by Jo Nesbo
A cold shiver ran down my spine. “How do you know …?”
“My dear Gusto, I told you I was keeping an eye on you. What I want you to do is contact Isabelle Skøyen on the private number I am sure you have and tell her this story we have prepared for the press. And then ask for an extremely private meeting among the three of us.”
He walked over to the window and looked at the drab weather.
“You’ll find she has a gap in her calendar.”
In the course of the last three years in Hong Kong Harry had done more running than in the whole of his former life. Yet in the thirteen seconds he spent covering the hundred yards to the prison entrance, his brain was playing various scenarios with a common theme: He was too late.
He rang and resisted the temptation to shake the door while waiting for it to open. At last there was a buzz, and he ran to reception.
“Forgotten something?” the officer asked.
“Yes,” Harry said and waited for her to let him through the locked door. “Sound the alarm!” he shouted, dropped the briefcase and ran. “Oleg Fauke’s cell.”
His footsteps echoed through the empty gallery, the empty corridors and the much-too-empty common room. He was not out of breath, yet his breathing sounded like a roaring inside his head.
Oleg’s screams reached him as he emerged from the last corridor. The door to his cell was half open, and seconds before he got there it felt like the nightmare, the avalanche, the feet that would not move fast enough.
Then he was inside and absorbing the scene.
The desk was on its side, paper and books strewn across the floor. At the other end of the room, with his back to the cupboard, stood Oleg. The black Slayer T-shirt was drenched in blood. He was holding the metal lid of the waste-paper basket in front of him. His mouth was open, and he was screaming and screaming. Harry saw the back of a Gym Tech singlet, above it a broad, sweaty bull neck, above that a shiny skull and above that a raised hand holding a bread knife. Metal resounded against metal as the blade struck the lid. The man must have noticed the change of light in the room, for the next moment he whirled around. He lowered his head and held the knife low, pointing it toward Harry.
“Out!” he barked.
Harry avoided the temptation of looking at the knife; instead he focused on the feet. He noted that behind the man Oleg had slid to the floor. Compared with martial arts practitioners Harry had a lamentably small repertoire of offensive moves. He had only two. And also only two rules. One: There are no rules. Two: Attack first. And when Harry acted it was with the automatic movements of someone who has learned, practiced and repeated only two methods of attack. Harry stepped toward the knife so that the man was forced to retreat in order to swing at him. And by the time the man had wound up his arm Harry had raised his right leg and angled his hip. As the knife was on its way forward, Harry’s foot was on its way down. It struck the man’s knee above the patella. And since the human anatomy is not very well protected against violence from that angle, the quadriceps immediately gave way, followed by the knee-joint ligaments and—as the kneecap was pressed down in front of the tibia—also the patellar tendon.
The man fell to the ground with a howl. The knife clattered to the floor as his hands groped for his kneecap. And his eyes saucered when he found it in a completely new position.
Harry kicked the knife away and raised his foot to finish off the attack as he had been taught: stamp on the opponent’s thigh muscles to cause such massive internal bleeding that he would not be able to get up again. But he saw that the job had already been done and lowered his foot.
He heard the sound of running feet and the rattle of keys from outside in the corridor.
“Over here!” Harry shouted, stepping over the screaming man toward Oleg.
He heard panting from the door.
“Get that man out and get hold of a doctor.” Harry had to yell to drown out the screams.
“Fucking hell, what—”
“Never mind that now—get hold of the doctor.” Harry tore the Slayer T-shirt and searched through the blood for the wound. “And the doctor should come here first. He’s only got a fucked-up knee.”
Harry held Oleg’s face between his bloodstained hands while listening to the screaming man being dragged away.
“Oleg? Are you there? Oleg?”
The boy’s eyes rolled and the word that escaped his lips was so faint that Harry barely heard it. And felt his chest constrict.
“Oleg, it’ll be all right. He hasn’t stabbed anything you really need.”
“Harry—”
“And soon it’ll be Christmas Eve. They’re going to give you morphine.”
“Shut up, Harry.”
Harry shut up. Oleg opened his eyes. There was a feverish, desperate sheen to them. His voice was hoarse, but quite clear now.
“You should have let him complete the job, Harry.”
“What are you saying?”
“You have to let me do this.”
“Do what?”
No answer.
“Do what, Oleg?”
Oleg placed a hand behind Harry’s head, pulled him down and whispered: “You can’t stop this, Harry. It’s all happened. It has to run its course. If you get in the way, more will die.”
“Who’s going to die?”
“It’s too big, Harry. It’ll swallow you up, swallow everyone up.”
“Who’s going to die? Who are you protecting, Oleg? Is it Irene?”
Oleg closed his eyes. His lips barely moved. Then not at all. And Harry thought he looked like he had when he was eleven and had just fallen asleep after a long day. Then he spoke.
“It’s you, Harry. They’re going to kill you.”
AS HARRY WAS leaving the prison the ambulances had arrived. He thought of how things used to be. The town as it used to be. His life as it used to be. While he had been using Oleg’s computer he had also looked for Sardines and the Russian Amcar Club. He hadn’t found any signs to suggest they had been resurrected. Resurrection may be generally too much to hope for. Perhaps life doesn’t teach you much, apart from this one thing: There is no way back.
Harry lit a cigarette, and before he took the first drag, the brain already celebrating the fact that nicotine would accompany the blood, he heard the sound being played back, the sound he knew he would hear for the rest of the evening and night, the almost inaudible word that had first crossed Oleg’s lips in the cell:
“Dad.”
The mother rat licked the metal. It tasted of salt. She gave a start as the fridge sprang into life and began to hum. The church bells were still ringing. She darted up the jacket sleeve of the human. There was a vague smell of smoke. Not smoke from a cigarette or a bonfire. Something in gas form that had been in the clothes, but had been washed out so that only a few molecules of air were left between the innermost threads in the cloth. In the distance there was the sound of a police siren.
There were all those small decisions, Dad. I thought they were unimportant: here today, gone tomorrow. But they pile up. And before you know it they become a river that drags you along with it. That leads you to where you’re going. And that was where I was going. In fricking July. But I didn’t want to go, Dad.
As we turned toward the main building Isabelle Skøyen stood in her driveway, in her tight riding breeches, legs akimbo.
“Andrey, you wait here,” the old man said. “Peter, you check the area.”
We got out of the limo to a cowshed smell, the buzz of flies and distant cowbells. She shook hands stiffly with the old man, ignored me and invited us in for a cup of coffee, “a” being the operative word.
In the hallway hung pictures of nags with the best bloodlines, the most racing cups and fuck knows what. The old man walked along by the photos and asked if one was an English Thoroughbred and praised the slim legs and impressive chest. I wondered whether he was talking about a horse or her. But it worked. Isabelle’s expression thawed a little and she became less curt.
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“Let’s sit in the lounge and talk,” he said.
“I think we’ll go to the kitchen,” she said, and the ice was back in her voice.
We sat down, and she put the coffeepot in the middle of the table.
“You pour for us, Gusto,” the old man said, looking out the window. “Nice farm you have here, Fru Skøyen.”
“There’s no ‘Fru’ here.”
“Where I grew up we called all women who could run a farm ‘Fru’ whether they were widows, divorced or unmarried. It was considered a mark of respect.”
He turned to her with a broad smile. She met his eyes. And for a couple of seconds it was so quiet all you heard was the retard fly banging against the window trying to get out.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Good. For the moment let’s forget these photos, Fru Skøyen.”
She stiffened on her chair. In the phone conversation I’d had with Isabelle she’d started by attempting to laugh off the suggestion that we could send the photos of her and me to the press. She said she was a single, sexually active woman who had taken a younger man—so what? First of all, she was an insignificant secretary to a councilwoman, and second, this was Norway. Hypocrisy was an issue in American presidential elections, not here. So I took it up a notch. She had paid me, and I could prove it. Prostitution and drugs were issues she tackled in the press on behalf of the Social Services Committee, right?
Two minutes later we’d agreed on a time and place for this meeting.
“The press writes enough about politicians’ private lives as it is,” the old man said. “Let’s talk about a business proposal instead, Fru Skøyen. A good proposal may, unlike blackmail, afford advantages to both parties. Agreed?”
She frowned. The old man beamed. “By business proposal I don’t mean of course that money is involved—even though this farm probably doesn’t run itself. That would be corruption. What I’m offering you is a purely political transaction. Covert, I’ll grant you that, but this is something practiced every day at City Hall. And it is in the people’s best interests, isn’t it?”
Skøyen nodded again, on her guard.
“This deal will have to stay between you and us, Fru Skøyen. It will primarily benefit the town, although if you have political ambition, I can see a possible advantage for you personally. Given that is the case, it will of course make the path to a leading chair at City Hall much shorter. Never mind a role in national politics.”
Her coffee cup had stopped halfway to her mouth.
“I haven’t even considered asking you to do something unethical, Fru Skøyen. I just want to illustrate where we have common interests and then leave it to you to do what I think is right.”
“I do what you think is right?”
“The City Council is in a tough spot. Even before last month’s unfortunate developments, the steering committee’s aim was to get Oslo off the list of Europe’s worst drug towns. You were to reduce the drug trade, addiction among young people and, not least, the number of overdoses. Right now nothing seems more unlikely. Isn’t that right, Fru Skøyen?”
She didn’t answer.
“What’s needed is a hero, or a heroine, to clean up the mess from the bottom upward.”
She nodded slowly.
“What she has to do is to clear up the gangs and the cartels.”
Isabelle snorted. “Thanks, but that’s been tried in every city in Europe. New gangs spring up again like weeds. Where there’s demand there will always be new suppliers.”
“Exactly,” he said. “Just like weeds. I see you have a field of strawberries, Fru Skøyen. Do you use a mulch?”
“Yes, strawberry clover.”
“I can offer you a mulch,” the old man said. “Strawberry clover wearing Arsenal shirts.”
She looked at him. I could see her greedy brain working at maximum speed. The old man looked pleased.
“Mulch, my dear Gusto,” he said, taking a swig of coffee, “is a weed you plant and allow to grow unhindered to prevent other weeds from appearing. Because strawberry clover is a lesser evil than the alternatives. Do you understand?”
“I think so,” I said. “Where weeds will grow anyhow it’s a good idea to plant a weed that doesn’t destroy the strawberries.”
“Exactly. And in this little analogy the City Council’s vision of a cleaner Oslo is the strawberries, and all the gangs selling dangerous heroin and creating anarchy on the streets are the weeds. While we and violin are the mulch.”
“And so?”
“And so you first have to do the weeding. And then you can leave the strawberry clover in peace.”
“And what is it that is actually so much better for the strawberries?” she asked.
“We don’t shoot anyone. We operate discreetly. We sell a drug that does not end in overdoses. With a monopoly in the strawberry field we can raise the prices so high that there are fewer and fewer young people recruited—without our total profit going down, I admit. Fewer users and fewer sellers. Junkies will no longer fill the parks and our downtown streets. In brief, Oslo will be a delight to behold for tourists, politicians and voters.”
“I’m not on the Social Services Committee.”
“Not yet, Fru Skøyen. But then weeding is not for committees. For that they have a secretary. To make all the small, daily decisions that in their entirety constitute the real action taken. Naturally you follow the council’s adopted policies, but you are the person who has daily contact with the police, who discusses their activities and ventures in Kvadraturen, for example. You will of course have to define your role a little more, but you seem to have a certain talent for that. A little interview about drug policies in Oslo here, a statement about drug overdoses there. So that when success is a fact the press and your party colleagues will know who the brain is behind”—he put on his Komodo dragon grin—“the market’s proud winner of this year’s biggest strawberries.”
We all sat very still. The fly had stopped trying to escape when it discovered the sugar bowl.
“This conversation has never taken place,” Isabelle said.
“Of course not.”
“We’ve never even met.”
“Sad but true, Fru Skøyen.”
“And how do you imagine … the weeding should be conducted?”
“We can offer a helping hand. There’s a long tradition of snitching to eliminate rivals in this industry, and we’ll supply you with the necessary information. You will naturally provide the Social Services Committee with suggestions for the Police Commission, but you will need a confidant in the police. Perhaps someone who can benefit from being part of this success story. A person—”
“An ambitious person who can be pragmatic so long as it’s in the town’s best interests?” Isabelle Skøyen raised her cup to a skål. “Shall we go and sit in the lounge?”
SERGEY WAS LYING supine on the bench as the tattooist studied the drawings in silence.
When he had arrived punctually at the little shop the tattooist had been busy designing a big dragon on the back of a boy who was lying there with his teeth clenched while a woman, who was clearly the mother, was comforting him and asking if the tattoo needed to be so big. She paid when it was finished and on the way out asked the boy if he was happy now that he had an even cooler tattoo than Preben and Kristoffer.
“This one will fit on your back better,” the tattooist said, pointing to one of the drawings.
“Tupoy,” Sergey muttered. Idiot.
“Eh?”
“Everything has to be exactly the same as the drawing. Do I have to tell you every time?”
“Yeah, well, I can’t do it all today.”
“Yes, you can—do it all. Double pay.”
“Urgent, is it?”
Sergey responded with a brief nod. Andrey had called him every day, kept him up to date. But when he had called today, Sergey had not been prepared for what Andrey had to say.
The necessary had become necessary.
And Sergey had known there was no way out.
He had immediately brought himself up short: no way out? Who wanted out?
Perhaps he’d thought of escape because Andrey had warned him. Told him that the policeman had managed to disarm an inmate they had paid to kill Oleg Fauke. Fair enough, the inmate was only a Norwegian and hadn’t killed anyone with a knife before, but it meant that this wasn’t going to be as easy as the last time. Shooting their dope seller, the boy, had been a simple execution. This time he would have to sneak up on the policeman, wait till he had him where he wanted and take him when he least expected it.
“I don’t want to be a killjoy but the tattoos you’ve already got are not exactly quality workmanship. The lines are unclear, and the ink’s poor. Shouldn’t we freshen them up a little?”
Sergey didn’t answer. What did the guy know about quality workmanship? The lines were unclear because the tattooist in prison had to use a sharpened guitar string attached to an electric shaver as a needle, and the ink was made from a melted shoe sole mixed with urine.
“Drawing,” Sergey said, pointing. “Now!”
“And you’re sure you want a pistol? It’s your choice, but my experience is that people are shocked by violent symbols. Just so you’re warned.”
The guy clearly knew nothing about Russian criminals’ tattoos. Didn’t know that the cat meant he had been convicted for stealing, the church with two cupolas meant he had two convictions. Didn’t know that the burn marks on his chest were from a magnesium powder dressing he had held directly on his skin to remove a tattoo. The tattoo had been of female genitals and had been given to him while he had been doing a second stint in prison by members of the Georgian Black Seed gang who thought he owed them money after a card game.
Nor did the tattooist know that the pistol in the drawing, a Makarov, the Russian police’s service weapon, denoted that he, Sergey Ivanov, had killed a policeman.
He knew nothing, and that was fine; it was best for everyone if he stuck to tattooing butterflies, Chinese symbols and colorful dragons on well-fed Norwegian youths who thought their catalog tattoos were a statement about something.