by Jo Nesbo
Harry headed for the counter, and a rotund, smiling girl in a Salvation Army hoodie offered him free coffee and whole-wheat bread with brown cheese.
“Not today, thank you. Is Martine here?”
“She’s working in the clinic.”
The girl pointed her finger at the ceiling, indicating the Salvation Army first-aid room above.
“But she should be finished—”
“Harry!”
He turned.
Martine Eckhoff was as small as ever. The smiling kitten face had the same disproportionately broad mouth and a nose that was no more than a knoll in her tiny face. And her pupils looked as if they had run to the edge of the brown irises, forming the shape of a keyhole. She had once explained to him it was congenital and known as iris coloboma.
Martine stretched up and gave him a long, lingering hug. And when she had finished she still would not let go of him, but held both of his hands while looking up at him. He saw a shadow flit across her smile when she saw the scar on his face.
“How … how thin you are.”
Harry laughed. “Thank you. But while I’ve got thinner—”
“I know,” Martine cried. “I’ve got fatter. Everyone’s got fatter, though, Harry. Except you. By the way, I do have an excuse for being fat …”
She patted her stomach where her black lambs’-wool sweater was stretched to its limit.
“Mm. Did Rikard do this to you?”
She laughed and nodded with enthusiasm. Her face was red, the heat coming off her like a plasma screen.
They walked over to the only free table. Harry sat down and watched the black hemisphere of a stomach trying to lower itself onto a chair. It looked incongruous against the backdrop of capsized lives and apathetic hopelessness.
“Gusto,” he said. “Do you know anything about the case?”
She heaved a deep sigh. “Of course. Everyone here does. He was part of the community. He didn’t come here often, but we saw him now and then. The girls working here were in love with him, every last one. He was so good-looking!”
“What about Oleg, the guy who it’s claimed killed him?”
“He came sometimes, with a girl.” She frowned. “Claimed? Is there some doubt about it?”
“That’s what I’m trying to establish. A girl, you say?”
“Lovely, but a wan little thing. Ingunn? Iriam?” She turned to the counter. “Hey! What’s the name of Gusto’s foster sister?” And before anyone had a chance to answer, she answered herself: “Irene!”
“Red hair and freckles?” Harry asked.
“She was so pale that if it hadn’t been for her hair she would have been invisible. I mean that. In the end the sun shone right through her.”
“In the end?”
“Yes, we’ve just been talking about that. It’s a while since she’s been here. I’ve asked lots of the people who come here if she’s left town or what, but no one seems to know where she is.”
“Do you remember anything happening around the time the murder took place?”
“Nothing special except for that particular evening. I heard the police sirens and knew they were probably for some of our young parishioners, when one of your colleagues here received a phone call and stormed out.”
“Thought it was an unwritten rule that undercover officers weren’t allowed to work here in the café.”
“I don’t think he was working, Harry. He sat alone at the table over there, supposedly reading Klassekampen. It might sound rather vain, but I think he came here to watch moi.” She coquettishly laid her hand flat against her chest.
“You still attract lonely police officers, I suppose.”
She laughed. “I was the one who checked you out, or have you forgotten?”
“A girl from a Christian family like you?”
“In fact his staring made me go all clammy, but he stopped when my pregnancy became visible. Anyway, that night he slammed the door after him, and I watched him head for Hausmanns Gate. The crime scene was only a few hundred yards from here. Right afterward rumors began to circulate that Gusto had been shot. And that Oleg had been arrested.”
“What do you know about Gusto, apart from the fact that he was attractive to women and came from a foster family?”
“He was called ‘the Thief.’ He sold violin.”
“Who did he work for?”
“He and Oleg used to sell for the bikers up in Alnabru, Los Lobos. But they joined Dubai, I think. Everyone who was approached did. They had the purest heroin, and when violin made an appearance it was the Dubai pushers who had it. And I suppose it still is.”
“What do you know about Dubai? Who is he?”
She shook her head. “I don’t even know if it is a who or a what.”
“So visible on the streets and yet so invisible behind the scenes. Does anybody know?”
“Probably, but those who do won’t say.”
Someone called Martine’s name.
“Stay where you are,” Martine said, struggling up from the chair. “I’ll be back in a sec.”
“Actually, I’ve got to go,” Harry said.
“Where?”
There was a second’s silence as they both realized he didn’t have a sensible answer to her question.
TORD SCHULTZ SAT at the kitchen table by the window. The sun shone low, and there was still enough daylight for him to see everyone walking on the road between the houses. But he couldn’t see the road. He took a bite of bread with sausage.
Planes flew over rooftops. Landed and took off. Landed and took off.
Tord Schultz listened to the various engine sounds. It was like a timeline—the old engines that sounded right, had the exact growl, the warm glow, evoked the good memories, gave meaning, were a soundtrack to when things had a meaning: job, punctuality, family, a woman’s caresses, recognition from colleagues. The new generation of engines moved more air, but were hectic, flew faster on less fuel, had greater efficiency, less time for inessentials. Also the essential inessentials. He glanced at the big clock on the fridge again. It ticked like a frightened little heart, fast and frenetic. Seven. Twelve hours left. Soon it would be dark. He heard a Boeing 747. The classic. The best. The sound grew and grew until it was a roar, making the windowpanes tremble and the glass clink against the half-empty bottle on the table. Tord Schultz closed his eyes. It was the sound of optimism about the future, raw power, well-founded arrogance. The sound of invincibility to a man in his best years.
After the noise was gone and it was suddenly still in the house he noticed that the silence was different. As if the air had a different density.
As if it were occupied.
He turned right around, to the living room. Through the door he could see the weight-training bench and the farthest end of the coffee table. He looked at the parquet floor, at the shadows from the part of the living room he couldn’t see. He held his breath and listened. Nothing. Just the clock ticking on the fridge. So he took another bite of the bread and a swig from the glass and leaned back in the chair. A big plane was on the way in. He could hear it coming from behind. It drowned out the sound of time ticking away. And he was thinking it would have to pass between the house and the sun as a shadow fell over him and the table.
HARRY WALKED ALONG Urtegata and down Platous Gate to Grønlandsleiret. Heading for Police HQ on autopilot. He stopped in Botsparken. Looked at the prison, at the solid gray walls.
“Where?” she had asked.
Was he really in any doubt as to who killed Gusto Hanssen?
An SAS plane left Oslo on a direct flight to Bangkok every day before midnight. Flew from there to Hong Kong five times a day. He could go to Hotel Leon right now. Pack his bag and check out. It would take precisely five minutes. The airport express to Gardermoen. Buy a ticket at the SAS counter. A meal and newspapers in the relaxing, impersonal transit atmosphere of an airport.
Harry turned. Saw that the red concert poster from the day before was gone.
He continued down Oslo Gate and was walking past Minneparken by Gamlebyen Cemetery when he heard a voice from the shadows.
“Two hundred to spare?” it said in Swedish.
Harry half-stopped, and the beggar stepped out. His coat was long and ragged, and the beam from the spotlight caused his large ears to cast shadows over his face.
“I assume you’re asking for a loan?” Harry said, fishing out his wallet.
“Collection,” Cato said, extending his hand. “You’ll never get it back. I left my wallet at Hotel Leon.” There wasn’t a whiff of spirits or beer on the old man’s breath, just the smell of tobacco and something that reminded him of childhood, playing hide-and-seek at his grandfather’s, when Harry hid in the closet and inhaled the sweet, moldy smell of clothes that had hung there for years. They must have been as old as the house itself.
Harry located a five-hundred note and handed it to Cato.
“Here.”
Cato stared at the money. Ran his hand over it. “I’ve been hearing this and that,” he said. “They say you’re police.”
“Oh?”
“And that you drink. What’s your poison?”
“Jim Beam.”
“Ah, Jim. A pal of my Johnnie. And you know the boy, Oleg.”
“Do you know him?”
“Prison’s worse than death, Harry. Death is simple; it liberates the soul. But prison eats away at your soul until there is nothing human left of you. Until you become a phantom.”
“Who told you about Oleg?”
“My congregation is large and my parishioners are numerous, Harry. I listen. They say you’re hunting that person. Dubai.”
Harry checked his watch. There was usually plenty of room on the flights at this time of the year. From Bangkok he could also go to Shanghai. Zhan Yin had texted that she was alone this week. They could go to the country house together.
“I hope you don’t find him, Harry.”
“I didn’t say I was—”
“Those who do, die.”
“Cato, tonight I’m going to—”
“Have you heard about the beetle?”
“No, but—”
“Six insect legs that bore into your face.”
“I have to go, Cato.”
“I’ve seen it myself.” Cato dropped his chin onto his priest’s collar. “Under Älvsborg Bridge by Gothenburg harbor. A policeman searching for a heroin gang. They smacked a brick studded with nails in his face.”
Harry realized what the man was talking about. Zjuk. The beetle.
The method had originally been Russian and used on informers. First of all, the informer’s ear was nailed to the floor beneath a roof beam. Then six long nails were hammered halfway into a brick, the brick was tied to a rope slung around the beam and the informer held the rope end between his teeth. The point—and the symbolism—was that so long as the informer kept his mouth shut he was alive. Harry had seen the result of zjuk carried out by the Tapei Triad on a poor jerk they found in a back street of Tan-shui. They had used broad nail heads that didn’t make such big holes on their way in. When the paramedics came and pulled the brick off the dead man, the face came with it.
Cato stuffed the five-hundred note in his trouser pocket with one hand and placed the other on Harry’s shoulder.
“I understand you want to protect your son. But what about the other guy? He also had a father, Harry. They call it self-sacrifice when parents fight for their children, but really they’re protecting themselves, the ones who have been cloned. And that doesn’t require any moral courage; it’s just genetic egotism. When I was a child my father used to read the Bible to us, and I thought Abraham was a coward when God told him to sacrifice his son and he obeyed. Growing up, I understood that a truly selfless father is willing to sacrifice his child if it serves a higher goal than father and son. For that does exist.”
Harry threw his cigarette down in front of him. “You’re mistaken. Oleg is not my son.”
“He isn’t? Why are you here, then?”
“I’m a policeman.”
Cato laughed. “Sixth commandment, Harry. Don’t lie.”
“Isn’t that the eighth?” Harry trod on the smoldering cigarette. “And as far as I recall, the commandment says you shouldn’t bear false witness against your neighbor, which would mean it’s fine to lie a bit about yourself. But perhaps you didn’t complete your theology studies?”
Cato shrugged. “Jesus and I have no formal qualifications. We are men of the Word. But like all medicine men, fortune tellers and charlatans, we can sometimes inspire false hopes and genuine comfort.”
“You’re not even a Christian, are you?”
“Let me say here and now that faith has never done me any good, only doubt. So that is what has become my testament.”
“Doubt.”
“Exactly.” Cato’s yellow teeth glistened in the darkness. “I ask: Is it so certain that a God doesn’t exist, that He doesn’t have a design?”
Harry laughed quietly.
“We’re not so different, Harry. I have a false priest’s collar; you have a false sheriff’s badge. How unshakable is your faith in your gospel, actually? To protect those who have found their way and make sure those who have lost theirs are punished according to their sins? Aren’t you also a doubter?”
Harry tapped a cigarette from the packet. “Unfortunately there is no doubt in this case. I’m going home.”
“If that is so, I wish you a good trip. I have a service to hold.”
A car horn beeped and Harry turned automatically. Two headlights blinded him before sweeping around the corner. The brake lights resembled the glow of cigarettes in the darkness as the police vehicle slowed down to enter the Police HQ garages. And when Harry turned back Cato had gone. The old priest seemed to have melted into the night; all Harry could hear were footsteps heading for the cemetery.
IN FACT IT did take only five minutes to pack and check out of Hotel Leon.
“There’s a small discount for customers who pay cash,” said the boy behind the counter. Not everything was new.
Harry flicked through his wallet. Hong Kong dollars, yuan, U.S. dollars, euros. His cell phone rang. Harry lifted it to his ear while fanning out the notes and offering them to the boy.
“Speak.”
“It’s me. What are you doing?”
Shit. He had planned to wait and phone her from the airport. Make it as simple and brutal as possible. A quick wrench.
“I’m checking out. Can I call you back in a couple of minutes?”
“I just wanted to say that Oleg has contacted his lawyer. Erm … Hans Christian, that is.”
“Norwegian kroner,” said the boy.
“Oleg says he wants to meet you, Harry.”
“Hell!”
“Sorry? Harry, are you there?”
“Do you take Visa?”
“Cheaper for you to go to an ATM and withdraw cash.”
“Meet me?”
“That’s what he says. As soon as possible.”
“That’s not possible, Rakel.”
“Why not?”
“Because—”
“There’s an ATM only a hundred yards down Tollbugata.”
“Because?”
“Take my card, OK?”
“Harry?”
“First of all, it’s not possible, Rakel. He’s not allowed visitors, and I won’t get around that a second time.”
“And second of all?”
“I don’t see the point, Rakel. I’ve read the documents. I …”
“You what?”
“I think he shot Gusto Hanssen, Rakel.”
“We don’t take Visa. Do you have anything else? MasterCard, American Express?”
“No! Rakel?”
“Then let’s say dollars and euros. The exchange rate’s not very favorable, but it’s better than the card.”
“Rakel? Rakel? Shit!”
“Something the matter, Herr Hole?”
“She
hung up. Is this enough?”
I stood on Skippergata watching the rain bucket down. The winter had never managed to get a grip, and there had been a lot of rain instead. But it didn’t dampen demand. Oleg, Irene and I turned over more in one day than I’d done in a whole week for Odin and Tutu. I earned roughly six thousand a day. I’d counted all the Arsenal shirts. The old man must have been making more than two million kroner a week, easy.
Every night, before we settled up with Andrey, Oleg and I carefully added up the take and made it tally with the goods. There was never so much as a krone missing. It wouldn’t have been worth it.
And I could trust Oleg one hundred percent. Either he didn’t have the imagination to think of stealing or he didn’t understand the concept. Or maybe his head and his heart were too full of Irene. It was almost ridiculous to see how he wagged his tail when she was around. And how utterly blind she was to his adoration. Because Irene could see only one thing.
Me.
It didn’t bother me or puff me up—that was just how it was and always had been.
I knew her so well, knew exactly how I could make her little pure heart thump, her sweet mouth smile and—if that was what I wanted—her blue eyes fill with big tears. I could have let her go, opened the door and said, You’re free. But I’m a thief, and thieves don’t give away anything they can convert into cash. Irene belonged to me, but two million a week belonged to the old man.
It’s funny how six thousand a day grows legs when you take crystal meth like ice cubes in your drinks and wear clothes that aren’t from Cubus. That was why I was still crashing in the rehearsal room with Irene, who slept on a mattress behind the drums. But she was managing, didn’t touch so much as a spiked cigarette, ate veggie shit and had opened a fricking bank account. Oleg was living with his mother, so he must have been rolling in money. He’d cleaned himself up, was doing some studying and had even begun to skate at Valle Hovin.
While I was standing on Skippergata doing mental math I saw a figure coming toward me in the pouring rain. Glasses misted up, thin hair plastered to his skull, wearing the type of all-weather jacket your fat, ugly girlfriend bought you both for Christmas. Well, either the girlfriend was ugly or she didn’t exist. I could see that from his limp. There’s probably a PC word for it. I call it a clubfoot, but then I say “spastic” and “Negro,” too.