before cafés and shops opened where he could find refuge. He had to find somewhere before then. A bolt-hole, a place where he could keep warm and rest until day broke.
He walked by a dirty yellow house front covered with graffiti. His eye was caught by one word painted there. 'Vestbredden'. The West Bank? A bit further up the street a man was standing bent double in front of an entrance. From a distance it looked like he was resting his head against a door. As he came closer he saw that the man was holding his finger on a bell.
He stopped and waited. This might be his salvation.
A voice crackled from the speaker above the bell and the stooped figure straightened up, swayed and started yelling furiously by way of answer. His reddened, booze-battered skin hung off his face like the folds of a Shar Pei dog. The man stopped and the echoes between the houses died away in the night-still town. There was a low electric buzz and, with some difficulty, he shifted his centre of gravity forwards, pushed open the door and staggered in.
The door began to close and his reactions were lightning fast. Too fast. His sole slipped on the blue ice and he just managed to slap down the palms of his hands on the burning cold surface before the rest of his body hit the pavement. He scrambled up again, saw that the door was on the point of snapping shut, charged forward, stuck out his foot and felt the weight of the door trap his ankle. He sneaked inside and stood listening. Shuffling feet. Which seemed to stop before being painfully resumed. Knocking. A door opened and a woman's voice screamed something in this weird sing-song language of theirs. Then it came to an abrupt end, as though someone had cut her throat. After a few seconds of silence he heard a low whine, the noise children make when they are getting over the shock of hurting themselves. Then the door upstairs banged again and it was quiet.
He let the door close behind him. Among the rubbish under the stairs were a couple of newspapers. In Vukovar they had put paper in their shoes as it insulated and absorbed moisture. His frosty breath was still visible, but for the time being he was safe.
Harry sat in the office behind the reception desk of the Hostel waiting with the receiver against his ear as he tried to visualise the flat he was ringing. He saw photos of friends stuck to the mirror above the telephone. Smiling, in party mood, maybe on a trip abroad. Girlfriends in the main. He saw a flat with simple furnishings but cosy. Words of wisdom on the fridge door. Che Guevara poster in the toilet. Did people still do that?
'Hello?' said a sleepy voice.
'It's me again.'
'Daddy?'
Daddy? Intake of breath and Harry felt himself blush. 'The policeman.'