by Jo Nesbo
‘We have a lead.’
‘Which is?’
‘I read in Se og Hør that Lene Galtung asked to have her hair dyed brick red. I don’t even know if that’s a colour we use in Norway, that’s probably why I remembered it.’
‘Remembered what?’
‘That it was the hair colour given in the passport belonging to Juliana Verni from Leipzig. At the time I asked Günther to check if there was a stamp from Kigali in her passport. But the police didn’t find it, the passport was gone, and I’m convinced Tony Leike took it.’
‘The passport? And?’
‘Now Lene Galtung has got it.’
Hagen put some pak choi in his shopping basket while slowly shaking his head. ‘You’re basing a trip to the Congo on something you read in a gossip rag?’
‘I’m basing it on what I – or I should say Katrine Bratt – found out about what Juliana Verni has been doing recently.’
Hagen started to make a move towards the man at the cash desk on a podium by the right-hand wall. ‘Verni’s dead, Harry.’
‘Do dead people catch flights? Turns out Juliana Verni – or let’s say a woman with curly brick-red hair – has bought a plane ticket from Zurich to the end of the world.’
‘The end of the world?’
‘Goma, the Congo. Early tomorrow.’
‘Then they will arrest her when they discover she has a passport belonging to a person who has been dead for more than two months.’
‘I checked with ICAO. They say it can take up to a year before the passport number of a deceased person is crossed off the books. Which means someone may have travelled to the Congo on Odd Utmo’s passport, too. However, we have no cooperation agreement with the Congo. And it’s hardly an insurmountable problem buying your way out of prison.’
Hagen let the cashier tot up his goods while he massaged his temples in an attempt to pre-empt the inevitable headache. ‘So go and find her in Zurich. Send the Swiss police to the airport.’
‘We’ve got her under surveillance. Lene Galtung will lead us to Tony Leike, boss.’
‘She’ll lead us to perdition, Harry.’ Hagen paid, took his items and marched out of the shop into rainy, wind-blown Grønlandsleiret where people rushed past with upturned collars and downcast faces.
‘You don’t understand. Bratt managed to find out that two days ago Lene Galtung emptied her account in Zurich. Two million euros. Not a staggering sum and definitely not enough to finance a whole mining project. But enough to bridge a critical phase.’
‘Idle speculation.’
‘What the hell else is she going to do with two million euros in cash? Come on, boss, this is the only chance we’ll get.’ Harry stepped up the pace to stay level with Hagen. ‘In the Congo you don’t find people who don’t want to be found. The fucking country is as big as Western Europe and consists largely of forest no white man has ever seen. Go for it now. Leike will haunt your dreams, boss.’
‘I don’t have nightmares like you do, Harry.’
‘Have you told the next of kin how well you sleep at night, boss?’
Gunnar Hagen came to an abrupt halt.
‘Sorry, boss,’ Harry said. ‘That was below the belt.’
‘It was. And actually I don’t know why you’re hassling me for my permission. You’ve never considered it important before.’
‘Thought it would be nice for you to have the feeling you’re the man in charge, boss.’
Hagen fired a warning shot across Harry’s bows. Harry shrugged. ‘Let me do this, boss. Afterwards you can give me the boot for refusing to obey orders. I’ll take all the flak, it’s OK by me.’
‘Is it OK?’
‘I’m going to resign after this anyway.’
Hagen eyed Harry. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Go.’ Then he set off again.
Harry caught up with him. ‘Fine?’
‘Yes. Actually it was fine from the very beginning.’
‘Oh? Why didn’t you say so before then?’
‘Thought it would be nice to have the feeling I was the man in charge.’
PART NINE
83
The End of the World
SHE DREAMED SHE WAS STANDING BEFORE A CLOSED DOOR and heard a cold, lone bird’s cry from the forest, and it sounded so peculiar because the sun was shining and it was hot. She opened the door . . .
She woke up with her head on Harry’s shoulder and dried saliva in the corners of her mouth. The captain’s voice announced they were about to land in Goma.
She looked out of the window. A grey stripe in the east presaged the arrival of a new day. It was twelve hours since they had left Oslo. In a few hours the Zurich flight with Juliana Verni on the passenger list would land.
‘I’m wondering why Hagen thought it was alright to shadow Lene like this,’ Harry said.
‘He probably valued your cogent arguments,’ Kaja yawned.
‘Mm. He seemed a bit too relaxed. I reckon he’s got something up his sleeve. There’s some guarantee he’s got they won’t bollock him for this.’
‘He might have something on someone in the Ministry of Justice,’ Kaja said.
‘Mm. Or on Bellman. Perhaps he knows you and Bellman were having a relationship?’
‘Doubt it,’ Kaja said, peering into the dark. ‘There are hardly any lights here.’
‘Looks like a power cut,’ Harry said. ‘The airport must have its own generator.’
‘Light over there,’ she said, pointing to a red shimmer north of the town. ‘What’s that?’
‘Nyiragongo,’ Harry said. ‘It’s the lava lighting up the sky.’
‘Is that right?’ she said, pressing her nose against the window.
Harry drank his glass of water. ‘Shall we go through the plan one more time?’
She nodded and straightened her seat back.
‘You stay in the arrivals hall and keep an eye on the landing times. Make sure everything is going to plan. In the meantime I’ll go shopping. It’s only fifteen minutes to the centre, so I’ll be back in plenty of time before Lene’s plane lands. You watch, see if anyone is there to collect her, and stay on her tail. As Lene knows my face I’ll be outside in a taxi waiting for you. And should anything untoward happen, you ring me at once. OK?’
‘OK. And you’re sure she’ll stop over in Goma?’
‘I’m not sure of anything at all. There are only two hotels in Goma that are still functional, and according to Katrine there’s nothing booked, neither in Verni’s name, nor in Galtung’s. But the guerrillas control the road to the west and north, and the closest town south is an eight-mile drive.’
‘Do you really believe the only reason Tony has brought Lene here is to milk her for money?’
‘According to Jens Rath, the project is at a critical stage. Can you see any other reason?’
Kaja shrugged. ‘What if even a killer is capable of loving someone so much that he simply wants to be with her? Is that so inconceivable?’
Harry nodded. As if to say ‘yes, you have a point’, or ‘yes, it is inconceivable’.
There was a humming and a clicking, like a camera in slow motion, as the wheels were lowered.
Kaja stared out of the window.
‘And I don’t like the shopping, Harry. Why the weapons?’
‘Leike is violent.’
‘And I don’t like travelling as an undercover cop. I know we can’t smuggle our own weapons into the Congo, but couldn’t we have asked the Congolese police for assistance with the arrest?’
‘As I said, we have no extradition agreement. And it’s not improbable that a financier like Leike has local police in his pay who would have warned him.’
‘Conspiracy theory.’
‘Yep. And simple mathematics. A policeman’s wage in the Congo is not enough to feed a family. Relax, Van Boorst has a wonderful little ironmongery and he’s professional enough to keep his mouth shut.’
The wheels emitted a scream as they hit the landing strip.
Kaja squinted out of the window. ‘Why are there so many soldiers here?’
‘UN flying in reinforcements. The guerrillas have advanced in the last few days.’
‘What guerrillas?’
‘Hutu guerrillas, Tutsi guerrillas, Mai Mai guerrillas. Who knows?’
‘Harry?’
‘Yes.’
‘Let’s get this job done quickly and go home.’
He nodded.
It had already grown lighter when Harry walked along the line of taxi drivers outside. He exchanged a few words with each and every one until he found someone who could speak good English. Excellent English, in fact. He was a small man with alert eyes, grey hair and thick blood vessels above the temples and sides of his high, shiny forehead. His English was definitely original, a kind of stilted Oxford variant with a broad Congolese accent. Harry explained to him that he would hire him for the whole day, they quickly agreed a price and exchanged handshakes, a third of the agreed sum in dollars, and names, Harry and Dr Duigame.
‘In English literature,’ the man elucidated, openly counting the money. ‘But as we’re going to be together the whole day you can call me Saul.’
He opened the rear door of a dented Hyundai. Harry indicated where Saul was to drive, to the road by the burnt-down church.
‘Sounds like you’ve been here before,’ Saul said, steering the car along a regular stretch of tarmac which, as soon as it met the main traffic artery, became a moonscape of craters and cracks.
‘Once.’
‘Then you should be careful,’ he smiled. ‘Hemingway wrote that once you have opened your soul to Africa you won’t want to be anywhere else.’
‘Hemingway wrote that?’ Harry queried with some scepticism.
‘Yes, he did, but Hemingway wrote that sort of romantic shit all the time. Shot lions when he was drunk and pissed that sweet whiskey urine on their corpses. The truth is that no one comes back to the Congo if they don’t have to.’
‘I had to,’ Harry said. ‘Listen, I tried to get hold of the driver I had last time when I was here, Joe from Refugee Aid. But there’s no response from his number.’
‘Joe’s gone,’ Saul said.
‘Gone?’
‘He took his family with him, stole a car and drove to Uganda. Goma’s under siege. They’ll kill everyone. I’m going soon, too. Joe had a good car, maybe he’ll make it.’
Harry recognised the church spire towering over the ruins of what Nyiragongo had eaten. He held on tight as the Hyundai rolled past the potholes. There were nasty scrapes and bumps to the chassis a couple of times.
‘Wait here,’ Harry said. ‘I’ll walk the rest of the way. Back soon.’
Harry stepped out and inhaled grey dust and the smell of spices and rotten fish.
Then he started walking. An obviously drunk man tried to ram Harry with his shoulder, but missed and staggered into the road. Harry had a couple of choice words hurled after him and walked on. Not too fast, not too slow. Arriving at the only brick house in the square of shops, he went up to the door, banged hard and waited. Heard quick footsteps inside. Too quick to be Van Boorst’s. The door was opened a fraction and half a black face and one eye appeared.
‘Van Boorst at home?’ Harry asked.
‘No.’ The large gold teeth in the upper set glinted.
‘I want to buy some handguns, Miss. Can you help me?’
She shook her head. ‘Sorry. Goodbye.’
Harry shoved his foot in the gap. ‘I pay well.’
‘No guns. Van Boorst not here.’
‘When will he be back, Miss?’
‘I not know. I not have time now.’
‘I’m looking for a man from Norway. Tony. Tall. Handsome. Have you seen him around?’
The girl shook her head.
‘Will Van Boorst be coming home this evening? This is important, Miss.’
She looked at him. Weighed him up. Lingered, from top to toe. And back. Her soft lips slid apart over her teeth. ‘You a rich man?’
Harry didn’t answer. She blinked sleepily, and her matt-black eyes glistened. Then she smirked. ‘Thirty minutes. Come back then.’
Harry returned to the taxi, sat in the front seat, told Saul to drive to the bank and rang Kaja.
‘I’m still sitting in the arrivals hall,’ she said. ‘No announcements to say anything except that the Zurich flight is on time.’
‘I’ll check us into the hotel before I go back to Van Boorst and buy what we need.’
The hotel lay to the east of the centre towards the Rwandan border. In front of reception was a car park coated with lava and wreathed with trees.
‘They were planted after the last eruption,’ Saul said, as though reading Harry’s thoughts. There were almost no trees in Goma. The double room was on the first floor of a low building by the lake and had a balcony overlooking the water. Harry smoked a cigarette, watching the morning sun glitter on the surface and glint off the oil rig far out. He checked his watch and went back to the car park.
Saul’s state of mind seemed to have adapted to the sluggish traffic he was in: he drove slowly, talked slowly, moved his hands slowly. He parked outside the church walls, a good distance from Van Boorst’s house. Switched off the engine, turned to Harry and asked politely but firmly for the second third of the sum.
‘Don’t you trust me?’ Harry asked with a raised eyebrow.
‘I trust your sincere desire to pay,’ Saul said. ‘But in Goma money is safer with me than with you, Mr Harry. Shame but true.’
Harry acknowledged the reasoning with a nod, flipped through the rest of the money and asked if Saul had something heavy and compact in the car, the size of a pistol, such as a torch. Saul pursed his lips and opened the glove compartment. Harry took out the torch, stuffed it in his inside pocket and looked at his watch. Twenty-five minutes had gone.
He strode down the street, his eyes fixed straight ahead. But sidelong glances registered men turning after him with appraising eyes. Appraising height and weight. The elasticity of his strides. The jacket hanging slightly askew and the bulky shape in the inside pocket. And dismissing the opportunity.
He went up to the door and knocked.
The same light steps.
The door opened. She glanced at him, then her gaze wandered past him, to the street.
‘Quick, come in,’ she said, grabbing his arm and pulling him inside.
Harry stepped over the threshold and stood in the semi-gloom. All the curtains were drawn, apart from by the window over the bed where he had seen her lying half naked the first time he was here.
‘He not arrive yet,’ she said in her simple but effective English. ‘Soon come.’
Harry nodded and looked at the bed. Tried to imagine her there, with the blanket over her hips. The light falling on her skin. But he couldn’t. For there was something trying to catch his attention, something was not right, missing, or was there and shouldn’t have been.
‘You come alone?’ she asked, walking around him and sitting on the bed. Placing one hand on the mattress, allowing the shoulder strap of her dress to slip down.
Harry shifted his gaze to locate what was wrong. And found it. The colonial master and exploiter King Leopold.
‘Yes,’ he said automatically, without quite knowing why yet. ‘Alone.’
The picture of King Leopold which had been hanging on the wall was gone. The next thought followed hard on its heels. Van Boorst wasn’t coming. He was gone, too.
Harry took half a step towards her. She tilted her head slightly, moistening her full, red-black lips. And he was close enough to see now, to see what had replaced the painting of the Belgian king. The nail the picture had been hanging from impaled a banknote. The face that made the note distinctive was sensitive and sported a well-tended moustache. Edvard Munch.
Harry realised what was going to happen, was about to turn, but something also told him it was far too late, he was positioned exactly as planned in the stage directions.
H
e sensed more than saw the movement behind him and didn’t feel the precise jab in his neck, only the breath against his temple. His neck froze to ice, the paralysis spread down his back and up to his scalp, his legs buckled beneath him as the drug reached his brain and consciousness faded. His last thought before darkness enveloped him was how amazingly fast ketanome worked.
84
Reunion
KAJA BIT HER LOWER LIP. SOMETHING WAS WRONG.
She called Harry’s number again.
And got his voicemail yet again.
For several hours, she had been sitting in the arrivals hall – which, as far as that went, was also the departures hall – and the plastic chair rubbed against all the parts of the body with which it came into contact.
She heard the whoosh of a plane. Immediately afterwards the only monitor present, a bulky box hanging from two rusty wires in the ceiling, showed that flight number KJ337 from Zurich had landed.
She scanned the gathering of people every second minute and established that none of them was Tony Leike.
She phoned again, but cut the connection when she realised she was doing this for the sake of doing something, but it wasn’t action, it was apathy.
The sliding doors to baggage reclaim opened and the first passengers with hand luggage came through. Kaja stood up and went to the wall beside the sliding doors so that she could see the names on the plastic signs and the scraps of paper the taxi drivers were holding up for the arriving travellers. No Juliana Verni and no Lene Galtung.
She went back to her lookout post by the chair. Sat on her palms, could feel they were damp with sweat. What should she do? She pulled down her sunglasses and stared at the sliding doors.
Seconds passed. Nothing happened.
Lene Galtung was almost concealed behind a pair of violet sunglasses and a large black man walking in front of her. Her hair was red, curly, and she was wearing a denim jacket, khaki trousers and solid hiking boots. She was dragging a wheeled bag tailor-made to the maximum measurements allowed for hand luggage. She had no handbag, but a small, shiny metal case.
Nothing happened. Everything happened. In parallel and at the same time, the past and the present, and in a strange way Kaja knew the opportunity was finally there. The opportunity for which she had been waiting. The chance to do the right thing.