The Bat

by Jo Nesbo

  ‘How long had she been dead before she was found?’

  Andrew pulled a grimace. ‘The police doctor said forty-eight hours. But he . . .’

  He put a backward-facing thumb in front of his mouth. Harry nodded. So the doctor was a thirsty soul.

  ‘And you become sceptical when the figures are too rounded?’

  ‘She was found on a Friday morning, so let’s say she died some time during Wednesday night.’

  ‘Any clues here?’

  ‘As you can see, cars can park down below and the area is unlit at night and relatively deserted. We haven’t got any reports from witnesses, and to be frank, we don’t reckon we’ll get any.’

  ‘So what do we do now?’

  ‘Now we do what the boss told me, we go to a restaurant and spend a bit of the force’s entertainment budget. After all, you’re Norway’s highest police rep in a radius of more than twelve hundred miles. At least.’

  Andrew and Harry sat at a table with a white cloth. Doyle’s, a seafood restaurant, was situated at the furthest end of Watson’s Bay with only a strip of sand between itself and the sea.

  ‘Ridiculously beautiful, isn’t it?’ Andrew said.

  ‘Picture postcard.’ A small boy and a girl were building sandcastles on the beach in front of them, against a background of a deep blue sea and luxuriant green hills with Sydney’s proud skyline in the distance.

  Harry chose scallops and Tasmanian trout, Andrew an Australian flatfish which Harry, quite reasonably, had never heard of. Andrew ordered a bottle of Chardonnay Rosemount, ‘quite wrong for this meal, but it’s white, it’s good and it’s smack on budget’, and looked mildly surprised when Harry said he didn’t drink.

  ‘Quaker?’

  ‘No, nothing like that,’ Harry said.

  Doyle’s was an old family-run restaurant and considered one of Sydney’s best, Andrew informed Harry. It was peak season and packed to the rafters and Harry presumed that was why it was so difficult to gain eye contact with the waiters.

  ‘The waiters here are like the Planet Pluto,’ Andrew said. ‘They orbit on the periphery, only making an appearance every twentieth year, and even then are impossible to glimpse with the naked eye.’

  Harry couldn’t work up any indignation and leaned back in his chair with a contented sigh. ‘But they have excellent food,’ he said. ‘So that explains the suit.’

  ‘Yes and no. As you can see, it’s not exactly formal here. But it’s better for me not to wear jeans and a T-shirt in places like this. Because of my appearance I have to make an effort.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Andrew stared at Harry. ‘Aboriginal people don’t have very high status in this country, as you may perhaps appreciate. Years ago the English wrote home that the natives had a weakness for alcohol and property crime.’

  Harry listened with interest.

  ‘They thought it was in our genes. “All they were good for was making a hell of a racket blowing through long pieces of hollow wood, which they call didgeridoos,” one of them wrote. Well, this country boasts that it’s managed to integrate several cultures into one cohesive society. But cohesive for who? The problem, or the advantage, according to your perspective, is that the natives aren’t seen any more.

  ‘Aboriginal folks are as good as totally absent from social life in Australia, apart from political debates that affect Indigenous interests and culture. Australians pay lip-service by having Aboriginal art hanging on the walls of their houses. However, we Blackfellas are well represented in the dole queues, suicide statistics and prisons. If you’re Aboriginal the chances of ending up in prison are twenty-six times greater than for any other Australian. Chew on that, Harry Holy.’

  Andrew drank the rest of his wine while Harry chewed on that. And the fact that he’d probably just eaten the best fish dish in his thirty-two years.

  ‘And yet Australia’s no more racist than any other country. After all, we’re a multicultural nation with people from all over the world living here. It just means that dressing in a suit whenever you go to a restaurant is worth the trouble.’

  Harry nodded again. There was no more to say on that subject.

  ‘Inger Holter worked in a bar, didn’t she?’

  ‘Yes, she did. The Albury in Oxford Street, Paddington. I thought we could wander up there this evening.’

  ‘Why not now?’ Harry was beginning to be impatient with all this leisure.

  ‘Because first we have to say hello to her landlord.’

  Pluto appeared unbidden in the firmament.

  3

  A Tasmanian Devil

  GLEBE POINT ROAD turned out to be a cosy, not too frenetic street where small, plain and, for the most part, ethnic restaurants from various parts of the world stood cheek by jowl.

  ‘This used to be Sydney’s bohemian quarter,’ Andrew explained. ‘I lived here as a student in the seventies. You can still find typical veggie restaurants for people with conservation on the brain and alternative lifestyles, bookshops for lesbians and so on. But the old hippies and acidheads have gone. As Glebe became an “in” place rent went up – I doubt if I’d be able to live here now, even on my police salary.’

  They turned right, up Hereford Street and went through the gate to number 54. A small furry black animal came towards them, barking, and revealing a row of tiny, sharp teeth. The mini-monster looked seriously angry and bore a striking similarity to the picture in the tourist brochure of the Tasmanian Devil. Aggressive and generally unpleasant to have hanging from your throat, it said. The species had been almost completely exterminated, which Harry sincerely hoped was true. As this specimen launched itself at him with jaws wide open, Andrew raised his foot and kicked the animal in mid-flight and volleyed it yelping into the bushes alongside the fence.

  A man with a large gut who looked as though he had just got up was standing in the doorway with a sour expression on his face as they came up the steps.

  ‘What happened to the dog?’

  ‘It’s admiring the rose bushes,’ Andrew informed him with a smile. ‘We’re from the police. Crime Squad. Mr Robertson?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. What do you lot want again? I told you I’ve told you everything I know.’

  ‘And now you’ve told us you’ve told us you’ve told us . . .’ A long silence developed as Andrew continued to smile and Harry shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

  ‘Apologies, Mr Robertson, we won’t try to kill you with our charm, but this is Inger Holter’s brother and he would like to see her room if that’s not too much trouble.’

  Robertson’s attitude changed dramatically.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t know . . . Come in!’ He opened the door and went ahead of them up the stairs.

  ‘Yeah, in fact I didn’t even know Inger had a brother. But now you say it of course I can see the family likeness.’

  Behind him, Harry half turned to Andrew and rolled his eyes.

  ‘Inger was a lovely girl and a fantastic tenant – indeed, a source of pride for the whole house and neighbourhood too, probably.’ He smelt of beer and his diction was already a bit slurred.

  No attempt had been made to tidy Inger’s room. There were clothes, magazines, full ashtrays and empty wine bottles everywhere.

  ‘Er, the police told me not to touch anything for the moment.’

  ‘We understand.’

  ‘She just didn’t come back one night. Vanished into thin air.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Robertson, we’ve read your statement.’

  ‘I told her not to take the route round Bridge Road and the fish market when she came home at night. It’s dark there and there are loads of blacks and Chinks . . .’ He looked at Andrew Kensington in horror. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to . . .’

  ‘That’s fine. You can go now, Mr Robertson.’

  Robertson padded down the stairs and they heard bottles clinking in the kitchen.

  The room contained a bed, a few bookshelves and a desk. Harry looked around
and tried to construct an impression of Inger Holter. Victimology: putting yourself in the victim’s shoes. He could just about recall the impish girl off the TV screen with her well-meaning, youthful commitment and innocent blue eyes.

  She was definitely not a home bird. There were no pictures on the walls, just a poster of Braveheart with Mel Gibson – which Harry remembered only because for some incomprehensible reason it won an Oscar for Best Film. Bad taste, as far as films go, he thought. And men. Harry was one of those who felt personally let down when Mad Max made a Hollywood star out of him.

  A photograph showed Inger sitting on a bench in front of some colourful Western-style houses with a gang of long-haired, bearded youths. She was wearing a loose, purple dress. Her blonde hair hung down flat against her pale, serious face. The young man whose hand she was holding had a baby in his lap.

  On the shelf there was a pouch of tobacco. A few books about astrology and a roughly hewn wooden mask with a long, bent nose like a beak. Harry turned the mask over. Made in Papua New Guinea, it said on the price tag.

  The clothes that weren’t lying on the bed and floor hung in a small wardrobe. There wasn’t much. A few cotton blouses, a worn coat and a large straw hat on the shelf.

  Andrew picked up a packet of cigarette papers from the drawer in the desk.

  ‘King Size Smoking Slim. She rolled herself some big cigarettes.’

  ‘Did you find any drugs here?’ Harry asked.

  Andrew shook his head and pointed to the cigarette paper.

  ‘But if we’d hoovered the ashtrays I wouldn’t mind betting we’d have found traces of cannabis.’

  ‘Why wasn’t it done? Didn’t the SOC people come here?’

  ‘First of all, there’s no reason to believe that this was the scene of the crime. Second of all, smoking marijuana is nothing to shout about. Here in New South Wales we have a more pragmatic attitude to marijuana than in certain other Australian states. I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that the murder could be drugs-related, but the odd reefer or two is hardly relevant in this context. We can’t know for sure if she used other drugs. There’s a fair bit of coke and designer drugs on the go in the Albury, but no one we’ve spoken to has mentioned anything, and there wasn’t a trace of anything in the blood tests. At any rate, she wasn’t on the serious stuff. There were no needle marks, and we have a reasonable overview of the hard-core users.’

  Harry looked at him. Andrew cleared his throat.

  ‘That’s the official version, anyway. There is one thing they thought you could help us with though.’

  There was a letter in Norwegian. ‘Dear Elisabeth,’ it started and obviously wasn’t finished. Harry skimmed through it.

  Well, I’m just fine, and even more important, I’m in love! Of course, he’s as handsome as a Greek God with long, curly brown hair, a pert bum and eyes that tell you what he’s already whispered to you: he wants you now – this minute – behind the closest wall, in the loo, on the table, on the floor, anywhere. His name’s Evans, he’s 32, he’s been married (surprise, surprise) and has a lovely little boy of 18 months called Tom-Tom. Right now he doesn’t have a proper job, but drifts around doing things.

  And, yes, I know you can smell trouble, and I promise not to let myself be dragged down. Not for the time being, anyway.

  Enough about Evans. I’m still working at the Albury. ‘Mr Bean’ stopped inviting me out after Evans was in the bar one night, and that at least is progress. But he still follows me with those slimy eyes of his. Yuk! Actually I’m beginning to get sick of this job, but I’ll just have to hang on until I can have my residence permit extended. I’ve had a word with NRK – they’re planning a follow-up to the TV series for next autumn and I can carry on if I want. Decisions, decisions!

  The letter stopped there.

  4

  A Clown

  ‘WHERE ARE WE going now?’ Harry asked.

  ‘To the circus! I promised a friend I would pop by one day. And today is one day, isn’t it.’

  At the Powerhouse a small circus troupe had already started the free afternoon performance for a sparse but young and enthusiastic audience. The building had been a power station and a tram hall when Sydney had trams, Andrew elucidated. Now it was functioning as a kind of contemporary museum. A couple of well-built girls had just completed a not very spectacular trapeze number, but had reaped a great round of friendly applause.

  An enormous guillotine was rolled in as a clown entered the stage. He was wearing a brightly coloured uniform and a striped hat, obviously inspired by the French Revolution. He tripped and got up to all sorts of pranks to the huge amusement of the children. Then another clown came onto the stage wearing a long white wig, and it gradually dawned on Harry that he was meant to be Louis XVI.

  ‘By unanimous vote, sentenced to death,’ announced the clown with the striped hat.

  Soon the condemned man was led to the scaffold where he – still to the amusement of the children – laid his head, after much screaming and yelling, on the block below the blade. There was a brief roll of the drums, the blade fell and to everyone’s amazement, Harry’s included, it cut off the monarch’s head with a sound reminiscent of an axe blow in the forest on a bright winter’s morning. The head, still bearing the wig, fell and rolled into a basket. The lights went out, and when they were switched back on, the headless king stood in the spotlight with his head under his arm. Now the children’s cheering knew no bounds. Then the lights went out again, and when they came back on for the second time, the whole troupe was assembled and bowing, and the performance was over.

  As people poured towards the exit, Andrew and Harry went backstage. In the makeshift dressing room the performers were already removing their costumes and make-up.

  ‘Otto, say hi to a friend from Norway,’ Andrew shouted.

  A face turned. Louis XVI looked less majestic with make-up smeared over his face and without his wig. ‘Well, hello, it’s Tuka the Indian!’

  ‘Harry, this is Otto Rechtnagel.’

  Otto proffered his hand elegantly with a kink in the wrist and looked indignant when Harry, slightly perplexed, made do with a light press.

  ‘No kiss, handsome?’

  ‘Otto thinks he’s a woman. A woman of noble descent,’ Andrew said, to illuminate.

  ‘Stuff and nonsense, Tuka. Otto knows very well she’s a man. You look confused, handsome. Perhaps you’d like to check for yourself?’ Otto emitted a high-pitched chuckle.

  Harry felt his earlobes go warm. Two false eyelashes fluttered accusingly at Andrew.

  ‘Your friend, does he talk?’

  ‘Sorry. My name’s Harry . . . er . . . Holy. Clever number out there. Nice costumes. Very . . . lifelike. And unusual.’

  ‘The Louise Seize number? Unusual? On the contrary. It’s an old classic. The first time it was done was by the Jandaschewsky clown family just two weeks after the real execution in January 1793. People loved it. People have always loved public executions. Do you know how many reruns there are of the Kennedy assassination on American TV stations every year?’

  Harry shook his head.

  Otto looked up at the ceiling pensively. ‘Quite a lot.’

  ‘Otto sees himself as the heir of the great Jandy Jandaschewsky,’ Andrew added.

  ‘Is that so?’ Famous clown families were not Harry’s area of expertise.

  ‘I don’t think your friend here is quite with us, Tuka. The Jandaschewsky family, you see, was a travelling troupe of musical clowns who came to Australia at the beginning of the twentieth century and settled here. They ran the circus until Jandy died in 1971. I saw Jandy for the first time when I was six. From that moment I knew what I wanted to be. And now that’s what I am.’

  Otto smiled a sad clown smile through the make-up.

  ‘How do you two know each other?’ Harry asked. Andrew and Otto exchanged glances. Harry saw their mouths twitch and knew he had committed a gaffe.

  ‘I mean . . . a policeman and a clown . . . t
hat’s not exactly . . .’

  ‘It’s a long story,’ Andrew said. ‘I suppose you could say we grew up together. Otto would have sold his mother for a piece of my arse of course, but even at a young age I felt a strange attraction to girls and all those awful hetero things. It must have been something to do with genes and environment. What do you think, Otto?’

  Andrew chuckled as he ducked away from Otto’s slap.

  ‘You have no style, you have no money and your arse is overrated,’ Otto squealed. Harry gazed round at the others in the troupe; they seemed quite unfazed by the performance. One of the well-built trapeze artists sent him an encouraging wink.

  ‘Harry and I are going up to the Albury tonight. Would you like to join us?’

  ‘You know very well I don’t go there any more, Tuka.’

  ‘You should be over that by now, Otto. Life goes on, you know.’

  ‘Everyone else’s life goes on, you mean. Mine stops here, right here. When love dies, I die.’

  ‘As you wish.’

  ‘Besides, I have to go home and feed Waldorf. You go, and I may come a bit later.’

  ‘See you soon,’ Harry said, putting his lips dutifully to Otto’s outstretched hand.

  ‘Looking forward to that, Handsome Harry.’

  5

  A Swede

  THE SUN HAD gone down as they drove along Oxford Street in Paddington and pulled up by a small open space. ‘Green Park’ the sign said, but the grass was scorched brown, and the only green was a pavilion in the middle of the park. A man with Aboriginal blood in his veins lay on the grass between the trees. His clothes were in tatters and he was so dirty that he was more grey than black. On seeing Andrew, he raised his hand in a kind of greeting, but Andrew ignored him.

  The Albury was so full they had to squeeze their way inside the glass doors. Harry stood still for a few seconds taking in the scene before him. The clientele was a motley collection, mostly young men: rockers in faded denim, suit-clad yuppies with slicked hair, arty types with goatees and champagne, blond and good-looking surfers with bleached smiles, and bikers – or bikies as Andrew called them – in black leathers. At the centre of the room, in the very bar itself, the show was in full swing with long-legged, semi-naked women wearing purple, plunging tops. They were cavorting about and miming with wide, red-painted mouths to Gloria Gaynor’s ‘I Will Survive’. The girls took turns so that those who were not performing served the customers with winks and outrageous flirting.