The Devil's Star
Page 5
‘Well, it wasn’t so difficult to find. It was in the rubbish bin under the sink.’
‘Make and number?’
‘A Glock 23. The number has been filed off.’
‘File marks?’
‘If you’re wondering whether they’re the same as the ones we find on most confiscated small arms in Oslo at the moment, the answer is yes.’
‘I see.’ Harry switched his mobile to his left hand. ‘What I don’t see is why you’re ringing to tell me all this. It’s not my case.’
‘I wouldn’t be so sure about that, Harry. Møller said . . .’
‘Møller and the whole fucking Oslo Police Force can go to hell!’
Harry was taken aback by his own screeching voice. He saw the taxi driver’s V-shaped eyebrows loom up in the rear-view mirror.
‘Sorry, Beate. I . . . Are you still there?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘I’m just not quite myself at the moment.’
‘It can wait.’
‘What can?’
‘There’s no hurry.’
‘Come on.’
She sighed.
‘Did you notice the swelling Camilla Loen had on her eyelid?’
‘Indeed I did.’
‘I thought the murderer may have hit her, or that she got it when she fell, but it turned out it wasn’t a swelling.’
‘Oh?’
‘The pathologist pressed the lump. It was rock hard. So he pulled up her eyelid and do you know what he found on the top of her eyeball?’
‘Well, no,’ Harry said.
‘A small, reddish precious stone cut in the shape of a star. We think it’s a diamond. What do you think about that?’
Harry breathed in and checked the time. There were still three hours to go before they stopped serving at Sofie.
‘That it’s not my case,’ he said, switching off his phone.
6
Friday. Water.
There is a drought , but I saw the policeman coming away from the watering hole . Water for the thirsty . Rain water, river water, amniotic waters.
He didn’t see me. He staggered over to Ullevålsveien and tried to hail a taxi. No-one wanted to take him. He was like one of the restless souls wandering along the river bank without a ferryman to take him across. I have some experience of what that feels like. Being hounded by those you nourished. Being rejected when for once in your life it is you who needs help. Discovering that you’re being spat on and that you have no-one to spit on in return. Quietly considering what you must do. The paradox is, of course, that the taxi driver who takes pity on you, it is his throat you cut.
7
Tuesday. Dismissal
Harry went to the back of the shop, opened the glass door of the milk refrigerator and leaned in. He pulled up his sweaty T-shirt, closed his eyes and felt the cool air against his skin.
The forecast was for a tropical night and the few customers there were in the shop wanted grilled food, beer or mineral water.
Harry recognised her by the colour of her hair. She was standing with her back to him at the meat counter. Her broad backside filled her jeans to perfection. When she turned round he saw that she was wearing a zebra-striped top which was just as tight as her leopard-pattern top. Then Vibeke Knutsen changed her mind, put back the ready-cooked pieces of beef, pushed her shopping trolley to the freezer counter and picked out two packets of cod fillets.
Harry pulled down his T-shirt and closed the glass door. He didn’t want any milk. Nor did he want any meat or cod. Basically, he wanted as little as possible, just something he could eat, not because he was hungry, but for his stomach’s sake. His stomach had started to give him some trouble the night before. And he knew from experience that if he didn’t get some solid food down him now, he would not be able to keep down a drop of alcohol. In his trolley there was a loaf of wholemeal bread and a brown paper bag containing a bottle from the Vinmonopol over the road. He added half a chicken, a six-pack of Hansa and fidgeted around at the fruit counter before joining the checkout queue right behind Vibeke Knutsen. It wasn’t intentional, but then again perhaps it wasn’t quite by chance either.
She half turned without seeing him and wrinkled her nose as if there was a potent smell coming from somewhere, which was a possibility that Harry could not completely exclude. She asked the checkout girl for a pack of 20 Prince Mild cigarettes.
‘Thought you were trying to give them up.’
Vibeke turned round in surprise, scrutinised him and gave him three different smiles. The first one, fleeting, automatic. Then one of recognition. Then, after she had paid, one of curiosity.
‘And you’re going to have a party, I see.’
She put her purchases into a plastic bag.
‘Something like that,’ Harry mumbled, reciprocating her smile.
She tilted her head to the side. The zebra stripes moved.
‘Many guests?’
‘A few. All uninvited.’
The checkout girl handed him his change, but he nodded towards the collection box for the Salvation Army.
‘You could show them the door, couldn’t you?’ Her smile had reached her eyes now.
‘Course. But these particular guests are not so easy to get rid of.’
The bottle of Jim Beam clinked joyfully against the six-pack as he lifted his bags.
‘Oh? Old drinking pals?’
Harry threw a lingering look in her direction. She seemed to know what she was talking about. This struck him as even stranger because she was living with the type of person who gave the impression of being fairly austere. Or to be more precise: it was strange that such an austere person would be living with her.
‘I haven’t got any pals,’ he said.
‘Must be the ladies then. The type that doesn’t let go easily.’
He intended to hold the door open for her, but it turned out it was automatic. He had only been shopping there a few hundred times. They stood opposite each other on the pavement outside.
Harry didn’t know what to say. Perhaps this was why he came out with:
‘Three ladies. Perhaps they’ll go away if I drink enough.’
‘Eh?’
She shaded her eyes from the sun.
‘Nothing. Sorry. I’m just thinking aloud. That is, I’m not thinking . . . but I’m doing it aloud anyway. Prattling away, I suppose. I . . .’
He couldn’t understand why she was still there.
‘They’ve been running up and down our stairs all weekend,’ she said.
‘Who?’
‘The police, I suppose.’
Harry slowly absorbed the information that a weekend had passed since he had stood in Camilla Loen’s flat. He tried to catch a glimpse of himself in the shop window. A whole weekend? What did he look like now?
‘They won’t tell us anything,’ she said. ‘And the papers only say they haven’t got any leads. Is that true?’
‘It’s not my case,’ he said.
‘Right.’ Vibeke Knutsen nodded her head. Then she began to smile. ‘And do you know what?’
‘What?’
‘Actually, it’s probably a good thing too.’
It took a couple of seconds before Harry realised what she meant. He laughed. The laugh developed into a hacking cough.
‘Funny that I’ve never seen you in this shop before,’ he said when he had regained his composure.
Vibeke shrugged her shoulders. ‘Who knows? Perhaps we’ll see each other here again soon?’
She beamed at him and began to walk away. The plastic bags and her backside swung from side to side.
Yes, you and me and a flying pig.
Harry was thinking furiously and for a moment he was afraid that he had thought out loud.
A man with his jacket slung over one shoulder and a hand pressed against his stomach was sitting on the steps outside the entrance to the apartment block in Sofies gate. His shirt had dark, sweaty patches on the front and under the armpits. On seeing Harry, he stood up.
‘My God, Harry.’
‘My God to you too, boss.’
‘Have you seen what you look like?’
Harry took out his keys. ‘Not quite peak of fitness?’
‘You were told to assist with the murder case at the weekend and no-one has seen hide nor hair of you. Today you didn’t even turn up for work.’
‘Overslept, boss. And that’s not as bloody far from the truth as you might think.’
‘Perhaps you overslept during those weeks when you only came in on Fridays as well?’
‘Probably. I picked up a bit after the first week. So I rang into work and was told that someone had put my name up on the staff leave list. I reckoned it was you.’
Harry trudged into the hallway with Møller hard on his heels.
‘I had absolutely no choice,’ Møller said, groaning and holding his hand against his stomach. ‘Four weeks, Harry!’
‘Well, just a nanosecond in the universe . . .’
‘And not one single word about where you were!’
Harry guided the key into the lock with some difficulty. ‘It’s coming now, boss.’
‘What is?’
‘A single word about where I was. Here.’
Harry shoved open the door to his flat and an acrid stench of beer, cigarette ends and stale refuse rose up to meet them.
‘Would you have felt better if you’d known?’
Harry went in, and hesitantly Møller stepped in after him.
‘You don’t need to take your shoes off, boss,’ Harry shouted from the kitchen.
Møller rolled his eyes and tried not to tread on any of the empty bottles, ashtrays full of cigarette butts and old vinyl records on his way across the sitting-room floor.
‘Have you been sitting here drinking for four weeks, Harry?’
‘With some breaks, boss. Long breaks. After all, I am on holiday, aren’t I? Last week I hardly touched a drop.’
‘I’ve got some bad news for you, Harry,’ Møller shouted, releasing the catches on the window and pushing feverishly at the glass. At the third shove the window sprang open. He groaned, loosened his belt and undid the top trouser button. As he turned round he saw Harry standing by the sitting-room door with an open bottle of whisky.
‘That bad, is it,’ Harry said, noticing the Chief Inspector’s slackened belt. ‘Am I going to be whipped or ravished?’
‘Slow digestion,’ Møller explained.
‘Mm.’ Harry put the top back on the whisky bottle. ‘Funny expression that, slow digestion. I’ve been suffering with my stomach a bit myself, so I read up about it. It takes somewhere between twelve and twenty-four hours to digest food. For everyone. Whoever and whatever. It might keep hurting, but your intestines don’t need any longer.’
‘Harry . . .’
‘A glass, boss? Unless it has to be clean, that is.’
‘I’ve come to tell you it’s finished, Harry.’
‘Are you resigning?’
‘Now that’s enough of that!’
Møller banged the table so hard the empty bottles jumped. Then he sank down into a green armchair. He ran his hand across his face.
‘I’ve risked my own job too many times to save yours, Harry. There are people in my life I am closer to than you. People I provide for. This is where it stops, Harry. I can’t help you any more.’
‘Fine.’
Harry sat down on the sofa and poured whisky into one of the glasses.
‘No-one asked you to help me, boss, but thank you anyway. For as long as it lasted. Skal.’
Møller took a deep breath and closed his eyes.
‘Do you know what, Harry? At times you are the most arrogant, the most selfish and the most unintelligent pile of shit on this planet.’
Harry shrugged his shoulders and emptied his glass in one swallow.
‘I’ve written your dismissal papers,’ Møller said.
Harry refilled his glass.
‘They’re on the Chief’s desk. All that’s missing is his signature. Do you understand what that means, Harry?’
Harry nodded. ‘Sure you won’t have a little snifter before you go, boss?’
Møller got up. He paused by the sitting-room door.
‘You have no idea how much it hurts me to see you like this, Harry. Rakel and your work were everything you had. First of all you spat on Rakel, and now you’re spitting on your job.’
I spat on both exactly four weeks ago, Harry declared roundly in his thoughts.
‘I’m really sorry, Harry.’
Møller closed the door gently behind him as he left.
Three-quarters of an hour later Harry was asleep in the chair. He had been visited. Not by his three regular women, but by the head of Kripos. Four weeks and three days ago, to be precise.
The Chief Superintendent himself had asked to meet at the Boxer, a bar for the exuberantly thirsty a stone’s throw from Police HQ and a few teetering steps from the gutter. Just him, Harry and Roy Kvinsvik. He explained to Harry that as long as no official decision had been taken it was best to do everything as unofficially as possible so that he had room for manoeuvre.
He didn’t say anything about Harry’s room for manoeuvre.
When Harry arrived at the Boxer a quarter of an hour later than they had agreed the Chief Superintendent was sitting at a table at the back of the bar with a beer. Harry could feel his eyes on him as he sat down, his blue eyes shining in their deep sockets on either side of his thin, imperious nose. He had thick, grey hair, an upright posture and he was slim for his age. The Chief was like one of those 60-year-olds you could never really imagine ever having been young. Or ever really being old. In Crime Squad they called him the President because his office was oval and also because he – particularly on public occasions – talked like one. But this was ‘as unofficial as possible’. The Chief Superintendent’s lipless mouth opened.
‘You’ve come on your own.’
Harry ordered a Farris mineral water from the waitress, picked up the menu lying on the table, studied the front page and remarked casually as if it were redundant information:
‘He’s changed his mind.’
‘Your witness has changed his mind?’
‘Yes.’
The head of Kripos sipped his beer.
‘For five months he said that he would appear as a witness,’ Harry said. ‘The last time was the day before yesterday. Do you think the knuckle of pork is good?’
‘What did he say?’
‘We agreed that I would meet him after the Philadelphia meeting today. When I turned up he said that he’d changed his mind and that he’d come to the conclusion that it wasn’t Tom Waaler he’d seen in the car with Sverre Olsen anyway.’
The Chief Superintendent fixed Harry with a straight look. Then he pushed up his coat sleeve and checked his watch, a movement which Harry took to mean that the meeting was concluded.
‘Then we have no choice but to assume that it was someone else your witness saw and not Tom Waaler. Or what do you think?’
Harry swallowed. And swallowed again. He stared at the menu.
‘Knuckle of pork. I think pork.’
‘By all means. I have to be running along, but put it on my bill.’
Harry gave a brief laugh. ‘Very nice of you, sir, but to be honest I have a horrible feeling that I’m going to be left paying the bill anyway.’
The Chief Superintendent frowned and when he spoke there was a quiver of irritation in his voice.
‘May I be absolutely frank, Hole? It is well known that you and Inspector Waaler cannot stand the sight of each other. From the very moment you came to me with these wild accusations I have suspected that you have allowed your personal antipathies to colour your judgment. From where I am sitting, I have just had this suspicion confirmed.’
The Chief Superintendent pushed his unfinished glass of beer away from the edge of the table, stood up and buttone
d his coat.
‘May I therefore be concise and I hope clear, Hole. Ellen Gjelten’s murder has been cleared up and the case is hereby closed. Neither you nor anyone else has successfully presented anything new that is substantial enough to warrant further investigation. If you so much as touch the case again it will be interpreted as countermanding orders and your dismissal papers signed by myself will be sent to the Police Appointments Committee forthwith. I am not saying this because I want to turn a blind eye to corrupt policemen, but because it is my responsibility to maintain the morale of the police force at a reasonable level. So we cannot have policemen crying wolf for no reason. Should I discover that you have made the slightest attempt to proceed with your charges against Inspector Waaler, you will be suspended with immediate effect and the case will be put before SEFO.’
‘Which case?’ Harry asked in a low voice. ‘Waaler versus Gjelten?’
‘Hole versus Waaler.’
When the Chief Superintendent had left, Harry sat staring at the half-empty glass of beer. He could do exactly what the head of Kripos said, but it would not change a thing. He was finished whatever happened. He had failed and now he had become a risk to the force. A paranoid traitor, a ticking bomb, they would get rid of him at the earliest opportunity. It was simply up to Harry to supply them with that opportunity.
The waitress arrived with the bottle of Farris water and asked him if he wanted anything to eat. Or to drink. Harry moistened his lips as his thoughts collided into one another. It was simply up to Harry to provide them with an opportunity; others would take care of the rest.
He pushed the bottle of Farris to the side and answered the waitress. That was four weeks and three days ago, and that was when it had all started. And finished.
Part Two
8
Tuesday and Wednesday.
Chow Chow.
On Tuesday the temperature in Oslo rose to 29 degrees in the shade and by three o’clock, office workers were already making for the beaches in Huk and Hvervenbukta. The tourists were flocking to open-air restaurants in Aker Brygge and in Frogner Park where, covered in sweat, they snapped obligatory pictures of the Monolith before drifting down to the Fountain in the hope that a breath of wind would send a cooling mist of fine droplets over them.