The Devil's Star

by Jo Nesbo

  This was the day. And it was still good.

  They had agreed that Beate would stay with Olaug Sivertsen during the operation. Møller didn’t want to risk the target (two days before, Waaler had started calling the killer ‘the target’ and now everyone was saying it) discovering the trap and changing the order of the crime scenes.

  The telephone rang. It was Øystein. He wondered how things were going. Harry told him that things were going well and asked what he wanted. Øystein said that was what he wanted: to know how things were going. Harry became self-conscious – he wasn’t used to that kind of thoughtfulness.

  ‘Are you sleeping?’

  ‘I slept last night,’ Harry said.

  ‘Good. And the code? Did you crack it?’

  ‘Partly. I know where and when. I just don’t know why.’

  ‘So now you can read the text, but you don’t know what it means?’

  ‘Something like that. We’ll have to wait for the rest when we’ve got him.’

  ‘What don’t you understand?’

  ‘Loads. Like why hide one of the bodies? Or trivial things like him cutting all the fingers from the victims’ left hands, but different fingers. The index finger with the first victim, the middle finger with the second and the ring finger with the third.’

  ‘In sequence then. Must like systems.’

  ‘Yes, but why not start with the thumb? Is there a message there?’

  Øystein burst out laughing.

  ‘Take care, Harry. Codes are like women: if you can’t crack them, they’ll crack you.’

  ‘You’re telling me.’

  ‘Am I? Good, because that means I’m a caring person. I can’t believe my own eyes, but it looks to me as if I’ve just got a customer in the car, Harry. Talk to you later.’

  ‘OK.’

  Harry watched the smoke dance pirouettes in slow motion. He looked at his watch. There was one thing he hadn’t told Øystein: that he had a hunch the rest of the details would soon fall into place. It was a little too pat because, despite the rituals, there was something unemotional about the killings, an almost conspicuous lack of hatred, desire or passion. Or love for that matter. They had been carried out too perfectly, almost mechanically, according to the book. It felt as if he was playing chess against a computer, not against someone whose mind was agitated or unbalanced. Time would tell, though.

  He looked at his watch again.

  His heart was beating faster.

  27

  Saturday. Into Action.

  Otto Tangen’s mood was in the ascendant.

  He had slept for a couple of hours and had woken up to a thundering headache and furious banging on the door. When he opened up, Waaler, Falkeid of the Special Forces and some character calling himself Harry Hole, who looked nothing like a police inspector, crashed in on him and the first thing they did was to complain about the air inside the bus. But after getting a coffee down him from one of the four thermos flasks, turning on the screens and setting the tapes to ‘record’, Otto felt the wonderful tingle of excitement he always got when a target was approaching.

  Falkeid explained that guards wearing civilian clothes had been posted all round the student building the evening before. The dog patrol had gone through the loft and the cellar to check that no-one was hiding in the building. Only the house occupants had been coming and going, although the girl in 303 had explained to the guard at the entrance that she had her boyfriend staying. Falkeid’s people were in position and awaiting orders.

  Waaler nodded.

  Falkeid checked the communication at regular intervals. Special Forces’ own equipment, not Otto’s responsibility. Otto closed his eyes and enjoyed the sounds. The brief second of atmospheric noise when they released the ‘speak’ button, then the mumbling incomprehensible codes, a kind of playground lingo for adults.

  ‘Smilly dillies.’ Otto shaped the words silently with his lips and remembered sitting in the apple tree one autumn evening spying on the adults behind the illuminated windows. Whispering ‘smilly dillies’ into a tin can with a cord hanging down over the fence, where Nils crouched waiting with the other tin can next to his ear. If he hadn’t got sick of it and gone home for his supper, that is. The tin cans had never quite worked the way it said they should in the Woodchuck Book.

  ‘We’re ready to go on air,’ Waaler said. ‘Clock ready, Tangen?’

  Otto nodded.

  ‘Sixteen hundred,’ Waaler said. ‘Right . . . now.’

  Otto started the timer on the recorder. Tenths of seconds and seconds shot past on the screen. He felt a silent joyful childlike laughter burst in his intestines. This was better than the apple tree. Better than Aud-Rita’s cream buns. Better than when she groaned with a lisp and told him what he should do to her.

  Show Time.

  Olaug Sivertsen smiled as she opened the door to Beate, as if she had been looking forward to her visit for ages.

  ‘Oh it’s you again! Come in. You can keep your shoes on. Horrid this heat, isn’t it?’

  Olaug Sivertsen went down the hallway ahead of Beate.

  ‘Don’t worry, frøken Sivertsen. It looks as if this case will soon be over.’

  ‘As long as I’ve got a visitor, you may take your time,’ she laughed and then put her hand over her mouth in alarm: ‘Dear me, what am I saying! After all, the man’s taking people’s lives, isn’t he?’

  The grandfather clock in the sitting room struck four as they entered.

  ‘Tea, my dear?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Am I allowed to go to the kitchen on my own?’

  ‘Yes, but if I may come along . . .’

  ‘Come on, come on.’

  Apart from a new stove and fridge, the kitchen did not seem to have changed much since wartime. Beate found a chair by the large wooden table while Olaug put the kettle on.

  ‘It smells great in here,’ Beate said.

  ‘D’you think so?’

  ‘Yes. I like kitchens that smell like this. To be honest, I prefer being in the kitchen. I’m not so fond of sitting rooms.’

  ‘Aren’t you?’ Olaug Sivertsen put her head to one side. ‘Do you know what? I don’t think we’re so different, you and me. I’m a kitchen person, too.’

  Beate smiled.

  ‘The sitting room shows how you want to present yourself. But in the kitchen everyone relaxes more. It’s like you’re allowed to be yourself. Did you notice that we relaxed with each other as soon as we came in?’

  ‘I think you’re absolutely right.’

  The two women laughed.

  ‘D’you know what?’ Olaug said. ‘I’m glad they sent you. I like you. And there’s no need to blush, my dear. I’m just a lonely old lady. Save it for an admirer. Or perhaps you’re married? You’re not? No, well, that’s not the end of the world.’

  ‘Have you ever been married?’

  ‘Me?’

  She laughed as she set out the cups.

  ‘No, I was so young when I had Sven that I never had a chance . . .’

  ‘You didn’t?’

  ‘Well, yes, I probably did have a chance or two. But a woman in my situation had such low prestige in those days that the offers you received were generally from men no-one else wanted. It’s not called “finding your match” for nothing.’

  ‘Just because you were a single mother?’

  ‘Because Sven was the son of a German, my dear.’

  The kettle began to give a low whistle.

  ‘Ah, I understand,’ Beate said. ‘He must have had a tough time growing up.’

  Olaug stared into the air without sensing that the whistling was getting louder.

  ‘The toughest you can imagine. Just thinking about it can still make me cry. Poor boy.’

  ‘The water . . .’

  ‘There you see. I’m getting senile.’

  Olaug lifted the kettle from the stove and poured water into their cups.

  ‘What does your son do now?’ Beate asked, looking
at her watch: 4.15.

  ‘Import-Export. Various things from the old communist countries.’ Olaug smiled. ‘I don’t know how much money he’s making out of it, but I like the sound of it. “Import-Export.” It’s just nonsense, but I like it.’

  ‘Anyway, it’s all worked out fine. Despite the tough time he had growing up, I mean.’

  ‘Yes, but it wasn’t always like that. You’ve probably got him on your records.’

  ‘There are lots of people on our records. Many who’ve turned out alright, too.’

  ‘Something happened once when he went to Berlin. I don’t know quite what. He’s never liked talking about what he does, Sven hasn’t. Always so secretive. But I think he might have been visiting his father. And I think it made him feel better about himself. Ernst Schwabe was a dashing man.’

  Olaug sighed.

  ‘But I may be wrong. Anyway, Sven changed.’

  ‘Oh, how?’

  ‘He became calmer. Before, he was always chasing things.’

  ‘Such as what?’

  ‘Everything. Money. Excitement. Women. He’s like his father, you know. An incurable romantic and ladies’ man. He likes young women, Sven does. And they like him. But I suspect he’s found someone special. He said on the phone that he’s got some news for me. He sounded excited.’

  ‘He didn’t say what it was?’

  ‘He wanted to wait until he got here, he said.’

  ‘Got here?’

  ‘Yes, he’s coming this evening. He has a meeting first. He’s staying in Oslo until tomorrow, then he’s going back.’

  ‘To Berlin?’

  ‘No, no. It’s a long time since Sven lived there. Now he lives in the Czech Republic. Bohemia, he usually calls it, the show-off.’

  ‘In . . . er . . . Bohemia?’

  ‘Prague.’

  Marius Veland stared out of the window of room 406. A girl was lying on a towel on the lawn in front of the student building. She was not unlike the one in 303 whom he had secretly christened Shirley, after Shirley Manson from Garbage. But it wasn’t her. The sun over Oslo fjord had hidden itself behind the clouds. At last the weather had begun to warm up – a heatwave was forecast for the week. Summer in Oslo. Marius Veland was looking forward to it. The alternative had been to go home to Bøfjord, the midnight sun and a summer job at the petrol station. To Mother’s meatballs and Father’s endless questions about why he had begun to study Media Studies in Oslo when he had the grades to train to become a civil engineer at NTNU in Trondheim. To Saturdays at the community centre with drunken locals, screaming classmates who had never left their own neighbourhood and thought that those who had were traitors; to the dance band that called itself a ‘blues band’, but always managed to mangle Creedence Clearwater Revival and Lynyrd Skynyrd.

  That was not the only reason for him to be in Oslo this summer, though. He had landed the dream job. He was going to listen to records, watch movies and get paid for typing up his opinions on a PC. Over the past two years he had sent his reviews to several of the established papers, without success, but last month he went to So What! where a friend had introduced him to Runar. Runar had told him that he had wound up the clothes business he was running to start Zone, a free paper whose first issue would come out in August, if everything went to plan. The friend had mentioned that Marius liked writing reviews; Runar had said that he liked his shirt and employed him there and then. As a reviewer, Marius’s brief was to reflect ‘new urban values by dealing with popular culture with an irony that was warm, well informed and inclusive’. Such was Runar’s formulation of Marius’s assignment, and for it Marius would be richly rewarded, not in cash, but in free tickets to concerts, films, new bars and access to a milieu where he could make interesting contacts with a view to his future. This was his chance and he needed to be properly prepared. Of course, he had a good general background in pop, but he had borrowed CDs from Runar’s collection to do some further swotting up on the history of popular music. In recent days it had been American rock in the ’80s: R.E.M., Green On Red, Dream Syndicate, Pixies. Right now Violent Femmes was on the CD player. It sounded dated, but energetic.

  The girl below got up from her towel. It was probably a little cool. Marius followed her with his eyes towards the neighbouring block. On her way she passed someone walking with a bike. From his clothing he looked like a courier. Marius closed his eyes. He was going to write.

  Otto Tangen rubbed his eyes with nicotine-stained fingers. A sense of unease had spread through the bus, though it may have seemed to the outside world like calm. No-one stirred and no-one uttered a word. It was 5.20 and there had not been so much as a movement on one of the screens, just tiny fragments of time spurting by in white digits in the corner. Another drop of sweat rolled down between Otto’s buttocks. Sitting like this you began to have paranoid thoughts, you imagined that someone had been tampering with the equipment and that you were sitting watching a recording from the previous day or something of that kind.

  He was drumming his fingers on the table beside the console. That bastard Waaler had banned smoking in the bus.

  Otto leaned to the right and squeezed out a silent fart while looking at the guy with the blond shaven skull. He had been sitting in a chair without saying a word ever since he arrived. Looked like a retired bouncer.

  ‘Doesn’t seem our man’s turning up for work today,’ Otto said. ‘Perhaps he thought it was too hot. Perhaps he postponed it till tomorrow and went for a beer in Aker Brygge instead. They said in the weather report that –’

  ‘Shut up, Tangen.’

  Waaler spoke in a low voice, but it was loud enough.

  Otto gave a deep sigh and flexed his shoulders.

  The clock in the corner of the screen said 5.21.

  ‘Has anyone seen the guy in 303 leave?’

  It was Waaler’s voice. Otto discovered that Waaler was looking at him.

  ‘I was asleep this morning,’ he said.

  ‘I want room 303 checked. Falkeid?’

  The head of Special Forces cleared his throat.

  ‘I don’t consider the risk –’

  ‘Now, Falkeid.’

  The fans cooling the electronics buzzed as Falkeid and Waaler exchanged looks.

  Falkeid cleared his throat again.

  ‘Alpha to Charlie Two. Come in. Over.’

  Atmospheric noise.

  ‘Charlie Two.’

  ‘Clear 303 right away.’

  ‘Received. Clearing 303.’

  Otto studied the screen. Nothing. Imagine if . . .

  There they were.

  Three men. Black uniforms, black balaclavas, black machine guns, black boots. It all happened quickly, but it seemed strangely undramatic. It was the sound. There was no sound.

  They didn’t use the smart little explosives to open the door, but an old-fashioned crowbar. Otto was disappointed. Must be the cutbacks.

  The soundless men on the screen positioned themselves as if they were starting a race, one with the bar hooked under the lock, the other two one metre behind with their weapons raised. Suddenly they went into action. It was one coordinated movement, a crisp dance routine. The door flew open. The two men standing at the ready stormed in and the third man literally dived after them. Otto was already looking forward to showing the recording to Nils. The door glided back half-way where it stopped. Great shame they hadn’t had the time to put cameras in the rooms.

  Eight seconds.

  Falkeid’s radio crackled.

  ‘303 cleared. One girl and one boy, both unarmed.’

  ‘And alive?’

  ‘Extremely . . . er, alive.’

  ‘Have you searched the boy?’

  ‘He’s naked, Alpha.’

  ‘Get him out,’ Waaler said. ‘Fuck!’

  Otto stared at the doorway. They’ve been doing it. Naked. They’ve been doing it all night and all day. He stared at the doorway, transfixed.

  ‘Get him dressed and take him back to your position, Charlie T
wo.’

  Falkeid put the walkie-talkie down, looked at the others and gently shook his head.

  Waaler banged the flat of his hand down hard against the arm of the chair.

  ‘The bus is free tomorrow, too,’ Otto said, casting a fleeting glance at the inspector.

  He would have to tread warily now.

  ‘I don’t charge any more for Sundays, but I have to know when –’

  ‘Hey, look at that.’

  Otto automatically turned round. The bouncer had finally opened his trap. He was pointing to the middle screen.

  ‘In the hall. He went in through the front door and straight into the lift.’

  It went quiet in the bus for two seconds. Then there was the sound of Falkeid’s voice on the walkie-talkie.

  ‘Alpha to all units. Possible target has gone into the lift. Stand by.’

  ‘No, thank you,’ Beate smiled.

  ‘Yes, well, that’s probably enough cookies,’ the old lady sighed, putting the biscuit tin back on the table. ‘Where was I? Oh, yes. It’s nice to have visits from Sven now that I’m on my own.’

  ‘Yes, it must be lonely living in such a big house.’

  ‘I chat quite a bit with Ina, but she went to her gentleman friend’s holiday cabin today. I asked her to say hello to him, but they’re so strange about things like that nowadays. It’s as if they want to try out everything and at the same time they don’t think anything will last. That’s probably why they’re so secretive.’

  Beate stole a look at her watch. Harry said they would ring as soon as it was all over.

  ‘You’re thinking about something else now, aren’t you?’

  Beate nodded slowly.

  ‘That’s quite alright,’ Olaug said. ‘Let’s hope they catch him.’

  ‘You’ve got a good son.’

  ‘Yes, it’s true. And if he had visited me as often as he has just recently, I wouldn’t complain.’

  ‘Oh? How often’s that?’ Beate asked. It should be over by now. Why hadn’t Harry rung? Hadn’t he shown up after all?

  ‘Once a week for the last four weeks. Well, even more frequently actually. He’s been here every five days. Short stays. I really think he’s got someone down there in Prague waiting for him. And, as I said, I think he’s got some news for me this evening.’