Cockroaches

by Jo Nesbo

  “I’ve been trying to organize my life a little,” Bork said. “Find out what happened and why.”

  He pointed to one of the piles. “Those are the divorce papers. I stare at them and try to remember.”

  A girl came in carrying a tray. Harry tasted the coffee she poured and looked up at her quizzically when he realized it was ice-cold.

  “Are you married, Hole?” Bork asked.

  Harry shook his head.

  “Good. Keep well away. Sooner or later they’ll try to get one up on you. I have a wife who ruined me and an adult son who is trying to do the same. And I can’t work out what I did to them.”

  “How did you end up here?” Harry asked, taking another sip. Actually, it wasn’t that bad.

  “I was doing a job for Televerket here while they were installing a couple of switchboards for a Thai telephone company. After the third trip I never went back.”

  “Never?”

  “I was divorced and had everything I needed here. For a while I seriously believed I longed for a Norwegian summer, fjords and the mountains and, well, you know, all that stuff.” He nodded in the direction of the pictures on the wall, as if they could fill in the rest. “Then I went to Norway twice, but both times I was back within a week. I couldn’t stand it, yearned to be here from the moment I set foot on Norwegian soil. I’ve realized now that I belong here.”

  “What do you do?”

  “I’m a soon-to-be-retired telecommunications consultant, I take the occasional job, but not too many. I try to work out how long I’ve got left and how much I’m going to need in that period. I don’t want to leave one single øre for the vultures.” He laughed and waved a hand over the divorce papers as if wafting away an evil smell.

  “What about Ove Klipra? Why’s he still here?”

  “Klipra? Hm, I suppose he has a similar tale to tell. Neither of us had very good reasons for returning.”

  “Klipra probably had very good reasons not to.”

  “All that gossip is absolute rubbish. If Ove had been up to that sort of thing I would never have had anything to do with him.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Bork’s eyes flashed. “There have been a couple of Norwegians who have come here for the wrong reasons. As you know I’m a kind of senior figure in the Norwegian circle in town, and we feel a certain responsibility for what our compatriots do here. Most of us are decent, and we’ve done whatever had to be done. These bloody pedophiles have destroyed the reputation of Pattaya to such an extent that when people ask us where we live many have begun to answer with districts like Naklua and Jomtien.”

  “What exactly is ‘whatever had to be done’?”

  “Let me put it this way, two have gone back home and one unfortunately never made it.”

  “He jumped out of a window?” Harry suggested.

  Bork gave a resounding laugh. “No, we don’t go that far. But it’s probably the first time the police have received an anonymous tip-off in Thai with a Nordland accent.”

  Harry smiled. “Your son?” He motioned toward the photograph on the chest of drawers.

  Bork looked a bit taken aback, but nodded.

  “Looks like a nice lad.”

  “He was then.” Bork smiled with sad eyes and repeated himself: “He was.”

  Harry looked at his watch. The drive from Bangkok had taken almost three hours, but he had made his way like a learner driver until he had relaxed a little in the final kilometers. Perhaps he would make it back in just over two. He took three photos from his folder and placed them on the table. Løken had blown them up to 24 × 30 centimeters to achieve the full shock effect.

  “We think Ove Klipra has a hideaway near Bangkok. Will you help us?”

  43

  Wednesday, January 22

  Sis sounded happy on the phone. She had met a boy, Anders. He had just moved into Sogn, in the same corridor, and was one year younger than her.

  “He’s got glasses too. But that doesn’t matter because he’s dead good-looking.”

  Harry laughed and visualized Sis’s new catch.

  “He’s absolutely crazy. He thinks they’ll let us have children together. Just imagine that.”

  Harry just imagined that and knew there could be some difficult conversations in the future. But right now he was glad Sis sounded so content.

  “Why are you sad?” The question came with an intake of breath, as a natural extension of the news that their father had been to visit her.

  “Am I sad?” Harry asked, fully aware that Sis could always diagnose his state of mind better than he could himself.

  “Yes, you’re sad about something. Is it the Swedish girl?”

  “No, it’s not Birgitta. There is something that’s bothering me now, but it will soon be OK. I’ll sort it out.”

  “Good.”

  There was a rare silence, as Sis wasn’t speaking. Harry said they’d better ring off.

  “Harry?”

  “Yes, Sis?”

  He could hear her preparing herself.

  “Do you think we could forget all that now?”

  “All what?”

  “You know, the man. Anders and I, we … we’re having such a good time. I don’t want to think about it anymore.”

  Harry fell silent. Then he took a deep breath. “He attacked you, Sis.”

  Tears were in her voice at once. “I know. You don’t have to tell me again. I don’t want to think about it anymore, I’m telling you.”

  She sniffed, and Harry felt his chest constrict.

  “Please, Harry?”

  He could feel he was squeezing the phone. “Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it, Sis. Everything’s going to be fine.”

  They had been lying in the elephant grass for almost two hours and waiting for the sun to set. A hundred meters away, at the edge of a copse, was a small house built in traditional Thai style with bamboo and wood, and featuring an open patio in the middle. There was no gate, only a little gravel path to the main door. Out front was what looked like a colorful birdcage on a pole. It was a phra phum, a shrine to the protective spirit of a place.

  “The owner has to appease the spirits so that they don’t move into the house,” Liz said, stretching her legs. “So you have to offer them food, incense, cigarettes and so on to keep them happy.”

  “And that’s enough?”

  “Not in this case.”

  They hadn’t heard or seen any signs of life. Harry tried to think about something else, not about what might be inside. It had only taken them an hour and a half by car from Bangkok, but still it was as though they had arrived in another world. They had managed to park behind a hut by the road, beside a pigpen, and had found a path leading up the steep, tree-clad slope to the plateau where Roald Bork had explained that Klipra’s little house was situated. The wood was verdant, the sky blue, and birds of all colors of the rainbow flew over Harry as he lay on his back listening to the silence. At first he had thought he had cotton wool in his ears before realizing what it was: he hadn’t had any silence around him since he left Oslo.

  When darkness fell the silence was over. It had begun with scattered scraping and humming, like a symphony orchestra tuning their instruments. Then the concert started with quacking and cackling and soared in a crescendo when the howling and loud, piercing shrieks from the trees joined the orchestra.

  “Have all these animals always been here?” Harry asked.

  “Don’t ask me,” Liz said. “I’m a city kid.”

  Harry felt something cold brush against his skin and pulled his hand away.

  Løken chuckled. “It’s just the frogs out on their evening promenade,” he said. And, sure enough, soon there were frogs all around them apparently jumping wherever the mood took them.

  “Well, so long as it’s only frogs that’s fine,” Harry said.

  “Frogs are food too,” Løken said. He pulled a black hood over his head. “Where there are frogs there are also snakes.”

&nbs
p; “You’re kidding!”

  Løken shrugged.

  Harry had no desire to know the truth, but couldn’t stop himself from asking. “What sort of snakes?”

  “Five or six different varieties of cobra, a green adder, a Russell’s viper plus a good many more. Watch out. They say of the thirty most common varieties in Thailand twenty-six are poisonous.”

  “Shit. How do you know if they’re poisonous?”

  Løken gave him his poor-recruit look again. “Harry, bearing the odds in mind, I think you should just assume they’re all poisonous.”

  It was eight o’clock.

  “I’m ready,” Liz said impatiently and checked for the third time that her Smith & Wesson 650 was loaded.

  “Frightened?” Løken asked.

  “Only of the Police Chief finding out what’s going on before we get this done,” she said. “Do you know the average life expectancy of a traffic cop in Bangkok?”

  Løken laid a hand on her shoulder.

  “OK, let’s go.” Liz ran head down through the tall grass and disappeared into the darkness.

  Løken studied the house through his binoculars while Harry covered the front with the elephant rifle Liz had requisitioned from the police arms depot, along with a gun, a Ruger SP101. He wasn’t used to wearing a calf holster, but shoulder holsters aren’t worn where jackets are an impractical item of clothing. A full moon was high in the sky and gave him enough light to make out the contours of the windows and doors.

  Liz flashed her torch once, the signal that she was in position under one window.

  “Your turn, Harry,” Løken said when he noticed him hesitate.

  “Shit, did you have to mention the snakes?” Harry said, checking he had a knife in his belt.

  “Don’t you like them?”

  “Well, the ones I’ve met made a very bad first impression.”

  “If you get bitten, make sure you catch the snake, so you’re given the right antidote. Then it doesn’t matter if you’re bitten a second time.”

  Harry couldn’t see if Løken was smiling in the darkness, but guessed he was.

  Harry ran toward the house that loomed out of the night. Because he was running, it looked as if the silhouette of the fierce dragonhead on the roof ridge was moving. Yet the house looked very dead. The shaft of the sledgehammer in his rucksack banged against his back. He had stopped thinking about snakes.

  He arrived at the second window, signaled to Løken and crouched down. It was a while since he had run so far; that was probably why his heart was pounding so hard. He heard light breathing next to him. It was Løken.

  Harry had suggested tear gas, but Løken had rejected the idea point-blank. The gas would prevent them from seeing anything, and they had no reason to believe that Klipra was waiting for them with a knife to Runa’s throat.

  Løken raised a fist to Harry as a signal.

  Harry nodded and could feel his mouth was dry, a sure sign that adrenalin was pumping through his veins in the right quantities. The butt of the gun was clammy in his hands. He checked that the door opened inward before Løken swung the sledgehammer.

  The moonshine was reflected on the iron, and for a brief second he resembled a tennis player serving before the hammer came down with immense power and smashed the lock with a bang.

  The next moment Harry was inside, and his torchlight was circling the room. He saw her immediately, but the light moved on, as if acting off its own instructions. Kitchen shelves, a fridge, a bench, a crucifix. He couldn’t hear the animal noises anymore. He was transported back to Sydney, and heard only the sound of chains, waves smacking against the side of a boat in a marina, and the gulls screaming, perhaps because Birgitta was lying on the deck and forever dead.

  A table with four chairs, a cupboard, two beer bottles, a man on the floor, not moving, blood under his head, his hand hidden by her hair, a gun under the chair, a painting of a dish of fruit and an empty vase. Stilleben. Nature morte. Still life. The torchlight swept over her and he saw it again: the hand, pointing upward against the table leg. He heard Runa’s voice: “Can you feel it? You can have eternal life!” As though she was trying to summon energy for a final protest against death. A door, a freezer, a mirror. Before he was blinded he saw himself for a brief instant—a figure in black clothes with a hood over his head. He looked like an executioner. Harry dropped the torch.

  “Are you OK?” Liz asked, laying a hand on his shoulder. He intended to answer, opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

  “This is Ove Klipra, yes,” Løken said. He crouched down by the dead man, the scene lit by a bare bulb in the ceiling. “How odd. I’ve been watching this guy for months.” He placed his hand on the man’s forehead.

  “Don’t touch!”

  Harry grabbed Løken’s collar and pulled him up. “Don’t …!” He let go as fast. “Sorry, I … Just don’t touch anything. Not yet.”

  Løken said nothing, and stared at him. Liz had her deep wrinkle between her non-existent eyebrows again.

  “Harry?”

  He slumped down on a chair.

  “It’s over now, Harry. I’m sorry, we’re all sorry, but it’s over.”

  Harry shook his head.

  She leaned over him and laid a big, warm hand on his neck. The way his mother used to do. Shit, shit, shit.

  He got up, pushed her away and went outside. He could hear Liz and Løken’s whispers from inside the house. He looked up at the sky, searched for a star, but couldn’t find one.

  * * *

  It was almost midnight when Harry went to the door. Hilde Molnes opened it. He looked down; he hadn’t phoned in advance and could hear from her breathing that soon she would be in tears.

  They sat opposite each other in the living room. He couldn’t see anything left in the gin bottle, and she seemed clearheaded enough. She wiped away the tears. “She was going to be a diver, you know?”

  He nodded.

  “But they wouldn’t let her take part in normal competitions. They said the judges wouldn’t know how to assess her. Some people said it was unfair. Diving with only one arm gave you an advantage.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. It was the first thing he had said since he arrived.

  “She didn’t know,” she said. “Had she known she wouldn’t have spoken to me in that way.” Her face contorted, she sobbed and the tears ran down the wrinkles by her mouth like small streams.

  “Didn’t know what, fru Molnes?”

  “That I’m ill!” she shouted, and buried her face in her hands.

  “Ill?”

  “Why else would I anesthetize myself like this? My body will have been eaten up soon. It’s just rotten, just dead cells.”

  Harry said nothing.

  “I meant to tell her,” she whispered between her fingers. “The doctors told me six months. But I wanted to tell her on a good day.”

  Her voice was barely audible. “But there weren’t any good days.”

  Harry, unable to sit, got to his feet. He walked over to the large window overlooking the garden, avoided the family photographs on the wall because he knew who his eyes would meet there. The moon was reflected in the swimming pool.

  “Have they rung back, the men your husband owed money?”

  She lowered her hands. Her eyes were red from crying and ugly.

  “They rang, but Jens was here and he spoke to them. Since then I’ve heard nothing.”

  “So he takes care of you, does he?”

  Harry wondered why he had asked her that of all questions. Perhaps it had been a clumsy attempt to console her, to remind her she still had someone.

  She nodded mutely.

  “And now you’re going to get married?”

  “Do you object?”

  Harry turned to her. “No, why should I?”

  “Runa …” She didn’t get any further, and the tears began to roll down her cheeks again. “I haven’t experienced much love in my life, Hole. Is it asking too much to want a few months’ happi
ness before the end? Couldn’t she allow me that?”

  Harry watched a little petal floating into the pool. He was reminded of the freighters from Malaysia.

  “Do you love him, fru Molnes?”

  In the ensuing silence he listened for a fanfare.

  “Love him? What does that matter? I’m capable of imagining I love him. I think I could love anyone who loves me. Do you understand?”

  Harry glanced toward the bar. It was three steps away. Three steps, two ice cubes and a glass. He closed his eyes and could hear the ice cubes clink in the glass, the gurgle of the bottle as he poured the brown liquid over and finally the hiss as the soda mixed with the alcohol.

  44

  Thursday, January 23

  It was seven o’clock in the morning when Harry returned to the crime scene. At five he had given up trying to sleep, dressed and got into the hire car in the car park. There was no one else around, the forensics team had finished for the night and wouldn’t appear for another hour at least. He pushed the orange police tape aside and went in.

  It looked quite different in the daylight: peaceful and well kept. Only the blood and the chalk outlines of two bodies on the rough wooden floor were testimony to the fact that it was the same room he had been in the night before.

  They hadn’t found a letter, yet no one had been in any doubt as to what had happened. The question was more why Ove Klipra had shot her and then himself. Had he known the game was up? In which case, why not just let her go? Perhaps it hadn’t been planned, perhaps he had shot her while she was trying to escape or because she had said something that had sent him over the edge? And then he had shot himself? Harry scratched his scalp.

  He studied the chalk outline of her body and the blood that hadn’t been washed clean. Klipra had shot her in the neck with the gun they had found, a Dan Wesson. The bullet had passed straight through her, tearing the main artery, which had managed to pump out so much blood it ran over to the kitchen sink before the heart stopped beating. The doctor said she had lost consciousness at once because her brain didn’t get enough oxygen and she died after three or four pumps of the heart. A hole in the window showed where Klipra had been standing when he shot her. Harry stood inside the chalk silhouette of Klipra’s body. The angle was right.