Smoke Screen
Page 16
Amy Linh knocked again, trying one more time.
‘Housekeeping!’
Still nothing. She thought about it for a few seconds, before pulling out her key card and unlocking the door.
‘Hello?’ she said, opening the door. ‘Housekeeping.’
She took a hesitant step inside. 620 was one of the nicest rooms on this floor. In the entire hotel, in fact. It was actually a suite. She stood in the hallway. No shoes on the floor, no jacket hanging on the hook. No one was in. There was a briefcase on the floor next to the umbrella stand, but that was it. She wasn’t disturbing anyone.
The hallway led into a larger room with a sofa, dining table and desk.
The TV she could hear from the hallway was in the bedroom. She announced her presence again and continued further into the suite. The bathroom door was closed. She decided to check the bedroom first. Amy Linh could feel her heart rate rising; still no one had replied. She had heard stories about housekeepers who had found dead bodies. She hoped for the love of God that wouldn’t happen to her. The thought made her feel guilty at first. It would, of course, be terrible for the person who had died, and his loved ones. But still.
She walked forwards tentatively, her shoes making a distinct clacking sound against the dark-brown parquet floor. She peeked into the bedroom. An unmade bed, a duvet that had been cast aside, as if the guest had only just gotten up. One of the pillows was on the floor. The other three pillows were still on the bed, one of them at the foot end. A suitcase was propped up against the wall. One of the wardrobe doors was open.
There was no one there.
She wanted to turn the TV off, but left it as it was. The sound was actually welcome company for the torrent of thoughts charging through her head.
Where was he?
Amy Linh walked back into the living room. The bin next to the desk was filled to the brim. Some of the contents had overflowed onto the floor. There were two bags propped up against it. One of the towels from the bathroom had been left scrunched up on the desk.
She moved closer. Lifted the towel slightly. There was a mortar underneath. The pestle was lying on the surface beside it. Residue of some kind of powder on both. Some of it was on the desk too.
She lifted the mortar to her nose and sniffed, but didn’t recognise the smell.
She picked up one of the bags from the floor and peered inside. A reel of wires and a small container with a diesel label on the side. A pair of black rubber gloves were folded up on the desk chair.
She was gripped with the sudden feeling that she shouldn’t be there. That she should get out immediately. She turned around, but stopped abruptly.
A sound from the door. The electric buzz of the lock.
It opened.
A man stepped inside and was in the process of taking off his scarf, before he came to a halt, realising she was there.
‘Hi,’ she said quickly, trying to smile. ‘Housekeeping.’
She looked down at the bag still in her hands. Put it down hastily. The man stood in the hallway, his eyes searching the room behind her. Amy Linh lowered her gaze. Stared at his boots instead. Beige leather with bright-blue shoelaces. They were muddy, and had probably soiled the carpet in the corridor.
‘Do you need anything?’ she asked, realising as she did that her voice was trembling. ‘Fresh towels?’
The man shook his head slowly. Amy Linh tried to smile, but couldn’t force her face to do it. He just stared at her. Dead eyes. Expressionless.
‘In that case,’ she said, noticing that her voice was really shaking now. ‘I’ll carry on.’
She walked past him. Through the hallway. Into the corridor. It was only once she had closed the door behind her, that she realised she needed to breathe.
40
The traffic on the motorway came to a standstill as Blix approached Oslo. He turned off at Bygdøylokket and made his way through the back streets. As always during the afternoon rush hour, the screen on his phone lit up continually with notifications warning him of the chaos on the roads.
With the traffic moving so slowly, he pulled out his phone and dialled Iselin’s number.
‘Hi, Dad,’ she answered, picking up straight away. ‘Are you at work?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I won’t be home for a while yet.’
‘That’s fine. I enjoy my own company.’
‘Did you get any sleep last night?’
‘I slept like a rock,’ she replied. ‘I might go for a walk in a bit. Is it safe to go into the city centre?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Just thinking about the rogue bomber.’
Blix took a moment, thinking about how he could answer her.
‘There’s no reason for you to worry,’ he said, hearing just how stupid that sounded. ‘That’s what he wants.’
Maybe, he wanted to add. They were still struggling to work out his motives, or even to decide whether there was more than just one perpetrator.
‘Let me know where you’re going though,’ he said.
‘Dad,’ Iselin replied, accusingly. ‘You never asked me to do that when I was living with Mum.’
Merete, he thought suddenly. He had planned on calling her today, but it had completely slipped his mind.
‘It’s different when you’re living with me,’ he answered. ‘You’re my responsibility now.’
‘I’ll send you a text when I figure out where I’m going,’ she said. ‘And I promise I’ll be home before the kids’ programmes start.’
Her teasing made him smile.
‘I’ve got to get back to work, my darling. See you later.’
‘See you.’
As soon as he hung up, he called Kovic and asked her to gather their small investigative team for a meeting.
Upon arrival on the sixth floor of police HQ, he found them waiting for him at the large conference table. He had asked Ann-Mari Sara from forensics to join them too, and she was now sat there with Kovic, Wibe and Abelvik. Blix had also requested that the police prosecutor, Pia Nøkleby, attend. Gard Fosse had not been invited, but he’d taken a seat at the end of the table regardless.
Blix quickly brought them up to speed on what had happened in Vestfold, and why he now believed that it was Sophus Ahlander who had kidnapped Patricia.
‘The link to Skage seems solid,’ he said, taking a sip from his coffee cup. ‘I’ve found the notifications of sale for a total of six cars that had been exchanged between them in the years leading up to Patricia’s kidnapping. These two probably knew each other quite well. Ahlander also confirmed that he used to be friendly with Ruth-Kristine too. The question is, just how long ago was that? We had kept an eye on Ruth-Kristine’s social circle at that time, in the hopes of identifying anyone she knew who fit the criteria – who could be a potential suspect. But we never came across Ahlander. We need to do things differently this time. Focus on Ahlander’s social circle, and see where Ruth-Kristine fits in.’
The police prosecutor straightened up. ‘The Patricia case has officially been reopened,’ she began. ‘I have started the process of pressing charges against Sophus Ahlander, but we need more information before we can proceed.’
Blix nodded. If they couldn’t find any DNA on the dummy, they risked having to let him go.
‘So you’re saying that dummy has been under a cabinet for the last ten years?’ The objection came from Wibe.
‘I agree that it sounds far-fetched,’ Blix said. ‘But I also know how easily things can get lost in a household with young children. It’s not all that rare to find things again much later, often in the strangest places. Beneath cabinets you rarely ever clean under, for example. Or at least not in my house, anyway.’
Wibe held up two hands, as if admitting that he wasn’t any better at cleaning either.
‘We received the dummy just before two o’clock,’ Sara reported. ‘I’ve spoken to one of the senior forensic techs. She was optimistic. They may have preliminary results for us sometime tomorrow morning.’
‘Good. We need to find out who he’s spoken to recently, besides Ruth-Kristine Smeplass.’
‘I’m still waiting on the data from Nina Ballangrud’s phone, although that’s not exactly relevant anymore,’ Kovic continued. ‘But we’ll probably have that by tomorrow.’
Blix took notes.
‘We’ve searched her flat,’ Wibe said. ‘We didn’t find anything that looked like it could be connected to the case.’
‘What about Ruth-Kristine’s flat?’ Blix asked. ‘Have you checked there again too?’
Abelvik nodded. ‘Nothing there, either,’ she said. ‘We’ve also gone round and interviewed some of her friends, including Mona Grandre and Christina Gjerdrum, the ones who were on the visitor list. They’d been told what had happened by Haugseth, her boyfriend, and had gone to visit her, but they hadn’t been allowed in.’
‘Did they say anything?’ asked Blix. ‘Or know anything?’
‘Nothing specifically related to the case, but both of them, as well as the others we spoke to, mentioned her mental-health problems and long-term drug addiction. She was generally described as a woman who had never really had her life in order.’
‘Did any of them have anything to say about Patricia?’
‘Nothing other than the fact she never spoke about her. She resented it when people brought it up.’
Blix’s phone started to ring. It was a number he had saved, but without a name. He let it ring out.
‘We went to see her boyfriend again,’ Wibe continued once Blix’s phone had gone silent. ‘He insists that he hasn’t heard anything from Ruth-Kristine, and he reassured us that he would let us know if he does hear from her.’
Gard Fosse had been sitting quietly at the end of the table.
‘Good,’ he said, clearing his throat. ‘This is certainly interesting, but there is still a lot of dust that needs clearing up from the wake of the bombings. They need more people. There is a limit to how much time you can carry on with this for. We need clarification.’
The police prosecutor agreed. ‘We have to make a decision on whether we’ll be taking Ahlander into police custody within the next twenty-four hours,’ she said. ‘When can we expect the next interview?’
‘Tomorrow,’ Blix replied. ‘As soon as I get the results for the dummy. If they find Patricia’s DNA on it, it won’t be a problem getting him into custody.’
Kovic’s phone began to ring as well. She had placed it on the table in front of her. Blix saw the number on the screen. It looked like the same person who had tried calling him.
‘See what they want,’ he said.
Kovic picked up her phone and walked away from the table. Blix watched her as she listened to the news on the other end of the phone. She nodded, hung up and returned.
‘That was the hospital,’ she said with a sigh. ‘Nina Ballangrud died twenty minutes ago.’
41
On most days, Amy Linh would walk all the way from the hotel in Majorstua to her home on Sars gate in Sofienberg, but she decided that, just this once, she would take public transport. She wanted to get home to her cat as soon as possible, to the leftovers of yesterday’s noodle soup and a quiet evening under a blanket in the living room. After such a long day at the hotel, she was tired and hungry.
She got on the tram at the stop towards the end of Vibes gate and sat in one of the vacant single seats right at the front, glad that she didn’t have to sit so close to a stranger. She could lean her head against the rattling windowpane as the tram clattered and whined its way laboriously through the city centre. She closed her eyes and longed for the peace and quiet of her flat. A cup of tea after dinner. Her laptop perched on her knees, if she could be bothered to do any writing, that is. Or maybe she would just read the book she had been neglecting for the last few days.
The lights of the city camouflaged the dark sky above them. The winter, which felt as if it was only getting longer and longer with each year, had seized Oslo in its icy grasp. The pavements were covered in the grit that had been scattered across the ice. People walked tentatively, holding on to each other. But the cold, slippery surfaces never phased Amy Linh. The dark days, on the other hand, that was a different story.
Just as the winter darkness began to set in, the darkness within welled to the surface. It was rare to find her doing anything after work. She washed and cleaned all day long at the hotel. At home, she couldn’t even be bothered to clean up after dinner. The first few weeks after Christmas were always the worst, when the evenings and winter months seemed endless.
Ten minutes later, a voice rang out from the speaker above her, announcing that the next stop would be Oslo Central Station. Amy Linh manoeuvred her way back towards the nearest door. She was not alone in trying to position herself at the exit. As the tram juddered to a halt, she steadied herself on the back of one of the chairs. Others were not so vigilant and bumped into her, without offering her so much as an apology.
A face of someone further back in the crowd caught her attention. There was something familiar about it, but she didn’t have time to look more closely – a teenager who was so tall he almost brushed his head along the roof of the compartment had pushed in front of her. In the chaos that ensued as the tram came to a complete stop and people began to shove their way out, she lost sight of the man.
She hurried out into the evening and down the stairs leading to the underground. She was only going to Grønland Station, one stop down the line. A cold gust of wind passed through her as she hurried by a homeless person kneeling on a piece of cardboard, hands outstretched in the form of a bowl. The flame of the small candle beside him flickered in the wind.
While she waited on the platform, it suddenly came to her that the man she had seen on the tram looked like the guest from room 620. She wondered if he would complain to her manager at the hotel, not just because she had let herself into his suite when he had hung up a Do Not Disturb sign, but because he had also caught her snooping through his things. That, she knew, could be grounds for dismissal. She definitely shouldn’t have done it. But she hadn’t been able to stop herself.
She was only on the Metro for about a minute before she got off. The Grønland underground station was huge, and it took her a few minutes to weave her way out into the fresh air. Amy Linh made her way onto Tøyengata, through the powerful scent of incense and spices. She had a strange feeling that someone was following her, but when she turned around, there was no one there.
The Botanical Garden came into view just ahead. The garden had been one of the reasons she had chosen to settle in Sofienberg. When it was enveloped in snow, as it was now, she would spend the day wandering around in there, imagining what it would look like in full bloom, what it would smell like, this green oasis, overflowing with all the plants and flowers the world had to offer, nestled in the centre of Norway’s capital. It gave her something to look forward to. Something that made the long evenings of the Norwegian winter a little more bearable.
Taking the path through the garden would shave about five minutes off her walk home, and she was pleased to see that the gate was open. The garden was spacious, wide and hilly, with several paths that zigzagged between the trees and bushes. They were sparsely lit during the winter – the only negative thing about taking this route on a cold, dark evening such as this.
Amy Linh was halfway up the steep incline, the highest point of the garden, when a jogger emerged over the hill, running in the opposite direction. He kept a good pace. She turned and watched with admiration at how easily he kept his balance on the icy surface. As she did so, she noticed a person in a dark coat behind her who had also chosen to walk the same path through the garden. His face was shrouded in darkness. She turned again and sped up. She felt her heart rate increase, noticed how hard she was pushing forwards as her feet met the slippery ground below, saw her breath start to crystallise in the icy air in fron
t of her. She was irritated with herself for having not packed her ice grips when she left home that morning.
It wasn’t much further. Just up to the highest point of the hill before she could speed up again. She looked behind her. The man was closer now, she could hear that his breathing was heavy too, an indication that he had been straining to get up the hill as well. She was just approaching the top now, but could hear that he was closer, almost right behind her. The sound of his footsteps. She spun round. In that moment, she realised who it was. She recognised the beige shoes. The laces. The face that was momentarily illuminated by a lamppost nearby.
She stopped, she knew he would eventually catch up with her. She knew that he wanted something.
With a quaking voice, she asked, ‘What do you want from me?’
He stopped directly in front of her. ‘How many people have you told?’
It was the first time she had heard his voice. It wasn’t as deep as she had imagined, but it was colder, hollow.
‘Told about what?’ she stammered.
‘That you were in my room today, that you looked through my things.’
‘No one,’ she answered hastily, regretting it instantly. ‘No. Wait. Several people.’
He didn’t say anything, just carried on staring at her, until he looked away, then around them, and seemed to come to the same realisation she had: there was no one else there. The jogger was gone.
Amy Linh swallowed.
‘I wish I could trust you,’ the man said, taking a step closer. ‘But I’m afraid I can’t.’
42
While Emma had been stood at the counter, buying herself a sandwich and another latte, a breaking-news notification from the Norwegian News Agency popped up on her phone – an update that the New Year’s Eve bomb had claimed its fifth life. She rushed back to her table and opened the notification. The police had published the name of the person who had been killed, Nina Ballangrud, hiding in this new update the press release they had planned to publish, and simultaneously rectifying the fact that they had misidentified Ruth-Kristine Smeplass as the injured woman.