The Devil's Star

by Jo Nesbo

Harry rewound the tape and played it again.

  And then again.

  It was impossible to be sure whether it was a man or a woman. Even more impossible to hear if it was Rakel. The display showed that they had received the call at 11.10 p.m. from an ‘unknown number’, just as when Rakel called from her phone in Holmenkollveien. If it was her, why didn’t she try his home number or his mobile?

  Harry went through the reports. Nothing. He read them one more time. Still nothing. He cleared his brain and started from the beginning again.

  When he was finished he looked at his watch and went out to the pigeonholes to see if anything else had arrived. He took a detective’s report with him, put an envelope addressed to Bjarne Møller in the correct pigeonhole and went back into his office.

  The detective’s report was concise and to the point: nothing.

  Harry rewound the answerphone tape, pressed play and turned up the volume. He closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. He tried to remember her breathing. Feel her breath.

  ‘Irritating when they don’t say who they are, isn’t it.’

  It wasn’t the words but the voice that made the hairs on his neck stand on end. He turned round slowly in his chair, which screamed in anguish.

  Tom Waaler was standing leaning against the doorframe with a smile on his face. He was eating an apple and proffered the bag.

  ‘Dunno what they are. Australian? Taste wonderful.’

  Harry shook his head without taking his eyes off him.

  ‘May I come in?’ Waaler asked.

  When Harry didn’t answer, he stepped in and closed the door behind him. He walked round the desk and sat himself down in the other office chair. He leaned backwards and chomped noisily away at the inviting red apple.

  ‘Have you noticed that you and I are almost always the first two to arrive at work, Harry? Strange, isn’t it? Since we’re also the last two to go home.’

  ‘You’re sitting in Ellen’s chair,’ Harry said.

  Waaler patted the arm of the chair.

  ‘It’s about time you and I had a chat, Harry.’

  ‘Chat away,’ Harry said.

  Waaler held the apple up to the light in the ceiling and screwed up one eye. ‘Isn’t it depressing not having a window in your office?’

  Harry didn’t answer.

  ‘There is a rumour going round that you’re leaving,’ Waaler said.

  ‘Rumour?’

  ‘Well, rumour is perhaps an exaggeration. I have my sources, let’s put it that way. You’ve probably been looking around for other work – security companies, insurance companies, debt collection maybe? Must be lots of places where they need an investigator with a bit of a background in law.’

  Strong, white teeth sank into the flesh of the apple.

  ‘Perhaps not so many places where they require a work record with notes on drunkenness, unauthorised absences, abuse of authority, insubordination to superiors and disloyalty to the force.’

  His jaw muscles were grinding and chewing.

  ‘But – but,’ Waaler said. ‘Perhaps it’s not such a bad thing if they don’t employ you. None of them offers particularly interesting challenges, so to speak. Not for someone who, despite everything, has been an inspector and was reckoned to be one of the very best in his field. And they don’t pay particularly well, either. And that’s what it’s about in the final analysis, isn’t it? Being paid for your services. Getting enough money to pay for food and rent. Enough for a beer and a bottle of cognac. Or is it whisky?’

  Harry noticed that he was clenching his teeth so hard that his fillings were beginning to ache.

  ‘The best thing,’ Waaler continued, ‘would undoubtedly be to treat yourself to a few extras over and above purely basic needs, providing you had earned sufficient money, that is. Such as the occasional holiday trip with your family to Normandy, for example.’

  Harry felt his head fizzing, as if a fuse had blown.

  ‘You and I are different in many ways, Harry, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t respect you as a professional. You are goal-orientated, smart, creative and your integrity is unimpeachable. That’s what I’ve always thought. Above all else, though, you are mentally tough. In a society where competition gets harder and harder there is a need for this quality. Unfortunately, the competition doesn’t always use the means that we might desire, but if you want to be a winner you have to be willing to employ the same means as your competitors. There is one more thing . . .’

  Waaler lowered his voice.

  ‘You have to play in the right team, the team you can win something with.’

  ‘What are you after, Waaler?’

  Harry could feel his voice trembling.

  ‘I want to help you.’ Waaler stood up. ‘It doesn’t have to be like this, you know . . .’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like this, that you and I are enemies. Like this, that the Chief Super has to sign those papers. You know.’

  Waaler walked over to the door.

  ‘And like this, that you can never afford to do something nice for yourself and those you love . . .’

  He rested his hand on the door handle.

  ‘Think about it, Harry. There’s only one thing that can help you in the jungle out there.’

  A bullet, Harry thought.

  ‘You yourself,’ Waaler said, and was gone.

  11

  Sunday. Departure.

  She lay in bed smoking a cigarette. She studied him as he stood in front of the low chest of drawers, watched his shoulder blades moving under the waistcoat and making it glisten in shades of black and blue. She shifted her gaze to the mirror and watched the gentle, self-assured movements of his hands tying his tie. She liked his hands, liked to see them moving.

  ‘When will you be back?’ she asked.

  Their eyes met in the mirror. His smile. That too was gentle and self-assured. She thrust out a sulky bottom lip.

  ‘As quickly as I can, Liebling.’

  No-one said ‘darling’ the way he did. Liebling. In his strange accent and with that singing intonation that had almost made her like the German language again.

  ‘On the evening flight tomorrow, I hope,’ he said. ‘Will you be there to meet me?’

  She couldn’t stop herself smiling. He laughed. She laughed. Damn him, he always managed it.

  ‘I’m sure you’ve got a throng of women waiting for you in Oslo,’ she said.

  ‘I hope so.’

  He buttoned up his waistcoat and took his jacket off the hanger in the wardrobe.

  ‘Did you iron the handkerchiefs, Liebling?’

  ‘I put them in your suitcase with the socks,’ she said.

  ‘Excellent.’

  ‘Have you got a rendezvous with any of them?’

  He laughed, went across to the bed and bent down over her.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She put her arms around his neck. ‘I think there’s a woman’s scent on you every time you come home.’

  ‘That’s because I’m never away long enough for your scent to fade, Liebling. How long ago is it now since I first discovered you? Twenty-six months. I’ve had your scent on me for twenty-six months now.’

  ‘And no other?’

  She wriggled further down the bed and dragged him after her. He kissed her lightly on the mouth.

  ‘And no other. My plane, Liebling . . .’

  He extricated himself.

  She watched him as he walked over to the chest of drawers, opened one, took out his passport and plane tickets, put them in his inside pocket and buttoned up his jacket. It all happened in one sleek movement; this effortless efficiency and self-assurance that she found both sensual and frightening. Had it not been for the fact that he did almost everything with the same minimal effort, she would have said that he must have been in training for this all his life: departing; leaving.

  Bearing in mind that they had spent so much time together over the last two years,
she knew surprisingly little about him, but he never made a secret of the fact that he had been with a great many women in his previous life. He used to say it was because he had been searching so desperately for her. He had turned them away as soon as he realised they weren’t her and he had continued his restless search until one fine autumn day two years ago they had met in the bar of the Grand Hotel Europa in Wenceslas Square.

  That was the most wonderful description of promiscuity she had ever heard. More wonderful than hers at any rate, which had been for money.

  ‘What do you do in Oslo?’

  ‘Business,’ he said.

  ‘Why will you never tell me exactly what it is that you do?’

  ‘Because we love each other.’

  He closed the door quietly behind him, and she heard his footsteps going down the stairs.

  Alone again. She closed her eyes and hoped that the smell of him would remain in the bedclothes until he returned. She placed her hand over her necklace. She had not taken it off since he gave it to her, not even when she took a bath. She stroked the pendant with her fingers and thought about his suitcase. About the stiff white clergyman’s collar she had seen next to his socks. Why hadn’t she asked him about it? Perhaps because she felt that she was asking too many questions already. She mustn’t irritate him.

  She sighed, looked at her watch and closed her eyes again. The day had no shape. An appointment with the doctor at 2.00, that was all. She began to count the seconds as her fingers continued to stroke the pendant, a red diamond, shaped like a star with five points.

  The front-page spread in Verdens Gang was about an unnamed celebrity in the Norwegian media having had a ‘brief, but intense’ relationship with Camilla Loen. They had got hold of a grainy holiday snap of Camilla wearing a minuscule bikini, obviously to underline the intimations made in the article as to what the main ingredient of the relationship had been.

  The same day Dagbladet ran an interview with Lisbeth Barli’s sister, Toya Harang, who in a paragraph entitled ‘Always Running Off’ gave her little sister’s childhood behaviour as a possible explanation for her unexplained disappearance. She was quoted as saying: ‘She ran off from Spinnin’ Wheel too, so why not now?’

  There was a picture of her wearing a Stetson and posing in front of the band’s bus. She was smiling. Harry assumed that she hadn’t really thought about what she was doing before they took her photo.

  ‘A beer.’

  He sank down on the bar stool in Underwater and pulled over Verdens Gang. The Springsteen concert in Valle Hovin was sold out. Fine with him. For one thing, Harry hated stadium concerts, and for another, he and Øystein had hitched to Drammenshallen when they were 15 with fake Springsteen tickets that Øystein had made. That was when they had all been right at their peak: Springsteen, Øystein and Harry.

  Harry pushed the paper away and opened his own Dagbladet with the photograph of Lisbeth’s sister. The likeness between the two was striking. He had talked to her in Trondheim on the phone, but she didn’t have anything to tell him, or more to the point, she didn’t have anything interesting to tell him. The fact that their conversation had lasted 20 minutes had had little to do with him. She had explained to him her name should be pronounced with the stress on the a. ToyA. And that she had not been named after Michael Jackson’s sister, who is called LaToya with the stress on oy.

  Four days had gone by now since Lisbeth’s disappearance, and the case had, in a nutshell, run aground.

  The same was true of the Camilla Loen case. Even Beate was frustrated. She had been working all weekend to help the few detectives who were not on holiday. Nice girl, Beate. Shame that being nice didn’t pay off.

  Since Camilla had clearly been a sociable young lady, they had managed to put together most of her movements the week before the shooting, but the leads they had didn’t take them anywhere.

  Actually, Harry had meant to mention to Beate that Waaler had been to his office and had more or less openly suggested that he sell his soul to him, but for some reason he held back. Besides, he had enough to think about. If he told Møller it would only lead to a row and so he immediately rejected the idea.

  Harry was well into his second beer when he saw her. She was sitting on her own at one of the tables in the semidarkness by the wall. She was looking right at him and gave him a little smile. On the table in front of her was a beer and between her index and middle finger a cigarette.

  Harry picked up his glass and made his way over to her table.

  ‘Can I sit down?’

  Vibeke Knutsen nodded towards the vacant seat.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I live just round the corner,’ Harry said.

  ‘I thought so, but I haven’t seen you here before.’

  ‘No. My local and I have differing interpretations of an incident that took place there last week.’

  ‘They barred you?’ she asked with a hoarse laugh.

  Harry liked her laugh. And he thought she was attractive, perhaps because of her makeup and because she was sitting in the dark. So what. He liked her eyes; they were playful and full of life, childlike and clever, just like Rakel’s but that was where the similarity ended. Rakel had a narrow, sensitive mouth; Vibeke’s was large and seemed even larger painted with fire-engine-red lipstick. Rakel was discreetly elegant and agile, almost as slim as a ballerina, no generous curves. Vibeke was wearing tiger stripes today, but they were as eye-catching as the leopard and the zebra stripes. Most things about Rakel were dark: her eyes, her hair and her skin. He had never seen skin glow like hers. Vibeke had red hair and was pale. Her crossed bare legs shone white in the dark.

  ‘What are you doing here on your own?’ he asked.

  She shrugged her shoulders and took a sip from her glass.

  ‘Anders is away, travelling, and won’t be back until this evening. So I am indulging myself a little.’

  ‘Has he gone far?’

  ‘Somewhere in Europe. You know how it is. They never tell you anything.’

  ‘What does he do?’

  ‘He sells fittings for churches and chapels. Altar-pieces, pulpits, crosses and suchlike. Used and new.’

  ‘Mm. And he does that in Europe?’

  ‘When a church in Switzerland needs a new pulpit, it could well come from Ålesund. And the old one may well end up being restored in Stockholm or Narvik. He travels all the time. He’s away more than he’s at home. Especially in the last few months. This last year really.’ She took a drag of her cigarette and added while inhaling: ‘He’s not Christian though.’

  ‘No?’

  She shook her head as the smoke rose in a thick coil from the red lips with the small, closeset wrinkles above them.

  ‘His parents were in the Pentecostal sect, and he grew up with that stuff. I’ve only been to one meeting, but do you know what? I think it’s creepy, I do. When they start talking in tongues and all that. Have you been to any meetings like that?’

  ‘Twice,’ Harry said. ‘With the Philadelphians.’

  ‘Were you saved?’

  ‘Unfortunately not. I just went there to find someone who said he would stand in court as a witness for me.’

  ‘Well, if you didn’t find Jesus, at least you found your witness.’

  Harry shook his head.

  ‘They said he’d stopped going, and he doesn’t live at any of the addresses I’ve been given. So no, I definitely wasn’t saved.’

  Harry drained his beer and signalled to the bar. He lit another cigarette.

  ‘I tried to get hold of you during the day,’ she said. ‘At your work.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  Harry thought of the wordless message on his answerphone.

  ‘Yes, but I was told it wasn’t your case.’

  ‘If you’re thinking about the Camilla Loen case, then that’s correct.’

  ‘So I spoke to the other one who was at our place. The fit-looking one.’

  ‘Tom Waaler?’

  �
��Yes. I told him a few things about Camilla. The sort of thing I couldn’t say when you were there.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because Anders was sitting there.’

  She took a long drag on her cigarette.

  ‘He can’t stand it when I say anything derogatory about Camilla. He gets absolutely furious. Even though we hardly knew her.’

  She shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘I don’t think it’s derogatory. It’s Anders who thinks that. I suppose it’s our upbringing. I believe that he actually thinks that all women should go through their lives without having sex with more than one man.’ She stubbed out her cigarette and added in a low voice: ‘And barely that.’

  ‘Mm. And Camilla had sex with more than one man?’

  ‘The upper-class name says it all.’

  ‘How do you know that? Can you hear noises?’

  ‘Not between floors. So in the winter we didn’t hear much. But in the summer, with the windows open. You know, sound . . .’

  ‘. . . carries over enclosed spaces.’

  ‘Exactly. Anders used to get up and slam the bedroom window shut. And if I happened to make a comment, like “now she’s got a good head of steam up”, well, he would get so angry that he would go and bed down in the sitting room.’

  ‘So you tried to get hold of me to tell me this?’

  ‘Yes. And there was one other thing. I received a phone call. At first I thought it was Anders, but I can usually hear background noise when he calls. As a rule he rings from some street in some European town. The weird thing is that the sound is exactly the same, just as if he were ringing from the same place every time. Anyway, this sounded different. Normally I would have just slammed down the receiver and not given it a second thought, but what with the Camilla business and with Anders away . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well, it was no big deal.’

  She gave a tired smile. Harry thought it was a wonderful smile.

  ‘It was just someone breathing on the phone. I thought it was creepy though, so I wanted to tell you. Waaler said he would look into it, but I don’t think they could find what number he was calling from. It does happen that these murderers return to the scene of the crime, doesn’t it?’