The Bat

by Jo Nesbo

  The room fell silent. Just the whirr of the fan, and the crunch as Andrew took a large bite out of his apple.

  ‘Back to the drawing board,’ said Watkins.

  Harry had arranged to meet Birgitta in the Opera House at five for a coffee before she went to work. When they arrived the cafe was closed. A notice said it was something to do with a ballet performance.

  ‘There’s always something,’ Birgitta said. They stood against the railing and looked across the harbour to Kirribilli on the other side. ‘I want the rest of the story.’

  ‘He was called Stiansen, my colleague. Ronny. Thuggish name in Norway, but he wasn’t a thug. Ronny Stiansen was a nice, kind boy who loved being a policeman. Mostly, at any rate. The funeral took place while I was still in hospital. My boss at the police station visited me later. He passed on the Chief of Police’s best wishes, and perhaps I should have smelt a rat then. But I was sober and my mood was rock bottom. The nurse had discovered the alcohol I’d had smuggled in and shifted my neighbour to another ward, so I hadn’t had a drink for two days. “I know what you’re thinking,” said my boss. “But stop it. You’ve got a job to do.” He thought I was considering suicide. He was mistaken. I was thinking about how I could get hold of some booze.

  ‘My boss isn’t the type to beat about the bush. “Stiansen’s dead. There’s nothing you can do to help him now,” he said. “All you can do is help yourself and your family. And us. Have you read the newspapers?” I answered that I hadn’t read anything – my father had been reading books to me and I had asked him not to say a word about the accident. My boss said that was fine. That made it much easier. “You see, it wasn’t you driving the car,” he said. “Or to put it another way, there wasn’t a drunk from Oslo Police HQ sitting behind the wheel.” He asked me if I understood. Stiansen was driving. Of the two of us he was the one whose blood test showed he was stone-cold sober.

  ‘He produced some old newspapers and I could see with my somewhat blurred vision that they had written that the driver had been killed instantaneously while the colleague in the passenger seat had been seriously injured. “But I was in the driver’s seat,” I said. “I doubt it. You were found in the rear seat,” the boss said. “Remember you had serious concussion. My guess is you can’t remember anything about the drive at all.” Of course I knew where this was heading. The press was interested only in the driver’s blood test, and so long as that was clean no one would bother about mine. The incident was bad enough for the force already.’

  Birgitta had a deep frown between her eyes and looked shaken.

  ‘But how could you tell Stiansen’s parents that he had been driving? These people must be totally without feeling. How . . .?’

  ‘As I said, loyalty within the police is strong. In some cases the force can come before family considerations. But maybe on this occasion Stiansen’s family had been given a version that was easier to digest. In the boss’s version Stiansen had taken a calculated risk to chase a potential drug dealer and murderer, and accidents can happen to anyone on duty. After all, the boy in the other car was inexperienced and another driver in the same situation would have reacted more quickly, and wouldn’t have driven in front of us. Remember we had the siren on.’

  ‘And were doing 110 kilometres an hour.’

  ‘In a 50 kph area. Well, the boy couldn’t be blamed of course. The point was how to present the case. Why should the family be told their son was a passenger? Would it be any better for the parents if their son was thought to be someone who passively allowed a drunken colleague to drive the car? The boss went through the arguments over and over again. My head ached so much I thought it was going to explode. In the end I leaned over the edge of the bed and was throwing up as the nurse charged in. The next day the Stiansen family came. The parents and a younger sister. They brought flowers and hoped I would soon be on the road to recovery. The father said he blamed himself because he hadn’t been strict enough with his son about speeding. I cried like a baby. Every second was like a slow execution. They sat with me for over an hour.’

  ‘God, what did you say to them?’

  ‘Nothing. They did all the talking. About Ronny. About all the plans he’d had, about what he was going to be and do. About his girlfriend, who was studying in America. He had mentioned me. Said I was a good police officer and a good friend. Someone you could trust.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘I was in hospital for two months. The boss dropped by now and again. Once he repeated what he’d said before. “I know what you’re thinking. Stop it.” And this time he was right. I just wanted to die. Maybe there was a trace of altruism in keeping the truth hidden; lying in itself was not the worst part. The worst part was that I’d saved my own skin. This may sound odd, and I’ve mulled it over often enough, so let me explain.

  ‘In the fifties there was a young university lecturer called Charles Van Doren who was famous all over the USA for his appearances on a game show. Week after week he beat off all the challengers. The questions were at times unbelievably difficult and everyone was speechless with admiration that this guy could apparently answer all of them. He received marriage proposals in the post, he had his own fan club and his lectures at the university were packed, of course. In the end he announced publicly that the producers had given him all the questions beforehand.

  ‘When asked why he had exposed the scam he told them about an uncle who had admitted to his wife, Van Doren’s aunt, that he had been unfaithful. It had caused quite a stir in the family, and afterwards Van Doren had asked his uncle why he’d told her. The affair had taken place many years before, after all, and he hadn’t had any contact with the woman subsequently. The uncle had answered that being unfaithful hadn’t been the worst part. It was the getting away with it that he couldn’t hack. And so it was for Charles Van Doren as well.

  ‘I think people feel a kind of need for punishment when they can no longer accept their own actions. At any rate I yearned for it: to be punished, to be whipped, to be tortured, to be humiliated. Anything so long as I felt accounts were settled. But there was no one to punish me. They couldn’t even give me the boot; officially I’d been sober, hadn’t I. On the contrary, I received recognition from the Chief of Police in the press because I had been seriously injured on active service. So I punished myself instead. I gave myself the worst punishment I could think of: I decided to live and I decided to stop drinking.’

  ‘And afterwards?’

  ‘I got to my feet again and started working. Worked longer days than all the others. Trained. Went on long walks. Read books. Some on law. Stopped meeting bad friends. Good ones too, by the way. The ones I had left after all the boozing. I don’t know why in fact, it was like a big clean-up. Everything in my old life had to go, good as well as bad. One day I sat down and rang round all those I thought I had known in my former life and said: “Hi, we can’t meet any more. It was nice knowing you.” Most accepted it. A couple were even glad, I suppose. Some maintained I was walling myself in. Well, they may have been right. For the last three years I’ve spent more time with my sister than anyone else.’

  ‘And the women in your life?’

  ‘That’s another story and at least as long. And as old. After the accident there’s been no one worth the breath. I suppose I’ve become a lone wolf preoccupied with my own concerns. Who knows, I might simply have been more charming when I was drunk.’

  ‘Why did they send you here?’

  ‘Someone high up must think I’m useful. Probably it’s a kind of acid test to see how I function under pressure. If I manage this without making an arsehole of myself it may open certain possibilities for me back home, I’ve gleaned.’

  ‘And do you think that’s important?’

  Harry shrugged. ‘There’s not a lot that’s important.’

  A hideous, rusty boat flying a Russian flag was under way, and further out in Port Jackson they saw white sails banking but looking as if they were lying still.

>   ‘What are you going to do now?’ she asked.

  ‘Not a lot I can do here. Inger Holter’s coffin has been sent home. The funeral director rang me from Oslo today. I was told the embassy had organised the transport. They talked about a “cadaver”. A beloved child has many names, but it’s strange for the deceased to have so many.’

  ‘So when are you going to go?’

  ‘As soon as all of Inger Holter’s contacts that we know of have been eliminated from the case. I’ll talk to McCormack tomorrow. I’ll probably go before the weekend. If nothing concrete comes to light. Otherwise this could become a long, drawn-out affair, and we’ve agreed that the embassy should keep us in the loop.’

  She nodded. A group of tourists was standing next to them and the whirr of cameras mingled with the cacophony of the Japanese language, seagulls’ screams and the throb of passing boats.

  ‘Did you know that the person who designed the Opera House turned his back on the whole thing?’ Birgitta said out of nowhere. As the waves around the budget overshoot on the Sydney Opera House rose to their peak, the Danish architect Jørn Utzon dropped the whole project and resigned in protest. ‘Just imagine walking away from something you’ve started. Something you really believed would be good. I don’t think I could ever do that.’

  They had already decided that Harry would accompany Birgitta to the Albury rather than her catch the bus. But they didn’t have a lot to say and walked in silence along Oxford Street towards Paddington. Distant thunder rumbled, and Harry gazed up in amazement at the pure, blue sky. On a corner stood a grey-haired, distinguished man, impeccably dressed in a suit with a placard hanging from his neck saying: ‘The secret police have taken my work, my home, and they have ruined my life. Officially I don’t exist, they have no address or telephone number and they aren’t listed in the state budget. They think they can’t be charged. Help me to find the crooks and have them convicted for their misdeeds. Sign here or make a donation.’ He held up a book with pages of signatures.

  They passed a record shop, and on impulse Harry went in. Behind the counter stood a man wearing glasses. Harry asked if he had any records by Nick Cave.

  ‘Sure, he’s Australian,’ said the man, removing his glasses. He had an eagle tattooed on his forehead.

  ‘A duet. Something about a wild rose . . .’ Harry started to say.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I know the one you mean. “Where the Wild Roses Grow” from Murder Ballads. Shit song. Shit album. You’d be better off buying one of his good records.’

  The man put his glasses back on and disappeared behind the counter.

  Harry was amazed again and blinked in the gloom.

  ‘What’s so special about the song?’ Birgitta asked as they came out onto the street.

  ‘Nothing, obviously.’ Harry laughed. The guy in the shop had put him back in a good mood. ‘Cave and this woman sing about a murder. They make it sound beautiful, almost like a declaration of love. But it is indeed a shit song.’ He laughed again. ‘I’m beginning to like this town.’

  They walked on. Harry glanced up and down the street. They were almost the only mixed-sex couple in Oxford Street. Birgitta held his hand.

  ‘You should see the gay pride parade during Mardi Gras,’ Birgitta said. ‘It goes down Oxford Street here. Last year they said over half a million people came from all over Australia to watch and take part. It was crazy.’

  Gay street. Lesbian street. It was only now that he noticed the clothes exhibited in the shop windows. Latex. Leather. Tight tops and tiny silk panties. Zips and rivets. Exclusive, though, and stylish, not the sweaty, vulgar stuff that permeated the strip clubs in King’s Cross.

  ‘There was a gay man who lived nearby when I was growing up,’ Harry recounted. ‘He must have been forty or so, lived alone, and everyone in the neighbourhood knew he was gay. In the winter we threw snowballs at him, shouted “buttfucker” then ran like mad, convinced he would give us one up the backside if he caught us. But he never came after us, just pulled his hat further down over his ears and walked home. One day, suddenly, he moved. He never did anything to me, and I’ve always wondered why I hated him so much.’

  ‘People are afraid of what they don’t understand. And hate what they’re afraid of.’

  ‘You’re so wise,’ Harry said and Birgitta punched him in the stomach. He fell onto the pavement screaming, she laughed and begged him not to make a scene, and he got up and chased her up Oxford Street.

  ‘I hope he moved here,’ Harry said afterwards.

  Having left Birgitta (he was worried that he had begun to think of every separation from her, short or long, as leave-taking), he queued at a bus stop. A boy with a Norwegian flag on his rucksack was in front of him. Harry was wondering if he should make his presence known when the bus arrived.

  The bus driver groaned when Harry gave him a twenty-dollar note.

  ‘S’pose you didn’t have a fifty, did ya?’ he said sarcastically.

  ‘If I’d had one, I’d have given it to you, you stupid bastard,’ he said in eloquent Norwegian while smiling innocently. The bus driver glowered ferociously at him as he handed out the change.

  He had decided to follow the route Inger took to walk home on the night of the murder. Not because it hadn’t been walked by others – Lebie and Yong had visited the bars and restaurants on the route and shown the photo of Inger Holter, without any success, of course. He had tried to take Andrew along with him, but he had dug his heels in and said it was a waste of valuable time better spent in front of the TV.

  ‘I’m not kidding, Harry. Watching TV gives you confidence. When you see how stupid people generally are on the box it makes you feel smart. And scientific studies show that people who feel smart perform better than people who feel stupid.’

  There was little Harry could say to such logic, but Andrew had at any rate given him the name of a bar in Bridge Road where he could pass on Andrew’s greetings to the owner. ‘Doubt he’s got anything to tell you but he might knock fifty per cent off the coke,’ Andrew had said with a cheerful grin.

  Harry got off the bus at the town hall and ambled in the direction of Pyrmont. He looked at the tall blocks and the people walking round them the way city folk do, without being any the wiser as to how Inger Holter had met her end that night. At the fish market he went into a cafe and ordered a bagel with smoked salmon and capers. From the window he could see the bridge across Blackwattle Bay and Glebe on the other side. They had started setting up an outdoor stage in the open square, and Harry saw from the posters it was to do with Australia Day, which was that weekend. Harry asked the waiter for a coffee and started to wrestle with the Sydney Morning Herald, the kind of paper you can use to wrap up a whole cargo of fish, and it is a real job to get through even if you only look at the pictures. But there was still an hour’s daylight left and Harry wanted to see what creatures emerged in Glebe after the onset of darkness.

  20

  Cricket

  THE OWNER OF the cricket was also the proud owner of the shirt Allan Border wore when Australia beat England four times during the 1989 Ashes series. It was exhibited behind glass and a wooden frame above the poker machine. On the other wall there were two bats and a ball used in a 1979 series when Australia drew with Pakistan. After someone had pinched the stumps from the South Africa game, which used to hang over the exit, the owner had deemed it necessary to nail his treasures down – whereupon one pad belonging to the legendary Don Bradman was shot to pieces by a customer who was unable to wrest it from the wall.

  When Harry entered and saw the combination of treasures on the walls and the ostensible cricket fans forming the clientele of the Cricket, the first thing that struck him was that he ought to revise his perception of cricket as a toffs’ sport. The customers were neither groomed nor particularly sweet-smelling, and nor was Borroughs behind the bar.

  ‘Evenin’,’ he said. His voice sounded like a blunt scythe against a whetstone.

  ‘Tonic, no gin,’ Harry said and
told him to keep the change from the ten-dollar bill.

  ‘A lot for a tip, more like a bribe,’ Borroughs said, waving the note. ‘Are you a policeman?’

  ‘Am I so easy to spot?’ Harry asked with a resigned expression.

  ‘Apart from the fact you sound like a bloody tourist, yeah.’

  Borroughs put down the change and turned away.

  ‘I’m a friend of Andrew Kensington,’ Harry said.

  Borroughs swivelled round as fast as lightning and picked up the money.

  ‘Why didn’t you say that straight away?’ he mumbled.

  Borroughs couldn’t remember having seen or heard about Inger Holter, which in fact Harry already knew as he and Andrew had spoken about him. But as his old tutor in the Oslo Police Force, ‘Lumbago’ Simonsen, always said: ‘Better to ask too many times than too few.’

  Harry looked around. ‘What have you got here?’ he asked.

  ‘Kebab with Greek salad,’ Borroughs answered. ‘Today’s special, seven dollars.’

  ‘Sorry, let me rephrase,’ Harry said. ‘I mean, what kind of people do you serve? What’s your clientele like?’

  ‘I reckon it’s what you’d call the underclass.’ He gave a forbearing smile. It said a lot about Borrough’s adult working life and his dream to turn the bar into something.

  ‘Are they regulars?’ Harry asked, nodding to a dark corner of the room and the five men drinking beer at a table.

  ‘Yup. Most here are. We’re not exactly on the tourist map.’

  ‘Would you mind if I asked them a few questions?’ Harry asked.

  Borroughs hesitated. ‘Those blokes aren’t exactly mummy’s boys. I don’t know how they earn their cash, and I don’t intend to ask them, either. But they don’t work nine to five, let’s put it that way.’

  ‘No one likes innocent young girls being raped and strangled in the district, do they. Not even people with a foot on either side of the law. It frightens people away and isn’t good for business whatever you’re selling.’