The Devil's Star

by Jo Nesbo

  ‘I know a few things about Muslims that you also know, Inspector. For them, a woman who comes in wearing a bikini is begging to be raped. It’s almost a duty, you could say.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘That’s just the way their religion is.’

  ‘Now I think you’re confusing Islam with Christianity.’

  ‘Ivan and I have finished in here now,’ the dog handler said, coming down the stairs with his dog.

  ‘We found a couple of chops in the bin, that’s all. Have there been any other dogs here recently by the way?’

  Harry looked at Wilhelm. He just shook his head. His facial expression suggested that his voice would not have carried.

  ‘In the entrance hall Ivan reacted as if there was another dog there, but it must have been something else. We’re ready for the loft and cellar now. Can someone come with us?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Wilhelm said, getting up onto his feet.

  They went out the door, and the police officer from the patrol car asked Beate if he could leave.

  ‘You’ll have to ask the boss,’ she said.

  ‘He’s gone to sleep.’

  He nodded scornfully in the direction of Harry who was testing out the Roman reclining chair.

  ‘Constable,’ Harry said in a low voice without opening his eyes. ‘Please come closer.’

  The police officer stood in front of Harry with his legs apart and his thumbs tucked into his belt.

  ‘Yes, Inspector.’

  Harry opened one eye.

  ‘If you allow Tom Waaler to talk you into handing in another report on me, I’ll make sure that you work on patrol cars for the rest of your career. Is that understood, Constable?’

  The officer’s facial muscles twitched. When he opened his mouth Harry was expecting swearing and ill temper. Instead the officer spoke in a controlled, low voice:

  ‘First of all, I don’t know any Tom Waaler. Secondly, I see it as my duty to report police officials who put themselves and colleagues at risk by turning up for work intoxicated. And thirdly, I have no desire to work anywhere else except on patrol cars. Can I go now, Inspector?’

  Harry stared at the officer with his cyclops eye. Then he closed it again, swallowed and said:

  ‘Please do.’

  He heard the outer door slam shut and groaned. He needed a drink. And pronto.

  ‘Are you coming?’ Beate asked.

  ‘Just go,’ Harry said. ‘I’ll stay here and help Ivan to sniff around the streets as soon as they’ve finished with the loft and cellar.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  Harry went up the stairs and out onto the terrace. He watched the swallows and listened to the sounds coming from the open windows in the yard. He lifted up the bottle of red wine from the table. There was just a drop left. He polished it off and waved to Ruth and the Trondheim Eagle, who had not had enough after all, and went inside again.

  He felt it immediately he opened the bedroom door. He had often noticed it, but he had never discovered where the stillness of other people’s bedrooms came from.

  There were still signs of someone’s decorating here.

  One wardrobe door with a mirror on the inside was ajar and a toolbox lay open beside the neatly made double bed. Over the bed was a photo of Wilhelm and Lisbeth. Harry had not taken a close look at the photograph Wilhelm had given to the patrol car officers, but now he could see that Ruth was right. Lisbeth really was a babe. Blonde hair, sparkling blue eyes and a slim, agile body. She had to be at least ten years younger than Wilhelm. They were tanned and happy in the picture – they must recently have returned from a holiday abroad. Behind them he could just make out a magnificent building and a statue of a horseman. Somewhere in France maybe. Normandy.

  Harry perched on the edge of the bed and was caught by surprise when the bed moved. A waterbed. He lay back and felt how it moulded to the shape of his body. The cool duvet cover was wonderful against the bare skin of his arm. The water made a slapping sound inside the rubber mattress as he changed position. He closed his eyes.

  Rakel. They were on a river. No, a canal. Their canal boat bobbed down and the water slapped against both sides making a kissing sound. They were below deck and Rakel lay quietly beside him in bed. She gave a low laugh as he whispered to her. Now she was pretending to sleep. He liked that. That she was pretending to sleep. It was a kind of game they played. Harry twisted round to look at her. His gaze fell on the mirror on the wardrobe door which reflected the whole of the bed. He looked at the open toolbox. On the top there was a short chisel with a green wooden handle. He lifted the tool up. Light, small, no sign of rust under the fine layer of builder’s plaster.

  He was going to put the chisel back when his hand froze. There was a severed part of a body in the toolbox. He had seen the same thing at other crime scenes. Severed sexual parts. It took a second before he realised that the skin-coloured, very realistic-looking penis was merely a dildo.

  He lay back on the bed again with the chisel still in his hand. He gulped.

  After doing a job for so many years, going through people’s private property and personal lives on a daily basis, this was no big deal. That wasn’t why he gulped.

  Here – in this bed.

  Would have to have a drink now.

  Sound carries over an enclosed space.

  Rakel.

  He tried not to think, but it was too late. Her body against his.

  Rakel.

  The erection came. Harry closed his eyes and could feel her hand moving, a sleeping person’s unconscious, arbitrary movement, and then resting on his stomach. Her hand just lay there as if it had no intention of going anywhere. Her lips against his ear, her warm breath sounding like the roar of something burning. Her lips began to move as soon as he touched her. Her small, soft breasts with the sensitive nipples that stiffened when he so much as breathed on them; her sex which would open and devour him. There was an explosion in his throat as if he wanted to cry.

  Harry gave a start on hearing the door close on the floor below. He sat up, smoothed the duvet, stood up and checked himself over in the mirror. He rubbed his face hard with both hands.

  Wilhelm insisted on staying outside to see if the canine Ivan could detect a scent.

  As they were coming out of Sannergata, a red bus glided soundlessly away from the bus stop. A little girl stared at Harry through the back window; her round face grew smaller and smaller as the bus disappeared towards Rodeløkka.

  They walked to Kiwi and back without any reaction from the dog.

  ‘It doesn’t mean your wife hasn’t been here,’ Ivan said. ‘In a busy street with traffic and a lot of people around it’s difficult to isolate the scent of one person.’

  Harry looked around him. He had the feeling that he was being observed, but the street was deserted, and all he saw in the windows of the row of house fronts was a dark sky and sun. An alkie’s paranoia.

  ‘Well,’ Harry said. ‘Then there’s nothing more we can do for the moment.’

  Wilhelm stared at them in despair.

  ‘It’ll be alright,’ Harry said.

  ‘No, it won’t be alright,’ Wilhelm answered in the same flat voice that radio weather forecasters use.

  ‘Come here, Ivan!’ the police officer shouted, jerking the lead. The dog had stuck its nose under the front bumper of a VW Golf parked close to the kerb.

  Harry gave Wilhelm a pat on the shoulder and avoided his intense stare.

  ‘All the patrol cars have been informed. If she doesn’t turn up before midnight, we’ll organise a search party. OK?’

  Wilhelm did not answer.

  Ivan barked at the Golf and pulled on his lead.

  ‘Wait a moment,’ the policeman said.

  He went down on all fours, put his head close to the tarmac and stretched out an arm under the car.

  ‘Found anything?’ Harry asked.

  The officer turned round. He was holding a lady’s high-heeled sh
oe. Harry heard Wilhelm sob behind him and asked: ‘Is this her shoe, Wilhelm?’

  ‘It won’t be alright,’ Wilhelm said. ‘It won’t be alright.’

  10

  Thursday and Friday.

  Nightmares.

  On Thursday afternoon a red mail van stopped outside a post office in Rodeløkka. The contents of the postbox were emptied into a sack, eased gently into the back of the van and driven to the mail centre at Biskop Gunnerus gate 14, better known in Oslo as the Post House. The same evening, at the mail centre, the post was sorted by size and so the brown padded envelope ended up in a tray with other letters of C5 format. The envelope passed through several pairs of hands, though naturally enough no-one paid any special attention to it, nor when it was sorted by geographical area and was put first in the Østland tray and then in the tray for postcode 0032.

  When the letter finally lay in a post sack in the back of a red van ready for delivery the following morning, it was nighttime and most people in Oslo were sleeping.

  ‘It’ll be fine,’ the boy said, patting the round-faced girl on the head. He felt her long, thin hair stick to his fingers. It was electric.

  He was eleven years old. She was seven and his little sister. They had been visiting their mummy at the hospital.

  The lift arrived and they opened the door. A man wearing a white coat pushed the grille to one side, gave them a fleeting smile and left. They entered the lift.

  ‘Why is it such an old lift?’ the girl asked.

  ‘Because it’s an old house,’ the boy said, pulling the grille closed.

  ‘Is it a hospital?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ he said, pressing the button for the ground floor.

  ‘It’s a house for people who are very tired to rest a little.’

  ‘Is Mummy tired?’

  ‘Yes, but she’ll be fine. Don’t lean against the door, Sis.’

  ‘What?’

  The lift started with a jerk and her long blonde hair moved. Electricity, he thought, and stared as the hair on her head slowly rose. Her hands shot up to her head, and she screamed. A thin, piercing scream that fixed him to the spot. Her hair was trapped on the other side of the grille. It must have been caught in the lift door. He tried to move, but it was as if he was stuck, too.

  ‘Daddy!’ she screamed and stood on the tips of her toes.

  But Daddy had gone ahead to collect the car from the car park.

  ‘Mummy!’ she screamed as she was pulled off the lift floor. But Mummy lay in bed with a pallid smile on her face.

  She kicked out wildly while clinging to her hair. If only he could move.

  ‘Help!’

  Harry sat up in bed with a start. His heart was beating like a bass drum gone wild.

  ‘Christ.’

  He heard his own hoarse voice and let his head fall back on the pillow.

  The light in the crack between the curtains was grey. He peered over to the red digital figures on his bedside table: 4.12. The summer nights were hell. The nightmares were hell.

  He swung his legs out of bed and went to the lavatory. The urine splashed into the water as he stared into the distance. He knew he wouldn’t be going back to sleep.

  The fridge was empty apart from a bottle of low-alcohol beer that had ended up in his shopping basket because his vision had been blurred. He opened the cupboard over the sink unit. An army of beer and whisky bottles stood to attention and eyed him in silence. All empty. In a sudden fit of rage he knocked them flying and heard them clattering long after he had closed the cupboard doors. He checked the time again. It was Friday morning. The Vinmonopol did not open for another five hours.

  Harry sat down by the telephone in the sitting room and rang Øystein Eikeland’s mobile phone number.

  ‘Oslo Taxis.’

  ‘What’s the traffic like?’

  ‘Harry?’

  ‘Good evening, Øystein.’

  ‘Is it? Haven’t had a punter for half an hour.’

  ‘Holiday time.’

  ‘Don’t I know it! The owner’s gone off to his log cabin on Kragerø and has left me driving Oslo’s deadest deadmobile. And in the deadest town in Northern Europe. It’s as if someone’s dropped a bloody neutron bomb.’

  ‘Thought you didn’t like to sweat too much on the job.’

  ‘Hah, I’m sweating like a pig. The tightfisted bastard buys cars without air conditioning. I have to drink like a bloody camel after shifts just to replace the liquid I’ve lost. And that costs an arm and a leg. Yesterday it cost me more than I had scraped together all day.’

  ‘I’m genuinely sorry to hear that.’

  ‘Should have stuck to cracking codes.’

  ‘Hacking you mean? That got you booted out of Den Norske Bank and a six-month suspended sentence?’

  ‘Right, but I was good at it. Whereas this . . . By the way, the owner’s thinking of cutting down on the hours he drives, but I’m already driving twelve-hour shifts and you can’t find new taxi drivers any more. You don’t fancy doing a bit, do you, Harry?’

  ‘Thank you, I’ll think about it.’

  ‘What are you after?’

  ‘I need something to make me sleep.’

  ‘Go to the doctor.’

  ‘I did. He gave me Imovane, some sleeping tablets. They didn’t work. I asked for something stronger, but he refused.’

  ‘Never a good idea to have the smell of booze on your breath when you go asking your GP for some Rohypnol, Harry.’

  ‘He said I was too young for strong medications. Have you got any?’

  ‘Rohypnol? Are you crazy? It’s illegal, isn’t it? But I’ve got Flunipam. Same sort of stuff. Half a tablet and you’ll go out like a light.’

  ‘OK. I’m a bit short of cash at the moment, but you’ll get the money at the end of the month. Does it get rid of dreams, too?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Will it stop me dreaming?’

  The line went quiet for a moment.

  ‘Do you know what, Harry? Now that I think about it, I’ve run out of Flunipam. On top of that, it’s dangerous stuff. And it won’t stop you dreaming, more the opposite.’

  ‘You’re lying.’

  ‘Maybe, but Flunipam is not what you need, anyway. Try taking it easy, Harry. Have a break.’

  ‘Have a break? I don’t have breaks. You know that.’

  Harry could hear someone opening the taxi door and Øystein telling them to go to hell. Then his voice was there again.

  ‘Is it Rakel?’

  Harry didn’t answer.

  ‘Have you had a row with Rakel?’

  Harry could hear a crackling noise and guessed Øystein was listening to the police channel.

  ‘Hello! Harry! Can’t you answer when a childhood friend asks you if the foundations of your existence are still in place?’

  ‘They aren’t,’ Harry mumbled.

  ‘Why not?’

  Harry took a deep breath.

  ‘Because I practically forced her to dig them up. Something I was working on for a long time fell apart and I couldn’t come to terms with it. I went on a bender and festered in my own shit for three days without answering the phone. On the fourth day she came round and rang the bell. At first she was furious. She said that I couldn’t just run away, that Møller had been asking after me, and then she stroked my face. She asked me if I needed help.’

  ‘And knowing you as I do, you showed her the door or something like that, right.’

  ‘I said I was fine. Then she went all miserable.’

  ‘Obviously. The girl’s fond of you.’

  ‘That’s what she said, but she also said that she couldn’t go through it again.’

  ‘Go through what again?’

  ‘Oleg’s father’s an alkie. It was destroying all three of them.’

  ‘And you answered?’

  ‘I said she was right, and that she should keep away from people like me. She pulled a face. Then she left.’

  ‘And now you have nightma
res?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Øystein breathed a heartfelt sigh.

  ‘Do you know what, Harry? There’s nothing that can help you through this. Well, there is one thing.’

  ‘I know,’ Harry said. ‘A bullet.’

  ‘You yourself, is what I was going to say.’

  ‘I know that, too. Forget I rang, Øystein.’

  ‘Already forgotten.’

  Harry went to get the bottle of low-alcohol beer. He sat down in the armchair and glared at the label. The cap came off with a gasp of relief. He put the chisel down on the coffee table. The wooden handle was green and the blade was covered with a fine layer of yellow builder’s plaster.

  At 6 a.m. on Friday the sun was already shining down on Ekeberg Ridge, making the Police HQ sparkle like a crystal. The security guard in reception yawned aloud and raised his eyes from Aftenposten as the first early riser slid his ID card through the security machine.

  ‘Says it’s going to get even hotter,’ announced the guard, who was glad he finally had someone he could exchange a few words with.

  The tall, fair-haired man with bloodshot eyes glanced at him, but he didn’t answer.

  The guard noticed that he took the stairs even though neither of the two lifts on the ground floor was being used.

  Then he went back to concentrating on the Aftenposten article about the woman who had disappeared one bright, sunny morning before the weekend and still had not turned up. The journalist, Roger Gjendem, quoted Chief Inspector Bjarne Møller who had confirmed that the police had discovered one of the woman’s shoes under a car directly outside where she lived and that this strengthened suspicions that a crime had taken place. However, as yet they had nothing concrete to this effect.

  Harry flicked through the paper on the way to his pigeonhole where he picked up the reports on the last two days’ search for Lisbeth Barli. There were five messages on his answerphone, all except one from Wilhelm Barli. Harry ran through the messages, which were almost identical: that they had to deploy more men, that he knew of a clairvoyant and that he wanted to go to the press and offer a reward to anyone who could help the police find Lisbeth.

  The last message was someone breathing. That was all.