The Devil's Star

by Jo Nesbo

  She had had plenty of time to think over the last few weeks. Time enough to realise that Harry had never made her a promise he hadn’t kept. He had never promised that he would not go to pieces again. He had never promised that work would not continue to be the most important thing in his life. He had never promised that it would be easy with him. All these were promises he had made to himself. She could see that now.

  Olav Hole and Sis were standing at the entrance waiting for them when they arrived at the house in Oppsal. Harry had talked so much about it that Rakel occasionally felt that it was her who had grown up there in the small house.

  ‘Hi, Oleg,’ Sis said, looking adult and big-sister-like. ‘We’ve made meatballs.’

  ‘Have you?’ Oleg pushed impatiently at the back of Rakel’s seat to try to get out.

  On the way back Rakel leaned her head back in her seat and said that she thought he was good-looking, but that he shouldn’t let it go to his head. He replied that he thought she was better looking and that she could let it go to her head as much as she liked as far he was concerned. When they reached the slopes of Ekeberg and Oslo lay below them, she saw black Vs intersecting the sky beneath.

  ‘Swallows,’ Harry said.

  ‘They’re flying low,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t it mean that it’s going to rain?’

  ‘Yes, rain is forecast.’

  ‘Oh, that’ll be wonderful. Is that why they’re out flying, to tell everyone?’

  ‘No,’ Harry said. ‘They’re doing a more useful job than that. They’re clearing the air of insects. Pests and so on.’

  ‘But why are they so busy? They seem almost hysterical, don’t they?’

  ‘It’s because they haven’t got much time. The insects are out now, but when the sun goes down the hunt for pests has to be over.’

  ‘Is over, you mean?’

  She turned towards him. He was staring ahead, lost in thought.

  ‘Harry?’

  ‘Yes. Sorry,’ he said. ‘I was gone there for a minute.’

  The audience for the play had assembled in the now shaded square in front of the National Theatre. Celebrities were making conversation with celebrities while journalists were swarming around and cameras were whirring. Apart from rumours about some summer romance, the topic of conversation was the same for everyone: the previous day’s arrest of the Courier Killer.

  Harry’s hand lay lightly against the small of Rakel’s back as they rushed towards the entrance. She could feel the heat from the tips of his fingers through the thin material. A face appeared in front of them.

  ‘Roger Gjendem from Aftenposten. Sorry, but we’re conducting a survey about what people think about the capture of the man who kidnapped the woman chosen to play the lead this evening.’

  They stopped and Rakel noticed that the hand on her back was suddenly no longer there.

  The journalist’s rictus smile was there, but his eyes were roaming.

  ‘We’ve met before, Inspector Hole. I work on crime reports. We chatted a couple of times when you returned after the case in Sydney. You once said that I was the only journalist who reported what you said accurately. Do you remember me now?’

  Harry studied Roger Gjendem’s face thoughtfully and nodded.

  ‘Mm. Finished with crime?’

  ‘No, no!’ The journalist shook his head energetically. ‘I’m just standing in. National holidays. Could I have a comment from Harry Hole, the policeman?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No? Not even a couple of words?’

  ‘I mean, no, I’m not a policeman,’ Harry said.

  The journalist seemed taken aback.

  ‘But I saw you . . .’

  Harry quickly panned around him before leaning forwards.

  ‘Have you got a business card?’

  ‘Yes . . .’

  Gjendem passed him a white card with the blue Gothic letters of Aftenposten on; Harry put it in his back pocket.

  ‘The deadline’s eleven o’clock.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ Harry said.

  Roger Gjendem stood still with a puzzled expression on his face as Rakel went up the steps with Harry’s warm fingers back in position.

  A man with a large beard was standing by the entrance smiling at them through tear-stained eyes. Rakel recognised the face from the newspapers. It was Wilhelm Barli.

  ‘I’m so glad to see that you’re here together,’ he boomed and opened his arms. Harry hesitated, but was caught.

  ‘You must be Rakel.’

  Wilhelm Barli twinkled at her over Harry’s shoulder as he hugged the tall man like a teddy bear he had lost and found again.

  ‘What was that?’ Rakel asked when they had found their seats in the fourth row.

  ‘Male affection,’ Harry said. ‘He’s arty.’

  ‘Not that. All that stuff about you not being a policeman.’

  ‘I did my last day’s work as a policeman yesterday.’

  She stared at him. ‘Why didn’t you say anything?’

  ‘I did say something. In the garden that time.’

  ‘And what are you going to do now?’

  ‘Something else.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘Something completely different. A friend has made me an offer and I have accepted. I hope I’m going to have better times. I can tell you more about it later.’

  The curtain went up.

  There was a roar of applause as the curtain fell and it continued with undiminished vigour for almost ten minutes.

  The actors came out and went back in consistently new formations until there were no rehearsed moves left and they just stood and received the applause. Shouts of ‘Bravo’ reverberated around whenever Toya Harang stepped forward to bow yet again, and in the end everyone who had had any connection with the performance was called up onto the stage and Toya was embraced by Wilhelm Barli, and tears were flowing both in the cast and in the audience.

  Even Rakel had to take out her handkerchief as she squeezed Harry’s hand.

  ‘You look weird,’ Oleg said from the back seat. ‘Is something up or what?’

  Rakel and Harry twisted their heads round in unison.

  ‘Are you friends again? Is that it?’

  Rakel smiled. ‘We’ve never fallen out, Oleg.’

  ‘Harry?’

  ‘Yes, boss?’ Harry looked in the mirror.

  ‘Does that mean that we can go to the cinema again soon? To see boys’ films?’

  ‘Maybe. If it’s a decent boys’ film.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Rakel said. ‘And what will I do?’

  ‘You can play with Olav and Sis,’ Oleg enthused. ‘It’s really cool, Mummy. Olav taught me how to play chess.’

  Harry swung into the drive and pulled up in front of the house. He let the engine idle. Rakel gave Oleg the house key and let him out. They watched him as he sprinted across the gravel.

  ‘My God, how he’s grown,’ Harry said.

  Rakel rested her head against Harry’s shoulder. ‘Are you coming in?’

  ‘Not now. There’s one last thing I have to do at work.’

  She stroked his face with her hand. ‘You can come later. If you’d like.’

  ‘Mm. Have you thought this through, Rakel?’

  She sighed, closed her eyes and nestled the top of her head against his shoulder.

  ‘No. And yes. It feels a bit like jumping out of a burning house. Falling is better than burning.’

  ‘At least until you land.’

  ‘I’ve come to realise that falling and living have certain things in common. For a start, both are very temporary states of being.’

  They sat in silence looking at each other while listening to the irregular rhythm of the engine. Then Harry put a finger under Rakel’s chin and kissed her. She had the feeling that she was losing her grip, losing her balance, and her composure, and there was only one thing she could cling on to, and he made her burn and fall at the same time.

  She didn’t know how long they had bee
n kissing when he gently freed himself from her embrace.

  ‘I’ll leave the door open,’ she whispered.

  She should have known it was stupid.

  She should have known it was dangerous.

  But she hadn’t thought for weeks. She was tired of thinking.

  33

  Sunday Night. Joseph’s Blessing.

  There were almost no cars and no people in the car park outside the custody block.

  Harry switched off the ignition and the engine died with a death rattle.

  He checked his watch: 23.10. Fifty minutes left.

  The echo of his footsteps rebounded off Telje, Torp & Aasen’s exterior brick walls.

  Harry took two deep breaths before he entered.

  There was no-one behind the reception desk and there was total silence in the room. He detected a movement to his right. The back of a chair rotated slowly in the duty office. Harry caught sight of half a face with a liver-coloured scar running down like a tear from an eye staring blankly at him. Then the chair returned to its former position and turned its back on him.

  Groth. He was alone. Strange. Or perhaps not.

  Harry found the key to cell number nine behind the reception desk to the left. Then he walked to the cells. There were voices coming from the warders’ room, but conveniently enough number nine was situated so that he didn’t have to pass it.

  Harry put the key into the lock and turned. He waited for a second; he could hear a movement inside. Then he pulled open the door.

  The man staring up at him from the bunk didn’t look like a killer. Harry knew that didn’t mean a thing. Sometimes they looked like what they were; sometimes they didn’t.

  This one was good-looking, clean cut, solidly built, short dark hair and blue eyes that may once have been like his mother’s, but over the years had become his own. Harry would soon be 40, Sven Sivertsen was over 50. Harry felt sure that most people would have guessed the other way round.

  Sivertsen, for one reason or another, was wearing the red prison working trousers and jacket.

  ‘Good evening, Sivertsen. I’m Inspector Hole. Would you mind standing up and turning round.’

  Sivertsen raised an eyebrow. Harry dangled the handcuffs in front of him.

  ‘It’s the rules.’

  Sivertsen got up without a word, and Harry clicked the handcuffs into place and pushed him back down on the bunk.

  There were no chairs to sit on in the cell. There was no personal property that could be used to harm yourself or others. In here the state had a monopoly on punishment. Harry leaned against the wall and pulled a crumpled packet of cigarettes out of his pocket.

  ‘You’ll set off the smoke alarm,’ Sivertsen said. ‘They’re extremely sensitive.’

  His voice was surprisingly high-pitched.

  ‘That’s true. You’ve been here before, haven’t you.’

  Harry lit the cigarette, stood up on tiptoes, whipped off the alarm cover and took out the batteries.

  ‘And what do the rules say about that?’ Sven Sivertsen asked acidly.

  ‘Don’t remember. Smoke?’

  ‘What’s this? The good-cop trick?’

  ‘No.’ Harry smiled. ‘We’ve got so much on you that we don’t need to do any play-acting. We don’t need to clear up details. We don’t need the corpse of Lisbeth Barli. We don’t need a confession. We simply don’t need your help, Sivertsen.’

  ‘Why are you here then?’

  ‘Curiosity. We deal with deep-sea creatures here and I wanted to see what kind of creature we had got on the hook this time.’

  Sivertsen snorted a laugh.

  ‘A fanciful image, but you’ll be disappointed, Inspector Hole. It might feel like something big, but I’m afraid this one’s just an old boot.’

  ‘Would you mind lowering your voice a bit.’

  ‘Are you frightened someone will hear us?’

  ‘Just do as I say. You seem very calm for someone who’s been arrested for four murders.’

  ‘I’m innocent.’

  ‘Mm. Let me give you a brief résumé of the situation, Sivertsen. In your briefcase, we find a red diamond that is not exactly an everyday item, but has been found on the bodies of several of the victims. Plus a Ceská Zbrojovka, a relatively rare weapon in Norway, but the same make as the gun used to murder Barbara Svendsen. According to your statement, you were in Prague on the dates the murders were committed, but we’ve checked with the airlines and it turns out that you were on a flying visit to Oslo on all of the five relevant dates, including yesterday. How are your alibis for five o’clock on all of the days in question, Sivertsen?’

  Sven Sivertsen did not reply.

  ‘Thought so. So don’t you innocent me, Sivertsen.’

  ‘As if I care what you think, Hole. Was there anything else?’

  Harry, his back against the wall, slid down into a crouch position.

  ‘Yes. Do you know Tom Waaler?’

  ‘Who?’

  It came quickly. Too quickly. Harry took his time, blew smoke up at the ceiling. The expression on Sven Sivertsen’s face was one of abject boredom, but Harry had met killers with a hard shell before – and with a psyche that was like a shaking jelly inside. Nonetheless, he’d also met the deep-frozen variety who were shell right the way through. He wondered how tough this one actually was.

  ‘You don’t need to pretend that you don’t remember the name of the man who arrested and questioned you, Sivertsen. I wonder if you already knew him?’

  Harry noted a tiny little hesitation in his eyes.

  ‘You’ve been done for smuggling before. The weapon that was found in your case has a particular mark on it made by a machine used to grind away the serial number. In recent years we have found the same marks on more and more unregistered guns in Oslo. We think there is a ring of smugglers responsible.’

  ‘Interesting.’

  ‘Have you been smuggling arms for Waaler, Sivertsen?’

  ‘Jesus, do you guys do that kind of thing, too?’

  Sven Sivertsen didn’t even blink. However, a little bead of sweat was making its way down from his dense hairline.

  ‘Warm, Sivertsen?’

  ‘Comfortable.’

  ‘Mm.’

  Harry got up, went over to the basin and with his back to Sivertsen he loosened a white plastic beaker from the container and turned the tap on full.

  ‘Do you know what, Sivertsen? It didn’t occur to me until a colleague told me about the way Waaler arrested you. Then I remembered how Waaler reacted when I said that Beate Lønn had found out who you were. Normally, he’s a cold sod, but he went ashen and for a while seemed almost stunned. At that time I thought it was because he realised we’d been outmanoeuvred and we might get landed with another dead body. But when Lønn told me about Waaler’s two guns and said that he’d shouted out that you shouldn’t shoot him, it all clicked into place. It wasn’t the fear of another murder that had given him the shakes. It was my mentioning your name. He knew you. In fact, you’re one of his couriers. And Waaler appreciated of course that if you were accused of murder everything would come out into the open. All about the guns you used, the reason for your frequent trips to Oslo, all your contacts. A judge might even mitigate the sentence if you were willing to work with the police. That was why he planned to shoot you.’

  ‘Shoot . . .’

  Harry filled the beaker with water, turned and went over to Sven Sivertsen. He put the beaker on the floor in front of him and unlocked his handcuffs. Sivertsen rubbed his wrists.

  ‘Drink up,’ Harry said. ‘Then you can have a smoke before I put the cuffs back on.’

  Sven hesitated. Harry looked at his watch. He still had half an hour left.

  ‘Come on, Sivertsen.’

  Sven took the beaker, put his head back and emptied it while keeping an eye on Harry.

  Harry put a cigarette between his lips and lit it before giving it to Sivertsen.

  ‘You don’t believe me, do you?
’ Harry said. ‘You think the opposite, that Tom Waaler is the one who’s going to rescue you from this – what shall we call it? – tiresome situation, don’t you? That he’ll take a risk as a reward to you for long and loyal service to his wallet. With all you’ve got on him, the worst that can happen is that you can blackmail him into helping you.’

  Harry gently shook his head. ‘I thought you were smart, Sivertsen. All these puzzles you set up, the way you stage-managed everything, with you always one step ahead. All this and I imagined someone who knew exactly what we would think and what we would do. But you aren’t even up to understanding how a shark like Waaler operates.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Sivertsen said, blowing smoke up at the ceiling with his eyes half closed. ‘I don’t believe you.’

  Sivertsen tapped at the cigarette. The ash fell outside the plastic beaker he was holding underneath.

  Harry wondered if it was a crack he could see. But then he had seen cracks before and had been wrong.

  ‘Did you know that colder weather is forecast?’ Harry asked.

  ‘I don’t follow Norwegian news.’ Sivertsen smirked. The man apparently thought that he had won.

  ‘Rain,’ Harry said. ‘How was the water, by the way?’

  ‘Like water.’

  ‘Joseph’s Blessing does what it’s supposed to, then.’

  ‘Joseph’s what?’

  ‘Blessing. No taste and no smell. You seem to know about the product. You might even have smuggled it in for him? From Chechnya to Prague to Oslo?’ Harry smirked. ‘That’s an irony of fate.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  Harry threw something high in the air over to Sivertsen, which he caught and inspected.

  ‘It’s empty . . .’ He sent Harry a searching look.

  ‘Skål.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Best wishes from our mutual boss, Tom Waaler.’

  Harry blew the smoke through his nose while watching Sivertsen.

  The involuntary twitch of his brow. The Adam’s apple bobbling up and down. The fingers that suddenly needed to scratch his chin.

  ‘With you under suspicion of committing four murders you should be sitting in a high-security prison, Sivertsen. Have you thought about that? Instead of that you’re in a standard detention cell where anyone with a police badge can walk in and out as they like. As a detective I could have taken you out, told the guard on duty that I was taking you for questioning, signed you out with some scrawl and then given you a plane ticket to Prague. Or – as in this case – to hell. Who do you think arranged for you to be here, Sivertsen? How do you feel, by the way?’