Kovic walked over to the bin. ‘Do you mind if we take what you cleared out of the car?’
She opened the lid without waiting for an answer. Haugseth walked over to her and helped to pull out the other bin bags until he found the right one.
‘Here you go,’ he said, handing it to her.
23
Blix received another text when they climbed back in the car. Iselin again. This time, she had just sent a question mark. He read the previous message. She wanted to meet up, but didn’t say why.
He typed out a reply, saying that he would probably be working late but that they could have dinner together. Out, at a restaurant, somewhere. She replied immediately: A thumbs up.
‘I’ll contact the ferry company, get a copy of their passenger lists,’ Kovic said.
Blix nodded and started the ignition.
‘She might not have been travelling alone,’ Kovic added.
The lorry in front of them ejected a huge cloud of exhaust.
‘Shall we try Nina Ballangrud before we drive back?’ Kovic asked.
Blix’s thoughts were elsewhere.
‘Who?’ he asked.
‘Ruth-Kristine’s addict friend,’ Kovic explained, yawning as she said it. ‘I can’t get through on her phone. She lives in Manglerud. It’s on the way back.’
Blix put his phone into the space between the seats. ‘Let’s do that,’ he said.
Kovic entered the address into the sat nav.
‘Does she live alone?’ Blix asked as they drove out onto the E6.
‘According to the information we’ve got,’ Kovic nodded.
The map indicated that they would be there in two minutes.
Kovic opened the folder she had been holding in her lap and found the print out of Ruth-Kristine Smeplass’s phone log.
‘Nina Ballangrud was the last person to call Ruth-Kristine,’ she said.
‘When was that?’
‘At 22:07 on New Year’s Eve,’ Kovic replied. ‘A short conversation. Only ten seconds.’
They pulled up in front of an old block of flats, one of the only ones in the area that had not yet been restored. Advent candles and Christmas decorations were visible in several of the windows.
Kovic got out first. She located the right entrance and found the doorbell with the name Nina Ballangrud.
‘Not home,’ Kovic concluded after waiting about a minute.
The next doorbell down was labelled Tore Halvorsen. Blix tried that one. Not long after, a man’s voice answered.
‘Police,’ Blix said. ‘We need to get inside.’
Without hesitation, the door buzzed as the lock opened from inside; it seemed this wasn’t the first time the police had asked to be let in. Kovic pulled the door open.
Nina Ballangrud lived on the third floor. A man stood in the doorway of the flat opposite hers.
‘Halvorsen?’ Blix asked.
The man nodded.
‘We’re here to speak to Nina Ballangrud,’ Blix explained. ‘Have you seen her?’
‘It’s been a few days,’ the man replied.
‘So she’s not home?’
‘I don’t know.’
The man stood there in the doorway while Blix knocked on Nina Ballangrud’s door. No response.
Kovic pulled out a calling card, wrote a short message and stuck it in the doorframe. The man across the hallway went back into his flat and closed the door.
Back in the car, Kovic searched for the phone number of Nina Ballangrud’s parents and called it as they drove back to HQ. Blix listened as she introduced herself and explained why she was calling. Then the tone of her voice changed, as if she had been told something interesting.
Blix’s own phone started to ring. He recognised the number but couldn’t quite work out where from. He lifted the phone to his ear so as not to interrupt Kovic’s conversation.
‘It’s the fingerprint lab,’ a woman’s voice said. ‘We’ve examined the image you sent over. I was told that you needed the answer immediately.’
‘Have you found anything?’
‘A total of six different fingerprints,’ the woman stated. ‘One of them is yours.’
‘Brilliant,’ Blix replied with a sigh. ‘Have you identified any of the others?’
‘Two of them. Several prints from both the left and right hands of Christer Storm Isaksen, and the remaining prints – a right thumb and a right index finger – belong to Ruth-Kristine Smeplass.’
‘Ruth-Kristine Smeplass,’ Blix repeated. ‘You’re sure about that?’
‘We’ll send an official report to verify,’ the woman confirmed.
‘What about the envelope?’ asked Blix. ‘Did you find any on that?’
‘Two sets of fingerprints,’ the woman answered. ‘Christer Storm Isaksen’s, and an unknown print.’
‘Not Ruth-Kristine Smeplass then?’
‘No, hers were only on the photo.’
Blix tried to work out what that could mean, but couldn’t think straight.
‘I’ll send the written report within the hour,’ the woman concluded.
Blix thanked her and looked over at Kovic who was now sat holding her phone in her lap. He let her go first.
‘Nina’s mother was planning on calling us,’ she said. ‘They’ve not heard from her since New Year’s Eve.’
24
Although the carpet muffled the sound of the cleaning trolley, Amy Linh still tried to be as quiet as possible as she wheeled it down the hallway. She cast a quick glance down at her list. Rooms 614, 615 and 616 were done. 617 was supposed to check out later, so she carried on walking past.
She knocked on the next door down.
‘Housekeeping.’
The words came out like a whisper. She cleared her throat and tried again, a little louder.
‘Not today,’ a voice answered from inside room 618. ‘I don’t need anything.’
She asked one more time, just to be sure.
‘No thanks’, the man repeated.
Amy Linh took hold of the trolley again and carried on pushing it down the hall, back into the silence. She liked the silence. It gave her space to think. Her imagination thrived at work. Sparked by the small insights she gained into other peoples’ lives, just by cleaning up after them, or from stealing brief, curious glances at their belongings. A used condom, or the residue of some bodily fluid left on the bedding. A gift bag or box from somewhere expensive, opened but packed away again – the garment still inside. A receipt from a fancy restaurant on the bedside table. Several glasses of wine and a taxi back to the hotel. Some of them didn’t even bother to hide the fact that, at some point since she’d last been in to clean, they had snorted a line of cocaine. Amy Linh would make a note of everything she saw or encountered at work, saving it all to write her own stories later on.
A door opened just ahead. A man and woman emerged from the room and began walking in Amy Linh’s direction. She moved the trolley closer into the wall and looked at the man, noticing that he didn’t seem fully awake yet. He had deep bags under his eyes, and his cheeks were red – as if they had been shaved recently with a razor that had been a little blunt. The woman’s hair was wet. As they passed, Amy could hear that her breathing was shallow – as if she were annoyed about something. Neither of them replied when Amy Linh gave them a quiet hello, just carried on as if she wasn’t there.
A late night, or maybe an early morning. Perhaps he had snored, or she had. Maybe their few days away at a hotel in Norway’s capital had lived up to their expectations, or they could have been in a rush to get back to normality. Children, work, a car they might have to take to the repair shop. Her imagination ran wild.
As for her own story, she had long fought to forget it. After the Americans had left her home country in the 1970s, the peace they had been promised had only resulted in more warfare. And since her father had taken the side of South Vietnam, they had been forced to flee in a raft, along with nearly fifty other refugees. They had all come close
to falling overboard more than once. Then they were finally rescued by a Norwegian cargo ship, and were, at long last, given food and drink, and were taken to Singapore. From there, they travelled to the Philippines. They had to stay there for two years, before they could eventually continue on to Norway.
It was in Manila that Amy Linh lost her sister. They had not caught the pneumonia in time. With no money, it had been impossible to get her the medication. Twelve years on earth, that was all. Their escape, and the journey itself, had impacted and shaped her family in ways none of them would talk about. But what they had been through was still visible, etched into their faces. Their story could still be heard in the silent cries of a grief that they never let out. In the arguments that raged between them whenever they found themselves without clothes or food.
It was for that reason that Amy Linh had made her mind up.
She wasn’t going to suppress the story she carried with her any longer. She was going to write it down. She was going to tell everyone about Nha Trang. What the city had been like before the tourists had discovered its bay and pristine beaches. The sounds she would wake up to every morning. The motorbikes. The doorbells. The horns from the boats signalling their way back into the harbour with the catch of the night. And she would write about her sister.
619 didn’t take long to clean. The guest was meant to be staying for two more days, so she only had to change the bed linen and the towels, put an extra toilet roll in and clean the bathroom. She also folded some of his clothes for him. In and out in less than ten minutes.
There was a tray with a dirty plate, an empty glass and some cutlery left on the floor outside 620. He had been staying at the hotel since the day before New Year’s Eve. Alone. Amy Linh had seen him before. He always stayed in the same room.
She wanted to knock on the door and check to see if everything was okay. If he needed anything. He had kept the Do Not Disturb sign on the door for three days in a row. He didn’t usually do that. She could hear that the TV was on, but no one was moving around inside.
Her thoughts got carried away again. What if something had happened? What if he was in there, dead, or unconscious?
If the sign were still there tomorrow, Amy Linh said to herself, she would knock and check.
25
The blinds in the office windows had been pulled shut and the lights dimmed. Gard Fosse was sat behind his desk. The clock on the wall behind him showed that it was already after five o’clock.
Blix walked in, leaving the door wide open behind him.
‘We’re going to have to take a closer look at the circumstances around Ruth-Kristine Smeplass,’ he announced.
Fosse leant back in his chair and looked up at him.
‘What kind of circumstances are we talking about?’
‘We have footage of her from the CCTV outside City Hall,’ Blix began. ‘Acting strangely, going from one bin to the next, before stopping right next to the one with the bomb.’
Fosse loosened his tie. He was the only one in their department who actually wore his uniform every day.
‘Her flat has also been broken into sometime over the last twenty-four hours,’ Blix continued. ‘And her boyfriend suspects that she was involved with some drug-smuggling operation just before New Year’s Eve.’
‘I don’t see how any of that relates to the explosion,’ Fosse commented. ‘Petty crimes. They always turn up when investigating these larger cases. You know that. They can’t be prioritised.’
Blix ignored him and carried on, informing him about the photo Christer Storm Isaksen had received in prison.
‘I’ve just found out that Ruth-Kristine’s fingerprints were on it,’ he said. ‘And her closest friend, Nina Ballangrud, has been reported missing too. No one’s heard from her since New Year’s Eve. The Missing Persons Unit have got most of their personnel wrapped up in the investigation into the bombing now, so they don’t have enough people to help us out with this. The smartest thing to do would be to look into it ourselves.’
‘Sounds as if you’ve looked into it a lot already,’ Fosse replied.
Blix considered him. For Fosse, the department was simply a machine that processed cases, hopefully with the least amount of resistance. Its effectiveness was measured only by the number of cases processed and the time it had taken to complete them. He didn’t want his staff to do any extra work that might fall into the responsibility of the other departments.
‘I have a bad feeling about this,’ Blix said, aware that argument wouldn’t have any impact on Fosse. ‘The father of Ruth-Kristine’s missing friend works for NRK,’ he added, knowing full well that this, at least, was a language Fosse understood. ‘I don’t want the case to be left on the shelf.’
He avoided telling him that Rolf Ballangrud was actually employed in the kitchen of the broadcasting company’s cafeteria.
‘Fine,’ Fosse said, making a gesture with his hand, as if to wave him out. ‘But don’t take too much time on this one.’
‘I’ll ask Wibe and Abelvik to help out,’ Blix added, now on his way out of the door. ‘They’re back from the Christmas break now. Maybe we’ll find her before the day is over.’
He closed the door behind him and headed back to the office, where Kovic had already gathered Nicolai Wibe and Tine Abelvik, all of whom were now waiting for him at the conference table. Wibe was a down-to-earth police officer with a background in undercover surveillance. He was an expert when it came to tracking people, both online and on the ground. Blix and Abelvik had worked on patrol together. She was a few years younger than he was but had gained a lot of experience working in various other specialist units.
‘As far as we know, this should be a basic missing-persons case, but it may also be connected to the New Year’s Eve bombing,’ Blix began. ‘One of the most severely injured is the closest friend of the woman who is now missing.’
Wibe pulled towards him the photo of Nina Ballangrud that Kovic had printed out.
‘I want to look into the possibility that the bomb was not just randomly placed, but was targeted at Ruth-Kristine Smeplass,’ Blix continued.
He went through the outline of the Patricia case again, noticing the scepticism on the faces of the two new team members.
‘What about the bomb in Frogner Park?’ Wibe asked. ‘The bomb squad reported that it had been made in the same way as the one at City Hall, just not as powerful. Which would suggest that the same person or group was behind the attack, and given the fact that the second one was placed in a rubbish bin as well, that seems plausible. But what you’re saying is that the New Year’s Eve bomb was an attempted murder? That sounds … wrong.’
‘I understand why you would think so,’ Blix said. ‘But there are a lot of reasons why we should look into Ruth-Kristine.’
He told them about the break-in at her flat, her trip to Denmark, her bizarre behaviour along the harbour just before the explosion. And finally, the cross they had found on the bin she had ended up standing next to.
Kovic took over. ‘One of the last people to have been in contact with Ruth-Kristine was the now-missing Nina Ballangrud,’ she explained, showing them the phone log.
Wibe studied the records.
‘Have you spoken to the taxi driver?’ he asked, pointing to the line that showed Ruth-Kristine’s call to the taxi company.
‘I called them fifteen minutes ago,’ Kovic replied. ‘They’re looking for the details of that trip and who the driver was, and then they’re going to get him to call me back.’
Abelvik took the printout of the phone log.
‘Do you have the records from Nina Ballangrud’s phone as well?’ she asked.
‘Not yet.’
‘What about the activity on her bank account?’
‘We’ve requested it,’ Kovic assured her. ‘We have just received the card details for Ruth-Kristine though,’ she added. ‘She paid for a taxi at 23:27 on New Year’s Eve. And that’s the last time her card was used.’
‘May
be Ruth-Kristine and Nina were both in the taxi that night?’ Abelvik suggested.
‘Nina wasn’t injured in the explosion,’ Kovic said. ‘The divers have checked the fjord, and the video feed has been reviewed to account for all the casualties and injured.’
‘Maybe she was involved?’ Wibe offered. He fished a bag of snus from behind his lower lip and put it back in its container. ‘Made sure Ruth-Kristine was there for the explosion?’
‘And then disappeared after that, you mean?’ Abelvik asked.
Wibe shrugged. Blix held his face in his hands as he thought through it.
‘They were both addicts,’ Wibe continued. ‘Maybe Smeplass owed her money or something?’
‘There are easier ways to kill someone than trying to blow them up outside City Hall,’ Kovic interrupted. ‘Besides, her flat had been completely upended. All because someone was looking for cash? Valuables?’
Wibe didn’t answer.
‘And where did she go, anyway?’ Abelvik asked.
Kovic’s phone rang and she walked a short distance away to answer it. Blix started to gather the papers together, indicating that the meeting was over. He gave Wibe and Abelvik the task of tracking down Nina Ballangrud, while he would try to find Sophus Ahlander himself.
‘I also want you to go to Ruth-Kristine’s flat and do a tactical search this time. See if you can find something that might explain what she had been up to in the few days before the explosion, or what the intruder could have been looking for.’
Kovic came back over as everyone was getting up.
‘That was the taxi driver,’ she said, holding up the phone. ‘The trip was booked under Ruth-Kristine’s name. There was only one passenger. A woman. She was picked up at Holmlia and driven into the city centre.’
‘He’s sure about that?’ Blix asked. ‘Just one woman?’
Kovic nodded. ‘He remembered the trip because he was worried he wouldn’t get paid for it.’
‘Why?’
‘The payment wouldn’t go through until the third attempt. According to the driver, the passenger kept typing in the wrong pin number.’
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