by Jo Nesbo
'You were drinking in the bar until it closed. Then you tottered up to your room.'
'Have you got spies, too?'
'Come on, Hole. You've got a plane to catch.'
There was a car outside waiting for them. Behind the wheel sat the barman with the prison tattoos.
'To St Stephen's, Fred,' the woman said. 'Step on it. His flight goes in an hour and a half.'
'You know a lot about me,' Harry said. 'And I know nothing about you.'
'You can call me Maria,' she said.
The tower of the mighty St Stephen's Cathedral vanished in the morning mist sweeping over Zagreb.
Maria led Harry in through the large, almost deserted, central nave. They passed confessionals and a selection of saints with appurtenant prayer benches. Recorded mantra-like choral singing issued from hidden speakers, low and heavy with reverberations, presumably to stimulate contemplation, but for Harry all it did was remind him of muzak in some kind of Catholic supermarket. She took him into a side aisle and through a door to a small room with double prayer benches. The morning light, red and blue, streamed in through the stained-glass windows. Two candles burned on either side of Jesus Christ on the cross. In front, a waxen figure knelt with upturned face and outstretched arms in desperate supplication.
'St Thomas the Apostle, the patron saint of builders,' she explained, bowing her head and making the sign of the cross. 'Who wanted to die with Jesus.'
Doubting Thomas, Harry thought, as she stooped over her bag, took out a small wax candle displaying a picture of a saint, lit it and placed it in front of the apostle.
'Kneel,' she said.
'Why?'
'Just do as I say.'
With reluctance, Harry knelt down on the tatty, red velvet prayer bench and placed his elbows on the slanting wooden arm rail, black with sweat, grease and tears. It was an oddly comfortable position.
'Swear by the Son of God that you will keep your part of the bargain.'
Harry hesitated. Then he bowed his head.
'I swear . . .' she began.
'I swear . . .'
'In the name of the Son, my Redeemer . . .'
'In the name of the Son, my Redeemer . . .'
'To do whatever is in my power to save the one they call mali spasitelj.'
Harry repeated.
She sat erect. 'This is where I met the client's go-between,' she said. 'This is where he set up the job. However, let's go. This is not the place to negotiate human destinies.'
Fred drove them to the large, open King Tomislav Park and waited in the car while Harry and Maria found a bench. Brown, withering blades of grass tried to stand but were flattened by the cold, wet wind. A tram bell rang on the other side of the old Exhibition Pavilion.
'I didn't see him,' she said. 'But he sounded young.'
'Sounded?'
'He phoned Hotel International in October the first time. If there are any calls about refugees they go through to Fred. He passed it on to me. The man told me he was ringing on behalf of an anonymous person who wanted a job done in Oslo. I remember there was a lot of traffic in the background.'
'Public telephone.'
'I assume so. I told him I never do business over the phone and never with anonymous individuals and rang off. Two days later he called again and asked me to go to St Stephen's in three days' time. I was given a precise time for when I was to appear and in which confessional.'
A crow landed on a branch in front of the bench, cocked its head and looked down on them gloomily.
'There were lots of tourists in the church that day. I entered the confessional at the appointed time. There was a sealed envelope on the chair. I opened it. Inside were detailed instructions about where and when Jon Karlsen was to be dispatched, an advance in dollars, way beyond our usual fee, and a suggested final figure. I was also informed that the go-between I had already spoken to on the phone would contact me to hear my answer and agree details of the financial arrangement if I accepted. The go-between would be our sole point of contact, but for security reasons he had not been initiated into the details of the task. Hence I was not allowed to divulge anything under any circumstances. I took the envelope, walked out of the confessional, the church and went back to the hotel. Half an hour later the go-between rang.'
'The same person who had called you from Oslo?'
'He didn't introduce himself, but as an ex-teacher I tend to notice how people speak English. And this person had a very idiosyncratic accent.'
'And what did you talk about?'
'I told him we were refusing the job for three reasons. First of all, because we make it our principle to know why a client wants a job done. Secondly, for security reasons we never let others determine the time or place. And, thirdly, because we don't work with anonymous clients.'
'What did he say?'
'He said he was responsible for making the payment, so I would have to put up with having only his identity. And he asked how much the price would have to increase for me to ignore the other objections. I answered that it was more than he could pay. So he told me how much he could pay. And I . . .'
Harry watched her as she searched for the right English words.
'. . . was not prepared for a sum of that size.'
'What did he say?'
'Two hundred thousand dollars. That's fifteen times our standard fee.'
Harry nodded slowly. 'So the motive wasn't that important any more?'
'You don't have to understand this, Hole, but we have had a plan the whole time. When we had enough money we would stop and move back to Vukovar. Start a new life. I knew this offer was our ticket out. This would be the last job.'
'So the principle of an ethical murder business had to give way?' Harry asked, rummaging for his cigarettes.
'Do you run ethical murder investigations, Hole?'
'Yes and no. You have to live.'
She flashed a smile. 'So there's not much difference between you and me, is there?'
'I doubt it.'
'Aha. If I'm not much mistaken you hope, as I do, that you only deal with those who deserve your attentions. Isn't that correct?'
'That goes without saying.'
'But it's not quite like that, is it? You've discovered that guilt is not as black and white as you thought when you decided to become a policeman and redeem humankind from evil. As a rule there's little evil but a lot of human frailty. Many sad stories you can recognise in yourself. However, as you say, one has to live. So we start lying. To those around us and to ourselves.'
Harry couldn't find his lighter. If he didn't get the cigarette lit soon, he would explode. He didn't want to think about Birger Holmen. Not now. There was a dry crunch as he bit through the filter: 'What did you say his name was – the go between's, that is?'
'You ask as though you already know,' she said.
'Robert Karlsen,' Harry said, rubbing his face hard with his palms. 'And he gave you the envelope with the instructions on 12 October.'
She raised one of her elegantly plucked eyebrows.
'We found his plane ticket.' Harry was frozen. The wind was blowing through him as though he were a mere apparition. 'And on his return he unwittingly took the place of the person he had helped to sentence to death. You could kill yourself laughing, couldn't you.'
She did not answer.
'What I don't understand,' Harry said, 'is why your son didn't abort the mission when he saw on the TV or read in the paper that he had in fact killed the person who was to hand over the cash.'
'He is never told who the client is, nor what the victim's crime is,' she said. 'It's best like that.'
'So he can't reveal anything if he's caught?'
'So he doesn't have to think. So he can just do the job and rely on me having made the correct judgement.'
'Moral as well as financial?'
She shrugged. 'In this case, of course, it would have been an advantage if he had known names. The problem is that my son hasn't contacted us since the killi
ng. I don't know why.'
'He doesn't dare,' Harry said.
She closed her eyes, and Harry saw the muscles in her narrow face moving.
'You wanted me to withdraw the operative as my part of the deal,' she said. 'Now you know it isn't possible. However, I have told you the name of the person who gave us the contract. Will you still keep your part of the deal, Harry? Will you save my boy?'
Harry did not answer. The crow took off from the branch and drops of water rained down onto the gravel in front of them.
'Do you think your boy would have stopped if he had known the odds were stacked against him?' Harry asked.
She gave a wry smile. Then shook her head gloomily.
'Why not?'
'Because he is fearless and stubborn. He takes after his father.'
Harry studied the lean woman with the erect posture and concluded he wasn't so sure about the latter. 'Say goodbye to Fred. I'll take a taxi to the airport.'
She examined her hands. 'Do you believe in God, Harry?'
'No.'
'Yet you swore in His sight that you would save my son.'
'Yes,' Harry said, standing up.
She remained seated and looked up at him. 'Are you the kind of man who keeps his promises?'
'Not always.'
'You don't believe in God,' she said. 'Nor in your own word. What's left then?'
He pulled his jacket around him more tightly.
'Tell me what you believe in, Harry.'
'I believe in the next promise,' he said, turning to squint down the broad avenue of weekend Sunday traffic. 'People can keep a promise even though they broke the last one. I believe in new starts. I may not have said this . . .' He waved down a car cruising with a blue sign. 'But that's why I'm in this business.'
In the taxi Harry realised that he had no cash on him. He was told that there were ATMs that took Visa cards at Pleso Airport. Harry sat fingering the twenty-kroner coin the whole way. Thoughts of the spinning coin on the floor of the bar and the first drink on board wrestled for supremacy.
It was daylight outside when Jon awoke to the sound of a car turning into Østgård. He lay contemplating the ceiling. It had been a long, cold night and he had not slept much.
'Who's that?' asked Thea, who had been fast asleep a moment ago. He could hear the anxiety in her voice.
'Probably relief for the policeman,' Jon said. The motor died and two car doors were opened and closed. Two people then. But no voices. Silent police. From the sitting room, where the policeman had set himself up, they heard a knock on the front door. Once. Twice.
'Isn't he going to open up?' Thea whispered.
'Shh,' Jon said. 'Perhaps he's outside. Perhaps he went to the outside loo.'
There was a third knock. Loud.
'I'll go,' Jon said.
'Wait!' she said.
'We have to let them in,' Jon said, scrambling over her and putting on his clothes.
He opened the sitting-room door. In the ashtray on the coffee table there was a smoking cigarette and on the sofa a discarded rug. Another knock. Jon peered out of the window, but couldn't see the car. Strange. He stood in front of the door.
'Who is it?' he shouted, no longer so sure of himself.
'Police,' said a voice from outside.
Jon might have been mistaken, but he thought he detected an unusual accent.
He jumped when there was another knock. He stretched out a trembling hand to the door handle. Then he took a deep breath and wrenched open the door.
It was like being hit by a wall of water as an icy wind swept in and the sharp, blinding light of the low morning sun made him squint at the two silhouettes on the steps.
'Are you the relief ?' Jon asked.
'No,' said a woman's voice he recognised. 'It's over now.'
'It's over?' Jon asked in surprise, shielding his eyes with his hand. 'Ah, it's you, is it?'
'Yes, you can pack. We'll drive you home,' she said.
'Why?'
She told him why.
'Jon!' Thea shouted from the bedroom.
'Just a moment,' Jon said, leaving the door open while going in to see Thea.
'Who is it?' Thea asked.
'It's the one who questioned me,' Jon said. 'Toril Li. And a guy called Li too, I think. They said Stankic was dead. He was shot last night.'
The policeman who had kept an eye on them last night returned from the toilet, packed his things and left. And ten minutes later Jon swung his bag up onto his shoulder, shut the door and turned the key in the lock. He trod in his own footprints in the deep snow over to the wall of the house, counted five boards and hung the key on the hook inside. Then he ran after the others to the red Golf that stood idling and snorting white exhaust fumes. He forced his way in next to Thea on the back seat. After they set off, he put his arm around her and squeezed, then leaned forward between the seats.
'What did happen down at the container terminal last night?'
Toril Li, the driver, glanced across at her colleague Ola Li beside her.
'They say Stankic went for his weapon,' Ola Li said. 'That is, the marksman from the Special Forces thought he saw that.'
'Didn't Stankic go for his weapon?'
'Depends what you mean by weapon,' Ola said, glancing at Toril Li who was having trouble keeping a straight face. 'When they turned him over his flies were open and his dick was hanging out. Seems like he was standing in the doorway taking a leak.'
Toril Li, suddenly gruff, cleared her throat.
'This is quite off the record,' Ola Li hastened to add. 'But you understand that, don't you?'
'Do you mean you shot him just like that?' Thea exclaimed in disbelief.
'We didn't,' Toril Li said. 'The FSK marksman did.'
'They think Stankic must have heard something and turned his head,' Ola said. 'Because the bullet went in behind his ear and came out where the nose had been. Snip-snap-snout. Snout – ha ha.'
Thea looked at Jon.
'Quite some ammo that must have been,' Ola reflected. 'Well, you'll soon see for yourself, Karlsen. Miracle if you could identify the guy.'
'That wouldn't have been easy anyway,' Jon said.
'Yes, we heard about that,' Ola said with a shake of the head. 'Panto face and all that. Bullshit, if you ask me. But that's off the record, OK?'
They drove in silence for a while.
'How are you so sure it's him?' Thea asked. 'If his face is smashed to pieces, I mean.'
'They recognised the jacket,' Ola said.
'Is that all?'
Ola and Toril exchanged looks.